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LackofControl Wizard
morthanos
Member Posts: 41 Arc User
/startwhine
Before this patch I was competitive in PvP. I could win my share of 1 v 1 fights, depending on circumstances, against any class. PvP was fun, if fairly linear and repetitive. I could get the jump on somebody and beat them with CoI, Spell Mastery RoE, EF, and CS or other, less cookie cutter rotations.
Since the patch, I can still beat a few people 1 v 1... sometimes. I could live with that, if I was a Control Wizard.
But I'm a LackofControl Wizard.
A trickster rogue can stun and destroy my 22K hit points before I can dodge.
A Guardian Fighter can knock me around and interrupt my casting THREE times and if anybody is with him I'm dead before I can dodge or activate a skill.
A Great Weapon Fighter... oh my gosh. Knocked down multiple times and destroyed before I can get a dodge off or activate a power.
Sure, if I dodge right when we engage, I can make a fight of it. But I can't win again a player with any skill. Why?
Because I'm a LackofControl Wizard.
The longest I have seen Entangling Force last is about 1, MAYBE 2 seconds. Steal Time is useful, if I'm in the middle of melee and my opponent is stupid enough to pick his nose while I cast it. Chill Strike doesn't even freeze anybody in PvP that I can see--at all. And Freeze? Getting six stacks of chill on somebody before they knock me down in the heat of PvP battle is a joke, unless you spec Oppressor, which is still the worst of the three Paragon Paths (in my opinion) by far. Shield blast is good, but having to recast it after cooldown is a huge loss of damage and you have to stand there like chicken in a guillotine to to do it, so unless aforementioned nose picking is going on, it's a waste of time to try. Repel? I have not seen any stun with it, it knocks a player away and does mediocre damage and they leap/telport/charge back into me and knock me on my ***, stun-lock me, and move on to their next victom.
In short, all the other classes other than Devout Cleric have more Control than I do--considerably more. GWF and TR damage is much better than CW when played by a skilled player, and so is GF if built for it. I can handle most DC's 1 v 1, but they are never alone.
In honesty, a big part of the problem is pugging PvP and running into a premade or just having a team with no healer or no fighters (most teams I get on are full of Rogues and other LackofControl Wizards, no idea why, but the other team always has a Rogue, Cleric, and two Fighters--which is NOT a fair fight).
I finish 1st or 2nd on my team in every match, almost without exception, win or lose. I'm not a great player, but not bad either.
I just hate my lack of Control...
/endwhine
Before this patch I was competitive in PvP. I could win my share of 1 v 1 fights, depending on circumstances, against any class. PvP was fun, if fairly linear and repetitive. I could get the jump on somebody and beat them with CoI, Spell Mastery RoE, EF, and CS or other, less cookie cutter rotations.
Since the patch, I can still beat a few people 1 v 1... sometimes. I could live with that, if I was a Control Wizard.
But I'm a LackofControl Wizard.
A trickster rogue can stun and destroy my 22K hit points before I can dodge.
A Guardian Fighter can knock me around and interrupt my casting THREE times and if anybody is with him I'm dead before I can dodge or activate a skill.
A Great Weapon Fighter... oh my gosh. Knocked down multiple times and destroyed before I can get a dodge off or activate a power.
Sure, if I dodge right when we engage, I can make a fight of it. But I can't win again a player with any skill. Why?
Because I'm a LackofControl Wizard.
The longest I have seen Entangling Force last is about 1, MAYBE 2 seconds. Steal Time is useful, if I'm in the middle of melee and my opponent is stupid enough to pick his nose while I cast it. Chill Strike doesn't even freeze anybody in PvP that I can see--at all. And Freeze? Getting six stacks of chill on somebody before they knock me down in the heat of PvP battle is a joke, unless you spec Oppressor, which is still the worst of the three Paragon Paths (in my opinion) by far. Shield blast is good, but having to recast it after cooldown is a huge loss of damage and you have to stand there like chicken in a guillotine to to do it, so unless aforementioned nose picking is going on, it's a waste of time to try. Repel? I have not seen any stun with it, it knocks a player away and does mediocre damage and they leap/telport/charge back into me and knock me on my ***, stun-lock me, and move on to their next victom.
In short, all the other classes other than Devout Cleric have more Control than I do--considerably more. GWF and TR damage is much better than CW when played by a skilled player, and so is GF if built for it. I can handle most DC's 1 v 1, but they are never alone.
In honesty, a big part of the problem is pugging PvP and running into a premade or just having a team with no healer or no fighters (most teams I get on are full of Rogues and other LackofControl Wizards, no idea why, but the other team always has a Rogue, Cleric, and two Fighters--which is NOT a fair fight).
I finish 1st or 2nd on my team in every match, almost without exception, win or lose. I'm not a great player, but not bad either.
I just hate my lack of Control...
/endwhine
Post edited by morthanos on
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Without any real damage Enchantments (Tenebrous on gear and any Weapon Enchantment) my damage is way too low to kill / stop a (good geared) GW and GWF.
Post-patch I went to a more support type of role. Debuffing (RoE (not Spell Mastery) and CoI with mitigation feat) and CC (Entangling Force (sure it doesn't hold long, but it can make a big difference)). And my personal favorite (I've really grown fond of it): Shard of Endless Avalanche on Spell Mastery (rank I is enough, because you don't take it for damage). If you can handle it, you can knock down a single target 3 times in total before it vanishes (now you know how it feels, GF!). Or knock down a whole group once. Great for supporting your team and you don't have to be too near to the action.
Sure this also can't knockdown CC immune targets, but it's a great CC WHEN you can.
It's just a pleasue for me to observe a tight team battle on any point, I roll my shard in, the whole (non CC immune) enemy team lays on the ground and this gets my team the edge to win the fight). Or in a 1on1 situation when I roll the shard over an enemy from behind, not knowing what hit's them and they lay before me in the dust.
Sure this power isn't anyone's cup of tea and I don't have any use for this skill without Spell Mastery, but I think it's at least worth a try.
GWFs are still more then managable to beat as a mage, but I just love bursty encounters, even tho they're not even remotely as effective as repel - huge knockback, ~5k damage crit and a 1-2 seconds stun on a hilariously low cooldown.
If we're talking about pure 1v1s the only class which will always kill a CW is a rogue. Other classes won't have a chance if CW have some place to maneuver.
One of my domination from weekend (now i got 300 more GS, so im better now)
Free respec token is still not used, im sure there are lot better builds then mine, but i feel good for now.
Are you standard Renegade build? Mind sharing your build? Please.
I don't care if I'm at the bottom of the list, so long as our team wins. I can dominate when I'm ignored, too, just about anybody can. I have beaten Rogues who get the jump on me with a well-timed dodge/EF--and gotten completely shredded before I knew my health bar was moving (usually when already fighting somebody else and they pop out of stealth).
Probably the biggest problem in PvP is a poorly organized team against a well-organized one. That trumps even gear. I've seen plenty of players get the top spot by just capping the undefended cap. Meanwhile, the other team holds the other two caps. The bad guys have little trouble killing the disorganized players zerging one cap or the other in ones and twos. Or the stat-conscious player cherry-picks killing blows. All kinds of tricks to top the stat sheet, it doesn't win matches.
Not to say anybody in this thread does anything like that, I'm sure it's just mega-awesome skill and brains.
I don't care about stats, just the teams final win or loss and my ability to contribute. Control Wizards, in equally skilled hands/gear, do less damage than a Rogue, take more damage than a GF, and have less control than either or a GWF.
But mainly, I just wanted to whine...
And sadly you are absolutely right, I'm shelving my CW out of frustration at not being really able to control anything at all anymore. Absolutely hilarious fun to grind those daily PvP dominations and most you see is your life going from 100->0 in split second, try to control there.
I'm not sure if you noticed, but the control wizard is the only class in the game which can spam control skills in PvP. While other classes do have control skills, most of these are situational and are thus used almost exclusively to execute combos. A wizard, on the other hand, can just stride into the battle field, randomly entangle someone, chill strike someone else and fire an ice ray at a rogue before proceeding to double enfeeble a fourth person and kill him/her off with Ice Knife.
There's a very good reason we're squishy in PvP.
I like this post, all great points.
I did not mean to communicate the CW is not valuable in a well-organized group. I was comparing 1 v 1 fights and whining about the fact other classes are better at control in those situations. I agree, a CW with even one ally is a serious problem for anybody.
My whine was about those times you find yourself 1 v 1 and are out-controlled.
Concerning 1on1s I have max control over TR and DC ~95% of the time. A good GF Player is my death, but that's ok for every class has his counterpart, GWF is pretty much 50-50 if I manage to cast my entangle and steal-time in the right moments he's done. I consider them as a good challenge. Vs CW it's most of the time, first one to hit a control spell wins.
Oh and double Ray of Enfeeblement is sooooo much fun and a total must have imo.
and using Maelstrom of Chaos is nice to push em away if u get too much into melee
Shenanigans! You do NOT beat TR's 95% of the time.
I buy the 50-50 with GWF's.
GF is a beast. If you break his Block from range with MM's (twice if his daily is up), he's crispy toast, unless he gets on you. If he does--game over.
I haven't had much trouble since the patch. I am pretty competitive against most classes, unless they simply out-gear me.
However, I can see it's affected A LOT of my CW friends. They are all having the same issues you point out in this very thread.
I agree with you 1000% in this regard.
Control in PvP is a joke, at best, for CWs right now. Even with Orb activated, the stuns and other control spells and abilities all seem to last exactly the same amount of time, if not less, no matter how many different ways I approach it. I think this is broken in PvP because in PvE, it works fine. Entangle lasts a LONG <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> TIME in PvE for me and Repel actually stuns targets. Not so much in PvP (which I love).
Yes and, if you want to color this a little better, get two rogues on you and they BOTH cloud you and (in many cases) SPAM their Daily Powers to get quick kills. I do my best to stay away from rogues unless I can get the first hit.
Then, to add even more to this, they have an ability to resist ALL of my control magic. It's got FAR too low a cooldown to be fair in PvP.
Just so you rogues know; I do not advocate nerfing your damage. I think your damage is fine. But your ability to avoid things to infinity is an unfair advantage.
Guardian Fighters need a small nerf in PvP. All they do is wander around, holding block while they inch closer to you (let's face it, stamina runs out), and then they repeatedly knock you down. While you are down, they use big moves on you. As you said, THREE (3) times in a row!
This needs to be revisited by the devs for sure.
This.
Not to mention the fact that they are ANOTHER class (though I can beat most of them) that can knock you down repeatedly WHILE being immune to Repel, Entangle, et cetera.
I don't think it needs too much of a nerf, though, so cooldown adjustment would make it more tolerable and level the playing field just a touch. There is no reason for ANY class to be able to activate immunity against core class spells and abilities with very little overall downtime. The cooldowns on these types of abilities NEED to be looked at. They are just far too fast.
I've highlighted the arguments I agree with.
Your post will be picked apart because you mention "more skilled players" than yourself. While that isn't necessarily bad, the forum trolls will egg you on with "l2PvP" and the like.
Ignore all that nonsense if you want to keep your sanity and your message clear.
Rogues, GFs and GWFs all have way too many defenses against our only offensive/defensive skills. Right now, CW is under-powered in that department, especially as people get better and better gear.
Again, I think cooldowns on some abilities need to be looked at and re-adjusted for PvP. Not PvE... just PvP. Make a switch that toggles different cooldowns in the PvP arenas and this is done. No need to try to balance PvE around PvP, as they did with the last patch.
This is so true.
The PvE queue has improved group making, but the PvP queue seems as though it wasn't even thought of during adjustment. I mean, I don't mind having me and 4 rogues in a match, I can hold my own most of the time, but it would be nice to see a little more group diversity when it comes to class pairings.
I salute you for making this post.
You have managed to sum up most of my frustration in PvP. The only thing with me is that I've learned to adapt and just deal with it for now. Then again, I am only 52 with my CW at the moment.
Anyway, good luck with your thread.
Fletch F. Fletch
newbie rogue extraordinaire
Thanks for posting your perspective, good to know others are experiencing similar frustrations. PvP is still fun, I'm still plugging away and will hopefully improve.
I'm not advocating any nerfs at all, and it sounds like you aren't either, except for some cooldown adjustments.
I just want to be a "Control" Wizard again...
Peace.
facing TR all u have to do is being first to cast cc. then he's done. if he goes into hiding, my steal time takes care of him -> stunned = byebye if he does not go into hiding byebye even faster. TR is no match for CW in a 1on1
maybe i've only had bad TR players as opponents, though i doubt that.
to me, the "nerf" actually turned out to be more of a buff. I play as a DoTer. seeing enemies run and fall is sooo much fun
when the GF block is broken, yes he sure is a nice piece of toast. but a good GF player won't give u the slightest chance of a broken block!
For me, when the block is broken via MM, I can't kill them without Eye of the Storm. Their HP is too much. And somewhen their block regenerates or they use some skill (I don't know much about GFs) to regenerate block. And since my stamina is at some point running out, I'm dead.
As mentionend in my reply on the first page, I haven't much damage enchantments, and since I'm using mainly CC powers, they don't do much damage either. But I can't disable them the whole fight (cooldowns) as they can when they're close, so at some point I just stand there with only my @wills and low stamina. So 1on1 against them is without EotS my guaranteed death. With EotS I can maybe kill them before they come close. Maybe.
Well, besides the fact that TRs have their ways so overcome CC (impossible to catch, to mention one)...how can your Steal Time take care of them in stealth?
1. The Steal Time stun lasts ridiculously short in PvP.
2. You maybe buy some time, and then what? When in stealth you can't attack them. While after the Steal Time stun they can throw knives out of stealth until you're dead (perma-stealth builds). Or can stun YOU (smoke bomb, dazzing strike) longer than you could ever stun them.
Together with: let's sum up: their single target damage is superior to our's (with EotS it might be even, but proc'ing it is a probability, TRs have their high damage constantly), they have low cooldown abilities to avoid CC and - besides the perma-stealth ability - can CC you longer than you can CC them, if you even get the chance to do so. Errrr...yeah.
@GWF I'm going mainly recovery and am at ~45% cooldown recovery. Still a GWF can go into berserker mode faster than my Entangling Force is up again. That's ridiculous.
Patience is key with GF. Maintain your distance and hit him with Magic Missile until his block breaks. Don't panic and use up your dodge's. Back pedal, teleport backwards away from him and keep the missiles flying. You may have to break block twice, if they use an ability to regen it. Once block breaks, spell mastery RoE, CoI, EF, RoE, Chill Strike. If he's still alive and your daily is up, hit him with Ice Knife, but that should often be overkill. With block down, a GF under two RoE's (Spell Mastery slot) is just about as squishy as anybody else. You won't get him every time, but with practice, you'll get better.
I tried this max debuff + damage setup a few times post-patch (not only against GFs - in general), but there is no way for me to kill a GF or GWF without my daily. TRs (when I can hit the full rotation, that is), CWs (if I CC first) and DCs I can kill with it, yes, but not the other two classes.
And since this is the most damaging setup you can run with (afaik) and it doesn't work out for me, I stick with my supporting role. Since maily it's teamplay that gets you wins.
Sure it's frustrating to lose 1on1s, but I'm just learning to cope with it.
Dodging backwards/sidewards is key against GFs but against GWFs you must learn when to dodge forward (and end up behind them). Many GWF skills rely on their target/s being in front of them. Doing this can also potentially confuse them or cause their skills to miss, especially if you follow up with another dodge. At the very least, you're making them waste some of Unstoppable's uptime. Finally, LoS can work wonders against GWFs.
You know that GFs have limited means of bridging the gap between you and him, right? You don't really need to fight one 1 vs 1, and he won't be able to reach you if you stay away. Against GFs abuse combat advantage. It helps.
I'd consider myself quite good with dodging, but that doesn't deal damage. And since GWFs have faster cooldown on their berserker than my powers, buying me time with dodging during their berserker for my skills to cooldown won't give me any advantage.
The stealth-dependent rogue is a very different animal, but it still helps if you know there's one in the area. If he uses stealth you can simply leave the area, making him waste one stealth bar.
Do you even know how Unstoppable works? It has no "cooldown".
Nope, I don't. Maybe "cooldown" is the wrong word. I'm generally stating what I observe fighting a GWF.
That is where you completely wrong. I've been running Thaumaturge spec all the way from open beta release and after patch decided to try OPressor - they fixed chill stacks after all. Using CoI in tab, chill strike (ofc), icy rays, RoE, ray of frost as main at-will, storm spell and chilling presense instead of standart EoS as passive (!!! yes, EoS is overrated). Ice Knife and Ice Storm (not stupid AS!) as daily. (Cant argue EF is an insanely good CC spell, but there was'nt any place for it, sadly
So, gotta say, this amount of CC is ridiculous. You can basically permastun targets. Cant lie like "it does insane amounts of damage", but it still does pretty good damage. May be 10-15% less than renegade/thaumaturge builds. Still 9-11k chillstrikes, still 5-7k icy rays, tenes and storm spells still proc as hard as usual. Yea, i know, 15% seems much, but that worth it. Reading whines in zone chat like "OMFG I died in permafreeze", "OMFG this CC", "OMFG nerf CW" - thats priceless.
Only reason im still thaumaturge - opressor is ridiculously bad for pve. Absolutely useless. But i still miss it playing pvp and probably respec back after 20th, when pvp will play more significant role in this game.
P.S.
Yea, i know my english sucks, but hope it at least readable.;)
My videos
1.) What Oppressor feats did you take? I guess Bitter Cold, Glacial Movement for more Chill Stacks with RoF and Shattered Strike for Chill Stacks for Chill Strike? What about the other feats?
2.) What do you do with this build against CC immune targets (TRs using impossible to catch, Unstoppable GWFs)?
1) Same opressor feats as u guessed, other feats - well, thats not that much important. Im playing tiefling so, that means Tempest Magic doesnt work for me (tifling passive works INSTEAD of TM - confirmed major bug, stil not fixed). If u are not tiefling, than its cool - u can take it and Snap Freeze for MOAR dmg. (Doesnt matter if you always applying chill stacks, it still cool). So, i took Critical Power and Nightmare Wizardry - both decent choices too.
2)Thats the main point of this build. Even if target immune to CC, chill stacks still apply to it and with CoI they wont dissapear in 2 seconds. This stated in patch notes and it works.
So, TR or GWF (same thing for GF in block) - yea, they gonna run around immune to CC, some of them slowed though, since slow applies on top of GWF big-red-guy mode (they can sprint normally tho) and on top of GF blocking. BUT! with 6 stacks of chill on them. So as soon as GF show his <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> out of the shield, or GWF red-mode over or after 5s in case of TR they gonna be frozen. And then frozen again and again. And again. Untill they eventually die and spam in chat "OMFG WTF IS THIS CC! NERF!!!1";)
EDIT:
While immunity on u still can kite with teleports like a normal wizard, even better, since u have speed buff from Glacial Movement (which stacks by the way xD)
My videos
But for PvP, taking all the Feats that increase survivability, cooldowns, and chill-based effects, then running Chill Strike, Conduit of Ice, Icy Terrain, and either Icy Rays or Entangling Force, seems like a pretty big pain in the a** for the other team if your team is supporting you. The goal is not to kill, it's to keep chill stacks/freezes/chokes on the enemy while your allies annihilate them.
I think the power you use in Spell Mastery would depend on your team's composition/current situation. Sometimes a ranged Icy Terrain might be useful (if you're above the battle or at range because the other guys keep focus-firing you). Other times, an AoE chill strike on 3 guys all with 5 chill stacks would really hit the spot.
Definitely has potential.
Well, that might work, i guess. I thought about that - running full defense items, using INT-WIS ability scores instead of conventional INT-CHA, taking Orb of Imposition as one of the masteries - that might work. Become stunbot-support in other words.
My point, again, was to keep my damage output almost at the same lvl as thaumaturge/renegade, while having ALOT more CC potential. And it worked: if build around crit/arpen/power u still 3 shotting people, like usual. If someone around here doubting to try or not to try Opressor - LOL try
My videos
Like people demanding that you put Repel on tab. Five targets knocked versus infinite targets knocked on Shield Pulse...yeah real useful there when compared to the huge AP gain on Entangling Force on tab. Or Conduit of Ice, which doesn't build AP anywhere near as fast but has uncapped freeze limits. This lets you recover quickly from any 'oops' moments, whereas if you built for DPS you're probably dead after any screw ups as you aren't rocking enough recharge. As a bonus, if you don't have ET on tab and you screw up your AS/Shield Burst you are now dead in the water. Five targets knocked back isn't going to save you. Congrats.
With Int and Wis as your two primary stats, you build AP faster and all your skills recharge faster. Most CW are probably building for Int and Cha for the increased damage on criticals and added Combat Advantage damage. Even if a mage does concentrate on dealing damage, they don't perform as well as a GWF at actually doing said damage. If they built for damage, yeah you might need two because neither of them built their characters to be control monsters. A mage doesn't even do the single-target damage or the AoE damage of a GWF. This assumes the GWF isn't an idiot, but since people are already building team loadouts that are idiot proof, I think that it's just a fact that lots of people make it into T1 and T2 that still haven't learned how to play their class in the end game.
Some boss fights do rely too much on CW doing things perfectly, and a lot of people rage if you mess up even once. This is also because people would rather take the time to gather up huge groups of add's and drag them to specific area's of the map to knock them off instead of just clearing them. Since a lot of groups apparently don't believe in taking GF or GWF, they also get zero chances to fix any errors that any of the players might make. Great for a perfect group of players, less perfect if you're a human or do PUG's.
Just as an example, I did Spellplague last night on both my CW and my GWF. My GWF completed it, my CW did not because the cleric, who had not played since the AS nerf, demanded that I put Repel on tab instead of ET even though ET allowed me to perma Singularity. That didn't matter though, because by darn it Repel is all that matters. So he quit after one attempt at the boss, which failed because the rogue, not me, got knocked into the Acid from behind. Our GF didn't grab the add in time, and the rogue wasn't paying attention, yet somehow it's my fault while I'm chain AS'ing everything into the drink? Yeah, whatever. He rage quit after the first attempt, and blamed me for other people's screw up's.
For the record, the rogue got knocked into the acid just before the end phase when I played through on my Destroyer Reaping Strike build GWF just like the Rogue in my CW's instance. I was the one that burned the boss down the rest of the way after he died. So whatever, believe what you will about classes and loadouts. Control Wizards do amazing control and crappy damage unless you're playing with boneheads.
This is coming from the perspective of someone that has a CW and a GWF in T2.