I see other guides here on the forums for Control Wizard builds. I have yet to see someone post a critical strike build. I do believe it's the highest DPS build for a Control Wizard, but that is my opinion and to each their own.
Feats (Please note that I have yet to do my first respec so some Feats may be odd and worthless. I'm just posting what I currently have.)
Powers
Honestly, I don't think is matters what you do with your powers. You can pretty much unlock everything. I will however tell you what I use.
Magic Missiles, Chill Strike, Ice Storm, Conduit of Ice, Entangling Force, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ice Knife, Evocation, Eye of the Storm are all maxed out at level 3 and are the main abilities I use. Feel free to do whatever with the tons of extra points you have.
Example of my Crit build in action at level 57:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEEuVFW8cCQ
It's a short guide, but when I hit level 60 and retalent everything.. I will update this post with more information.
Comments
Will check back later when you have explored it at lvl 60, i myself went for a Trauma build, want to rearrange a few points but not at the cost of 6$.
Will most likely just farm the massive amount of AD to retalent myself. I think at level 60 is costs about 190K AD to redo your feats. As far as my powers, I think they're fine. Like I said you can pretty much unlock every thing in the power tree. Just max the ones you like to use the best.
The problem with Chilling Advantage is that you are forced to drop either Evocation or Eye of the Storm for Chilling Presence, which is not all that great unless you are only concerned about single target DPS (since you will most likely drop evocation). You will mostly only be using Tabbed Chill Strike and COI for your ice skills (and occasionally Ice Knife) so using up 1 class feature slot for 5% more crit rate with CS/COI/IK over something like evocation/eye of the storm would instead indicate lower DPS to me.
My Feat build isn't final. Although with the way my build is right now. I'm consistently beating every Control Wizard that I have grouped with for dungeons/skirmish in damage. Hell, it could just be because for my gear I am doing nothing but Power/Crit. Or the other CW are not that good. Take your pick. I forget to mention in my original post that Ice Ray isn't a bad ability.
My current CW has 2770 power, 1976 crit, 216 armor pen, 792 recovery. This translates to attack/healing value of 5492 and 35.5% crit rate, 24.4% recharge reduction, 10.7% action point gain rate. 6753 gear rating. PVP farmed weapon, with mostly blue/green items with crit rate and power. No enchantments on gears what-so-ever.
I consistently beat most CW (and even many, many rogues) in dps, both when it was on a renegade build and its current Thaumaturge build. Hell, on the last Dread Vault dungeon I did, I was going toe to toe with this other CW (3 CW 1 cleric 1 GF) even though I forgot to swap out Orb of Imposition for Evocation (I was using that for PVP earlier on). This is me doing 6m DPS on par with another CW while having a 15% weaker tabbed chill strike/steal time/shield. And this is done while I work on controlling the adds during boss/mini-boss fights as well (I would sometimes swap out shield for entangling force).
Not to mention that with the assailing force feat I have for my conduit of ice, I was actually helping everyone's DPS at the same time, so builds that deal more raw damage than mine does should actually out-dps me. But alas, I have only seen one such incident thus far after hitting lvl 60, and this was from a well-geared rogue (before I respec'ed). I'm sure as people get better gear and stuff that they'll start winning me easily, but right now I'm just not seeing it.
http://i.imgur.com/OHf9wil.jpg
I just finished my first Epic Dungeon and I out damaged the entire group by about 1 million damage. This was without Evocation. Hell, I never even changed out any on my Encounters. I would also mention that my game crashed right at the start of the instance, so everyone got a head start on me in terms of their overall damage. So you see, Evocation isn't really needed to deal a ton of DPS. Granted I wasn't up against a Rogue in this group, but I was against another CW. Can't control what the matchmaking gives me. I'm only 5700 GS, just enough to get into the T1 dungeons.
I can't tell you how different it will be from the guide you mentioned as I didn't take a look at it yet. So far I am liking my current build. (Although I want to get change some feats around. I just spent all my AD getting gear just to enter T1 dungeons) I'm really curious though, can you post a screen shot of your total damage at the end of one of your dungeon runs so I can compare it to mine?
however there is no point to going over 3k crit rating.
Critical Strike is good, yes. The debate is me taking Chilling Advantage over Masterful Arcane Theft.
Takes me about 10 mins to earn $6 lol......
Very nice damage there. I haven't tried out the T1 dungeons yet, since the groups I entered Dread Vault with usually wipes at the boss and start having server issues/people leaving (and I wanted to clear that first). Just today though, I managed to finally beat DV with a cleric who had experience at clearing it before. (forgot to take a screenie though, got too excited at the dungeon drops/end chest).
Before we got to the boss, I managed to keep up with the TR in the group, and we ended up both having around 6mil damage dealt. The bossing strategy had me dealing most of the dps to the boss though (since I could do that outside of the tentacle's range) so it was unfair for the rogue at that point for a damage comparison. After we cleared I was at around 7.8mil damage while the rogue was at around 6-6.5mil damage (since he was only really touching adds).
I'll get a screenie from another dungeon run later.
I have 20 dollars from Google Adsense. They won't give it to me until I have 100 dollars though. LOL
Plus, there is a passive that give your critical strike for X seconds.
Yeah, as others have said, you don't need a token or cash to respec feats. I love how people freak out over this, but have never done it or even looked closely at it. If you need to respec your powers or ability points, you have bigger issues i think, as it's hard to really mess that up.
I'm curious what will happen to DPS builds with CW's once Warlock comes out, as that is its main reason for being, ranged spell dps, and will probably leave us in the dust with dps. (imagine a ranged TR, heh) Hopefully we still find groups, but we will probably have to focus more on CC builds to do that.
We wiped twice and the strategy we used had me being the main dps from range, so almost half the damage recorded was just from bosses alone. Pre-boss I was leading by about 1.2mil in damage, but I believe none of the other CW/rogues were well geared, which would explain why I managed to lead with such a margin.
I find it hilarious when others just asume it is the value that has me annoyed, i got cash, i just dont feel like im getting my moneys worth from a respecc, which has been a free feature in almost every other game and/or had other implements to make sure you could respecc such as timed respeccs and/or limited amounts per month etc.