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My Control Wizard
borak2
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 202 Arc User
This is Fred Psion. My control wizard i used during the beta weekend 3. I got him up to 35 so far.
My Thoughts so far
After the last Beta Weekend almost everyone complained about how uncontrolly the control wizard was. The devs listened and added a few seconds to the duration of the control powers and it has made a world of difference in gameplay between last test and this one.I am happy with the progression of the CW so far. You hit your stride when you get spell mastery and your game play changes dramatically depending on what spell you put in there. I keep Repel in there to build a quick 5 stacks of arcane mastery so when i pop steal time it does good.
You start to get powerful when your in the low 20's, and it gets better from then on.
My only real complaint so far is the Paragon paths. We only have 1. I am hoping each class has three different options considering there are three different trees.
I don't want my control wizard shooting lightning. It doesn't make sense. Give me some kind of Arcane type mastery or elemental type since we wasted all our feat points on chill. (I didn't but you get the idea)
All in All I am very happy with the way things turned out and my guy does look awesome in the picture.
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*~Serixil Kor'hedron- Drow Trickster~*
At level 50.
I got one at 30.
Kidding, but if you do have pics, I would love to see the orbs.
Seven Against Thay: An RP-Focused Guild for all Races and Classes
/10 char
I found this somewhat humorous, seeing that Steal Time gathers 5 stacks by itself during the slow portion even if only used on 1 enemy. :P
Plus I love choking someone then repelling them through the air. But Repel is a good Oh <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> button. In helms hold It's np to take on 2 legion devils and an enzyine(sp?) Choke one, repel the other two, mm, when they all get close to you hit Time Steal, by then choke is up again and repel is as well and my daily usually takes me a minute now adays in a fight to get full. I have it for almost every fight.
I then invested some points in the paragon tree that gives 30% dmg if your within 20" range, and the recover 5% AP from your crits.
With this i was pretty much top dps in anything, except maybe single target boss fights.
My rotation would be: conduit of ice on the big mob -> teleport in to the group -> throw down icy terrain followed up by -> Steal time finish off with -> chill strike (spell mastery).
this combo just rocks also for soloing, love to see how everything shatters from the chill strike, and you ap gains are pretty insane.
Choke the boss type, Chill strike a minion charging me, Repel everyone close to me back near the boss. By the time they all got to me again I would time steal. That would kill all the minions. By then Choke would be ready again as would chill strike. I would choke and chill strike and the boss type would be dead. By this time my daily would be ready for the next encounter.
If there was two or three boss types (not minions) then I would choke one. Chill strike another. When they both got to me I would repel all of them away and choke the same one again and chill strike him to kill him off. Then I would Steal time and smack my daily down and kill whatever was left with 1 or 2 magic missiles.
I have my guy built for recovery so my daily comes up after I go through my rotation twice. It works wonders. When I finally got Arcane Singularity I used that to open every fight, it would kill all minions and then I would cycle through my rotation on any harder (boss types) people left over in the encounter.
My spells I used were:
Chill Strike, Choke, Steal Time, Repel in spell mastery, MM and ray of frost (switched over to the lightning one after got my paragon) and my dailies were The big snow spike and the giant knock back snow storm. Once I got Arcane Singularity I got rid of the snow storm and took that instead.
Edit: My gear I used were power gear and recovery gear, with crit sprinkled in.
Set-up
Please note I do not remember all names correctly, and will try to "describe" them.
Dailies: Ice Knife for single targets, Black hole for groups
Tab-skill: Ice spear
Encounters: Force grip, Force push, the purple ray (Dot with a dmg-de-buff to target)
At-will: MM and frost-ray.
The dailies are self explanatory.
The tab-skill not only aoe dmg well, being the only real dmg ability this build has, but it also stunns the target.
Force grip is the longest stun, and with the update works well as the main stun.
Force push was used seldom, but was needed at times to save the hide of the cleric, or simply make sure some mob did not escape the singularity.
The purple ray was always applied, a fire and forgett dot, who would NOT use it?
At wills: MM is the bread and butter. Get those arcane stacks. It was nice to see the addition of a visual representation of the level, though it does need some pretty-fying for launch
Ray of frost, only used in fights where I know I need to get a Daily up and running fast. Some boss adds where predictable, and thus it was needed sometimes so I could pop a black-hole.
All in all, the changes to PvE from Beta 2 made this build very soloable at lvl 35-40, and I have to say that as disapointed I was last beta, just as happy was I this beta.
I hope this build stays viable, since this kite-set-up was alot of fun to play. In pvp I managed quite will being the opportunist attacker. If 1 rogue or GWF or GF spotted me though:
Run and gun, survival: TR:0%, GWF:40%, GF:90%.
Killing these classes in such a case.
TR:20%
GWF:40%
GF:0%
These numbers are pretend and used to illustrate.
Great fun, very happy.
Is that our control skills are zero zip and nada worth vs boss monsters, sure we can control the adds and such but imho i just feel its such a waste to have all these control skills and when it comes to boss encounters your just semi useless.
Add some mechanic where the boss gets reduces control time, or some kind of control immunity stack that goes down everytime u use a control spell on him, say a stack of 3.
I dunno they just need to look at it i think.
in harder dungeons its more important to handle the adds of the boss than the boss himself
ive yet to see a boss that wipes a group, its always the adds that kill you
Untill there is a true tanker that can grap that aggro back its unhealthy to get to much add attention.
I always made sure myself and one other would deal with the adds when they spawned(rogue or GWF worked well), while rest of group focused the boss. Icy terrain, the cold tornado thing,steal time and singularity daily the adds, the rogue or GWF mops up.
When there are no adds you just spam all your damage attacks on the boss. Your job is to control the battle (thats adds) and let the dps'ers kill the boss. Protect the cleric is our main concern.
That's exactly it.
Chill Strike as your Mastery skill is nice as well since it provides some AoE and a brief stun on the primary target.
Your At-Will selection is the only one I'd currently go with since the other two powers are less useful. MM is high dps (and great utility if you get the Renegade Paragon Mastery Feat) while RoF is second only to Steal Time when you want to build Action Points (You did grab the Controlling Action Feat, right?).
Now your three encounters is the place where I disagree somewhat. Entangling Force (aka. Force Choke), Repel (aka. Force Push) and Ray of Enfeeblement are decent, but all suffer from being single target. The two basic things about the Control Wizard compared to the other classes are a) lots of AoEs and b) stuns, debuffs and slows. Also, you haven't slotted Action Point Generator #1 (aka. Steal Time).
Steal Time is AoE damage with a debuff and stun while building massive AP with the Controlling Action Feat. Once you get it at level 17 you have no reason to not have it on your bar unless you hate your class. It's that good.
In your build, Repel is the weakest link, so I'd drop that first. Though for soloing certain dungeons (notably those with bottomless chasms) Repel is awesome in the Mastery slot. I used it to insta-kill one boss in the Sky Pirate zone, even though it cost me the boss drop, just because my first attempt cost 30+ potions and still failed due to a stun/high damage combo out of nowhere.
I second most of what he said, although I went with the following:
Dailies: Same (Ice Knife - singles; singularity - groups)
At-will: MM, Lightning
Encounters: (tab) Chill Strike, Entangling Grasp, Conduit of Ice, Repel/Steal time
Generally, I open up with Chill strike, then lay Conduit of Ice. I generally throw a lighting AoE in to kill the minions off (if any are alive) and MM the lieutenant or boss caster type down. I use repel if I'm running into a lot of melee charge types. Steal time if they have no charge/teleport powers. Entangle grasp, MM, Chill.
I also found the storm at-will useful for taps if you're ever surrounded by minions. Tapping it rapidly three times (just a slight bit of bar-length) will give you about 25-40% of your action points as long as there are 3+ mobs around you. Worked really well during the succubus battle to just nail her with dailies before she charmed you.
That's very good to know. Wish I had tried that!
I always found Repel's bang for the buck limited in group scenarios. Sending a group of mobs flying off isn't the best idea - with some of the bosses, the logic thought they were "dead" and the boss summoned another swarm. Soloing it has it's uses - but I honestly think there are skills with better synergy available for tab.
It all depends on your rotation, I suppose. Tab + dps power worked best for me.
I just love choking someone then repelling them across the screen and watching them fly.
magic missle+ray of frost
ice knife+arcane singularity
tab chillstrike
shield+entangeling force+sudden storm
what ill never use are: icy terrain, conduit of ice, Oppressive Force, Chilling Cloud, Storm Pillar, Shard of the Endless Avalanche in their current form
Very late reply here, I've been away from the forums for a bit, but: Nope, that's incorrect. The only thing that matters for Steal Time is the amount of stacks you have when the damage/stun portion goes off. And as long as you hit at least 1 enemy with the Slow build-up, you will have 5. However, there is one way that it would be beneficial to have 5 stacks beforehand, and that's if you use Steal Time early while a mob's too far for the slow portion to hit, so that the Stun hits right as it gets in-range. It sounds like an unlikely scenario, but I've actually used that tactic quite a few times against single elites after Repelling them away.
I didn't realize that. Good to know and try out if we get another chance.