Chem's Dracoslaying MoF build

chemboy613 · January 2014

This build routinely outdamages similarly geared Stormspell Renegades at Draco - though it depends a lot on how the fight goes. Keep in mind you boost party DPS as well, so think this is simply better than stormspell renegade, and is a strong compliment to stormspell thaum - i.e. a Stormspell and a MoF CW together are better than two stormspells or two MoFs. I am quite certain.

Philosphy -

First of all, what is often lost in builds on the forums is this is a TEAM game. We win and lose as a TEAM first. All other things are secondary.

I will talk about diminishing returns (DR), and that’s because i believe effective characters are balanced characters. If you are too offensive, you die to easy (remember DPS on the floor is 0), if you are too defensive then your DPS is a joke (inefficient). Hence balanced characters are best.

That said, this is not intended to be a how-to-kill draco guide, rather a build guide. However, the build is optimized to kill draco, provide optimal synergy, and make the CN clear as smooth as possible. To do that we must understand that we have to control well and provide excellent team DPS over time. Burst damage is not wonderful for that fight, because the red wizards, whights, and draco have so much HP. Spellstorm will always do more burst and out DPS MoF on trash mobs - but since trash mobs die so easy it is irrelevant to spec for trash mobs.

Also, what about _XYZ_ fight? basically all other fights in this game are relatively simple and easy, and in the cases where they aren’t (Ysshgol in EDV), they are not efficient and profitable. People make the most AD doing CN and CN is quite difficult, so it is the most important dungeon for spec considerations.

That said, I can not stress enough how important it is to have a good team with good team chemistry. More GS, higher enchants, etc… means nothing if it is five individuals fighting. This is a big reason why I hand-pick my CN teams and only slowly rotate in new people. After we have killed draco together 50 or 100 times, we have an intuitive response as to how to move and work together.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Priorities -

1) Teamwork is the most important thing. This is not for the build, per se - but rather to remind you that the team aspect governs my decisions. You can always go stormspell/vorpal/renegade and go win paingiver, but I want to efficiently kill draco in 5 minutes, so i don’t care about that at all.

2) Control. Too many CWs forget the C part of CW. Control is extremely important. It is very easy to die to uncontrolled adds, and very hard to die to frozen/stunned adds. A well controled fight makes team DPS skyrocket and makes a smooth run.

3) Buff/Debuff synergy - Once you have enough control, then it is important to buff your team and debuff the mobs. This is why a P. Terror or plaguefire is better than a P.Vorpal for this build. A P.Vorpal increases personal DPS by 15% (for me), whereas a P.Terror increases my dps 5% with weapon damage, then increases everyone’s DPS 4%. Since 4% of team DPS is greater than 10% of personal DPS, the vorpal is not efficient for anything except looking cool and winning paingiver.

4) Sustained damage - that said, damage is really important. However, a big crit is pretty useless against a target with 8.75M HP, rather we maximize team sustained DPS.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Gear -

Set Choice - it is important that there is someone in the party with High Vizier for the amazing debuff - but it is best worn by a stormspell mage. This is because eye of the storm makes a CW’s crit chance somewhere around 50%, and hence stormspells don’t need much crit in their stat sheet. Hence the SW crit is largely wasted and is inefficient for stormspell mages.

Flame mages make better use of the Shadow Weaver set. The crit on SW is very useful to MoF builds, because every crit procs smolder due to critical conflagration feature. Since smolder is 10% of our damage PLUS 5% of other CW’s damage, it is important to proc it often. So Crit does matter here.

In addition the SW buffs, despite the annoying internal cooldown, is very nice for the party to have.

I am well aware that SW has low power, but considering 1000 power might only increase your damage a few percent - power is the least efficient stat for CW, and we should only consider it after everything else is near its cap. In addition we get power from boons, so it is routinely buffed.

For weapons i use the fomorian set. I also think the fallen dragon set is fine - but i like my stats better with fomorians. If you have fallen dragons though, it is probably not worth the effort or expense to get fomorians.

EDIT: the specific items are not important, but you need 2k arp, 1k lifesteal (with consumption) "enough" recovery (over 35% AP gain), and probably about 2500-3000 crit

For artifacts I Was using the Skull, the Waters and the Lantern. The other artifacts really don’t give me any stats i want, and i think the crown is very expensive and overrated, so they are less efficient.

EDIT: since then i got a book of the dead. It is best in slot for flame mage. However it is expensive, so use skull in meantime.

I use a cat augment.

For gems, I would socket armor pen (on gear first) up to 20% cap, then i would socket crit up to 3000, then i would socket power in offense slots. For defense slots, i use an azures to 2500, then radiants for HP, and an eldritch on the cat for more stats.

Soulforge is really the only valid armor enchantment here that makes sense. The others are barely worth considering.

In my weapon i use a perfect terror. While we can argue in another thread about GPF, it is very likely my teammate will have a greater plaguefire, and until they stack, a perfect terror is more efficient.

As for stats, I would I would obviously pump everything into INT, then I would do wisdom until you have “enough” recharge and AP gain, and then into charisma. Since playstyle influenced this choice, it is hard to know, but until you can comfortably 2CW draco, it is not “enough.”

chemboy613 · January 2014

Feats and powers:

They are on display here:

http://nwcalc.com/cw?b=iyl:26rpdc:1dthkj,13n3i03:100000:1z00uv:1uu000&h=0&p=mof

Powers -

For powers your draco bar will be Conduit on Tab, Shard, Icy Terrian, and steal time. This combination provides max control and also provides great DoT. According to ACT, almost 25% of my damage is conduit, 25% shard, about 12% smolder, maybe 10% steal time and 5-6% icy terrian. That said, terrian provides amazing CC with no target limit, will activate bitter cold, and generate a ton of AP, so it is quite amazing in the draco fight.

For powers it is pretty obvious to slot critical conflagration and swath of destruction. More crit severity, increased smolder damage, smolder on crits, and a defense debuff is way too good to pass up. If the team really struggles, then you can slot orb of imposition, but hopefully it is not necessary.

At wills, you are basically only going to use chilling cloud. It doesn’t matter what is in the other slot.

For dailies singularity is necessary and you should never cast anything else. For clearing trash, furious immolation is excellent, but the target cap of 8 makes it impractical for draco.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Feats -

Heroic feats:

Weapon master 3/3 - more crit chance is too good to pass up
Toughness 3/3 - a little more HP doesn't hurt
Fight on 5/5 - more encounters = more CC and more damage
Blighting Power 3/3 - since most of your powers are Cold-based, this is quite excellent
Focused wizardry - 3/3 - almost everything is AO, so this is no duh
Wizard’s wrath 3/3 - more AOE damage, is great.

Feats - Thaum is the only way to go, as conduit does huge damage, and lowered draco’s defenses substantially, greatly increasing team DPS. it is the only way to go

Tempest Magic 5/5
Malevolent surge 5/5
Frozen Power Transfer 5/5 (makes chilling cloud good)
Elemental Empowerment 5/5
Assailing Force 1/1

and from Renegade
Critical Power 5/5
Nightmare Wizardry 5/5

EDIT - i changed out a few things, this new build has more damage and more HP but barely lost any AP gain. it is slightly (maybe 2-3%) better

Boons -

I think Boons for CW are pretty basic. For sharandar I took Defense, Deflect, HP, (damage or heal doesn't matter), and fury, which should be up often.

in DR i took crit, regen, ArP, damage, and Endless Consumption - my survivability has increased

chemboy613 · January 2014

Pets -

Obviously i use an augment, and I am using my cute kitty, Esmeralda. She’s epic and all together awesome.

For control the cantankerous mage and wisp are obvious choices. My mage is epic as well and wears an ancient exorcist neck (lol).

The last two pets are a bit harder. I am currently using an epic wild hunt rider. In five minutes it procs about 30 times, which increases my damage substantially. I am not sure the actual uptime, but i will guess somewhere in the 40% range (so about a 4% DPS increase).

For the last pet i’m using a fire archon. I am really unsure here, but i know it does increase my DPS substantially (about 1.67%).

That’s it for the guide. I will likely have a friend make a video of me playing, and load up a picture of my character sheet soon.

Thanks to everyone for reading and good luck dracokilling!

charononus · January 2014

One issue here is your build guide would only be good for a respec for the most part. You advocate things from MC yet a CW in MC needs to have MoC unless they only ever run 2/3.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Actually, my teams can clear MC with no MoC and no Slam quite easily. It's a non-issue.

vorphied · January 2014

charononus wrote: »

One issue here is your build guide would only be good for a respec for the most part. You advocate things from MC yet a CW in MC needs to have MoC unless they only ever run 2/3.

MoC is a convenience, to be sure, but hardly necessary.

j0shi82 · January 2014

Nice read.

Just wondering: How and why is this build superior to the more tradition Spellstorm ones? You remain very vague throughout your write-up.

chemboy613 · January 2014

I would say the major difference is increased team synergy.

Let's assume for now that a spellstorm is wearing the same gear and same enchantments with the same feats. Since many spellstorms like to max DPS this might not be likely, but it's for arguments sake.

Therefore the main difference is going to be the smolder mechanic. This means that while we are just doing our thing, we are dotting everything that we crit on. (critical conflagration feature) That adds a) a debuff that takes away 6% of the monster's defense and (swarth of destruction feature) b) a relatively long duration DoT, which increases our personal damage approximately 10% throughout the duration of the fight.

In addition to that, any other CW in the fight can refresh smolder with a chill stack, so when you look at the LOG, smolder is about 5% increased DPS for them, because you no longer get credit on the paingiver raitings.

In addition the 15% increased crit severity doesn't hurt either.

So the personal DPS against a spellstorm mage with the same gear will be similar or a little less, but you are also responsible for 5% of their damage + another 1% (or more, -6% defense) of everyone else's damage. This is something a spellstorm spec can't do.

The net result of the exchange is increased team DPS and a smoother kill.

hombre · January 2014

I thought the rimefire effect on smolder (which u should always have with your build) was bugged and didnt tick till after your cold spell that activated rimefire ended? This makes any build with smolder/fire lose a good amt of dps and I would stay spellstorm at least until that is fixed.

linkingirl86 · January 2014

hi chemboy613

I really liked your guide, can I add it to mmominds.com??

chemboy613 · January 2014

Hombre - yeah it won't tick till the end, that's why smolder is 5% of DPS to draco and more like 10-12% to everything else. Once that is fixed, this build will be better.

Linkingirl - sure

just make sure it is accurately transcribed. Thank you,

shadow5930 · January 2014

Due to the bug, I'm actually looking at switching to an arcane spec with Renegade. MM, shard on tab, EF, coi, steal time. Renegade helps with critting, which is important with critical conflag. I know Renegade doesn't do as much damage as Thaurm, however I've also read where it can still do well enough on it's own. What's your thoughts on the matter Chem?

chemboy613 · January 2014

Well, shadow there are so few renegade/MoF out there i don't have a sample size to compare it to.

That said, I know that on trash, SS/renegade will outdamage SS/Thaum killing trash (which dies easy anyway), but SS/Thaum is absolutely better for dracoslaying.

Our renegades will keep shard/icy/steal time on their bar and try things on mastery. I have seen conduit/entangle/sudden storm/etc...

I think if I was rene i would still put shard, icy, steal time on the bar for CC, then test things on tab. I'd like to see how fanning the flames performs, actually.

Do you run ACT shadow? Could you send me the log? I haven't played with anyone using this build.

And the renegade tree isn't "helping with critting" because nothing there increases crit chance, but rather it increases the benefits from crits

Get back to me after your testing, but everything i've seen says Thaum is best tree. It would be nice to see alternatives.

shadow5930 · January 2014

I don't actually run ACT. I'm also not high enough GS to get into CN on my CW. The HR showed up and I switched my focus.

I currently run oppressor spec MoF. I actually use FtF on him, on tab. It's extremely potent dot burst. I, however, run into the fail that is the bug with the DoT not working properly. So this is the main reason why I was looking at going Renegade, step away from the chill for more crunch on the DoT.

I'd be happy to hop on the test server and get ACT going to try some runs on the dummies. Part of why I avoid icy terrain is due to the chill it does. However, FtF on tab, EF, shard, ST make for a nice setup as well, I think... I'll have to think more about renegade, I thought there was a crit increase there. That's probably just from when I had EotS.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Hey shadow, i updated this.

The corner with FtF on tab is no control. It does massive damage, but lacks the control conduit has. Also with thaum hard to get away from conduit.

So you'd be giving up control and debuff for a little more damage. I'm not sure that tradeoff is worth it.

Also, i updated the build in feats and boons. Please check it out.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Draco Kill - 3:11

ME - 15.2k (MoF/Thaum/P.Terror)
Val - 14.7k (SS/Thaum/GPF)
Fyst - 14.2k (SS/Rene/N.Vorpal)
Ekso - 15.9k (MoF/Thaum/P.Terror)
Amelia - 14.1k (IV/Sent/L.Lightning)

chemboy613 · January 2014

I can't upload the log for some reason - if anyone knows how to upload the log, let me know.

brazennl · January 2014

pastie.org if it's not so big that it's impractical, else, there's always dropbox.

elsumonner · January 2014

Good guide.Please post some videos with you doing CN

shadow5930 · January 2014

Hey Chem, thanks for the update!

I would give up the chill control for arcane controls. I'd also be gaining the arcane mastery boost to stuff as I'd always be doing arcane spells, so it'd stack up fairly fast. You're right, FtF is heavy damage on tab, without any control. Not that it has control off of tab.

FtF on tab, shard, EF, ST, there's still plenty of AoE control there between ST and shard. Add in MM bonus from renegade and you're supplementing the party even more. Thinking it through, I would have to agree it's not to the point of toppling Thaurm, with their debuffs, however as a team focused character, it should be a very nice setup. I'm going to try using the test server and see if I can play around with it some more to get a good idea.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Hey shadow, sorry for being slow. It's been a tough few days for me.

My concern with this bar is a lack of control. I suspect in a clear, with a high DPS party you will do fine. Maybe in a place like MC, you can throw FtF and ef on a totemist, sing on his head and smash him. That would probably be awesome there.

However at Draco there are so many adds. If you had trouble you could put icy terrian instead of enfeeble and then conduit or entangle on tab - but it would depend upon your team.

The problem with the test server is that no one is farming CN or MC over there. This is party of the myopia with stormspell - as stormspell will absolutely perform better on trash and perform better on the test server, but it doesn't perform better at draco. The only way to know for sure is respec, play with it for a while, then respec again to tweak. a bit expensive, but worth it.

zargorius666 · January 2014

Nice, amazing though how little flame is there in the Master of ... Flame. Speaks a lot about how much this path needs some re-working. Would love to see actually a proper split betwen Ice, Flame and Storm ... but that's wishful thinking I guess.

chemboy613 · January 2014

Well, i must say furious immolation is wonderful. I like using it whenever there are 8 mobs or less. It gathers them faster, does more damage, adds a dot, and then smolder debuff from Swath of Destruction. Quite wonderful.

FtF is great in PvP and single target fights. I can't tell how often I laugh as people run for the potion and die along the way ^^.

The huge benefit of this path is critical conflagration - 15% crit severity and crits add smolder - is amazing. I think in fights where things don't die in 2-3 seconds, this is as good as eye of the storm. I am running with 35% crit chance, and since i hit the room, i am critting all the time, dotting and debuffing the room.

Spellstorm is similar - Sudden Storm is awesome damage but no control, storm pillar is great feated but rarely used, and malestorm, well... relatively useless outside of the valindra fight.

I think the emphasis on cold abilities comes from the need to control the 100000 adds in this game. If that wasn't an issue then FtF becomes much, much better.

Shadow is on to something with it - we could put it on tab, but going thaum spec really induces conduit on tab (with no regrets).

zargorius666 · January 2014

chemboy613 wrote: »

Well, i must say furious immolation is wonderful. I like using it whenever there are 8 mobs or less. It gathers them faster, does more damage, adds a dot, and then smolder debuff from Swath of Destruction. Quite wonderful.

FtF is great in PvP and single target fights. I can't tell how often I laugh as people run for the potion and die along the way ^^.

The huge benefit of this path is critical conflagration - 15% crit severity and crits add smolder - is amazing. I think in fights where things don't die in 2-3 seconds, this is as good as eye of the storm. I am running with 35% crit chance, and since i hit the room, i am critting all the time, dotting and debuffing the room.

Spellstorm is similar - Sudden Storm is awesome damage but no control, storm pillar is great feated but rarely used, and malestorm, well... relatively useless outside of the valindra fight.

I think the emphasis on cold abilities comes from the need to control the 100000 adds in this game. If that wasn't an issue then FtF becomes much, much better.

Shadow is on to something with it - we could put it on tab, but going thaum spec really induces conduit on tab (with no regrets).

Don't get me wrong, I have a Tiefling Renegad MoF and love her, FtF on tab is almost like a proper fireball, just would lvoe to see some more flaming stuff added as as it is now it's only FtF and Furious Immolation - Scorching Burst is not worth it, especially on Renegade that has a boost to the MM.
Would love to see MM replaced with a Flaming Arrow.
Maybe Ray replaced with some fire cone ability (flamethrower like).
Thing is often it feels too many things are packed in one not allowing for much diversity in Encounters to use.

spacejew · January 2014

My mage is actually a Renegade, and I recently specced into Master of Flame just for a different play style. I can definitely confirm that it does less damage than a Thaum, but adding Combat Advantage through Nightmare Wizardy and the buff/debuff on Chaos Magic flows nicely into the other debuffs the flame path offers. They are all small bonuses but they all apply for the entire team.

What I'm running (at the moment) is generally Fanning the Flame on Tab, Shard, Steal Time, and Ray of Enfeeblement. For my dailies I've been playing around with Furious Immolation and Oppressive Force. Class skills are Combustive Action and Critical Conflagration.

The rotation I've been experimenting with is to drop a shard on top of me and throw my Furious Immolation. As it tosses the add's into the air, I throw shard on top of them for the knockdown and follow up with a Steal Time. I choose a stronger add and hit them with RoE and a follow-up tabbed FtF and hope for a crit.

Mostly I was hoping to buff team damage and maximize AP generation so I can throw more Furious Immolation's, as that Daily is like a faster Singularity that proc's my DoT which then gives back 1% AP for every target that is killed (by me or anyone).

The biggest drawback to the MoF paragon seems to be the lack of decent critical chance buffs, I.E. Eye of the Storm. It requires the MoF wizard to actually concentrate on Crit chance instead of the standard low-crit Spellstorm build that relies on it's 100% crit proc.

One thing the MoF CAN do that the Spellstorm cannot do is proc a DoT on an infinite number of add's using Oppressive Force. Maintaining that DoT is tricky, but a tabbed CoI or just an Icy Terrain seems to refresh Smolder very efficiently on a large number of adds. If you can survive their wrath, anyway. You can also maintain a critical hit Smolder for an almost infinite amount of time if you keep maintaining the fire DoT with ice spells, which is situational and difficult to exploit at the moment.

(I should note that a renegade half-orc could, in theory, obtain a 160% critical severity. So the logical tradeoff here is less power and more critical chance. Basically the opposite of what you would do with a spellstorm mage.)

chemboy613 · February 2014

That playstyle is not that different from mine, actually. The gather them up and slam them with shard is a standard practice of CW gameplay.

I think nightmare wizardry is the highlight of the renegade tree. It is somewhere between excellent and amazing.

Stacking crit is true. I didn't stack crit but i currently have 2888 crit and a 34.7% crit chance. That said, my power is compartively low, but until the other stats are overcapped, power has a rather minor impact on damage.

I also switched my boons away from crit to defensive ones for more survivability. I barely lost any DPS (not noticable) but live longer (very noticiable), and so i think reaching around 3k crit, 2.6k arp, whatever recovery you need, and then focusing on defensive stats and more or less ignoring power is the most effective way to build a MoF CW.

The problem with renegade is say we take nightmare wizardy and then fill out the thaum tree - that will be much better DPS and and max team buffs for everyone. While chaos magic is good, it's not as good as assailing force.

Why i suggest using singularity, conduit, and icy terrian is not that the bar you are running is bad, but i tend to run CN as efficently as possible, and when there are 15+ mobs around, conduit and terrian add CC that FtF and EF don't. Singulairty isn't so much for the CC< but putting them all in one spot allows you and the team to max out their AOE DPS. The downside of force isn't the damage (better than sing) or the stun (excellent) but rather that it spreads out mobs rather than gathers them up, limiting team DPS.

That said if you have multiple CWs you could use force occasionally when the mobs are together and then have the other CW gather them up with sings (works wonderfully). Personally i use furious immolation when there are 8 or less mobs and sing when there are more.

It seems to me, right now, the best thing to do is take crit power/nightmare wizardry, then climb the thaum tree. Even the die-hard renegades in my guild are beginning to think thaum is simply better. I agree right now.

There are some people who go spellstorm/renegade/vorpal and they out damage me on the clear, but they don't outdamage me at draco. Also remember vorpal only buffs yourself, while terror or plaguefire buffs the whole team. Current thought is those are better options for CW, whereas vorpal is better suited to EXE/TR or Archer/HR.

spacejew · February 2014

Indeed, as I said I was experimenting so there is going to be some inefficiency. (Ok, a lot of it! ^_-)

Right now I'm trying to figure out if FtF is capped on the number of targets that it can attract flame from. I know the ability itself is capped for initial damage, but is the DoT gather effect also capped? I only wonder because an oppressive force thrown into a massive group followed up by FtF definitely does a boat load of damage, but it is very difficult to notice how many targets are actually contributing to the single-target portion of FtF.

The nice thing about FtF on tab for Renegade? If it crits it's pretty much a guaranteed AoE Nightmare Wizardry proc. Each tick of the gather damage, DoT, and initial burst seem to check for the feat which given the number of ticks is a virtual certainty. This also serves to pretty much instantly proc the crit severity buff. Sadly, it's an all-or-nothing gambit that relies utterly on that up-front critical.

brazennl · February 2014

Has any more testing been done on this?

Chem's Dracoslaying MoF build

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