So wait until the next changes come, instead of complaining about something that we do not know about. If they break the thaum and renegade trees. i will complain. I don't want just 1 spec to rule all.
I also hate the removal of debuffs (I like having that role)
But why would i complain now? its in testing phase. They are have noted they are adjusting some things due to feedback and we don't know the other changes/reverts will come either.
take the GF for example, putting 3 charges on an at-will. Now they have changed it back to its original state. .
They're going to have to do a LOT more than that Grimah,
Because right now... as it stands its a 67% damage reduction on the Thaum path alone... not including Renegade path which others have also spoken on.
In order for this to be a "mere" adjustement of say 20% damage reduction... they are going to have to add back a good 45%-50% damage to these trees and spells alone... that is how much damage was removed from the Spellstorms.
LAST but not least... the Spellstorm is the burst Nuker... NOT the DoT caster...
That.... is the territory of the Master of Flame...
That is MY territory... not theirs...
And if they want an DoT Freezing Ice Mage that badly... then go make another Paragon path because neither of these two Paragon paths are Ice Mages. One is a Thunder and Lightning burst nuker... the other is a Fire Based DoT caster...
You don't Ram a half azzed ice mage down the Spellstorms throats... They took that paragon path for a reason.
I also play all classes. And I've been working on all my builds for over a year to make them perfect. I understand where the "OP" is coming from. And it's everything but the single target spells.
Nerfed spells that have nothing to do with it at all and are only useful in PvP, where we're already the worst class:
- Ray of Enfeeblement
- Entangling Force
- Magic Missile
- Ice Knife
Nerfed spells that have something to do with it, but should not be changed in a way that affects PvP:
- Chill Strike (give it a smaller target cap on Spell Mastery... maybe 3 instead of 5; or leave it as it is, it's the least affecting one)
- Shard of Endless Avalanche (only nerf the normal one's damage, not the one's on Spell Mastery)
- Oppressive Force (nerf the target cap, not the damage)
Spells that have to be nerfed in order to balance the classes regarding the CW:
- Steal Time (This is the absolute number 1 reason why the CW is OP! What did they do? They buffed the damage by 65 % and lowered the cooldown.)
- Sudden Storm (already nerfed, which is one of almost none good decisions there)
- Icy Terrain (maybe a slight damage nerf)
- Singularity (already nerfed)
- Change the High Vizier 4-set bonus from 450 per tick to 100 per tick.
- Fix that Steal Time has an 80 % chance to proc Eye of the Storm.
After these changes, the CW should be balanced. GWFs and HRs should be able to outdps the CW easily with these changes.
Then TEST IT!!!!! If you still think the CW is OP, which would completely contradict with my testing results, you could nerf some of the damage CWs get per Chill stack, maybe slightly nerf the Thaumaturge tree (the one and only PvE tree). A Thaumaturge build deals up to 300% more PvE damage than a Renegade build. Oppressor isn't a damage build at all. There is no reason to touch that path (or the Eye of the Storm passive).
But anyway, it is useless now for me to log on preview, because I know I won't be able to play the CW in the new Mod, because of the activation time changes. The physical rotations I've been practicing as a Renegade for over a year cannot be completed without looking at the cooldowns anymore. The timing between spells doesn't fit anymore. Again: not complaining about full Renegade tree destruction, not complaining about different cooldowns, only complaining about the absolutely useless activation time changes which flush all the physical practice for over a year down the drain.
In game news, people left Neverwinter Nights due to material being tested on the TEST server, that had no intention of ever going live in its current state.
Well, it says May 2014 is your join date. It's usually the date you joined the forums for the first time, not the game. So you may have been around for longer. Anyhow, the people who are quitting the game do it because of their experience with the other Modules (1, 2, and 3). Fact is: they announce to break the game and they go through with it. Always. Even when it sounds like they will adjust things.
GWF was always a quite balanced class. You either had decent DPS and no survivability or you had survivability and negligible DPS. They broke GWFs the moment they gave them Iron Vanguard, a pure GF path. Hell, most of the attacks there are shield attacks. So even the RPers had problems with that, not only the whole PvP community. What did they do? They ignored everyone and went through with it.
GF wasn't always useless. It became useless when they introduced Tenacity and HD. People gave them a lot of good advice on how to balance Tenacity and HD for all classes. They didn't listen and went through with it. That was the moment GF died.
The TR was a very strong class for a long time. Quite high single target damage and (perma-)stealth when needed. The solution would've been so simple: don't break the class, just remove permastealth. Make Shadow Strike and 'Bait and Switch' give you only 50 % or 75 % of the stealth bar. Then you will have TRs that can deal very high damage, but also can't stay in stealth for so long. What did they do? They nerfed TRs to uselessness (damage-wise) and forced everyone to be permastealth. Oh yeah... and it was a PvP nerf that affected PvE (the opposite of what's happening to CW now).
All these changes were announced as "let's test them on the test shard first" and were obviously bad ideas that led to what people were concerned about. But the devs ignore everything. They want to nerf one thing, but nerf another, because they have no idea about game mechanics. Want proof? Google for "EoA vs Devs" and watch that video. Those are the devs.
I like this game and I will play it. All I quit so far is the test shard. And even though I'm a big fan of testing and always ready to help the devs, I will not return there until I read something saying that the spell activation times have been restored (Magic Missile, Chill Strike, Entangling Force, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ice Knife, Oppressive Force). Having all my physical practice for over a year in mind, I can not accept those changes. Especially, since they're not necessary at all and do not affect PvE even slightly, and the same effects can be achieved easily by damage-tweaking without breaking mechanics.
I like the live shard, because I like playing CW, even though it's terrible in PvP I try my best to pull it off. Test shard is unplayable for me. And based on my experience with the other 3 modules, the activation times will stay. So all that's left for me is to enjoy the game until live shard becomes test shard.
vampirecavyMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 55Arc User
edited June 2014
... Okay, I do agree that the EotS change is too much, and Shard's nerf is too hard. Plus, there really wasn't a good reason to -buff- steal time. Enfeeblement's change is largely unjustified, as well. The complaints about the changes to casting time are also well-founded, but that one doesn't seem to be nearly as widespread a complaint. Overall, I do agree that some of the changes to CW are poorly thought out and won't be good for the class.
However... with the stupid level of buff that Oppressor got, plus the fact that it's a CONTROL wizard, I can't agree that this is a class-destroyer. It might wreck your style (and I certainly agree it wrecks thaum path wizards right now), but with the oppressor capstone being as powerful as it is, their control is so very buffed that it won't actually matter. Yes, I agree that the whole "shoving everybody into a single build" thing is a bad idea, but there's really two minor variants of one build used by 90% of CWs right now, so it's really not making that problem any worse.
The complaints about the changes to casting time are also well-founded, but that one doesn't seem to be nearly as widespread a complaint.
And that's the problem. It only affects PvP CWs. All good PvP CWs I knew quit long ago, back when they gave Iron Vanguard to the GWFs. There aren't many PvP CWs left, and maybe 2 - 3 visit these forums (or know that the forums exist). Most people are intuitive, they don't even read patch notes or message the devs. It's more like this: you see an update, you log on, you see your class/build got destroyed, you count the money you invested in this game, if it's not significant, you uninstall, install the next game. If you look at the first leaderboard pages, it says everything. Not many CWs there.
The change now is just the last straw that will render PvP CWs useless (damage-wise), make only one build viable (perma-freeze), and negate more than a year of physical practice for no reason.
In PvE, casting times don't matter. The AI is dumb. It doesn't make a difference how long it takes you to cast something (or the difference is negligible). In PvP, with broken GWFs and (upcoming) immortal HRs, CWs cannot make mistakes. If you don't time your spells perfectly and the GWF actually gets to prone you, you are dead in 1 rotation. Hell, GWFs 1-shot you with IBS as a CW. It took me a long time (as I said, more than a year) to figure out the perfect timings for all kinds of different situations that happen in PvP. All this is negated by casting time changes.
Yes, I agree that the whole "shoving everybody into a single build" thing is a bad idea, but there's really two minor variants of one build used by 90% of CWs right now, so it's really not making that problem any worse.
That isn't entirely true , on live at the moment you will find MoF renegade , MoF Thaum , spellstorm renegade and Spellstorm Thaum , yes some are more effective then others but all 4 are playable and viable , if module 4 changes go through anything like they are now the only build that will be close to viable is MoF oppressor , renegade and Thaum paths have been nerfed into near uselessness as well as spellstorm .
Armor Penetration should now correctly work on all powers.
Powers
Magic Missile: The first two strikes can be chained together about 40% slower. The third strike of Magic Missile now takes 1.4 seconds to fire (up from 1.2).
Chilling Cloud: The final strike of Chilling Cloud now takes 1 second to fire (down from 1.2).
Scorching Burst: This power now benefits more from being charged. The bonus from charging has been improved by roughly 50%.
Chill Strike: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from 1 second).
Chill Strike: This power has had its recharge time increased to 15 seconds (up from 13 seconds).
Conduit of Ice: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .98 seconds).
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 13 seconds (down from 18 seconds).
Conduit of Ice: This power has had its damage reduced by roughly 33%.
Entangling Force: This power's damage over time component now ticks every .5 seconds (down from every .65 seconds).
Entangling Force: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from 1 second).
Entangling Force: This power has had its total base damage reduced by about 10% overall.
Icy Terrain: This power now ticks every 1 second (down from every 1.3 seconds).
Sudden Storm: This power has had its recharge time increased to 14 seconds (up from 10 seconds).
Sudden Storm: This power has had its base damage reduced by roughly 33%
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .9 seconds).
Ray of Enfeeblement: This power has had its recharge time increased to 18 seconds (up from 14).
Ray of Enfeeblement: Allies no longer benefit from this debuff.
Steal Time: This power has had its damage increased by roughly 65%.
Steal Time: This power has had its recharge time reduced to 18 seconds (down from 22 seconds).
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its base impact damage reduced by roughly 33%.
Shard of the Endless Avalanche: This power has had its explosion damage reduced by roughly 60%.
Fanning the Flame: This power now takes 1.5 seconds to fire (up from .6 seconds).
Fanning the Flame: This power has had its recharge time increased to 22 seconds (up from 15 seconds).
Arcane Singularity: Activation time increased to 2 seconds (up from 1 second).
Arcane Singularity: Now can affect up to 8 targets (down from 15).
Oppressive Force: This power has had its overall damage reduced by roughly 9%.
Ice Knife: This power now takes 1.2 seconds to fire (up from .93 seconds).
Furious Immolation: This power has had its damage increased by roughly 26%.
Eye of the Storm: This power now has an internal cooldown of 90 seconds. Base Duration increased to 4 seconds (up from 2). Duration increase per rank increased to 1 (up from .5).
Feats: Heroic
Wizard's Wrath: This feat now grants 1/2/3% area of effect damage (down from 2/4/6%).
Arcane Enhancement: This feat now grants 1/2/3% more Arcane damage (down from 2/4/6%).
Blighting Power: This feat now grants 2/4/6% more cold damage (down from 3/6/9%).
Focused Wizardry: *REWORK* Single target Powers deal 2/4/6% more damage.
Feats: Oppressor
Bitter Cold: *REWORK* Targets take 1/2/3/4/5% more damage for 6 seconds after being affected by Chill. This effect does not stack.
Chilling Control (Paragon: Spellstorm): *REWORK* Sudden Storm now applies 1/2/3/4/5 stacks of Chill to targets hit by the primary strike.
Twisting Immolation (Paragon: Master of Flame): This feat now dazes targets for .8/1.6/2.4/3.2/4 seconds (up from .2/.4/.6/.8/1 second(s)).
Cold Infusion: *REWORK* Foes deal 1/2/3/4/5% less damage for 10 seconds after being affected by Chill. This effect does not stack.
Glacial Movement: Ray of Frost has a 10/20/30/40/50% (up from 5/10/15/20/25%) chance to apply an additional stack of Chill.
Alacrity: *REWORK* When you deal damage to foes affected by Chill you have a chance to reduce the cooldown on Icy Terrain and Entangling Force by .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 second(s).
Controlled Momentum: *REWORK* After using a Control power nearby allies deal 1/2/3/4/5% more damage for 6 seconds. This effect does not stack.
Shatter Strike: *REWORK* When you freeze a target they are afflicted by Shattered for 10 seconds. Shattered foes have a chance when taking damage to be stunned for 5 seconds (1 second on players) and take up to 5% of their Max HP in damage (max 300% weapon damage). This effect consumes Shatter. Additionally, your control powers deal 100% of your weapon damage against control immune targets and Chill lasts 2.5 seconds longer.
Feats: Thaumaturge
Tempest Magic: This feat now grants 1.5/3/4.5/6/7.5% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%) bonus damage while targets are below 30% HP.
Malevolent Surge: This feat now grants 1/2/3/4/5% (down from 2/4/6/8/10%) and no longer stacks. This feat now lasts 15 seconds (up from 4).
Snap Freeze: This feat now grants 2/4/6/8/10% (down from 3/6/9/12/15) bonus damage to your Cold At Wills and Encounters against foes who are not Chilled.
Destructive Wizardry (Paragon: Storm): This feat now grants 1/2/3/4/5% (down from 2/4/5/8/10%) bonus damage. This feat no longer requires you strike at least 2 targets, but now requires you charge Storm Pillar fully. This feat now lasts 20 seconds (up from 6).
Drifting Embers (Paragon: Master of Flame): This feat now has a 8/16/24/32/40% (up from 5/10/15/20/25%) chance to spread Smolder to targets.
Far Spell: Now affects all Single Target powers rather than just Magic Missile and Chill Strike.
Frozen Power Transfer: This bonus now stacks up to a maximum of 3 stacks and is refreshed when you gain a new stack. Players will gain one stack for each target hit with the final strike of Chilling Cloud. This bonus now lasts 20 seconds (up from 8).
Transcended Master: Shard of Endless Avalanche now gains 2/4/6/8/10% (down from 3/6/9/12/15%) bonus damage. Icy Rays now gains 2/4/5/8/10% bonus damage when cast on the same target twice and a .5/1/1.5/2/2.5 second(s) shorter cooldown when used on two different targets.
Elemental Empowerment: *REWORK* Dealing Cold damage has a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to apply Creeping Frost. Creeping Frost deals 85% of your weapon damage as cold damage every 3 seconds for 18 seconds. Dealing Arcane damage has a 3/6/9/12/15% chance to apply Warped Magics. Warped Magics deals 50% of your weapon damage as Arcane damage every 3 seconds for 18 seconds. Warped Magics ignores half of a target's resistance. These effects do not stack.
Assailing Force: *REWORK* Dealing damage to foes has a chance to grant you Assailant. When you have Assailant your next encounter power deals 10% of the target's max HP as unresistable damage (max 500% weapon damage). This will only affect one target when used in an AoE.
Feats: Renegade
Reapers Touch: This feat now grants 2/4/6/8/10% (down from 3/6/9/12/15%) bonus damage.
Nightmare Wizardry: This feat now has a 1/2/3/4/5% chance (down from 4/8/12/16/20%) to grant you and allies combat advantage for 12 seconds (up from 4).
Unrestrained Chaos (Paragon: Storm): This feat now has a chance to apply 6 stacks of Chill (up from 1) to a nearby target or to grant you full stacks of Arcane Mastery (up from 1) every second for 1/2/3/4/5. Maelstrom will not freeze foes.
Arcane Burst (Paragon: Master of Flame): Each target hit by Scorching Burst has a 6/12/18/24/30% (up from 4/8/12/16/20%) chance to add a stack of Arcane Mastery.
Phantasmal Destruction: When you deal Combat Advantage damage you have a 25% chance (down from 100%) to grant 3/6/9/12/15% Critical Severity for 6 seconds.
Energy Recovery: Now grants 1/2/3/4/5% (up from .15/.3/.45/.6/.75%) of your HP as Temp HP and .2/.4/.6/.8/1% (up from .15/.3/.45/.6/.75%) Temp HP for each additional target hit.
Chilling Advantage: This feat now grants 1/2/3/4/5% chance to Crit to all Encounter Powers (rather than Cold Powers).
Chaos Magic: *REWORK* Dealing Damage to targets has a chance to apply Chaos Magic to yourself. When you are affected by Chaos Magic you cannot be affected by a new Chaos Magic. You will be affected by Chaotic Growth, Chaotic Nexus, or Chaotic Fury.
Chaotic Growth - Heal yourself for 200% weapon damage every second for 10 seconds.
Chaotic Nexus - You gain 5% additional Armor Penetration and Critical Chance for 10 seconds.
Chaotic Fury - You gain gain 10% additional Power and Lifesteal for 10 seconds.
Job well done for this, CW is "control wizard" not BCW "burst control wizard" it is just appropriate to tone down their damage, the increase in cast time is ok since they have plenty of ways to lockdown in pvp. This will make the game healthier because the scale is starting to weigh even
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Because right now... as it stands its a 67% damage reduction on the Thaum path alone... not including Renegade path which others have also spoken on.
Can you provide some data on this? I did some testing this afternoon using my exact same build from live on test (Thaum MoF) and noticed a 28% drop in DPS. However, that includes the obvious 15% drop from the change in Assailing Force, plus Elemental Empowerment not working yet. On the three training dummies in the small room to the right, I went from a sustained 20k to 14.5k DPS.
I didn't change a single thing in my trees.
I changed things up to the the new Oppressor tree as an MoF, and was able to sustain over 16.5k DPS, which is only a drop of about 17% (again, minus the obvious 15% straight cut from Assailing Force).
And the thing to consider about the 15% Assailing Force cut is it means the entire group is losing 15% DPS, so that cut is essentially effects EVERYONE when a CW is present, and that has to be factored in.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
Can you provide some data on this? I did some testing this afternoon using my exact same build from live on test (Thaum MoF) and noticed a 28% drop in DPS..
We were talking about Spellstorms... Zerg, not us.
This just wrecked them and the entire paragon path.
As Master of Flame we've lost relatively little, but we were generally unaffected by any of the trees in the first place. This is why I've been stating specifically they've destroyed the Spellstorm Paragon path... and two of the trees that support it (Thaumaturge/Renegade). We benefitted mostly from Assailing Force and Nightmare Wizardry, but outside that, not much on the tree really made much difference for us.
Its a total damage reduction on them by about 70% for Spellstorms, according to Abbadon's testing, and it didn't take me long to verify that on Preview.
Spellstorm is now completely non-competitive with the MoF in any way shape or form, and both Thaumaturge and Renegade paths are broken. Leaving only Oppressor that we get limited benefits from anyway.
And lets be honest here, MoFs were just fine damage wise anyway and didn't need nerfs in the first place. As MoFs we gain very little from any tree. Even oppressor as we're not big Chill Stackers anyway as we have to slot FtF on Tab just to make it an AoE thus removing any fast Chill Stack abillity.
However this change absolutely destroyed the Spellstorm Paragon Path. And both renegade and thaum trees that support it. Resulting in a 70% damage reduction and the removal of nearly all Burst Nuking capability of that class which is designed as a Burst Nuking Thunder and Lightning mage.
All I know is that after reading the preview server notes, I no longer really have the heart to bother playing on the Live server. With these changes hanging over my CW's head its like being told I have only a couple of months to live. My CW is my favorite toon. It is my best geared toon. It is the toon I have spent the most time playing. I have 7 L60's including a Fire Mage and one of each other class.
After reading these proposed changes, all I am doing on my toons is invoking and crafting. I have also started looking for another game to play until I find out what the state of the CW is going to become. I've been on the Preview Server and completely hate the specing I have to do now to get some decent damage. <sigh>
Yes I yelled that. The tree is useless now. Not nerfed. Useless. I've been trying to play in the preview server, but as a renegade, with the combination of no EOTS, little to no additional Combat Advantage, little to no additional Crit Severity, decrease in damage and the increase in cooldown it takes too long to kill the ememies and sometimes is a struggle just to survive the battle.
OK. I get it. You want more control and less damage. I get that. But forcing everyone to be a Master of Flame Oppressor. Really. So we have to be a fire mage who uses frost? So which are we? A Control Wizard, a Fire Mage or a Frost Mage? If Wizards of The Coast need to sign off on this before it goes live, maybe ther is hope. I can't believe they would approve such drastic changes.
I fear now, the Renegade tree is useless.The whole reason to go Renegade was for Combat Advantage and Critical Severity. I have purchased several purple (or upgraded to purple) companions to give me addition Combat Advantage and Critical Severity. Not to mention my 2 week old Perfect Vorpal. All of which have been reduced to virtually useless.
Nightmare Wizardry: This feat now has a 1/2/3/4/5% chance (down from 4/8/12/16/20%) to grant you and allies combat advantage for 12 seconds (up from 4).
So now I have a 95% chance to get NO Combat Advantage from this feat at all? 5 Points wasted here.
Phantasmal Destruction: When you deal Combat Advantage damage you have a 25% chance (down from 100%) to grant 3/6/9/12/15% Critical Severity for 6 seconds.
So now I have a 75% chance to get an 85% chance to get NO additional crit severity... another 5 points wasted!
There's 10 points. Tossed away in the Renegade tree. These feats are so useless now, you might as well just replace them altogether.
First, I'm still waiting for the patch for the preview server to finish, so I can see how my build (s) might be affected, but I can tell you I have two level 60 thaum storm mages and I'm lousy about PVP so it's a non-issue to me. Also, I wasn't planning to spend 10 million AD getting High Vizier and perfect anything per toon, so what they have is what they're stuck with.
I didn't build by the standard build. I used my experience from the original D&D days to decide what my characters needed, then adjusted stats for survivability. I've had to solo 98% of the game pve, so far.
I recently joined a good guild and we've been trying epic dungeons. Both my level 60 wizards have over 12k gs and can solo what they need to, but epic dungeons are another matter. Even in a party with everyone else being over 12k, we can't finish CN and haven't even attempted VT or MC.
My point is, if it's hard now for almost all casual players to finish an epic dungeon, if the powers we have get nerfed, how are we supposed to even hope to complete them? I'm not going to state how much I've payed to get the gear I have in this game (or any other game for that matter) but even if I had spent to get top tier gear I doubt it would change how I play. I grew up when twitch reflexes were not that important and I never developed them. I'm not even sure I can dart around enough to avoid death.
Specifically, I didn't take repel, storm surge, evocation, or time whatever. I did take Shard. You know that second room in epic Pirate King? The one with all the ads? It took over an hour for my group to kill that room. If these changes go into effect, we won't be able to complete this dungeon at all.
When you change what the control wizards do, you'll be changing the dynamic of every character's dungeon experience. The 200 or so professional PVPers may be more balanced but the thousands of casual players will not be able to complete regular or epic content. It's not just the wizards that won't be able to play. Every other class that relies on wizards to eliminate ads will also suffer.
I'm still going to test on the preview server, but I'm not holding my breath. I think I now have two level 60 sitters.
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ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
Its a total damage reduction on them by about 70% for Spellstorms, according to Abbadon's testing, and it didn't take me long to verify that on Preview.
What were the numbers on this? Or did Abbadon just say "he lost 70%" of his DPS?"
I'm not going to pay to respec my CW on Live just to get a baseline of DPS to compare against on the Test Server. If someone wants to set up a test on Live and report back their DPS, I'd be happy to take that into consideration.
Right now, I'm doing ACT parses of various builds using the three training dummies in the right room. If you're standing just behind the last training dummy, you can hit all three with every power, which should help standardize things.
"Meanwhile in the moderator's lounge..."
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aulduronMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,351Arc User
edited June 2014
First they came for the TR's, and I did not speak out—because I was not a TR....Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me
FEEDBACK: Shard of The Endless Avalanche-Now very buggy on test goes through targets without affecting if moved too soon after creation. Appears more responsive but not useful if its not proning when moved. Damage nerf is idiotic,spell will not be used in pvp, I will be going back to IR on tab.
FEEDBACK: Magic Missile Animation no longer matches particle effect and of course it feels slow and cumbersome, which is ok since Ray of Frost is all anyone will use after update in PVP.
FEEDBACK: Increased cast time allows GF to close very easily.
Testing vs GF..We still do not inflict enough damage to be meaningful vs the heavily armored melees. Armor pen will not be enough to compensate.
Perma freeze appears powerful on the surface...nitty gritty is TRs and GWF will still walk through us due to immunes and escapes,and the damage nerf to Shard will not allow us to kill the only melee we can control which is the GF.
CW in PVP will be further crushed by these PVE changes.
The experienced CWs dont slot Repel anyway we had better options..until now. Repel bypassing control immune targets isnt even useful...the targets we need off of us are the control immune toons, so helpful...not.
Bottom line is PVE CWs used shard and Steal time in conjunction anyway, you simply took the usefulness of our one burst damage spell away.
I know youve worked hard on these changes but I honestly dont think you play the game at all. Paper vs game play is what I see in these changes. The CW will continue to be bottom tier in PVP..actually more so, perma freeze will be good vs other CWs I guess, so we will continue to be able to kill the only class we were already able to fight, ourselves, nice.
In PvE, casting times don't matter. The AI is dumb. It doesn't make a difference how long it takes you to cast something (or the difference is negligible).
Actually, cast times matters a lot in PvE too.
CWs do a lot of AEs, which usually leads to (unhealthy) interest from a number of mobs.
The basic CW way of staying alive is nuke-teleport-nuke-teleport. If cast times increases, the time that very vulnerable CWs must stay still with half a room of baddies trying to get at them will increase. Basically CWs will lose much of their ability to stay alive by their own means.
The current cast times seems to be VERY carefully tuned so it is possible to stay ahead of the baddies while still getting off some spells.
I would much rather the cast times were kept unchanged and just the damage reduced.
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susp3ktMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Hero Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 38Arc User
edited June 2014
Well, we can all hope and wish and complain....but what will be will be, if you're still inclined to play.
I've been testing the preview. Ran a SS oppressor with coi tab, icy t, steal time and sudden storm...in that order. Dps was down but everything was frozen solid. That was with evocation and spell storm.
Respecced to a MOF, which I've never played...and can't suggest I completely understand, but ran ftf on tab , icy t, coi and steal time. Mostly oppressor feats. Less freeze but felt like more dps.
I found the MOF was much more efficient in IWD.
Notes: shard was so bugged I couldn't really cast it. Never used Eots.
Believe me, I love my current SS thaum build, but there will still be good builds to run PVE with.
I thought the EotS would be a burden. Was thinking about the same thing. If you proc it when you don't want it to, it wears off when your encounter finally comes off cooldown.
Highly doubt people in IWD are biding their time fishing for it to proc with at-wills.
Remove the cooldown, but decrease the severity by a sum.
How they are changing EotS is literally how it used to work (it was 8 seconds with a 30 second internal cooldown). Their reason for changing to to how it works now is because they wanted EotS to do less burst/spike damage (you can use everything at once for instant crit during those 8 seconds).
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silverquickMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 1Arc User
What were the numbers on this? Or did Abbadon just say "he lost 70%" of his DPS?"
I'm not going to pay to respec my CW on Live just to get a baseline of DPS to compare against on the Test Server. If someone wants to set up a test on Live and report back their DPS, I'd be happy to take that into consideration.
Right now, I'm doing ACT parses of various builds using the three training dummies in the right room. If you're standing just behind the last training dummy, you can hit all three with every power, which should help standardize things.
That's what I'm talking about.
Abbadon posted his ACT logs in the original thread on this in the Official Feedback thread. He took his build from Live, then did another ACT log on preview. That is the result.
Its a 67% damage decrease on his build as a Spellstorm Thaumaturge. I know he uses something similar to the old Grimah build.
With the current Nerfs, that's how badly Spellstorms are being hit.
That's with Thaumaturge, and I see you've looked at Renegade too, which has had similar results.
Its destroyed two entire feat paths, and the Spellstorm Paragon path as a whole. The only thing left will be Oppressor, but because all of the powers that activate it or stack chill are all low level spells it basically breaks Spellstorms as a Paragon path. And we don't stack Chill as an MoF as we have to keep FtF on tab so won't get much out of Oppressor.
As an MoF we're relatively untouched outside the destruction of the Thaum and Renegade paths but those never affected us as much as the Spellstorms anyway.... but the Spellstorms lost nearly ALL their burst damage in total and its no longer even competitive with Master of Flame.
They're going to need to add back a large portion of the damage they took away on those trees in order for the Spellstorm (the Burst Nuker of the CW class). Otherwise its just another broken paragon path at this point.
I doubt many people will even bother playing it at this point if this remains unchanged.
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aulduronMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,351Arc User
edited June 2014
Unless your encounters are on extra long cooldown when it procs.
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enorezMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 6Arc User
edited June 2014
I dont like those feat changes, the intention of those feats still doesnt make sense to me.
I think they should rearrange the feats, make all path should be viable and competitive.
the core gameplay of CW is to deal with massive mobs.
and those three path of feats should balance and suit different playstyle:
Controller (defensive): ignorable dps but have stronger control & survivability.
Destroyer (offensive): the classic aoe mage, highest dps with lesser control.
Support (teamwork): aoe debuff, moderate dps and survivability, contribute to whole group's performance.
Well on preview CN run with basically a PUG my dps dropped to 16k from the usual 20-22k (26-28 with PUGs) according to ACT.
Its hard to tell exact numbers and impact because that was only one run.
I only slightly modified my spellstorm build didnt tried out MoF yet. Dropped Eots.
Btw what is the point of COI in a MoF build if its not on Tab? Of course you must reserve Tab for Flanning the flame.
Keep in mind I've never played MoF and I judged skills kinda on feeling. I've taken all-aoe skills. I'd consider placing shard there when change to this skills comes to preview.
Bids he then the spruces to singer him an anthems!
And the Woodsie Lord binders them fleshes to stone!
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
Abbadon posted his ACT logs in the original thread on this in the Official Feedback thread. He took his build from Live, then did another ACT log on preview. That is the result.
Can you link to the post? I tried searching the thread, and nothing's coming up, and I don't have the time to go through all 20 pages individually if it's as simple as having you link to the post in question.
Comments
They're going to have to do a LOT more than that Grimah,
Because right now... as it stands its a 67% damage reduction on the Thaum path alone... not including Renegade path which others have also spoken on.
In order for this to be a "mere" adjustement of say 20% damage reduction... they are going to have to add back a good 45%-50% damage to these trees and spells alone... that is how much damage was removed from the Spellstorms.
LAST but not least... the Spellstorm is the burst Nuker... NOT the DoT caster...
That.... is the territory of the Master of Flame...
That is MY territory... not theirs...
And if they want an DoT Freezing Ice Mage that badly... then go make another Paragon path because neither of these two Paragon paths are Ice Mages. One is a Thunder and Lightning burst nuker... the other is a Fire Based DoT caster...
You don't Ram a half azzed ice mage down the Spellstorms throats... They took that paragon path for a reason.
ALL TRUE! you nailed it man
Well, it says May 2014 is your join date. It's usually the date you joined the forums for the first time, not the game. So you may have been around for longer. Anyhow, the people who are quitting the game do it because of their experience with the other Modules (1, 2, and 3). Fact is: they announce to break the game and they go through with it. Always. Even when it sounds like they will adjust things.
GWF was always a quite balanced class. You either had decent DPS and no survivability or you had survivability and negligible DPS. They broke GWFs the moment they gave them Iron Vanguard, a pure GF path. Hell, most of the attacks there are shield attacks. So even the RPers had problems with that, not only the whole PvP community. What did they do? They ignored everyone and went through with it.
GF wasn't always useless. It became useless when they introduced Tenacity and HD. People gave them a lot of good advice on how to balance Tenacity and HD for all classes. They didn't listen and went through with it. That was the moment GF died.
The TR was a very strong class for a long time. Quite high single target damage and (perma-)stealth when needed. The solution would've been so simple: don't break the class, just remove permastealth. Make Shadow Strike and 'Bait and Switch' give you only 50 % or 75 % of the stealth bar. Then you will have TRs that can deal very high damage, but also can't stay in stealth for so long. What did they do? They nerfed TRs to uselessness (damage-wise) and forced everyone to be permastealth. Oh yeah... and it was a PvP nerf that affected PvE (the opposite of what's happening to CW now).
All these changes were announced as "let's test them on the test shard first" and were obviously bad ideas that led to what people were concerned about. But the devs ignore everything. They want to nerf one thing, but nerf another, because they have no idea about game mechanics. Want proof? Google for "EoA vs Devs" and watch that video. Those are the devs.
I like this game and I will play it. All I quit so far is the test shard. And even though I'm a big fan of testing and always ready to help the devs, I will not return there until I read something saying that the spell activation times have been restored (Magic Missile, Chill Strike, Entangling Force, Ray of Enfeeblement, Ice Knife, Oppressive Force). Having all my physical practice for over a year in mind, I can not accept those changes. Especially, since they're not necessary at all and do not affect PvE even slightly, and the same effects can be achieved easily by damage-tweaking without breaking mechanics.
I like the live shard, because I like playing CW, even though it's terrible in PvP I try my best to pull it off. Test shard is unplayable for me. And based on my experience with the other 3 modules, the activation times will stay. So all that's left for me is to enjoy the game until live shard becomes test shard.
However... with the stupid level of buff that Oppressor got, plus the fact that it's a CONTROL wizard, I can't agree that this is a class-destroyer. It might wreck your style (and I certainly agree it wrecks thaum path wizards right now), but with the oppressor capstone being as powerful as it is, their control is so very buffed that it won't actually matter. Yes, I agree that the whole "shoving everybody into a single build" thing is a bad idea, but there's really two minor variants of one build used by 90% of CWs right now, so it's really not making that problem any worse.
And that's the problem. It only affects PvP CWs. All good PvP CWs I knew quit long ago, back when they gave Iron Vanguard to the GWFs. There aren't many PvP CWs left, and maybe 2 - 3 visit these forums (or know that the forums exist). Most people are intuitive, they don't even read patch notes or message the devs. It's more like this: you see an update, you log on, you see your class/build got destroyed, you count the money you invested in this game, if it's not significant, you uninstall, install the next game. If you look at the first leaderboard pages, it says everything. Not many CWs there.
The change now is just the last straw that will render PvP CWs useless (damage-wise), make only one build viable (perma-freeze), and negate more than a year of physical practice for no reason.
In PvE, casting times don't matter. The AI is dumb. It doesn't make a difference how long it takes you to cast something (or the difference is negligible). In PvP, with broken GWFs and (upcoming) immortal HRs, CWs cannot make mistakes. If you don't time your spells perfectly and the GWF actually gets to prone you, you are dead in 1 rotation. Hell, GWFs 1-shot you with IBS as a CW. It took me a long time (as I said, more than a year) to figure out the perfect timings for all kinds of different situations that happen in PvP. All this is negated by casting time changes.
That isn't entirely true , on live at the moment you will find MoF renegade , MoF Thaum , spellstorm renegade and Spellstorm Thaum , yes some are more effective then others but all 4 are playable and viable , if module 4 changes go through anything like they are now the only build that will be close to viable is MoF oppressor , renegade and Thaum paths have been nerfed into near uselessness as well as spellstorm .
Job well done for this, CW is "control wizard" not BCW "burst control wizard" it is just appropriate to tone down their damage, the increase in cast time is ok since they have plenty of ways to lockdown in pvp. This will make the game healthier because the scale is starting to weigh even
Can you provide some data on this? I did some testing this afternoon using my exact same build from live on test (Thaum MoF) and noticed a 28% drop in DPS. However, that includes the obvious 15% drop from the change in Assailing Force, plus Elemental Empowerment not working yet. On the three training dummies in the small room to the right, I went from a sustained 20k to 14.5k DPS.
I didn't change a single thing in my trees.
I changed things up to the the new Oppressor tree as an MoF, and was able to sustain over 16.5k DPS, which is only a drop of about 17% (again, minus the obvious 15% straight cut from Assailing Force).
And the thing to consider about the 15% Assailing Force cut is it means the entire group is losing 15% DPS, so that cut is essentially effects EVERYONE when a CW is present, and that has to be factored in.
We were talking about Spellstorms... Zerg, not us.
This just wrecked them and the entire paragon path.
As Master of Flame we've lost relatively little, but we were generally unaffected by any of the trees in the first place. This is why I've been stating specifically they've destroyed the Spellstorm Paragon path... and two of the trees that support it (Thaumaturge/Renegade). We benefitted mostly from Assailing Force and Nightmare Wizardry, but outside that, not much on the tree really made much difference for us.
Its a total damage reduction on them by about 70% for Spellstorms, according to Abbadon's testing, and it didn't take me long to verify that on Preview.
Spellstorm is now completely non-competitive with the MoF in any way shape or form, and both Thaumaturge and Renegade paths are broken. Leaving only Oppressor that we get limited benefits from anyway.
And lets be honest here, MoFs were just fine damage wise anyway and didn't need nerfs in the first place. As MoFs we gain very little from any tree. Even oppressor as we're not big Chill Stackers anyway as we have to slot FtF on Tab just to make it an AoE thus removing any fast Chill Stack abillity.
However this change absolutely destroyed the Spellstorm Paragon Path. And both renegade and thaum trees that support it. Resulting in a 70% damage reduction and the removal of nearly all Burst Nuking capability of that class which is designed as a Burst Nuking Thunder and Lightning mage.
Devs need to change Dungeon Content so that it attracts other classes. Clearing and controlling mass numbers will always draw CW.
CHANGE THE 20 MOBS and 1 boss TO 2 ELITES AND PER SUB BOSS INSTEAD OF 20 TRASH MOBS.
Add 3 Elites for final boss.
Amen brother. I couldn't have said it better.
Quoting myself
I didn't build by the standard build. I used my experience from the original D&D days to decide what my characters needed, then adjusted stats for survivability. I've had to solo 98% of the game pve, so far.
I recently joined a good guild and we've been trying epic dungeons. Both my level 60 wizards have over 12k gs and can solo what they need to, but epic dungeons are another matter. Even in a party with everyone else being over 12k, we can't finish CN and haven't even attempted VT or MC.
My point is, if it's hard now for almost all casual players to finish an epic dungeon, if the powers we have get nerfed, how are we supposed to even hope to complete them? I'm not going to state how much I've payed to get the gear I have in this game (or any other game for that matter) but even if I had spent to get top tier gear I doubt it would change how I play. I grew up when twitch reflexes were not that important and I never developed them. I'm not even sure I can dart around enough to avoid death.
Specifically, I didn't take repel, storm surge, evocation, or time whatever. I did take Shard. You know that second room in epic Pirate King? The one with all the ads? It took over an hour for my group to kill that room. If these changes go into effect, we won't be able to complete this dungeon at all.
When you change what the control wizards do, you'll be changing the dynamic of every character's dungeon experience. The 200 or so professional PVPers may be more balanced but the thousands of casual players will not be able to complete regular or epic content. It's not just the wizards that won't be able to play. Every other class that relies on wizards to eliminate ads will also suffer.
I'm still going to test on the preview server, but I'm not holding my breath. I think I now have two level 60 sitters.
What were the numbers on this? Or did Abbadon just say "he lost 70%" of his DPS?"
I'm not going to pay to respec my CW on Live just to get a baseline of DPS to compare against on the Test Server. If someone wants to set up a test on Live and report back their DPS, I'd be happy to take that into consideration.
Right now, I'm doing ACT parses of various builds using the three training dummies in the right room. If you're standing just behind the last training dummy, you can hit all three with every power, which should help standardize things.
FEEDBACK: Shard of The Endless Avalanche-Now very buggy on test goes through targets without affecting if moved too soon after creation. Appears more responsive but not useful if its not proning when moved. Damage nerf is idiotic,spell will not be used in pvp, I will be going back to IR on tab.
FEEDBACK: Magic Missile Animation no longer matches particle effect and of course it feels slow and cumbersome, which is ok since Ray of Frost is all anyone will use after update in PVP.
FEEDBACK: Increased cast time allows GF to close very easily.
Testing vs GF..We still do not inflict enough damage to be meaningful vs the heavily armored melees. Armor pen will not be enough to compensate.
Perma freeze appears powerful on the surface...nitty gritty is TRs and GWF will still walk through us due to immunes and escapes,and the damage nerf to Shard will not allow us to kill the only melee we can control which is the GF.
CW in PVP will be further crushed by these PVE changes.
The experienced CWs dont slot Repel anyway we had better options..until now. Repel bypassing control immune targets isnt even useful...the targets we need off of us are the control immune toons, so helpful...not.
Bottom line is PVE CWs used shard and Steal time in conjunction anyway, you simply took the usefulness of our one burst damage spell away.
I know youve worked hard on these changes but I honestly dont think you play the game at all. Paper vs game play is what I see in these changes. The CW will continue to be bottom tier in PVP..actually more so, perma freeze will be good vs other CWs I guess, so we will continue to be able to kill the only class we were already able to fight, ourselves, nice.
Actually, cast times matters a lot in PvE too.
CWs do a lot of AEs, which usually leads to (unhealthy) interest from a number of mobs.
The basic CW way of staying alive is nuke-teleport-nuke-teleport. If cast times increases, the time that very vulnerable CWs must stay still with half a room of baddies trying to get at them will increase. Basically CWs will lose much of their ability to stay alive by their own means.
The current cast times seems to be VERY carefully tuned so it is possible to stay ahead of the baddies while still getting off some spells.
I would much rather the cast times were kept unchanged and just the damage reduced.
I've been testing the preview. Ran a SS oppressor with coi tab, icy t, steal time and sudden storm...in that order. Dps was down but everything was frozen solid. That was with evocation and spell storm.
Respecced to a MOF, which I've never played...and can't suggest I completely understand, but ran ftf on tab , icy t, coi and steal time. Mostly oppressor feats. Less freeze but felt like more dps.
I found the MOF was much more efficient in IWD.
Notes: shard was so bugged I couldn't really cast it. Never used Eots.
Believe me, I love my current SS thaum build, but there will still be good builds to run PVE with.
PVP, not my specialty.
Cheers
How they are changing EotS is literally how it used to work (it was 8 seconds with a 30 second internal cooldown). Their reason for changing to to how it works now is because they wanted EotS to do less burst/spike damage (you can use everything at once for instant crit during those 8 seconds).
That's what I'm talking about.
Abbadon posted his ACT logs in the original thread on this in the Official Feedback thread. He took his build from Live, then did another ACT log on preview. That is the result.
Its a 67% damage decrease on his build as a Spellstorm Thaumaturge. I know he uses something similar to the old Grimah build.
With the current Nerfs, that's how badly Spellstorms are being hit.
That's with Thaumaturge, and I see you've looked at Renegade too, which has had similar results.
Its destroyed two entire feat paths, and the Spellstorm Paragon path as a whole. The only thing left will be Oppressor, but because all of the powers that activate it or stack chill are all low level spells it basically breaks Spellstorms as a Paragon path. And we don't stack Chill as an MoF as we have to keep FtF on tab so won't get much out of Oppressor.
As an MoF we're relatively untouched outside the destruction of the Thaum and Renegade paths but those never affected us as much as the Spellstorms anyway.... but the Spellstorms lost nearly ALL their burst damage in total and its no longer even competitive with Master of Flame.
They're going to need to add back a large portion of the damage they took away on those trees in order for the Spellstorm (the Burst Nuker of the CW class). Otherwise its just another broken paragon path at this point.
I doubt many people will even bother playing it at this point if this remains unchanged.
I think they should rearrange the feats, make all path should be viable and competitive.
the core gameplay of CW is to deal with massive mobs.
and those three path of feats should balance and suit different playstyle:
Controller (defensive): ignorable dps but have stronger control & survivability.
Destroyer (offensive): the classic aoe mage, highest dps with lesser control.
Support (teamwork): aoe debuff, moderate dps and survivability, contribute to whole group's performance.
They are heading into that direction based on Malabog and Valindra's Tower
Its hard to tell exact numbers and impact because that was only one run.
I only slightly modified my spellstorm build didnt tried out MoF yet. Dropped Eots.
Btw what is the point of COI in a MoF build if its not on Tab? Of course you must reserve Tab for Flanning the flame.
Keep in mind I've never played MoF and I judged skills kinda on feeling. I've taken all-aoe skills. I'd consider placing shard there when change to this skills comes to preview.
Now, if we had more rimefire golems....
The fact is... too many gigantic freakin monsters can be knocked around like a ragdoll.
Really, I can't move a golem, but can send a Cyclopes flying across the room.
Can you link to the post? I tried searching the thread, and nothing's coming up, and I don't have the time to go through all 20 pages individually if it's as simple as having you link to the post in question.