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Please criticize my Renegade build, any help appreciated
pers3phone
Banned Users, Neverwinter Beta Users Posts: 0 Arc User
So it seems I'm a very undecided mage. I have yet to respec since Feywild and even though I top DPS many times in MC or CN, there are those mages (yes, most of the times much better geared, with nice Vorpals or GPFs that do a few more million damage than me while having identical control. And I kinda know why, since I run with a dated setup with Shield occupying a DPS slot that would normally be Sudden Storm or Shard these days, not to mention a few important feats missed.
I've read a lot of topics here and there is amazing advice, but all builds I've seen lack stuff I might need. Some lack Icy Terrain. I need that in CN. Some lack Shard or SS, which do amazing damage. Some guys still run whole dungeons with EF on Tab or below 500 ArP and 4500 Recovery, then at the end they ask me why I have worse gear and do way more damage. My heart is heavy for leaving Thaumaturgy and CoI debuffing, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do
So my goal is to find a setup that is able to do 3 things as good as possible:
- run dungeons successfully while being flexible and able to adapt to requirements: singing, pushing, DPSing, CCing, debuffing targets...
- able to switch between single target boss and AoE setups as needed
- able to allow me to enjoy myself in PvP
So here is the spec I have came with: BUILD
AoE setup:
Mastery: Chill Strike (EF if sing bot)
Powers: SoteA, Sudden Storm, Steal Time
At Wills: Magic Missile, Storm Pillar (for recharging AP out of combat mostly, if you like this power you can feat for it in the Thaum tree)
Dailies: Oppressive Force, Ice Knife / Singularity in a few cases.
Class feats: Storm Spell, Evocation/EotS (have my doubts here. With EotS I seem to be able to plan some big hits if I pay attention correctly).
Replace Shard/SS with Icy Terrain when needed.
Single target setup:
Mastery: Icy Rays
Powers: Ray of Enfeeblement, Chill Strike, SoteA or Repel (for HV stacking). If close and with other mobs around, SS.
At Wills: Magic Missile
Dailies: Oppressive Force, Ice Knife
Class feats: Storm Spell, EotS
For PvP you can use EF in place of Repel/SoteA and Ray of Frost instead of Storm Pillar.
My char stats:
The objective of this build is to provide reliable CC with SoteA/Steal Time/Icy Terrain/Oppressive Force while doing its best to top damage charts. Obviously this also depends a huge lot on gear and personal skill/knowing the fight very well, so you might not be able to top people that actually know what they are doing and have optimized setups (but they are really, really few...). For this build (and almost all others) the HV set is extremely important. I am trying to use abilities that will add HV stacks.
Keep in mind, this is not a guide, I am not a "pro". If you like the build, then I'm glad you do. If you don't, please let me know how can I improve it. I might have missed some things in this first post, will add as necessary.
Credits for the build:
grimah's guide - primary inspiration
kerrovitarra's and copticone's topics, amazing info.
I've read a lot of topics here and there is amazing advice, but all builds I've seen lack stuff I might need. Some lack Icy Terrain. I need that in CN. Some lack Shard or SS, which do amazing damage. Some guys still run whole dungeons with EF on Tab or below 500 ArP and 4500 Recovery, then at the end they ask me why I have worse gear and do way more damage. My heart is heavy for leaving Thaumaturgy and CoI debuffing, but sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do
So my goal is to find a setup that is able to do 3 things as good as possible:
- run dungeons successfully while being flexible and able to adapt to requirements: singing, pushing, DPSing, CCing, debuffing targets...
- able to switch between single target boss and AoE setups as needed
- able to allow me to enjoy myself in PvP
So here is the spec I have came with: BUILD
AoE setup:
Mastery: Chill Strike (EF if sing bot)
Powers: SoteA, Sudden Storm, Steal Time
At Wills: Magic Missile, Storm Pillar (for recharging AP out of combat mostly, if you like this power you can feat for it in the Thaum tree)
Dailies: Oppressive Force, Ice Knife / Singularity in a few cases.
Class feats: Storm Spell, Evocation/EotS (have my doubts here. With EotS I seem to be able to plan some big hits if I pay attention correctly).
Replace Shard/SS with Icy Terrain when needed.
Single target setup:
Mastery: Icy Rays
Powers: Ray of Enfeeblement, Chill Strike, SoteA or Repel (for HV stacking). If close and with other mobs around, SS.
At Wills: Magic Missile
Dailies: Oppressive Force, Ice Knife
Class feats: Storm Spell, EotS
For PvP you can use EF in place of Repel/SoteA and Ray of Frost instead of Storm Pillar.
My char stats:
The objective of this build is to provide reliable CC with SoteA/Steal Time/Icy Terrain/Oppressive Force while doing its best to top damage charts. Obviously this also depends a huge lot on gear and personal skill/knowing the fight very well, so you might not be able to top people that actually know what they are doing and have optimized setups (but they are really, really few...). For this build (and almost all others) the HV set is extremely important. I am trying to use abilities that will add HV stacks.
Keep in mind, this is not a guide, I am not a "pro". If you like the build, then I'm glad you do. If you don't, please let me know how can I improve it. I might have missed some things in this first post, will add as necessary.
Credits for the build:
grimah's guide - primary inspiration
kerrovitarra's and copticone's topics, amazing info.
Post edited by pers3phone on
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Comments
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
@pers3phone, I've two L60 CW's, one who roughly follows copticones build suggestion and the other one is currently using grimah's Renegade build. There are two things I would recommend to change on your proposed build:
Storm Pillar is just so awkward to use. Seems I will have to adapt
BTW, I can only take away a single point from Chilling Presence. New Build
What about Bitter Cold instead of Destructive Wizardry? Would proc each Chill Strike I assume, and it's passive and without requirements to load up an awkward spell and manage to hit 2 targets as well.
I have omitted Blighting Power because in the AoE setup (which would be what most dungeons will be run with) there's just Chill Strike as a cold damage power, while AoE and Arcane buffs are a no brainer. I might miss something that's not that obvious though.
Added credits to the first post
Edit: Another option would be to skip Evocation and max Shield and Storm Pillar. Would I miss it a lot or I will be fine with Storm Spell and EotS (this is what I use now and they work quite nicely).
I chose Bitter Cold feat instead of Tempest Magic feat. Easy for me to chill mobs since I often use Icy Terrain.
Destructive Wizardy looks good too. Maybe I will switch to that.
Only criticism I have is that your HP could be higher. Defense and Deflect are also low, but I guess that's ok if you can maintain HV stacks in most situations. I don't have HV set, so can't help you with that.
Do you use an augment companion?
Anyway, this is the reason my orb doesn't have a weapon enchant yet. For now, I hope in some lucky MC/CN drop to sell so I could buy the Ancient set and slot a LPF or miniVorpal. Feels kinda bad since I have the fomorian offhand already, however Artificing will take time to level, and then I will need so much AD for assets/fragments it would take me 3-6 months of farming just for an orb, so yeah. If a Coalescent Ward would actually drop, I have a lot of Terror shards so I might get a lesser terror cheap. I'm skeptical though, because I've read it's kinda HAMSTER for CWs at least in comparison with Vorpal and PF, if it will ever be fixed.
I second that opinion, also another reason to choose Destructive Wizardry over Bitter Cold.
Not sure about that one. My Renegade is running with only Storm Spell and Eye of the Storm, but there are a couple of CWs (amongst others Kerrovitarra) who are using Evocation, because it (should) do(es) more damage. I, myself, haven't tested it yet, but plan on doing it in the next couple of weeks.
My plan is to have and use two orbs. Currently, I use Orb of the Champion Mage with standard plague fire enchantment.
My next orb will be Fomorian Fabled Orb with greater/perfect vorpal since it will be my dps orb. I will keep the old orb for situations when I don't want to do too much damage, such as when our side has the buff advantage in Gauntlgrym PvP. My ultimate goal is to have two Fomorian Fabled Orbs. One orb with vorpal to max my dps. And another orb with a debuff enchantment to increase party dps. But by the time I get two orbs, good chance there will be a new, even better orb.
I think I'll go for the more convenient build and skip on Destructive Wizardry. I can clearly see this is the better(-ish) choice, my reasons to get Bitter Cold instead are:
- convenience, I admit, guilty as charged here
- passive buff with just (maybe) 2-3 seconds of downtime because of constant Chill Strikes and when single targeting bosses, Ice Knife and Icy Rays
- no time loss during the charge of Storm Pillar, so one can perform the normal encounter rotation
- better for PvP where you'd use Chill Strike as well as Icy Rays and Ice Knife
- impossible for me to max Storm Pillar without giving up something I want, which would probably be Icy Terrain Rank 3 since it's the most situational spell in this build
Will I lose some DPS? I think so. I'd say in PvE trash AoE clearing this would be something around 3-4% loss. In PvP it wouldn't matter and for single target bosses such as Fulminorax and stage 2 Draco I'll actually be in the win with Bitter Cold. Admittedly, most CW damage comes from AoE, but nobody will mind me (or even know hehe) having a bit less efficiency, the current content was actually doable with my current very dated setup.
You've set some serious goals for yourself. The fragments are maybe 2000K AD. This will take a lot of CN runs or buying Zen, because the drop rate is extremely small in MC and 4 people will roll against you. I personally only saw 2 fragment drops, and I have maybe 350 or so Dark Fey Seals, dunno how many runs this means (all seals from first 2 bosses, Fulminorax is too much for the pugs I run MC with, although I almost killed it 2-3 times). I didn't win any fragment rolls. So my opinion is that the AH is the only reliable way.
Oh. And after the fragments, come Artificing assets. Not sure exactly how much they are, but I know you will need to get some blue/purple assets to guarantee the orb craft will be successful. If you don't have anybody that can share the assets with you, the AH is again where you need to go, and who knows how much AD you need to spend, again.
As for greater/perfect Vorpal, these are 3000K/9000K AD. I'm not sure these are realistic goals without buying a lot of Zen to exchange for AD, which I will personally never do.
Thanks a lot for the feedback and help everybody
Update: respecced and already tested in PvP and MC. Very smooth. Feeling a bit naked without shield, but I'm managing. Damage is increased substantially. For the first time I'm becoming irritated with Singularity from other CWs, it messes badly with my rotation and I lose time waiting for mobs to come down so I can hit them