What is singing and how does a Control Wizard do it?

errab · September 2013

Greetings All,

I'm still learning the ins and outs of being a Control Wizard and the term Sing keeps coming up in some of the parties that I've been a part of.

From what I gather Singing has something to do with using entangling force to quickly build Action Points so the Control Wizard can spam Arcane Singularity as much has possible; however, it seems that I'm not doing it correctly because other controllers with half my recovery are getting their Dailies off twice has fast has I am.

I tired searching the web for the term sing but I've found nothing and to make matters worse the players that keep mentioning sing will not tell me how it's done when I ask them about it.

I'm a Thamumaturge tree Control Wizard with 4357 recovery and this is the skill setup that I use when grouping:

Entangling Force or Conduit of Ice
Shield
Steal Time
Shard of Endless Avalanche
Arcane Singularity + Oppressive Force
With Storm Spell and Eye of the Storm

I just not sure how to do about getting my dailies has fast the other Control Wizards that have much lower recovery than I do.

exarkun007 · September 2013

Shield is trash if you aren't punting large amounts off a cliff. Swap it for sudden storm or icy terrain for better AP gen. Also what is you spec? Critical power is handy.

kerrovitarra · September 2013

Drop 1300 recovery into some other, more usefull stat. Singularity bots are dead.

tyrtallow · September 2013

These CWs that you keep referring to might be Oppressors. In which case it's natural that they can potentially use their dailies twice as fast as you can, it's kind of the point of being an Oppressor. They could also be just using the Archmage set.

Sing->Arcane (Sing)ularity, I'm assuming "Singing" means spamming Singularity. Don't look at me, I didn't invent the term.
So, control. The main reason people want a CW in their team is because CWs specialize in control. First off, play smarter. As a Thaumaturge your specialty lies in killing things while you control them, not controlling things indefinitely. Don't try to be an Oppressor (or a Renegade, for that matter). To do this you must find a particular combo specifically for your build for you to use when you're the solo wizard. TBH if you're in a team with another wizard then you should be concentrating on doing your own thing (and using tabbed Conduit, unless the other wizard is terrible). Leave the other wizard to do his. Accept that your Arcane Singularities are going to be less frequent, you did trade extra control for DPS. You should try to make each and every one of your own singularities count, however.

If I were a Thaumaturge and I was the solo wizard (and expected to control a legion of mobs) I'd probably begin by casting AS in front of me while fighting a horde of mobs. While AS pulls 'em in, I'd spam Storm Pillar. Storm Pillar generates a lot of AP and buffs your damage, besides. I'd also spam Storm Pillar even out of combat so my daily is up as much as possible. As AS begins to end, I start channeling Steal Time. By the time AS ends and drops mobs in front of me Steal Time will have stunned them. I then cast tabbed Entangle and Conduit of Ice (AoE 15% reduction to mitigation? yes please. You could also cast this right before AS ends). While mobs are bunched up I might try to cast an entire Chilling Cloud sequence, or I won't if there isn't enough time. Then I drop Shard of Endless Avalanche (or I might drop this earlier) though the finale is the same: I push it as soon as the mobs recover from the stun. The idea is that you want to do as much damage as you can while keeping mobs controlled. The details might need some tweaking since I don't actually play a Thaumaturge. If you already know all of this then there probably wasn't a problem to begin with. You probably just need to fine tune your build/stats or needed confirmation from someone who actually talks back.
Anyway as a Renegade my own "rotation" for instances like these are similar, except I swap Conduit for Icy Terrain simply because the latter benefits me and my spec more. Icy Terrain freezes mobs right before Steal Time ends, giving me a few extra seconds to just stand there and look at them. As they marinate my powers slowly start to come off cooldown. I then use my finale as soon as mobs recover. I also use Magic Missile almost exclusively, "marking" as many mobs as I can with Chaos Magic.
Obviously I don't bother with the above if I'm not the only mage (situations like these are about the only time Enfeeble leaves my bar) or if I'm not expected to deal with a legion of mobs by myself.
Finally, practice. You could perhaps do a few Idris runs and try to pull this off while Idris floats around spamming her purple orbs. If you can do this reliably while dodging those orbs, you're probably ready for T2 and beyond.

Seeing as you have 4.3k recovery I can't imagine gear being your the problem. You do need to bring that down to 3k (anything above that has very limited returns, only nice if they're actually free) and reallocate that extra 1.3k to some other stat like power, crit or armor pen.

errab · September 2013

tyrtallow wrote: »

These CWs that you keep referring to might be Oppressors. In which case it's natural that they can potentially use their dailies twice as fast as you can, it's kind of the point of being an Oppressor. They could also be just using the Archmage set.

Sing->Arcane (Sing)ularity, I'm assuming "Singing" means spamming Singularity. Don't look at me, I didn't invent the term.
So, control. The main reason people want a CW in their team is because CWs specialize in control. First off, play smarter. As a Thaumaturge your specialty lies in killing things while you control them, not controlling things indefinitely. Don't try to be an Oppressor (or a Renegade, for that matter). To do this you must find a particular combo specifically for your build for you to use when you're the solo wizard. TBH if you're in a team with another wizard then you should be concentrating on doing your own thing (and using tabbed Conduit, unless the other wizard is terrible). Leave the other wizard to do his. Accept that your Arcane Singularities are going to be less frequent, you did trade extra control for DPS. You should try to make each and every one of your own singularities count, however.

If I were a Thaumaturge and I was the solo wizard (and expected to control a legion of mobs) I'd probably begin by casting AS in front of me while fighting a horde of mobs. While AS pulls 'em in, I'd spam Storm Pillar. Storm Pillar generates a lot of AP and buffs your damage, besides. I'd also spam Storm Pillar even out of combat so my daily is up as much as possible. As AS begins to end, I start channeling Steal Time. By the time AS ends and drops mobs in front of me Steal Time will have stunned them. I then cast tabbed Entangle and Conduit of Ice (AoE 15% reduction to mitigation? yes please. You could also cast this right before AS ends). While mobs are bunched up I might try to cast an entire Chilling Cloud sequence, or I won't if there isn't enough time. Then I drop Shard of Endless Avalanche (or I might drop this earlier) though the finale is the same: I push it as soon as the mobs recover from the stun. The idea is that you want to do as much damage as you can while keeping mobs controlled. The details might need some tweaking since I don't actually play a Thaumaturge. If you already know all of this then there probably wasn't a problem to begin with. You probably just need to fine tune your build/stats or needed confirmation from someone who actually talks back.
Anyway as a Renegade my own "rotation" for instances like these are similar, except I swap Conduit for Icy Terrain simply because the latter benefits me and my spec more. Icy Terrain freezes mobs right before Steal Time ends, giving me a few extra seconds to just stand there and look at them. As they marinate my powers slowly start to come off cooldown. I then use my finale as soon as mobs recover. I also use Magic Missile almost exclusively, "marking" as many mobs as I can with Chaos Magic.
Obviously I don't bother with the above if I'm not the only mage (situations like these are about the only time Enfeeble leaves my bar) or if I'm not expected to deal with a legion of mobs by myself.
Finally, practice. You could perhaps do a few Idris runs and try to pull this off while Idris floats around spamming her purple orbs. If you can do this reliably while dodging those orbs, you're probably ready for T2 and beyond.

Seeing as you have 4.3k recovery I can't imagine gear being your the problem. You do need to bring that down to 3k (anything above that has very limited returns, only nice if they're actually free) and reallocate that extra 1.3k to some other stat like power, crit or armor pen.

Makes a lot of sense

Thank you

grimah · September 2013

as someone said before me, if you do not have critical power feat, that is probably where it lies. recovery helps but its not a big game changer around the 3400ish mark.

tokse2 · September 2013

Critical power helps. Recovery helps, also past 3-4000. Going for wisdom instead of charisma helps. Storm pillar helps (you can use it to gain action points anytime, even when not in combat). Shield sucks now after the nerf, with only 5% action point gain after the feywild patch. Chill and freeze abilities like tabbed CoI, Icy Terrain and chill cloud is a decent way to obtain some the crowd control we lost with the shield/singularity combo.

drscone · September 2013

Singularity is still nice though. It still bunches everyone up and lets you hit them all with steal time, puts them all inside the radius of CoI and lets you take advantage of spells like Sudden Storm and Icy Terrain that have no target limit. It's still my main Daily in PvE.

tyrtallow · September 2013

Only Thaumaturges and Renegades were particularly hit hard by Shield's AP nerf. Alacrity makes Entangling Force spammable for Oppressors (-2.5s CD per kill is massive) so as long as they can keep killing things they can still chain singularities. Essentially what the nerf did was widen the gap between paths, so that Thaumaturges/Renegades are now even more different from Oppressors. Even Renegades should start to play very differently from Thaumaturges. Ideally you'll want Chaos Magic on as many mobs as possible for the healing/AoE buffs/mitigation debuff, so a Renegade should be trying to debuff as many targets as he can whenever his encounters are on cooldown. Meanwhile a Thaumaturge will be very busy just trying to kill things.

ianthewizard2012 · September 2013

tyrtallow wrote: »

Only Thaumaturges and Renegades were particularly hit hard by Shield's AP nerf. Alacrity makes Entangling Force spammable for Oppressors (-2.5s CD per kill is massive) so as long as they can keep killing things they can still chain singularities. Essentially what the nerf did was widen the gap between paths, so that Thaumaturges/Renegades are now even more different from Oppressors. Even Renegades should start to play very differently from Thaumaturges. Ideally you'll want Chaos Magic on as many mobs as possible for the healing/AoE buffs/mitigation debuff, so a Renegade should be trying to debuff as many targets as he can whenever his encounters are on cooldown. Meanwhile a Thaumaturge will be very busy just trying to kill things.

I did some tests with the Alacrity feat and found it is not useful. The main reason is because when slotting EF in the tab slot, chill-affected mobs being killed by you can't happen often. Those mobs will often be killed by party members instead of by you.

tyrtallow · September 2013

"Can't happen often"? Just how low do you think wizard DPS is? The class with the most powers that can hit more than 5 targets, the class that is now the undisputed master of AoE thanks to the GWF Slam nerf, the class who is usually left to deal with mobs while everyone else focuses on the boss?
What kind of tests were you doing, exactly? T1 dungeon tests were every encounter is just like 4 normal mobs and an elite or two?

ianthewizard2012 · September 2013

tyrtallow wrote: »

"Can't happen often"? Just how low do you think wizard DPS is? The class with the most powers that can hit more than 5 targets, the class that is now the undisputed master of AoE thanks to the GWF Slam nerf, the class who is usually left to deal with mobs while everyone else focuses on the boss?
What kind of tests were you doing, exactly? T1 dungeon tests were every encounter is just like 4 normal mobs and an elite or two?

I tested that long ago and before GWF nerf. I might reconsider its usefulness. Thanks.

thorny911 · September 2013

One thing I think needs cleared up is regardless of Set choice (HV far superior atm), Singularities for the most part aren't needed. It groups them up nicely but so does EF on tab. OF is far better as its instant, a daze, and does more DMG (and with HV applies stacks).

AS prohibits the user of SS/SotEA which currently should be most of your dps. An occasional Singularity is nice to group things up if they get spread apart but otherwise OF is vastly superior. Use OF right after a Steal Time on a big group and watch the orange numbers fly!

So if you have gone Thurm, use CoI on Tab (then I would go SotEA/ST/(SS or IT)) IT for when you need extra control and SS if your group is progressing fine without the need for extra control. It is good to have the SotEA feat near the end of thurm to boost your Shard damage.

As long as you play to your style while making adjustments along the way as things become obsolete or OP you'll be fine.

tokse2 · September 2013

thorny911 wrote: »

Use OF right after a Steal Time on a big group and watch the orange numbers fly!.

Does OF have a max number of targets? (is it 5 targets?)

uurbs · September 2013

tokse2 wrote: »

Does OF have a max number of targets? (is it 5 targets?)

Yes, it's infinite. See also Grimah's Comprehensive Wizard Guide

slushpsycho · September 2013

I still see lots of cw do the sing+shield push combo. Which is fine, but few of them actually pop shield in time or they pop it after the sing, I was like wtf. And those cw think they are doing good and refuse to stop doing so when I ask them to stop since they score higher in the dps chart... with the draw back of lowering whole team's dps...

What is singing and how does a Control Wizard do it?

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