Stox, I'm fairly new so take this in mind. Why go with 1 point in shield and 2 points repel and not take anything in Arcane Presence?
Am I misunderstanding or is this passive broken? At 1 point its 5% to anything with chill. You took 3 in chilling presence so why not take this? I get your not doing much MM but even at 1 stack of MM 1 point in this is 1% more passive dps right?
I could just be misinformed or misunderstanding the mechanics as I've only been playing about 2 weeks but please educate me.
Thanks!!!
And many thanks for this build. I'm only lvl 46 but I'm planning on using this to max dps because unless I'm the person pulling trash tends to die so quickly... I rarely wait for cool downs and when I do it's every 3rd or 4th fight...
Stox, I'm fairly new so take this in mind. Why go with 1 point in shield and 2 points repel and not take anything in Arcane Presence?
Am I misunderstanding or is this passive broken? At 1 point its 5% to anything with chill. You took 3 in chilling presence so why not take this? I get your not doing much MM but even at 1 stack of MM 1 point in this is 1% more passive dps right?
I could just be misinformed or misunderstanding the mechanics as I've only been playing about 2 weeks but please educate me.
Thanks!!!
And many thanks for this build. I'm only lvl 46 but I'm planning on using this to max dps because unless I'm the person pulling trash tends to die so quickly... I rarely wait for cool downs and when I do it's every 3rd or 4th fight...
I dunno if i can speak for stox, but the way i see it is this:
Arcane Presence: 1 pt gives you 1/3 of the buff (original buff is 15% damage with all 5 stacks, ONLY for arcane spells) and this bonus only applies to cold spells. 2 and 3 pts expands this to 100% of the buff, for 15% more damage to cold spells and arcnae spells when you have all 5 stacks, which if you already dont spend more than 1 rotation in a fight will be useless anyway.
Chilling Presence: at 1 point you get 1% bonus per stack of chill (this applies to ALL damage, not just cold spells, and stacks with default AM) for 6% total. At 2 points, its 12%, and at 3 points, its 18%, which is more than the arcane presence damage anyway.
Also, its much easier to stack chill on a target than to stack AM on yourself, especially if there are multiple cw's in the party.
yeah, I understand why he picked up Chill Presence just didn't understand why 2 extra points in expel and 1 in shield which he never or rarely uses.
I could even understand 1 point in shield and 1 in expel for the shoving off the cliff mechanic in some battles which I've only read about but why top off expel? that's still 2 points that could go into Arcane Presence or 67% of the buff for Arcane Mastery. if you only do 1 round of MM its 5 stacks right? even if you only do 1 tick between cool downs which should happen (keep in mind I'm 46) your going to have a little down time. full 5 stacks which you should have during a boss fight at 67% of the max buff would be 10% damage increase to Cold spells... Or am I looking at this wrong?
Just asking why not. Is the loss of at least 2% extra damage to cold spells (1 stack of MM at 2 points into AM) not worth the dps gain vs the utility of expel maxed?
Just theory craft and trying to understand a game ty for the replay and opinion. would love to hear more from others.
At level 60 you will always use EOTS as one of your passives, then you will use either Storm Spell or Evocation for AOE for your second passive. For single target you will use EOTS and Chilling Presence. There is no point in wasting points in additional inferior passives, so add points to entounters you may use. Arcane Presence only increases cold based dam damage not All damage.
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susp3ktMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 38Arc User
edited February 2014
Stox....thanks foe the guide, love the build! Question on Tempest Magic.....does it stack or replace the Tiefling feat? If it stacks....even better, if not I may make a slight swap.
Cheers!
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
edited February 2014
It does not stack, it replaces the Tiefling race feat.
I am curious on the benefits you see from Snap Freeze. I love the idea of this feat, but as I am typically grouped with at least 1 other CW who is stacking chill (CoI Tab) - I assume to really gain any Snap Freeze benefit, one in this position would be required to be sure they were the first to get their rotation started. Granted I could totally misunderstand how Snap Freeze works, I mean we all know sometimes the tool tips can be a bit cryptic.
I am curious on your testing for the build, was this an issue (multi CW/Chill) and in such a situation would not FPT be a better fit?
Hi Stox, thanks for a great guide. I have a couple of questions. For tieflings would it be better to keep the racial trait or still go with tempest magic. If not, what do you recommend putting the 5 points in. Also, I'm sort of confused on single targets. What should I use in VT against Valindra. I've heard all sorts of recommendations from other players, but I'm not certain. Thanks.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Hi Stox, thanks for a great guide. I have a couple of questions. For tieflings would it be better to keep the racial trait or still go with tempest magic. If not, what do you recommend putting the 5 points in. Also, I'm sort of confused on single targets. What should I use in VT against Valindra. I've heard all sorts of recommendations from other players, but I'm not certain. Thanks.
stox is no longer here on forums sadly, at least he had time to post his very good guides
- I'd put the 5 points in Frozen Power Transfer or Critical Power, since the build already uses Chilling Cloud a lot.
- single target setup for Val/Fulmi fights would be: Icy Rays Mastery/Chill Strike, Enfeeblement, CoI/Ice Knife/Magic Missile spam. You could switch between IR and RoE so RoE is on Tab, for more debuffing but a bit lower personal DPS.
- single target setup for Val/Fulmi fights would be: Icy Rays Mastery/Chill Strike, Enfeeblement, CoI/Ice Knife/Magic Missile spam. You could switch between IR and RoE so RoE is on Tab, for more debuffing but a bit lower personal DPS.
Checking out the VT video at the Twitch TV address you linked, he's actually using CoI (Tab), RoE/IT/CS, EotS/CP and Ray of Frost during the single target end-fight.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Checking out the VT video at the Twitch TV address you linked, he's actually using CoI (Tab), RoE/IT/CS, EotS/CP and Ray of Frost during the single target end-fight.
I see.
Well.
To be honest, I cannot explain why he does that on the forums due to their rules. Feel free to copy the stuff, but all I can tell you is that's not a legit single-target setup
To be honest, I cannot explain why he does that on the forums due to their rules. Feel free to copy the stuff, but all I can tell you is that's not a legit single-target setup
Actually, the one you posted is straight from Grimah's thread, to which Stox commented: contact me if you want me to improve your single target rotation (or something to that extent). They each have their own view on things.
Anyway, this is about what Stox said/recommends, and that's as far as I'm willing to "take it" in his name.
To be honest, I cannot explain why he does that on the forums due to their rules. Feel free to copy the stuff, but all I can tell you is that's not a legit single-target setup
What are you doing? Be quiet.
It's only worth doing if you are the only CW anyway.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
edited February 2014
All SHHHHHHHHH now :P
(I'm not the one streaming the stuff btw hehe )
As for grimah he's a great CW I learned a lot of stuff from his topics&guides and not ashamed to admit it. He helped the community a lot and was here, and geared, before me even being having a level 60 char. Props to him.
This is what I believe to be the most damaging CW setup for PVE. I spend a ridiculous amount of time testing and doing math and will try to answer any questions you may have. I don't claim to be new or innovating anything so please don't harass me in my thread. This is simply the setup I run being posted because I'm asked way too much.
The build is all about stacking debuffs / buffs / and increasing damage.
A few remarks on my sheet:
1. Prioritize INT, each point in INT will give you more damage than a point in CHA. But these are the 2 stats you should focus on. For Human ending up 26 INT / 19 CHA, for Tiefling 26 INT / 21 CHA
2. I choose power over crit. Why? Because it's more damage despite what some people believe
3. I choose pyro bands over ancient slavemaster rings of control. Why? Well recovery wins when it comes to DPS sort of. As in, with a long fight recovery up til about 3500 will win the DPS race, but most fights aren't long. With a good group you don't get a chance to get your cooldowns again before moving on to the next pack, so I front load the damage by sacrificing recovery for more power / crit / arm pen.
4. Yes I know my armor pen seems low, but fact is arm pen doesn't work for a lot of our abilities right now and most of the time even the amount I have is enough for most of the mobs we fight. We're on adds a lot more than we're on elites and bosses.
5. Weapon enchant Vorpal since this really is a max DPS setup, but for party benefit when Plague Fire is fixed that's a great choice as well, but it still won't do the damage of a Vorpal. For armor enchant, because of the bonus from Galeb Duhr come module 2 I'd recommend Soulforged. i.e. barkshield is nice but with lower health you'll actually do more damage with Galeb Duhr. People really need to learn how to calculate vorpal added damage as well, so here you go folks. P. Vorpal = 50% crit severity. This doesn't mean you do 50% more damage or as most people seem to believe 20-30% damage. It is simply your base crit severity 175 (100 + 75% crit severity) + p. vorpal 50 = 225. 225/175 = 1.2857. So this is your damage increase from a perfect vorpal hit, 28.57%. Now you multiply this by your crit chance to get your overall damage increase. Note that because some of our skills do not crit, they do not gain anything from vorpal and you will need to test how much your crit chance is with a parser such as ACT because of Eye of the Storm. Your character sheet number is not reliable. So in my case I show a 28% chance to crit on the character sheet, but because of Eye of the Storm I normally average 48% crits. So damage increase for me with p. vorpal would be 28.57% * .48 = 13.71%.
Weapon Mastery 3/3 - 3% more crit, enough said.
Toughness 3/3 - because I'm squishy enough. lol
Wizard's Wrath 3/3 - because extra damage on every skill in my normal rotation (coi, chill strike tab, shard of the endless avalanche, and steal time, even adds damage to aoe dailies)
Fight On 1/5 - again I'm frontloading a lot of my damage to hit hard, so while reduced cooldowns is nice, I normally won't see cooldowns before going to the next pack.
Arcane Enahncement 3/3 - because shard is our biggest damage spell
Blighting Power 2/3 - because in my normal rotation I don't use a cold power on anything with chill already on it, but for bosses this feat is great or if someone else has put chill on the mobs before you.
I'm human so I have 8 feats in the last column. If I was not human I would go 3/3 Focused Wizardry and 2/5 Learned Spellcaster for the most damage, but as it is I can have my cake and eat it too. I believe human to be the most damaging class over even tieflings because of the feats in this last column. 9% damage to every enounter and daily that I typically use and then on top of that nearly 6% increased damage from Learned Spellcaster on everything. With my roll it's 16% extra damage from INT, so 5% * 1.16 (the 16% bonus) = 5.8% extra damage from Learned Spellcaster to everything with a roll of 26 INT. It's slightly more with campfire bonus.
For the right side:
5/5 Tempest Magic - because extra damage when the mob is low health is nice
5/5 Malevolent Surge - We kill a lot as CWs, so bonus damage when we do.
5/5 Snap Freeze - with the rotation I use which I will explain more in detail below, I get this effect on 2 spells, coi and chill strike.
0/5 Frozen Power Transfer - just mentioning this because while it is a nice damage buff, I am frontloading damage and not going to take the time to cast a full rotation of chilling cloud before using encounters.
5/5 Transcended Master - because 15% to our most damaging aoe encounter is ridiculously good
5/5 Elemental Empowerment - this is actually a 10% debuff, thanks for pointing this out Grimah
1/1 Assailing Force - 15% extra damage after using COI.
Going into other trees there are lots of fun choices. I would say there are 2 best options for overall damage though. Severe reaction in oppressor can help with your survivability a lot and reaper's touch is a nice bonus to at wills, but you have to be too close and shouldn't be doing the majority of your damage with at wills. So especially with the upcoming nerf to entangling force, AP gain is going to be critical making Critical Power a very viable option as well. With this if it procs on a multi target ability, say chill strike in tab, you get 25% AP.
Another worthy contender that I did not go with is Nightmare Wizardry. Yes this spell is nice and will increase party damage. But as I said my build is more for DPS racing. A good party will have combat advantage most of the time anyway, so this feat is somewhat nulled but is still a great party DPS increase. I am 5/5 Bitter Cold because it's an increase to my shard damage in my rotation and only benefits me really.
My rotation and an explanation.
CoI > Chill Strike in tab > Shard of the Endless Avalanche > Steal Time.
Sometimes I will go ahead and put the shard down before starting the rotation and then launch it to combo faster.
I normally run Arcane Singularity and Oppressive Force for dailies because sometimes singularity is still needed to make a fight go smoother, for instance there are 3 times during an MC run with some big pulls that I would be using this but otherwise I would use Oppressive. I normally will swap one of these for Ice Knife for boss fights.
I use Eye of the Storm exclusively and that will not leave my bar for dungeon running or for bosses, it is just too good. Now the question of storm spell or evocation is more interesting. With my setup and the debuffs and damage I do, Evocation wins. For others Storm Spell may do more damage. The easiest way to find out is to parse a few runs while running storm spell. Check the damage of abilities affected by Evocation and see how much damage that would have added. If it is more than the damage you got with Storm Spell during the runs, you should be running Evocation instead.
Now if I can get close enough to the mobs I will use Steal Time or a Daily early in the fight for more HV procs and bonus damage, but usually fights are started from a distance and this is not the case.
IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE, READ THIS AND KNOW WHY THIS BUILD IS SO GOOD!!!
**note that due to the math the actual numbers you get will be slightly higher, so say you have debuffs of 25%, you will likely see 26.5% extra damage.
1. CoI is benefitting from Snap Freeze, so 15% more damage on it AND the CoI debuff. So your CoI hits for 30% harder. Note that as you add other debuffs and chill and others add debuffs that this actually goes higher, over 75% in fact.
2. Chill Strike also benefits from Snap Freeze 15% because CoI doesn't actually add chill stacks unless it is in tab, and it is also getting another 15% damage from the CoI debuff and another 15% from Evocation and another 10% from HV stacks on 5 targets, ~55% bonus damage.
3. Shard gets the 15% damage debuff from CoI as well, 15% from evocation, it gets 5% more damage from Bitter Cold, and another 15% more damage from Transcended Master, another 10% from Elemental Empowerment, shard slam adds 1 stack of HV and shardsplosion adds 1 more. This is our hardest hitting encounter and my build and rotation are setup to make it hit that much harder. You're looking at about 90% damage increase to shard, really closer to 100%.
4. Steal Time gets the 15% debuff from CoI, 15% from evocation, 5% from Bitter Cold, and 10% from Elemental Empowerment. With HV stacks this is a 75% increase.
Show me another Tree with CW that can stack debuffs like this that can even come close to the damage a thaum CW can do!
Note I do change up encounters depending on the situation and bosses but that just depends on the situation. If you have a specific scenario you're interested in ask me, but as an example for CN I'd be running this setup until after the second boss then I would switch to Entangling Force on TAB for faster AP gain currently but it's being nerfed, and switch CoI for Shield for bumping off. Then for the final boss I'd be using Repel on TAB and be back to having in CoI instead of Shield. Now I'm sure they will fix the clearing of adds in CN soon, so this is just an example of current methods assuming you're even running the dungeon and not having a TR solo run it. When the adds are cleared in the last fight I would once again be switching skills.
Feywild boons, Power and Crit for the first 2 because this is a damage build after all.
The Third tier was a personal choice, yes 2% more AP gain will give you more damage, but really that's every 50 singularities or OF you cast, you will get 1 extra. I chose the 700 hp here instead.
4th Tier, the one that does damage to enemies, note either has a 1 minute cooldown.
5th Tier, I feel a lot of people miss out on how good this is, but Elvish Fury refreshes itself when you kill a mob in it's timer. In a fast group that means you will always have a bonus 600 power when running through a dungeon after you have the stacks built.
That's about it. As I said this is what I run. If there is something better in all of my testing I have yet to find it. I have played around with the fire path coming in module 2 and needless to say, as of now nothing in my build will be changed. Any questions just ask me here or in game @stoxbox2.
MODULE 2 ARTIFACTS:
1. Lantern of Revelation
Legendary is 300 crit, 300 arm pen, 300 combat advantage.
2. Shard of Valindra's Crown
Legendary is 300 Power, 300 life steal, 400 control bonus
3. I would say Bloodcrystal Raven Skull or Waters of Elah'zad, or just wait. On the test shard prior to module 2 they had a class specific artifact that would have been better. They will add these eventually.
Module 2 Companions:
1. Ioun Stone of Allure for the stats obviously.
2. Fire Archon, 5% more damage to targets at less than 30% health. Assuming an even distribution of damage this would be about 1.5% extra damage, though in practice it will likely be less.
3. Galeb Duhr gives 10% bonus damage based on how much damage you have taken. i.e at 90% health you do 1% more damage, at 50% health you do 5% more damage, etc. I normally am the first one into the fights and getting hit, so this will be a few % to my overall damage I'm sure.
4 and 5. This is the tough one in my opinion, Dancing Blade at epic gives 5% crit severity. This may sound good but when you have a p. vorpal for instance, it's 230 severity / 225 severity or 1.022 * your crit%, likely ~50% with eye of the storm, so it's about 1.1% damage increase. Blink Dog seems to be the popular choice giving 5% combat advantage damage at epic, but I also believe Vicious Dire Wolf for 5% chance to interrupt target and Wild Hunt Rider for a 5% chance for encounters to increase your damage by 10% to be a great choice as well. The reason the others are viable choices IMO is that blink dog gives me an effective damage increase of 0.75%, it's not really that great. Dire Wolf interrupt seems to proc off every hit of everything, so a few CWs running this could chain interrupt enemies. It appears that Wild Hunt Rider procs the damage increase from each target hit as well and will likely be my go to companion for this last slot. Every tick of CoI seems to be able to proc it, the same for icy terrain and all 6 hits of steal time as well, the slow ticks and not just the damage.
just wondering why do you wear that belt? i would assume that there are better ones out there that can most likely give better stats. that one gives 100 to armor pen, crit, and power right?
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uurbsMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 449Bounty Hunter
just wondering why do you wear that belt? i would assume that there are better ones out there that can most likely give better stats. that one gives 100 to armor pen, crit, and power right?
The "Smiting Beserker Belt" has +110 Power, +133 Critical Strike and +133 Armor Penetration as well as an Offensive Slot (there are two variants of "Smiting Beserker Belt"). Depending on the stats you need for your character, that is a very good choice. Especially as all epics belts only have an Defensive Slot.
I found the answer to my question, this post can be deleted, my bad.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited March 2014
Hey, so so many people are using this guide, i thought i'd skip it and the 11 pages
As far as I can tell, this is likely max burst DPS - so while going through a rotation it lays in the most damage possible, which is pretty awesome
The downside - it's not setup for sustained fights (no FPT, snap freeze), so it is probably better on clear and less good on bosses. If the fight is longer than 2-3 seconds, snap freeze isn't good
I think it's setup for an EoA farming run. I haven't played with stox, but i played with Sheyla, who played with a simliar style. We had Cenom too, so two huge DPS CWs and everything melted and we flew,
that said, there is absolutely no survavibility stats here. What if **** happens? what if you run 3 or 4 man CN? what about lifesteal (which we all stack up a bit). The net is very squishy.
So i'm wondering - how does it perform in less well geared situations? with mixed group? with short handed groups? that's my concern.
The guide _is_ awesome for max burst DPS though, so if everything is dead after a rotation, it's probably great.
The downside - it's not setup for sustained fights (no FPT, snap freeze), so it is probably better on clear and less good on bosses. If the fight is longer than 2-3 seconds, snap freeze isn't good
I think it's setup for an EoA farming run. I haven't played with stox, but i played with Sheyla, who played with a simliar style. We had Cenom too, so two huge DPS CWs and everything melted and we flew.
A very good point and something to consider when choosing your build.
Hey, so so many people are using this guide, i thought i'd skip it and the 11 pages
As far as I can tell, this is likely max burst DPS - so while going through a rotation it lays in the most damage possible, which is pretty awesome
The downside - it's not setup for sustained fights (no FPT, snap freeze), so it is probably better on clear and less good on bosses. If the fight is longer than 2-3 seconds, snap freeze isn't good
I think it's setup for an EoA farming run. I haven't played with stox, but i played with Sheyla, who played with a simliar style. We had Cenom too, so two huge DPS CWs and everything melted and we flew,
that said, there is absolutely no survavibility stats here. What if **** happens? what if you run 3 or 4 man CN? what about lifesteal (which we all stack up a bit). The net is very squishy.
So i'm wondering - how does it perform in less well geared situations? with mixed group? with short handed groups? that's my concern.
The guide _is_ awesome for max burst DPS though, so if everything is dead after a rotation, it's probably great.
TKX to stox, i'll find you ingame.
Maximum burst damage does not imply bad dps. Especially because further stacking recovery for example will not result in more dps.
I'm currently using an altered version of this build, toying with the idea of using SS at certain times in dungeons with huge mob concentrations and power transfer instead of snap freeze. Results are mixed, hard to tell which is better so w/e.
But what stox did isn't just burst dps I would argue its also one of the top dps builds even in sustained encounters.
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pers3phoneBanned Users, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
I'm currently using an altered version of this build, toying with the idea of using SS at certain times in dungeons with huge mob concentrations and power transfer instead of snap freeze. Results are mixed, hard to tell which is better so w/e.
This is the same conclusion I reached for PvE. FPT is pretty hard&slow to get in, but is good damage once it procs on more targets, Snap freeze requires you to run in front, SS clears grouped mobs like there's no tomorrow and if you can get used to positioning and constant movement seems better to me than CS. SS also benefits a lot from having more CWs that actually use sing to pull mobs together for the huge burst that comes from 3 shards/steal times/SSs. But if you have CWs always doing OF, then CS becomes better, but I think this shouldn't happen, OF should be used only if mobs are reasonably close to each other.
So both setups are quite situational and very good. Thing is, the content is so easy that it makes you fall asleep, so yeah, sadly such choices are not so important at one point.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited March 2014
Agreed content is too easy. I just can't convince myself snap freeze is good - though i do understand the argument.
I think something like 20-30% of winning paingiver is being first in the fight, it's more my style to stick with team too, plus since many CWs i run with use icy terrian (drop it under a sing) everything has chill stacks on it, so it's a 5% bonus to the first hit of the first CW - which over a dungeon is probably negligible dps.
FPT is absolutely more DPS if you drop it into a sing, but it involves something surviving a rotation.
Looking at this build, from the beginning it assumes that nothing lives through a rotation, which is true in some parties, but hardly true for the playerbase, so it seems optimized for a super fast, super high DPS clear. I think if fights last longer than 5 seconds, it might not be optimal.
I think it shows there are different ways to play CW out there too, so I'm glad we can all debate these builds (hopefully without personal insults).
Agreed content is too easy. I just can't convince myself snap freeze is good - though i do understand the argument.
I think something like 20-30% of winning paingiver is being first in the fight, it's more my style to stick with team too, plus since many CWs i run with use icy terrian (drop it under a sing) everything has chill stacks on it, so it's a 5% bonus to the first hit of the first CW - which over a dungeon is probably negligible dps.
FPT is absolutely more DPS if you drop it into a sing, but it involves something surviving a rotation.
Looking at this build, from the beginning it assumes that nothing lives through a rotation, which is true in some parties, but hardly true for the playerbase, so it seems optimized for a super fast, super high DPS clear. I think if fights last longer than 5 seconds, it might not be optimal.
I think it shows there are different ways to play CW out there too, so I'm glad we can all debate these builds (hopefully without personal insults).
The build is actually optimized more for smaller pulls / packs. That was the point of it in fact, like in MC. If you are doing giant pulls in CN and VT, then obviously SS and I would argue icy terrain instead of steal time should be rotated in. For a pull of an average pack, that was the purpose of this build. It's not meant for super elite parties that kill in one rotation, it's simply meant for normal sized pulls and a max buff/debuff combination for efficient killing.
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
edited March 2014
today we just ran from door right to beholder and blew up 30+ things at once that was insane
so yeah, maybe that too, smaller pulls, but most times you pull 15 at once and kite when it's 3.
Odd, I am pretty sure I read here the Combat Designer lordgallen stating that Tieflings with the feat get 15% damage increase.
Can anyone confirm or refute this with source? Also with this build, if you're running with another cw and chill is applied to the mobs before you can do your rotation, would you lose a significant amount of dps?
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chemboy613Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,521Arc User
Can anyone confirm or refute this with source? Also with this build, if you're running with another cw and chill is applied to the mobs before you can do your rotation, would you lose a significant amount of dps?
1) no idea
2) I think the build is predicated on being first CW to attack.
Had a chat with STOX though, compared with other people i played with, he might be highest DPS on server - haven't had the privilege of running with him yet.
1) no idea
2) I think the build is predicated on being first CW to attack.
It is,
I run with a CW that uses this, and he likes to do that. He'll run ahead, pad his numbers by starting to solo things before everyone else, and always wants to strike first and be the paingiver.
What he doesn't know is that it was never the build in the first place, it was his agressiveness. And he's a very skilled player. Because I actually played this build before, and have moved on to other builds which more damage potential for the way I actually play.
I once reconfigured my char with the exact same build as him and ran with him just to see if it was his build....
...it wasn't... and he never knew.
In fact my actual damage went down.
Its a great build though, and I do recommend it to newbies. It is definitely an established one. And it doesn't actually require much in terms of know how or tactics to still utilize. The nice thing about Thaum builds vs Renegade builds is that they take much less skill to actually play. You don't have to worry about as much about positioning, you don't have to worry about combat advantage. You can just stand in the back and nuke things without really doing much and it will STILL work for you. And it will still give you good sustained damage. Eventually you'll learn the tricks of the trade and get better, but this is definitely a good starting point.
Comments
Am I misunderstanding or is this passive broken? At 1 point its 5% to anything with chill. You took 3 in chilling presence so why not take this? I get your not doing much MM but even at 1 stack of MM 1 point in this is 1% more passive dps right?
I could just be misinformed or misunderstanding the mechanics as I've only been playing about 2 weeks but please educate me.
Thanks!!!
And many thanks for this build. I'm only lvl 46 but I'm planning on using this to max dps because unless I'm the person pulling trash tends to die so quickly... I rarely wait for cool downs and when I do it's every 3rd or 4th fight...
Arcane Presence: 1 pt gives you 1/3 of the buff (original buff is 15% damage with all 5 stacks, ONLY for arcane spells) and this bonus only applies to cold spells. 2 and 3 pts expands this to 100% of the buff, for 15% more damage to cold spells and arcnae spells when you have all 5 stacks, which if you already dont spend more than 1 rotation in a fight will be useless anyway.
Chilling Presence: at 1 point you get 1% bonus per stack of chill (this applies to ALL damage, not just cold spells, and stacks with default AM) for 6% total. At 2 points, its 12%, and at 3 points, its 18%, which is more than the arcane presence damage anyway.
Also, its much easier to stack chill on a target than to stack AM on yourself, especially if there are multiple cw's in the party.
I could even understand 1 point in shield and 1 in expel for the shoving off the cliff mechanic in some battles which I've only read about but why top off expel? that's still 2 points that could go into Arcane Presence or 67% of the buff for Arcane Mastery. if you only do 1 round of MM its 5 stacks right? even if you only do 1 tick between cool downs which should happen (keep in mind I'm 46) your going to have a little down time. full 5 stacks which you should have during a boss fight at 67% of the max buff would be 10% damage increase to Cold spells... Or am I looking at this wrong?
Just asking why not. Is the loss of at least 2% extra damage to cold spells (1 stack of MM at 2 points into AM) not worth the dps gain vs the utility of expel maxed?
Just theory craft and trying to understand a game
Cheers!
I am curious on your testing for the build, was this an issue (multi CW/Chill) and in such a situation would not FPT be a better fit?
stox is no longer here on forums sadly, at least he had time to post his very good guides
- I'd put the 5 points in Frozen Power Transfer or Critical Power, since the build already uses Chilling Cloud a lot.
- single target setup for Val/Fulmi fights would be: Icy Rays Mastery/Chill Strike, Enfeeblement, CoI/Ice Knife/Magic Missile spam. You could switch between IR and RoE so RoE is on Tab, for more debuffing but a bit lower personal DPS.
If you want to ask stox personally these questions, I'd go on his stream at: http://www.twitch.tv/stoxbox/
Quite sure he will be happy to help.
I see.
Well.
To be honest, I cannot explain why he does that on the forums due to their rules. Feel free to copy the stuff, but all I can tell you is that's not a legit single-target setup
Anyway, this is about what Stox said/recommends, and that's as far as I'm willing to "take it" in his name.
E: "legit" Holy cow ...
What are you doing? Be quiet.
It's only worth doing if you are the only CW anyway.
(I'm not the one streaming the stuff btw hehe
As for grimah he's a great CW I learned a lot of stuff from his topics&guides and not ashamed to admit it. He helped the community a lot and was here, and geared, before me even being having a level 60 char. Props to him.
just wondering why do you wear that belt? i would assume that there are better ones out there that can most likely give better stats. that one gives 100 to armor pen, crit, and power right?
Odd, I am pretty sure I read here the Combat Designer lordgallen stating that Tieflings with the feat get 15% damage increase.
As far as I can tell, this is likely max burst DPS - so while going through a rotation it lays in the most damage possible, which is pretty awesome
The downside - it's not setup for sustained fights (no FPT, snap freeze), so it is probably better on clear and less good on bosses. If the fight is longer than 2-3 seconds, snap freeze isn't good
I think it's setup for an EoA farming run. I haven't played with stox, but i played with Sheyla, who played with a simliar style. We had Cenom too, so two huge DPS CWs and everything melted and we flew,
that said, there is absolutely no survavibility stats here. What if **** happens? what if you run 3 or 4 man CN? what about lifesteal (which we all stack up a bit). The net is very squishy.
So i'm wondering - how does it perform in less well geared situations? with mixed group? with short handed groups? that's my concern.
The guide _is_ awesome for max burst DPS though, so if everything is dead after a rotation, it's probably great.
TKX to stox, i'll find you ingame.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
A very good point and something to consider when choosing your build.
Maximum burst damage does not imply bad dps. Especially because further stacking recovery for example will not result in more dps.
I'm currently using an altered version of this build, toying with the idea of using SS at certain times in dungeons with huge mob concentrations and power transfer instead of snap freeze. Results are mixed, hard to tell which is better so w/e.
But what stox did isn't just burst dps I would argue its also one of the top dps builds even in sustained encounters.
This is the same conclusion I reached for PvE. FPT is pretty hard&slow to get in, but is good damage once it procs on more targets, Snap freeze requires you to run in front, SS clears grouped mobs like there's no tomorrow and if you can get used to positioning and constant movement seems better to me than CS. SS also benefits a lot from having more CWs that actually use sing to pull mobs together for the huge burst that comes from 3 shards/steal times/SSs. But if you have CWs always doing OF, then CS becomes better, but I think this shouldn't happen, OF should be used only if mobs are reasonably close to each other.
So both setups are quite situational and very good. Thing is, the content is so easy that it makes you fall asleep, so yeah, sadly such choices are not so important at one point.
I think something like 20-30% of winning paingiver is being first in the fight, it's more my style to stick with team too, plus since many CWs i run with use icy terrian (drop it under a sing) everything has chill stacks on it, so it's a 5% bonus to the first hit of the first CW - which over a dungeon is probably negligible dps.
FPT is absolutely more DPS if you drop it into a sing, but it involves something surviving a rotation.
Looking at this build, from the beginning it assumes that nothing lives through a rotation, which is true in some parties, but hardly true for the playerbase, so it seems optimized for a super fast, super high DPS clear. I think if fights last longer than 5 seconds, it might not be optimal.
I think it shows there are different ways to play CW out there too, so I'm glad we can all debate these builds (hopefully without personal insults).
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
The build is actually optimized more for smaller pulls / packs. That was the point of it in fact, like in MC. If you are doing giant pulls in CN and VT, then obviously SS and I would argue icy terrain instead of steal time should be rotated in. For a pull of an average pack, that was the purpose of this build. It's not meant for super elite parties that kill in one rotation, it's simply meant for normal sized pulls and a max buff/debuff combination for efficient killing.
so yeah, maybe that too, smaller pulls, but most times you pull 15 at once and kite when it's 3.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
Can anyone confirm or refute this with source? Also with this build, if you're running with another cw and chill is applied to the mobs before you can do your rotation, would you lose a significant amount of dps?
1) no idea
2) I think the build is predicated on being first CW to attack.
Had a chat with STOX though, compared with other people i played with, he might be highest DPS on server - haven't had the privilege of running with him yet.
Everything you need to know about CW:
http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?780981-Chem-s-CW-Compendium-Everything-you-need-to-know
It is,
I run with a CW that uses this, and he likes to do that. He'll run ahead, pad his numbers by starting to solo things before everyone else, and always wants to strike first and be the paingiver.
What he doesn't know is that it was never the build in the first place, it was his agressiveness. And he's a very skilled player. Because I actually played this build before, and have moved on to other builds which more damage potential for the way I actually play.
I once reconfigured my char with the exact same build as him and ran with him just to see if it was his build....
...it wasn't... and he never knew.
In fact my actual damage went down.
Its a great build though, and I do recommend it to newbies. It is definitely an established one. And it doesn't actually require much in terms of know how or tactics to still utilize. The nice thing about Thaum builds vs Renegade builds is that they take much less skill to actually play. You don't have to worry about as much about positioning, you don't have to worry about combat advantage. You can just stand in the back and nuke things without really doing much and it will STILL work for you. And it will still give you good sustained damage. Eventually you'll learn the tricks of the trade and get better, but this is definitely a good starting point.