test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Control wizards and AoEs with no target limits
diogene0
Member Posts: 2,894 Arc User
One of the concerns of the communities seems to be how CWs make any other classes except maybe GWFs completely useless in pve. Consequently, I made a littme video to illustrate how, as a CW, I make having tanks, clerics, rogues and rangers, just watching the show and feeling like companions on the battlefield:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t18Vaq6bu3Y
The basics of this way to play the game is: pull as much as you can (ideally until your soulforge procs), and rely on AoEs with high or no targets caps, such as singularity, oppressive force, sudden storm, shard of endless avalanche, or even icy terrain. And when you pull 50 mobs, any AoE spell will heal you for more than your max HP as a wizard, provided you have over 1000 lifesteal (and ideally endless consumption), thus negating the need for a healer.
Of course, it's better if you kill these 50 npcs fast so you want to stack debuffs (they stack multiplicatively), so you're using a thaumaturge build with a high vizier set, debuffing all your targets by 30% when you use high damage AoE spells. The damage in my video is quite low, we didn't try to max it out, but there are some 35k shard hits, which is low in comparison to the average 50-70k hit during dungeon runs with a better team composition.
This can be achieved in any dungeon in game, I only used the CtA because it's convenient, short, and easy to record.
Is that really the way the devs intended the game to be played?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t18Vaq6bu3Y
The basics of this way to play the game is: pull as much as you can (ideally until your soulforge procs), and rely on AoEs with high or no targets caps, such as singularity, oppressive force, sudden storm, shard of endless avalanche, or even icy terrain. And when you pull 50 mobs, any AoE spell will heal you for more than your max HP as a wizard, provided you have over 1000 lifesteal (and ideally endless consumption), thus negating the need for a healer.
Of course, it's better if you kill these 50 npcs fast so you want to stack debuffs (they stack multiplicatively), so you're using a thaumaturge build with a high vizier set, debuffing all your targets by 30% when you use high damage AoE spells. The damage in my video is quite low, we didn't try to max it out, but there are some 35k shard hits, which is low in comparison to the average 50-70k hit during dungeon runs with a better team composition.
This can be achieved in any dungeon in game, I only used the CtA because it's convenient, short, and easy to record.
Is that really the way the devs intended the game to be played?
Post edited by diogene0 on
0
Comments
Always better to judge by actions (or inaction) rather than words......
Dungeons are badly designed, not challenging, but most importantly:
THEY LACK PROPER REWARDS.
For the lame drops with lame drop rates I see in any dungeon today, and the trend is worse, even this is too much effort.
As for other classes, it's developer's job to make proper dungeon&class design. It's been a year and mostly nothing good in that aspect.
Signed: CW.
That is probably the most efficient easiest and fastest way to get in game rewards, yes. If you like to speed through encounters to get to the end reward of dungeon then yes, that's how it should be played...
As for myself I like diverse play style, sometimes I RP others I solo, but always I have fun. Sometimes I play my TR sometimes my GWF or CW, I recently started a GF and my Ranger is at lvl55 and I have fun playing all those classes. If you don't have fun playing a class, don't play it.
Ppl will always find the most efficient way to use game mechanics to play content as fast as possible no matter what the devs do.
Which means the devs have to make it more efficient and faster to have tanks and healing clerics, and that means tweaking some CWs spells and gear, if they ever intend to make tanks and clerics useful, something many people ask.
CWs just happen to be the best at dealing with trash.
Absolutely.
I had even more CC and AoE DPS on my mage in WoW for example, but I couldn't do a raid in all DPS crew cause encounters specifically required tanks and healers most of the times, although there were some exceptions.
Blizzard were so smart they even created boss fights where the tank actually needed to be a mage (what an awesome experience that was...) or warlock and so on.
Diversity and inventivity vs "I'll throw some adds at you, be scared!!!". Guess who wins...
If, for example, they were to make pulls smaller, but with stronger and much faster running mobs that are immune to crowd control, then TRs and GFs would become more desirable than CWs.
^ This so much.
I'd rather we had less adds and the adds overall would be tougher, but that would require giving them a better A.I. that wouldn't just spam attacks, so that's unlikely to happen.
I actually prefer being solo wizard in the party. The rest can be any class provided they know what they're doing. Hate when other CWs mess with my formation/piling/pushing/singing/so on.
True, but 2 or more CWs that are on the same page... brutal. Getting tired of pugging with another cw who thinks "ice storm" is best cw ability for crowd control... at least HR's seismic shot doesn't move them far(unless hes point blank, and what hr wants to facetank a mob?)
I hear ya. I play every class, and my 2 faves are my cw and hr... but I mained my cw for the longest time, because that's all people wanted. Plus, certain dungeons pretty much require more than 1 cw(CN, MC(especially at final boss, but MoC's fixed now
You are wrong. The point is to not make the same mistakes in future content, which is still to be released. I doubt Cryptic has the resources to fix old content considering some bugs still being abused have been around since beta.
The greater reason CWs are too good isn't even just their damage, but even moreso their CC. Almost every mob can be cc'ed and you want them cc'ed because those mobs happen to have nasty AoEs of their own. Just saying what others have already, the issue is in the way dungeons are designed, or to be more specific the monsters populating them.
If it were just damage then HRs would be up there, too!
That isn't what I advocate anyway.
There are CWs out there, even end game CWs, who struggle with something like Castle Never, which has been around since the very beginning of the game. Now CWs like pers3phone and diogene0 and chemboy can sleep-walk through CN and kill everything without even thinking about it. But a whole lot of CWs cannot because they have not yet reached that stage of character development. (And yes I include myself in that category.) So rather than prevent them from enjoying defeating Draco by nerfing all CWs, design new content going forward that would be a substantial challenge to ALL, including CWs.
Thing is the same issues have been pointed out practically since Open Beta, and yet every Dungeon, old and new, still uses the same addfest routine. So I really, really doubt that this dungeon design will change, and even if they they do the best dungeon to run may still be CN, which as you pointed out isn't likely to be fixed anyway.
Eventually, the Devs may get around to making the dungeon and mob changes suggested but it is extremely unlikely to soon....
I never suggested nerfing CWs although admittedly that is the usual Dev response to one class being so unbalanced. Increasing the AoE damage of other classes could work also.
It has nothing to do with character development, it's all about pulling as much as you can and having enough lifesteal to mindlessly bulldoze the pull with massive AoE damage spells while you stand in red. Again, your GS has a very small influence over this. But I guess you'd need to play a 15-16k CW to realize it's just the class (read: you not being better with 16k) and not my supposedly godly wizard. My wizard has good gear because I can do what I do, which is pulling 50 mobs and clearing them, not the other way around. I'm just doing things any group will do at a much larger scale. And if it makes GFs and healers pointless for the average groups, I'm not even talking about my own experience...
In other words, the healing potion covers the failure of the class or the possible stupidity of the player.
All videos "look, as I am powerful" are like that.
Solution 1: Allow all potions of healing/artefact in pve environments are temporary healing or add animation charge.
Solution 2: make the enemy becomes immune to an effect "x" by "x" time. After suffering a takedown, the zombie can not be knocked down again for 6 sec/8/ i dont know.
Defender becomes important, and dc becomes the main game class. Anyone nerf suffered. If the idea is to balance classes and functions - and not revenge or monopoly - I see no reason to oppose it.
The alternative to better dungeon design would be to give everyone massive AoE control abilities. Which do you think sounds crazier?
and also the featured satirical comedic adventure "A Call for Heroes".
Long time, no see, good to see you posting
I suggested the exact same thing, but as you see, it's not realistic that Cryptic will redesign dungeon content.
So only solution is nerf CW DPS to the ground, so hard that the class is pure CC, and everything will be fine, tears of joy everywhere.
Adjusting those shouldn't take much work. I mean, players are getting crowd control reduction modifiers, why not the average epic dungeon monster?
//edit: Of course, it would still be too aoe centric if the mob density is conserved. These many monsters would still be spamming their own aoe, keeping TRs in a bad spot when clearing trash pulls. : |
On the other hand, while we are at it: Bosses in this game are too immobile. They just sit there and rotate up to 3 skills that can be easily avoided. But this one is to consider for future content.
From a technical standpoint, these elite mobs do exist, but mostly have two slow spells (maws in the spellplague) or ironically strong melee attacks and narrow aoe ones (driders). It's also known that debuff stacking to crazy levels makes these elite mobs very weak and die quickly to what is normally moderate aoe damage. And CWs are very strong in the debuff stacking area via (again, ironically) high damage aoe spells, thanks to the HV set and all the thaumaturge feats.
The only well designed elite mobs are the lavamasters in Karrundax - the guys with big fire whips. They have a big conic aoe, it's a long prone and damage is high, but all of them but one can be skipped... But when you fight the 4 lavamasters before the first boss at the same time, as a wizard, you better play smart and have a tank.
Now take this and multiple it by 5 and you got the easy mode of neverwinter, requires almost no skill to use.
A gwf might be able to do it as well, not as good as a cw as it requires skill, but the main problem is not a lot of players take the time to learn HOW it is done.
It seems to me that every dungeon you want in will want atleast 2 CWs, no exception. Sometimes it's for speedruns, and sometimes it's for utility. But the problem is they're mostly preferred for speedrunning. Nerf something about the CW or buff some enemies enough and see if they are any useful now in packs. But without enough players stepping up and arguing for a nerf there'll never be one.
Every time i do FC or DK i see lots of ppl in chat saying: "lfg cw for FC or DK". And when i play on my cw and join these parties there's already 3 or 4 in the group. I mean, seriously? I really hate groups like these, all they wanna do is speedrun with specific class. I don't really mind speedrunning dungeons, however it seems like in order to speedrun you need to play with 3-5 CWs, no exceptions.
Basically the whole game as i see it is running to each area, agroing the mobs, then keep moving until you gather enough and let the CWs do all the work. Some of the nerfs i want to see are:
give enemies more CC resistance
reduce CC duration on CW powers
lower damage of AoE spells
lower number of enemies that can be hit by aoe spells of any shape (straight line, circle, cone, splash, etc.)
Because right now if you want to speedrun dungeons or even have a chance to go into a dungeon, you'd better be a CW that has lifesteal. Or form your own team and steal a Cleric as quickly as you can if you aren't one.
Mind you, I dislike all the rampant cheating going on in speedruns that virtually all high geared players engaged in - those things some might call creative use of game mechanics.
Generally, like running dk with 2 cws AT LEAST, but its possible with 1.
I hear you, done some crazy stuff with my HR but tops is 3 HRs, 1 TR, and 1 DC for VT. Golem fight was easy as I kited all the adds and they killed it and then the adds.
Wiped the first try on Valindra. 2nd attempt was golden...with our range we could litterally hit almost anything on the field and stand where the caskets spawns.
Yes I know this discussion is about CW's but just saying. Things can be done without a CW in the group, so no nerf is needed for anything on them.
What I read from this post: "since i can ride my bike on the highway and reach my destination at some point, there's no need for speed limit for racing cars".
You doing stuff with rangers is nice. But that wont change two facts: the metagame is all about clearing content as fast as you can, and CWs rule in this areas, thus, tanks and, to some extent, healers, are not invited to parties.
And you are right, CW is clearly better than most classes for pve, the same way rogue is clearly better than cw for pvp. The game will never be perfectly balanced, but with time, changes happen and the meta game changes.