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I leveled a CW 1 to 50 this weekend, AMA.
jkaplan92
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 111 Bounty Hunter
Ask me anything gais.
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In terms of armor, none whatsoever. BUT I will reserve my judgment on this until launch, and advise you guys too as well. I literally got 0 item drops in any dungeon that I did so I cannot comment on that at all, and I assume armor from dungeons does have a different appearance.
While leveling there are give or take 4 armor sets you will get, kind of like armor tiers, and each has a slightly different appearance. You can kind of tell that the armor has the same "base" to it but it gets more ornate and cooler looking as you level up, keep in mind this is exclusively the green quality dropped and quest reward gear, again dungeon gear will probably look very different.
There was definitely more diversity for orbs. At first it was mostly just colors but towards the higher levels I've been getting some more unique looking ones. For example the one I have now has these cool spikey rings around the orb itself, kinda hard to describe but it looks cool trust me.
While leveling I will admit there isn't as much gear variety as would be ideal, but as long as there is a lot in the end game I am satisfied, and I think there will be. It took me 26 hours played to get to 50 and I think people will be able to hit 60 in around 30 hours played, so the leveling experience in this game is really short compared to other games, so for me its really going to be all about how things are at level 60.
Despite the lack of diversity while leveling I still felt like my guy was getting cooler and I got satisfaction out of seeing the looks of a new tier.
I stopped using chill strike all together around level 35ish I believe. I'm not really sure which spell mastery i like best right now. I think ray of enfeeblement, steal time, and conduit of ice all seem pertty solid. Chill strike is probably good too but I think chill strike is only good for people who are spcced into opressor. I used opressor from 35-50 and still didn't use chill strike, i think other abilities are just stronger. I switched to renegade at level 50 to test it out and its way stronger so I will be using renegade at launch.
I wish I knew, i really wanted to play warlock too.
@losse1 I played tiefling and I think it is BY FAR the best race choice if you want to min max your character, the extra damage below 50% is really strong and the status bonuses are the best you can have for a wizard.
@bizi974 It was kind of quick but I could have done it faster, as I said I think people can hit 60 in 30 hours played with no exp boosters or any other item shop bonuses. I like to level efficiently, its just the way i play mmos so I always try to quest as fast as possible... I know that turns some people off but its fun for me.
Tips for leveling:
1. Use the renegade tree in my opinion.
2. CC is your friend, don't try to be a glass cannon, you can maximize offensive stats but you need to have a good bit of CC as your powers. You will find that the game is much easier when you have a lot of CC abilities and you will still do very good damage. I recommend entangling force, steal time, and frozen terrain (cant remember what its called exactly). You should focus on rotating these abilities and using blink to dodge large attacks.
3. I mainly focused on power as my primary stat. Crit and armor penetration are both good as secondary stats I think.
4. GET AZURE GEMSTONES and socket them into every single yellow slow you get. They will give you +3.5% exp per slot. I had them in 3 slots so I was getting +10.5% exp for most of my leveling time. It isn't really worth fusing the stones to higher than 3.5%, you will be changing gear often so its better to have a lot of the 3.5% stones
5. Avoid dungeons, they aren't worth the exp and the gear doesn't really make a big difference.
6. Skip skirmishes and their quests.
7. PvP is a nice way to get exp when you're underleved for the quests you have (but its currently bugged and gives no exp once you're over level 20
8. Start crafting with leadership first. Get the small bonuses of exp and work it up. If you play this game more than give or take 1 hour per day while you're leveling you WILL outlevel your armor crafting profession to the point where you can't make yourself anything useful unless you spend tons of diamonds. Leadership just makes sense to work on first for anyone that cant afford the diamonds or plays more than extremely casually.
Thats about it for leveling tips.
I'm a rogue and find ice storm immensely annoying. The aoe knockback is great for solo, truly clutch situations, or for pvp. However, just popping it for damage is at the expense of the rest of the group's dps and ability to kill quickly.
@zalathorm7: Ice storm is the highest dps daily but as you said it can be really annoying for other members of the group. I think arcane singularity is the best daily for group play. It does pretty solid damage, has a large radius, sucks all mobs into a single area to allow you and your group to aoe effectively, and it also CCs the effective mobs for 4 or 5 seconds. I think a lot of the dailies need to be buffed however because ice storm and singularity are really the only viable ones in my opinion. Ice knife is decent to have, but it only does a little bit more damage than ice storm and is single target. I can't remember all of the ability names off the top of my head... The last daily you get, something malsetorm... It's pretty bad, it does less damage than ice storm and has a really small radius.... That ability really needs a buff. Same with the first daily you get, the one that dazes enemies and pulls in the metal stuff.
Hah, I wish you'd post this over on the rogue or class discussion forums. A few people are claiming that rogues are doing 150%-200% more damage than the next person. The point you reinforce here is that without a clear difference in the DPS between strikers and more hybrid classes, the hybrid classes will always bring more to the table. I would argue that 15% is too narrow of a margin.
Anyway, I dont want to divert conversation in your thread. I just laughed when I saw how different people are viewing rogue balance
First good job answering questions. If this game weren't FTP, I'd put a huge red flag on this game. You are betting that things you have done to 50 will be different and better at 60, not sure why. You are betting that there is this amazing end game at 60 and we haven't been shown that. I'm just saying history isn't on the games side here. Yes the Foundry is this games wild card for sure, but the stock game should still be able to stand proudly on it's own. So a question to anyone, do we plan on their being a lot more itemization at 60?
That said, at lower levels rogue does more than 15% more damage, and rogue is by far the easiest class to solo and level as, soI understand the sentiment of people feeling it is overpowered, but at level 50 I don't think it is, it is by far the best soloer, but in group play it is pretty balanced in my opinion.
@horrorscope666 I've been playing MMOs for 10 years now so I've been there for my fair share of hyped up games falling on their face, utterly terrible end-game content, etc. I'm generally prett cautious about hyping up games or expecting great things, and I don't expect anything from neverwinter. Here is my position on the game:
The base combat is extremely fun for me, at its core the gameplay is awesome and I haven't enjoyed combat so much in a really long time. Dungeons are very fun and challenging, and I think with the systems in place there is potential for really amazing end game dungeons and hopefully raids. PvP is awesome in my opinion and it has a lot of potential as well if cryptic can add ranking systems, competitive features, and allow people to create pvp maps with the foundry. Overall I'm cautiously optimistic about this game, as I said, I enjoy the gameplay itself, right now it depends on what cryptic unveils for an end-game. I have no assumptions about what that will be. What I do know is that my experience in neverwinter has been refreshing to say the least and I haven't enjoyed leveling in an MMO this much in a very long time. As for itemization, i personally don't care that much about the limited armor skins. I would be willing to bet a lot that there will at least be 4 or 5 separate skins for armor sets at level 60 depending on rarity, pvp gear, etc, and for me that is perfectly fine. Look at WoW... you have raid gear, pvp gear, and quest gear... there really aren't many separate sets of armor in that game, everyone is typically wearing the same pvp gear or the same pve gear for their class and nobody ccomplains.
The key will be whether or not cryptic gives the necessary support to this game. If they can add pvp features and raids or difficult dungeons and continue to produce that content every couple of months, I think this game could be very succesful. If they cannot I think it will be mildly succesful because there is a niche following of D&D fans and foundry users.
In terms of balance, I think it is about right, and a 15% difference between a CW and a rogue in DPS can be misleading when you just look at the total damage inflicted. A good rogue should be managing their agro too, so likely they are not spamming their abilities, whereas as a CW, i would spam my nukes, and if something agroed me, I would blow it back with shield or use entangling force.
Where I think the CW is weak is escapbility, especially when solo. Sure you can teleport away, however once you teleport, there is a pause before you can move, and the bad guys are on you almost immedietly. I find it is only good for avoiding special attacks. CWs are squishy, so spamming heal pots sometimes does not keep up with the amount of damage you are taking. I tried a a gear build using lifesteal, got it up to about 250, but it barely healed 4-6 hp per magic missile, which did nothing to mitigate damage. Anyone know if lifesteal becomes more viable at higher levels? Even icestorm only healed like 50-80 dmg, and that isn't per enemy in AOE, that was total. I'd really like to dump the cleric companion for something a little more fun, but I think I would go bankrupt on heal potions very quickly. She at least gets off a heal or two before she goes down each fight, and tanks 1 or 2 baddies for a few seconds.
Rogues can actually do more aoe damage/trash clearing damage than wizards can at 50. As for single target, it really isn't that far apart if you use the build I have. My arcane missles hit for 30% more damage any by level 60 I think that my damage single target will be very close to that of a rogue and I will probably have higher overall damage, although I don't think CWs should given our other strengths.
As for our survivability I disagree with you. First of all life steal is just a bad stat in my opinion. It seems to scale really poorly and I can't really justify having it at all right now. If you use my build you will get chaotic growth from your arcane missles. This means you will be healing for 3% of your maximum hp every second, this helps a lot with survivability. I agree that our blink/dodge is only really useful to dodge big attacks and less useful to create distance, but with the CC i have in my kit I never really had problems soloing. Steal time is such a strong ability, entangling force is also really strong, and I often used icy terrain as well so I almsot never had problems kiting and I only died once in my entire leveling experience and that was at level 46ish I believe when about 20 skeletons spawned that I thought were melee skeletons but in reality were mages... They all auto attacked at the same time and literally 1 shot me before I could react... But overall soloing is pretty easy as a CW in my opinion, probably not as easy as rogue but still.
As for health pots, they are pretty cheap. At level 50 I had over 20 gold, at around level 40 the gold you get really picks up so you should be pretty liberal about spending gold on health pots. Remember that gold isn't even the main currency in this game, it has very little use beyond buying pots and kits, so I recommend buying as many pots and always keeping a kit of each type on hand as you level.
Thanks for the tips man. With just a couple beta weekends to experiment I didn't get a chance to explore every angle on surviviability. I was also didn't level past 40. Steal time and icy terrain were great in BW3, but the level min got moved up. Good to hear they are still worthwhile. I definitely felt their loss this weekend. My basic cycle while soloing was to open up with icy strike (tabbed) to AoE a cluster, then to finish off with magic missile as they ran at me. Most stuff was dead by then. I then did the standard entangle force and icy ray on the harder dude that is often with the cluster. What I ran into problems with was, like you said, multiple casters. To a lesser degree, multiple "elite" bad guys too. I felt that 2 was easy. 3 became very hard. When I was in helms hold, 2x legion devils and an erinyes was a pretty standard mix and that was a difficult fight when my cleric was off training, and resource intensive. I can control 2 things, but the third is basically free to beat me down. If I have a targeting issue and use entangling force on the wrong bad guy, sometimes that free hitter is a caster who nukes me and knocks me down.
How did you kite? When I run away the baddies pretty much keep pace with me and beat me down. Are you invested in movement gear? Perhaps my gear opened me up for more squishiness. Up until Sunday, which is when I started experimenting with equipment, I focused on power as a main stat. I didn't invest in and defense, deflection, etc. I think I got my power up to 1800 and my magic missiles were hitting in the 180 range. I'm curious to know if a balanced approach is better, say 200-300 in defensive stats, and accepting a 1400-1500 power rating. That might make my magic missiles hit in the 160 range, not sure on the math, and not sure if 200-300 defensive or deflection would do anything.
I agree with you on gold. It is pretty useless.
Also, would you he willing to share your feat point allocation along with rationale behind where you spend points?
Thank you very much for the insights provided.
To answer your question about kiting. It's slightly difficult for me to answer because as I said a few posts back, I leveled all the way to 50 using the opressor tree. My skills were conduit of ice, frozen terrain, entangling force, and shockwave or steal time. Using these skills generally I would run into the mobs I was attacking face first, drop frozen terrain at the center of the pack, blink backwards, immediately cast conduit of ice on one of the tankier/elite mobs, shockwave/steal time them, and then use entangling force on a larger more damaging mob if one remained after that combo. I would almost always take hits initially when I ran in to drop frozen terrain, but after that most were dead via my aoe combo. As I said, I don't think this setup is optimal, it was just why I tried first and it worked well enough to have no reason to switch until 50.
As for a renegade spec which I recommend, Steal time is the best ability this class has in my opinion. It's an aoe cc that seems to have a 3 or 4 second duration AND it does a ton of damage. I try to use this on cooldown and its generally my first ability in a fight. Once it is down I usually entangling force the most threatening mob and arcane missle the smaller mobs. Generally the smaller mobs are at low HP after steal time so I can typically kill them before any get a hit off on me. If I had shockwave slotted I would use it basically right after steal time, if I had frozen terrain I would use it after all of my cc was on cooldown and mobs were starting to approach me.
As for stats. I focused heavily on power and it worked fine for me. I didn't really have any issues with survivability. Sometimes things got hectic but I just blinked around until my potion was off cooldown and generally that was enough to stay alive in the toughest situations. I didn't really experiment with stats much at all this weekend. I imagine you could be quite tanky with the right feats and a defensive stat priority. I know that life steal is not worth it at all, it scales really poorly and is just a useless stat. I would recommend stacking power and crit. Crit probably becomse the best stat after level 50, but before then I like power best, both are good. I can't comment on armor pentration at all, I have no idea what the math is behind that.
@eldurpp: I focused on power first, crit second. Almost every other stat was meaningless for me and i generally took whatever piece of armor had the highest power regardless of its secondary stats. Crit was the exception, I would sacrifice some power to have a piece with crit on it. I think that beyond level 50 crit will probably become the best stat to prioritize, but power seems very solid. Lifesteal is terrible and should be avoided. I can't comment on armor pentration as I don't know how it really works. A lot depends on the math behind the stats. I'm not sure how much crit translates into what % and things like that, or if there are soft caps for stats like crit. Crit does seem to scale quite well though, I want to say i had 24% crit at level 50 which seemed quite good.
As for feats I wrote down my build before logging off of beta but its hard to explain without some kind of feat calculator tool. This is basically what I will be going for at launch, and I'll try to explain it below.
heroic:
0/5/0/0
3/0/0/1
2/3/3/3
Renegade:
0/5/5/5
5/0/0/0
Thermaturge:
5/0/0/0
5/0/0/0
powers:
enfeebling ray as mastery
q is sudden storm (subject to change)
e is steal time
r is entangling force
arcane singularity/ice knife as dailies
class features: eye of the storm = must have, second = either storm spell or evocation
Explanation: For the feat trees the columns of numbers correspond to columns in the feat page. So for heroic trees in the first column I have 3 in the middle feat and 2 in the bottom. I can't even remember what half of these feats actually do, I just wrote down the template so I could copy it at launch, but can't really describe the build unless someone knows of a site that has the tree for me to look at. As for abilities, its pretty self explanatory. Sudden storm may get swapped for something else, its situational which is why I wrote subject to change. Also I'm not sure how the paragon trees work, I assume I can put the 10 points I get after 50 into thermaturge but I have no idea.
Edit: As for base character stats, I think for PvE you should allocate 100% of your stats to int and charisma. Int is a no brainer, but wisdom vs charisma is debatable. I think for renegade you want to get only charisma because crit is going to be your primary stat and because you will almost always be doing combat advantage damage so the +1% combat damage is really strong. Charisma might actually be ever better than int for renegades. Here is a site that shows the feats so you can try to understand the build: http://nwowiki.co/index.php?title=Control_Wizard
I wondered how important Wisdom was. It gives a boost to recharge time, action point gain and control bonuses.
With renegade, you have feats where
Based on what I've read, you focus more on arcane than cold, and it seems that you still have plenty of control with your abilities where you can focus more on damage and less on extending control windows.
The question is, do you find yourself wishing that your encounter abilities were coming back quicker?
As for action point gain, its not that important in my opinion. I don't think a 5% or so increase in action point generation can compare to crit and combat advantage damage. That said I have considered taking my 5 points out of masterful arcane theft (tier 4 renegade feat) and putting it into Critical Power (tier 1 renegade talent) to get more action point generation but at this point I don't think its worth it because critical power has a 10 second internal cooldown. If it didn't have the cooldown it would be amazing and probably extremely overpowered.
There are 5 tiers(just wanted to clear that up)
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Masterful Arcane Theft looks really powerful when you have stacks of Arcane Mastery up. (up to a 25% bonus)
I think that it is likely better than Critical Power on a 10 second internal cooldown. (I wasn't aware of that cooldown)
What do you like for your second At-Will? I didn't play long enough to pick up Chilling Cloud, so I don't know how it measures up to the Ray of Frost.
I pretty much spammed Missles until I had a 1:1 situation where I could more-or-less kite with chill effects from the frost ray and encounter controls.
However, I found Ray of Frost to be exceptionally useful on CC-able boss mobs, and was able to permanently lock them down with a cycle of Chill Strike > Entangling Force > Ray of Frost > Repeat with a few Magic Missiles thrown in between. Sure, Ray of Frost did less damage, but it definitely payed off when the bosses couldn't do anything to save themselves.
I think I'll try out the Int/cha build in OBT. Ran a Wis/Cha build with high base Int, low base Wis in the BWEs, but I think the extra damage from Int will synergize better with my high crit build than the extra couple % control duration from Wis.
Rogues stomp CWs on dps, clerics get heals and seemed like stronger attack spells, and of course fighters doing their fightering thing. CW was just straight fun to play.
jkaplan, good thread dude, and you're absolutely right this class is strongest around it's crowd control abilities, not glass cannon build. My preferences differ a bit from yours, as I used no ice abilities after lvl 30. I hate ice, except the daily, so built around arcane and lightning and did extremely well.
Steal time in mastery slot hands down the best ability. Big aoe damage, slow/stun enemy, speed up and COMBAT ADVANTAGE to your party. This was EXTREMELY useful at higher levels, especially in boss fights. With paragon skills you could boost arcane damage and effectiveness. I think there was also an ability that using the storm ability would boost arcane damage.
Magic Missiles, storm abilities (forget their names, one encounter for big damage, one at will), mastery steal time, entangling force, and SHIELD! This shield spell was awesome because it actually did decent damage when you pushed it, and repelled all enemies around you.
The CC was a little more lacking with this build, but with good timing on teleport, it really didn't matter plus my dps was enough to kill off most groups quickly with minimal damage taken, and less time kiting around. I could normally kill off 4-6 minor enemies before they could even swing at me, and have the tougher mob choking with entangling force and have my way. Larger groups and adds definitely made this build tougher to play than with an ice one with larger scale battles.