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Sexy commando wizard guide

hedgehog8hedgehog8 Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 148 Arc User
edited April 2013 in The Library
I finally gathered all the info to present this 'build' to everyone :D It worked fairly effective in the dungeons and in solo, so I hope you will have some fun time if you choose to use it.

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BW4 comment - 'recharge' times dropped visibly, so sadly it's not THAT effective anymore. Now this build is closer to an interesting alternative, rather than an absolutely OP thing that every sane person would go for
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Ok. First of, all, what the hell is 'sexy commando'? It's a rather unique fighting style that is mainly aimed to catch your enemy offguard by unexpected moves, and then making surprise attacks. Here is a short video where you can see this technique. It also explains, how can a high charisma score affect 'critical hits' :D

The idea of the build is to maximize crit chance and later use it to recharge your daily power at fastest rate.

Now, how can we apply this to a CW? Quite easy. Everything starts with the character generation. Traditionaly, Humans are most suited for this style, but thanks to race bonuses to charisma, Half-elves and Tieflings can also get good results. Although halflings have a charisma bonus as well, they are just not that great CWs overall.
Whichever race of the 3 above you picked, make sure to roll the dice untill you get 16 base charisma and get a '+2' racial bonus. That way, you will start with a '18 charisma score'. Getting high crits is really hard for a CW, so it's important to use every bit available. As for Wisdom and Intelligence - you will have a higher Int score in most cases, but overall Wisdom just seems like a better choice because of 'action point gain' increase. So, on lvl 10 and 20 I'd sugges to pick a '+1' to Wis and Charisma.


Now, after winning some 'battles' in the Moonstone mask(again, 18 charisma score, would be a waste not to use it :D) we can finally start leveling up. Up to level 10 there is nothing interesting to note. After lvl 10, you will start using the feats.
'Weapon master' and 'Control action' are both vitally important. It doesn't matter in which order, just max them both. Best feat in tear 2 is 'Fight on', so it's better to max it fully (and there is nothing really amazing in tier 3). Unless devs rework 'Prestitigination', it's worthless to level up (but if they do on the other hand and it adds '+3%' to actual crits, then it's a 'must have'), so the remaining feats are up to your taste. Arcane, frost, area - just max dmg for the spells you prefer. Threat, hp or stamina feats are the most useless ones (because of the tiny numbers they add).

Don't get really attached to your companion, because it would be a good idea to get 'sellsword' or someone else with high crit score. Get as many 'elderithch' runestones, max them and stuck them into every hole that your companionl has - each of those will add some % of the crit stat. Alternitively, you can get a 'cat', elemental or other 'shop' companion that has a crit aura.
Speaking of comanions - it would be a great idea to team up with a rogue who maxed his '+5% crit aura' - it's also valuable for you.
Also, 'azure' runes are the only ones you gonna need, feel free to trade others for those.

When it comes to dungeons, try to amass as many 'lion seals' as possible. Around level 25, you can buy 2 neat rings that give '+150' crit each - together it's around +3%. There is some other crit stuff in the seal shop as well, and it should be your top priority.

Closer to level 30, you will finally be able to pick the 'paragorn feats'. The obvious choice is the 'Critical power' from the Renegade path. Over the next 5 levels, you will experience a tremendous improvement of your daily cooldown. If you did everything right, by level 35 you should have the total of about 25-30% crit. Each of your crits will restore 5% of your daily, and with the attack rate of your at-will attacks (especially ray of frost), it's easy to cast your daily faster than once in 20 seconds(faster than some of the encounter powers). The greatest part of this build is that you can utilize any spell combos freely - the crit chance is applied to all encounter powers as well as to at-will attacks, you will have a faster daily whatever you prefer to use.

After maxing the 'Critical power', I'd recommend to go for 'Nightmare Wizardry' for obvious reasons. 'Phantasmal destruction' may be a good choice, but if you are really comfortable with the low range fights, you should take 'Reaper's touch'. Finally, with 'chilling advantage'(and with the crits you get by that level) your ray of frost should be able to build 'full daily' in stable 10-12 seconds(and by 'stable' I mean it will almost always be at least that. It's always possible to land a lucky crit on a timesteal+arcane singlularity combo, as a result your daily bar will be full in 2-3 seconds after you cast the previous one). Chaos magic is just a great addition to your at-will, nothing to add here.




So, as a result of this build, you will have a CW with increased average damage later on(because of greatly improved crit rates) and an absolutely fantastic daily recharge rate. The disadvantages are quite obvious - lack of 'wisdom' and 'intelligence', as well as 'power' and 'recovery' will visibly reduce the output damage and encounter cooldown (overall should be about 10% each). I believe that it's a fair trade, since crits make up for the damage loss, and the 'daily' fast cast(15 seconds against 60+ second on average is fast indeed) makes up for longer cooldown of encounter (and by longer I mean like 3-4 seconds at most).



I guess it's all for now, write your comments and opinions on this build.
Stay cool, stay sexy, best regards :D
Post edited by hedgehog8 on

Comments

  • derresshderressh Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited March 2013
    If this actually works, I get the feeling it would be fantastic (or maybe even a little OP) for endgame PvP. Cast a daily, RoF/ST for a couple seconds and repeat. Not sure if I would go balls to the wall like this for a full crit build, but stacking crit does seem to be the way to go for CW at the moment.
  • kyllroy2kyllroy2 Member, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 309 Bounty Hunter
    edited March 2013
  • hedgehog8hedgehog8 Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 148 Arc User
    edited March 2013
    derressh wrote: »
    If this actually works, I get the feeling it would be fantastic (or maybe even a little OP) for endgame PvP. Cast a daily, RoF/ST for a couple seconds and repeat. Not sure if I would go balls to the wall like this for a full crit build, but stacking crit does seem to be the way to go for CW at the moment.

    It will be quite troublesome in PvP I believe. The main condition for the 'fast-cast' daily is to be able to cast your spells freely without being disturbed. And enemy rogues gonna have another opinion on this matter :D (to be honest, a rogue is a class that gets best benefits from 'sexy commando' style and actually uses it's elements most of all, so fighting them with this style as a CW is a bad idea from the start) This is also where lack of deflect and defence may backfire. Also, as classes like fighters get more levels, they get improved resistance to control, so even the daily casts won't have such big effects. So while it may have some use, it surely won't be OP because there are some visible drawbacks and ways to counter.
    kyllroy2 wrote: »
    Soooo what vendor sells those boxers? ;)

    'Boxers' is actually just one of the most basic techniques ('Para Elise' is the official name if I remember right :D), so even if Cryptic don't add such items, I believe we will find other effective 'decoys' :D
    'Emote' commands have a big potential here, as well as stuff like 'fireworks' and other 'summon something visual' items.
  • hedgehog8hedgehog8 Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 148 Arc User
    edited April 2013
    Well, I knew it was too good to work. Next time I find something awesome I should keep it to myself, rather than sharing it will people :P



    SO. The key 'critical power' feat got a serious rework, it now has a 10% cooldown. So the maximum speed that this can add (by itself) is 100% in 50 seconds. That would be a disaster, if other paragorn paths didn't suck so much (as I checked, they still did :D), so while sexy commando build got quite weaker, it's still usable - the often crits are still a good asset even by themselves(out of my 3 ice arrow dailies 2 crited for 6500 dmg :D Level 44 or something around that.).
    Also magic missile attack rate got visibly slower, it's like devs were trying to counter my sexy build from all approaches :(
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