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CW the class you need in a tier two dungeon.
wizend14ever
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users Posts: 0 Arc User
First off let me link out a video to give you an idea of the build I run.
http://www.twitch.tv/wizend4ever
Now, you need to understand something that is incredibly significant about this game that a large majority of players will not understand, knockbacks reduce the ability of mobs to hit your party and therefore reduce incoming damage while increasing your own. I don't care if you are some melee whining about your DPS numbers or some other stupid complaint about not being able to hit a mob. They are trash mobs and should be treated as such and if you don't like mobs getting knocked around go hit the one we can't knock around.
Also, mobs can be knocked off most edges and groups complaining about a CW pushing mobs around need to come to grips with the fact that MOST CW's deal as much if not more damage than rogues when there is more than one target on the field.
I will be putting up some videos on that twitch link of tier two instance clears and Castle Never this next week and giving instructional walkthroughs as much as possible.
http://www.twitch.tv/wizend4ever
Now, you need to understand something that is incredibly significant about this game that a large majority of players will not understand, knockbacks reduce the ability of mobs to hit your party and therefore reduce incoming damage while increasing your own. I don't care if you are some melee whining about your DPS numbers or some other stupid complaint about not being able to hit a mob. They are trash mobs and should be treated as such and if you don't like mobs getting knocked around go hit the one we can't knock around.
Also, mobs can be knocked off most edges and groups complaining about a CW pushing mobs around need to come to grips with the fact that MOST CW's deal as much if not more damage than rogues when there is more than one target on the field.
I will be putting up some videos on that twitch link of tier two instance clears and Castle Never this next week and giving instructional walkthroughs as much as possible.
Post edited by wizend14ever on
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Now let me start with saying, that you're wrong. KB spec does insane damage compared to the pitiful lightning farts. First of all it does damage to unlimited targets, and second of all it can be combined into insane combos tossing mobs around keeping them disabled throughout the entire fight. I'm still to find a mage that can deal comparable DPS even if I slack.
I just finished an epic dungeon not five minutes ago and had 2.5mil, a quarter mill ahead of the second dude (also a wizard). I was slacking half of the time and had to afk five minutes due to a phonecall. If you play it right you're not even that griefing to the rest of the group, just need to time your KBs. There is no way an arcane spec can do anywhere near the damage cold does and cold means KB.
Regards,
Kalantris
This is not entirely true. Obviously depending on the dungeon and group setup, there are situations for both. As much as I don't want to run knock back spec, if we are running one Cleric, he begs me to run it to keep mobs off him. Even with a tank, it's difficult to taunt off. The tank and rogue usually hate it obviously, but it works. If we run a second Cleric, there is no need. Some boss encounters are also easily done by just perma knocking back adds, and since the boss wont be affected, the Rogue can just focus him down.
Obviously in pugs, or certain setups it can be less effective. But to say it can't be useful is just wrong.
Yes, Shield pumps your numbers super high because of no max targets but as a whole you are hurting group DPS and overall slowing down the run. Sure, you can shield mobs just a second before singularity goes off and they'll all be in place again.. blah blah.. now think about that Rogue or GWF that just popped something and missed because of those moments the mobs were pushed back.
There are only a few dungeons it's worth chaining shield/singularity full time unless you are in a very coordinated group. And based on you doing 2.5 mil, you're in T1 and haven't even reached those places yet.
Of course on bosses you should always be using this combo.
1. They move monsters out of melee range (and even out of your own range if you have reaper's touch), or out of position to effectively AE down as a group.
2. They can aggro even more mobs.
3. The skill you are using to knockback is taking the slot of another skill that can do more damage.
I'm not saying they are never useful but they have very specific applications that make them inferior for most of everything.
First off you can push mobs off the edge with your knock backs and EVERY instance has a place to do that somewhere.
Secondly, No other skill you do can even come close to the amount of damage you can get with shield. You can literally RESET the skill if you stack arcane mastery stacks correctly.
Lastly, any decent group will understand that these are TRASH mobs and believe it or not you clear it faster with a control wizard doing AoE damage than any other class.
This is only partially true. It does most of what you said, but it doesn't necessarily increase your own DPS. There is a threshold number of mobs that must be present for that to be true. Furthermore, in most of the T2 dungeons the incoming damage is irrelevant with the 2 cleric setup most groups are using. Finally, even if you are increasing your own dps, the overall DPS of the group is being reduced because the other players in the group are unable to dps effectively, which slows down the run.
That said, there are plenty of situations where KBs are very useful. For example, anywhere you can knock mobs off a cliff and thus eliminate the need to DPS them at all. You could bring 2 high single target dps to focus the boss while you handle the adds yourself. If there is an extremely large amount of mobs in an encounter (i.e. Idris trash before the final boss), you can time shield pushes to instantly refill your AP and just chain cast AS -> Shield back to back. These and others are valid reasons to run a knockback build, but just running it for the hell of it is wrong.
1. Useful to knock back mobs (when they're chasing the healer, when there's too much DPS, when there's an overpull going on, when there are spawners, they're separated - yes, you can use KB to push ranged mobs into the frey, just gotta push them in the other direction);
2. You don't have to knock back mobs (they're near a wall);
3. You can oneshot mobs with your knockback (places where they can fall off a cliff or something).
The aggro system (where tank has to deal damage to a mob to agro it) and the add spawning system (they appear under the boss - ok, near the boss - less ok, someplace random - not ok) makes most of the ads chase the healer. Here is where AoE KB build comes in handy. You can make sure the healer lives to save everyone else by disabling the ads most of the time and eventually killing them. Shield is an incredible AP loader and will allow you to use the vortex daily most of the time pulling everything where you want it - under the boss for example).
That build combines power and awesome CC. If used correctly not only does it increase your dps, but also your team's dps (mitigation debuff), allows you to use your dailies most of the time and is the most awesome thing that can happen to a healer during a boss fight.
Regards,
Kalantris
Knockbacks are great when you can get rid of them entirely (smacking 'em into pitfalls) or when they're chewing on your Clerics but otherwise it is usually a total dps loss. Total as in your total team damage suffers, not just yours.
Groups are about teamwork. Having the highest dps means nothing if nobody else is dealing damage, it just means you're sitting there pleasuring your own ego whilst increasing the time you're standing in that one dungeon. It's also really boring for everyone else, regardless of whether you care or not (it's called courtesy).
Drop singularity and shield bursting them builds massive damage and AP. Now if others watching blow their aoe while im shield bursting instead of waiting until it drops them back down shame on them if they do it more than once.
Im dropping them in a nice tight bunch after sing drops so they can take advantage of them. Therefore after hitting shield im closer to controlling them again and therefore reducing their over all damage to the group. Especially if they are casting that nasty red <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> on the ground.
the most efficient way of doing this is the arcane singularity>shield explosion routine. your damage means NOTHING if the cleric can't do their job because you refuse to do yours.
my main was a 10k gs cleric. it's about to be a cw when i finish levelling it. clerics are a dime a dozen - did an epic cragmire 4 clerics one rogue - but cw that aren't selfish turdburglars are hard to find.
more people should watch kripp's stream imo
Exactly this. My girlfriend plays a cleric (unfortunately she started late, so I'll have to wait for her to ding 60) and I can barely watch her play with PUGs. In every MMO there's this most important class you need to have someone good playing in order to succeed and in Neverwinter it's the Control Wizard. You do half of the stuff in every dungeon, controlling trash, getting rid of ads, positioning everything around you, protecting the cleric from ads while beating the <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of the boss... Perhaps that's the reason why I think everything is really easy around Neverwinter while my girl struggles horribly with more difficult dungeons, because nobody is there to protect her and she has to fight the ads while healing herself and everybody else. Insanity. Cleric doesn't even have to move with a good wizard in his group. He shouldn't have to make one freaking step unless the boss places a template under his feet. Period.
Regards,
Kalantris
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.
Learn to Play.
lrn2read and lrn2t2
Nearly 9-10 seconds of daze with no aoe cap, and decent dmg as well.
What class are you?
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.
it can be, but it doesnt have the power of positioning that arcane singularity does. the only fight i would consider oppressive viable on is the pirate king and that's only if you have two wizzies. the other should still be using arcane singularity in order to give the cleric(s) a break from teh constantly kicking and interrupting elite adds that spawn in this fight.
Two questions
1) Would you consider the Magelord or the High Vizier set superior for a build like this? Unless they have some hidden specs, it's a choice between having perma 450 recovery and defense buff/debuff (yawn) for High Vizier or 450 power and a 6 second 900 recovery proc on mobs that have more than 3/4 HP (pics on the set item thread)
2) Would you go int>wis>cha over int>cha>wis?
1) You should not be taking damage so the High Vizier set would probably not work as well as you expect it, and the defense steal sounds good in theory, but then you are losing out on a lot of other stats/buffs you can gain from a set bonus like Magelord or Shadow Weaver. Also, there is diminishing returns on very high recovery, so unless you have literally 2K recovery right now, Magelord will not benefit you that much.
2) Int>Cha>Wiz
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.
The set bonuses for Magelord and Shadow Weaver are equally rubbish if anything. If you're going to be going for Magelord you might as well just wear 2pc of something else given what the 4pc averages out to. Power is also a pretty worthless stat so this doesn't help.
It'd be nice if someone could indicate the range on the friendly target buffs from 4pc Shadow Weaver since this will decide if the set is good or useless. If you can get the Shadow Weaver buffs onto the entire party then this is clearly the best set.
Additionally, all stats have severe diminishing returns. Recovery DR is actually quite small compared to Crit.
This is really up for debate - If you look at serious CN/DD runs you're going to be knocking 90% of the enemies off ledges, making crit pretty useless. Our primary role right now is not too dependent on damage, although WIS benefits damage almost as much as CHA anyway.
Did you even test Weavers set bonus?
It is far from rubbish if you actually test it and see how good it actually is.
The range of Weaver buffs is mainly melee range, so using your AOE skills in melee range will benefit you greatly. I have managed to get over 10+ stacks on Reckless Abandon and the other buff which I forgot the name of atm, and my party members also receive this buff as long as they are near me.
To put this in perspective, at dummies I go from 0 to 2K life steal with the set buff.
Also, I don't really focus my gameplay around knocking mobs off as you cannot do that in clearing CN... But when I need to knock mobs off, I don't have any issues with CDs, especially on spider runs, it's a joke. I prefer the crit so that I pump out more damage with my Shield when I use it, and I do more damage overall.
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.
I'm aware of the diminishing returns for stats, but I'm not sure how the math goes exactly - for example, adding 500 power at 2000 power will clearly be worth more than adding 500 power at 5000 power (same for any stat from what I've seen), but how does for example adding 500 power at 3000 power compare to adding 500 recovery at 4000 recovery when it comes to a specific thing, like charging action points?
Because that really seems to be the name of the game right now, for pugging at least, having cooldowns as low as you can resonably get them, and having AP gain as high as you can reasonably get it, since vast majority of the groups will have major issues on T2 bossfights without either 2 clerics or a CW that can recharge singularity super fast. I'm not saying that's the only way to build a CW, and it's probably a waste to focus so much on one thing in more coordinated groups, but it makes pugging SO much easier, and a lot of the time it's basically needed to make it viable
Also seems much easier increasing damage/crit through feats than increasing AP gain or decreasing cooldowns.
Disclaimer: I'm not terribly experienced with playing T2s, I'm mostly just speaking from a perspective of making pugging work, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong with any of my claims.
No, I don't have the set, as mentioned. If it stacks up then it is clearly superior to the other sets as they all have rubbish bonuses.
You can clear everything after the first boss with sending things off the edge.
3K recovery seems to be most rewarding, any more is just meh.
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.
Then disregard my angry tone, but the Weaver set does indeed stack up quite nicely.
Also, I understand knocking things off is very efficient, but if someone dies in CN or disconnects, well they are going to have a hard time with the mobs that respawned. Plus it's a bad habit to get into if Cryptic decides to fix being able to knock mobs off of ledges and whatnot.
4/4 Castle Never legit. 4/4 Shadow Weaver set. 1/2 Ancient Court Magister.