While I appreciate putting this talent into tier 3, I strongly disagree with swapping it for Energy Recovery. There is no valuable tier 2 talent now that I would consider picking because both Energy Recovery and Unrestrained Chaos are terrible for any PvE build.
Picking between talents that are the least worse is never a fun place to be in. I'd like to have a good tier 2 talent that I could pick instead...
How about you swap it with Phantasmal Destruction instead? That would solve the problem just as well without making the progression through the Renegade tree awkward...
I completely agree, you basicly end up waising 5 points if you are a renegade now which kinda ruins the path progression imo. Another option though would be for them to rework energy recovery into something useful.
0
crohnsyMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 16Arc User
edited July 2014
BUG: Alacrity
Smoulder's interaction with alacrity is currently broken. When alacrity is triggered by smolder the blue indicator will pop up as normal, but the cooldown of icy terrain is not reduced. This occurred 100% of the time in my testing.
I tested this by casting icy terrain only, against training dummies, on my MoF CW. Normally smolder would trigger Alacrity at the beginning of the cast (since smolder is added on crit with critical conflagration), but the cooldown would not be reduced. It might be that alacrity is triggering too fast for the encounter power to go on cooldown and the reduction is applied before the cooldown actually starts.
0
dingleberrytruthMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 25Arc User
edited July 2014
Hello fellow cws and devs.
I've been open so far about CW changes as admittedly they are inexplicably strong in PVE. However, this was only evident with the changes to power mechanics as compared to mod 2. I enjoyed following a rotation of skills utilizing the High Vizier set and Thaumaturge feats, maximizing potential for both personal and party dps.
However, in the current version where 166 power gives you a 1% increase damage, many geared CWs are stacking power and forsaking other survivable aspects of their character and merely throwing whichever skills are off cooldown. And it still works. Mobs die too fast for rotations to matter. Or other classes to matter.
I wasn't surprised about nerfs to damage. It's fine. Long time coming. But the changes still doesn't solve the issue I pointed out in Para2 vs mod2 and before. But nevermind, each to his own playstyle.
My main concern is this:
Eye of the Storm.
As much as people try to advocate for MoF in terms of min maxing for dungeons, it is... definitely inferior to Spellstorm in terms of damage delivery. One could argue that over time, the dots from MoF would surpass a Spellstorm's damage. But here's the news, nothing in the game lives long enough to see the reality of that coming true. I doubt it would even come true, mainly because of EoTs.
It's too strong. But this is the defining aspect of Spellstorm.
Often I see theorycrafters regard EoTs utility in terms of uptime. And often I disagree how this passive should be viewed. Here's why.
The bulk of a CW's damage comes from a rotation of encounters. Unlike other classes where at-wills deal a respectable amount of total damage, ours comes mainly from encounters. If we were to line up a graph, our dps comes in cycles, as and when our encounters go off cooldown and we cycle encounters in a given order for maximum damage.
Let's use an example in Live context: 6-9 corrupted bears from a HE.
Steal time (procs EoTs reliably) > Shard cast > CoI > Shard push/detonation > Icy Terrain.
The result of this is Shard and CoI becomes a crit. I am able to reliably crit on my most damaging skills.
Assuming I am still using this set of encounters on preview, the result is still the same albeit lower damage on some encounters due to changes.
The problem comes in my second cycle of encounters. With a 25 second ICD I am unable to visibly see a cooldown, nor will I be able to reliably proc EoTs simply because whilst cycling my encounters it may still be on ICD. So during the course of my rotation, EoTs might very well proc on Icy Terrain, the end of my rotation. This happens several times.
So what use is this concept of "uptime" when most of the "uptime" falls during the down time of my encounters. Whether or not duration lasts for 3 seconds or 10 seconds wouldn't matter if the concept of an ICD causes this situation.
As far as passives go, EoTs is the only one worth looking at under Spellstorm, and the only thing steering a choice into this paragon. MoFs have viable passives but unattractive because it is overshadowed by EoTs.
(not to mention that rimefire damage is credited to other CWs who applied chill thus you lose out on Paingiver. Yes this matters to some players)
EoTs just went from overpowered to... underwhelming. It's as useful as Storm fury in PVE. (I hope this means something)
We have to admit that EoTs was overpowered fellow cws, but don't be lulled into believing that you all deserve to take every nerfbat blindly. Do consider what I just put forward.
Nerf EoTs, yes, but not in the form of ICDs, not for EoTs. Hell put a crit severity penalty when using the passive. 20% 30%, just not ICDs.
Happy with changes to Nightmare wizardry and party-wise chaos missile.
Still I'd advocate to give Renegades a feat that would reduce this enormous cool down time on encounters and cancel ICD (or decrease to 5 sec. max) on feats (EotS).
Lots of players have already stated that ICD kills EotS. Make it useful for a cost of choosing Renegade tree and 5 heroic feat points. We are talking about end tree Spellstorm Mage feat. There is nothing left for us with this feat nerfed (nobody uses Maelstrom, some maybe will suffer buggy shard for longer prone but surely not for damage, nobody will use EotS with ICD). I guarantee that any CW who can choose between feat supporting aoe skills and control ALL THE TIME will not waste a slot for feat that is useless even for 10 seconds.
I don't think I'll be mistaken if I say Renegades would prefer feat which decreases cool down time for encounters and feats, instead of Unrestrained Chaos or Energy Recovery - almost nobody uses these two.
Bids he then the spruces to singer him an anthems!
And the Woodsie Lord binders them fleshes to stone!
Renegade T4 Masterful Arcane Theft - Steal time and Ray of enfeeblement does 5/10/15/20/25% more damage, their casting time is also reduced .1/.2/.3/.4/.5seconds
This will bring it in line with Thaumurgist Transcended Master
Hey all, we have been looking at how Shield functions and we think it is diminishing too fast and that makes slotting it feel too frustrating most of the time so we are imrpoving it dramatically. This should drastically improve wizard survivability while it is slotted which should provide a substantive PVP and PVE buff.
This change should hit this week barring anything going wrong.
Control Wizard: Shield: Shield will now diminish to 50% effectiveness while fully Destabilized at Rank 1. Each additional Rank will reduce the total amount of Destabilization your Shield can suffer. Grants 5% Control Resist per rank while slotted in spell mastery.
I will clarify this since I don't want the actual patch note to get too wordy (despite being a bit confusing).
At all ranks Shield while stable (undamaged) absorbs 50% of incoming damage after your damage resistance.
It then is Destabilized, which reduces its effectiveness. So here are the before and afters!
Normal
Before
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 0%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 5%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 10%
I tried playing renegade again this morning. I want to like renegade, I really do, but I can't. It feels entirely lackluster. In it's current state, it's stuck between bad to worse. It has the same control as a thaum but way less damage. I play with a HV set and plague fire, use the same skill set. CoI on tab, icy terrain, shard, steal time. Evocation and spell storm.
Even tested thaum again but removed nightmare wizardy to prep for the incoming patch changes. It still performed better imo than renegade. Everything dies faster as thaum, as renegade it's a struggle to stay alive solo'ing epic encounters in IWD.
Moving nightmare wizardry further into the tree isn't going to help anyone, since no one will play renegade in it's current state.
Moving Nighmare Wizardry up a slot in the Renegade tree is a change I agree needs to be made. It does serve to make the Renegade tree a more viable choice. However, it does this by making the Thaumaturge and Oppressor trees LESS useful and brings them back to the usefulness of the Renegade tree rather than moving the Renegade tree up. Nightmare Wizardry had a fairly high up time; especially on enemies with high HP. Losing Nightmare Wizardry will serve to reduce the damage of Thaumaturge and Oppressor CW's by at least another 10-15% on top the damage already lost to intentional nerfs and the fixing of bugs (Evocation, Wizard's Wrath, etc) which already represented a 40-60% loss. It would be nice if you could buff some of the feats in the other trees so there is something worth spending points on. There are several very lackluster feats. With Nightmare Wizardry gone I look at the feat tree and think "well I have 10 points to spend...I guess I'll put them in ______. Not that it will help much." Things like Severe Reaction, Brisk Transport, Energy Recovery, Unrestrained Chaos, and Reaper's Touch are a pu-pu platter of useless feats that people are going to be stuck choosing from.
Hey guys, we are making a small handful of changes to fix a couple of things we have noticed that are a tad out of line as well as give Renegades more party utility.
Control Wizard: Assailing Force: This feat is now half as effective on players.
Control Wizard: Freeze: This hold no longer breaks from damage. It is now only resisted with Control Resist.
Control Wizard: Nightmare Wizardry: This feat has switched places with Energy Recovery and now requires 10 points in Renegade to access it.
Control Wizard: Energy Recovery: This feat has switched places with Nightmare Wizardry and now requires 5 points in Renegade to access it.
Control Wizard: Chaos Magic: Now applies to yourself and allies within 50' when triggering.
These changes should hit PTS this week.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
what do you mean by "This feat is now half as effective on players"? does it mean it does half the dmg?
I did some more solo testing between renegade and thaumaturge, created some parses with exact copies of my toon. Same buffs, same skill sets, two same IWD HE's. Wagon attack and hammerstone raiders, both in that order.
CoI on tab, icy terrain, shard, steal time; evocation, spell storm; magic missile and chilling cloud. 13k GS HV set with lesser plague fire and soulforge.
To note though - Shard is still buggy, so not all of them worked as intended (missed targets, didn't move, etc) so both sets worked out slightly differently.
Thaum obviously pulled ahead in damage, the difference was 15.6k overall damage and most likely in longer runs, damage will pull even further ahead.
I am new to logging, so I am assuming that nightmare wizardry combat advantage is bundled in with the damaging encounter/skill/debuff. If not, please correct me as that would bump up the renegade dps.
However with the move of nightmare wizardry, renegade will be exclusively bringing the "group buffs" along with the chaos magic "buffs". Hypothetically making runs as a group more efficient and less solo; BUT there are other classes that can bring combat advantage to the group (HR) if they have Aspect of the Pack SLOTTED (doesn't even have to proc). So in those regards, a renegade CW can still be less efficient in such case loosing one of their bread and butter paragon features to another class.
With the change to nightmare wizardry, it will now make it a more conscious effort on what to bring to the table. Group or self buff, and will now work some what as intended for the renegade tree. Though as stated quite a few times already, lots of the renegade feats are extremely lacking and I skipped them all together and put the 10 points into tempest magic and malevolent surge (thaum).
Though in my game play so far on preview, it is much more difficult for a renegade to go against harder hitting mobs, such as in icewind pass with the barbarian raiders and bear riders (elites from HE's). Thaum had it easier since they could nuke them down faster while having the same control features.
For the ease of viewing, these are links to images of the parses.
seventhpillarMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 216Arc User
edited July 2014
Feedback: Nightmare Wizardry
Now that Nightmare Wizardry have moved up and out of reach from other trees, there is now calling to buff their trees back up. While that is a problem because the chain of effect effectively means they are losing damage, my biggest concern is not buffing the renegade tree but make it viable. Again, renegades are not charity wizards. If this is the decision and what you, as designers intend, please make an announcement to rename it so I and the rest of the faithful renegades can cut our ties with this lackluster tree.
Forgot to add this, but please increase the radius of icy terrain. Having to sit in someone/something's lap in order to make sure that the target is in it's radius is just annoying and inefficent. The radius in tab is just as annoying since it's such a small target area, takes too much time to get an accurate placing with moving targets, especially if you need it at your feet then.
Thank you for making freeze no longer break because of damage. Freeze, currently, is mostly useless as a control feature because enemies are not frozen for any duration in a group setting because of damage from party members. This will fix that. However, I am a bit concerned that this change will mean that there is no longer much benefit to being an Oppressor CW. Shatter sometimes adds a 5 second stun onto the end of freeze. That is a massive improvement over what is on live because of just how ineffective freezing was as a means of control. The stun gave control. Going from 0.5 seconds of control to 5.5 seconds was a huge improvement. But now that damage won't break the freeze every CW, Oppressor or not, can very effectively use ice as a means of controlling enemies for ~5 seconds. The stun from Shatter is much less useful because not that many enemies will need to be held in place for longer than the ~5 seconds freeze will give you. A chance to inflict a 5 second longer stun on top of the ~5 second freeze isn't a huge benefit especially since you can use spells to just freeze them a second time without too much trouble. You may want to re-work Shatter so that it still gives a control benefit equal to the damage benefit the Thaumaturge capstone gives. For example, you could reduce the duration of freeze by 1/2 then make the Shatter double the duration of freeze. That way only Oppressor's could have access to the 5 second freeze and the other trees would have to make do with 2.5 seconds. Or you could make it so that only Oppressor freezes do not break from damage. Another option would be to make Icy Terrain have a significantly bigger radius for Oppressors which would allow us to control the battlefield better. Looking at the feats currently I'm thinking that I would pick Thaumaturge for the damage then just use CoI on tab and Icy Terrain and get pretty much the same control as an Oppressor does.
Also with a ~5 second freeze you may want to look into fixing Icy Terrain so that it can apply damage to frozen targets. Currently it does 0 damage to frozen enemies. I assume you did that so that it wouldn't apply stacks of chill to an already frozen target, but there really should still be damage ticks even without the chill stack. Once these changes go live if I were to slot Orb of Imposition, freeze an enemy, then use Icy Terrain on them they will take no damage from it for the duration of the spell. That doesn't seem appropriate.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
0
ironzerg79Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,942Arc User
1. Shield change is good, but a bit much
2. Assailing Force is RIDICULOUS, you can EVISCERATE ANY players with 50k+HP within 30 seconds. It's bugged and does more dmg than it should. Give it ~20 sec ICD.
1. Shield change is good, but a bit much
2. Assailing Force is RIDICULOUS, you can EVISCERATE ANY players with 50k+HP within 30 seconds. It's bugged and does more dmg than it should. Give it ~20 sec ICD.
Shield: - same buff should be same on or off mastery -
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 25%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 30%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 35%
1- I mentioned same thing about shield.
Mastery ability should offer some other aspect other than more defense. I recommended a shield pulse while unstable on mastery tab.
2- Assailing force makes up for a lot of damage lost to Shard nerf. It does not need a cool down and works fine.
3- Renegade tree is lacking substatially in Burst DPS department which is what Renegade is known for.
Thanks...
0
darkstarcrashMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,382Arc User
1. Shield change is good, but a bit much
2. Assailing Force is RIDICULOUS, you can EVISCERATE ANY players with 50k+HP within 30 seconds. It's bugged and does more dmg than it should. Give it ~20 sec ICD.
Lrn2DevPost:
Hey guys, we are making a small handful of changes to fix a couple of things we have noticed that are a tad out of line as well as give Renegades more party utility.
Control Wizard: Assailing Force: This feat is now half as effective on players.
Are you sure about this? I heards its 230power~1%dmg
"Power is not included on the graph, but from module 3 every 500 power is a 3% increase in the multiplier for damage/healing (coefficient of 0.00006) which is roughly 167 power per 1% (see Equation 2). Having higher power basically increases your damage output linearly. For example, at 5000 power you will do 30% more damage compared to when you had zero power. Now be careful in drawing conclusions here- don't fall in the trap of thinking +167 power is 1% more DPS. It isn't. If you now have 5500 power you will do 33% damage compare to if I had zero power. The actual percentage gain in damage is (1.33-1.30)/1.3= 2.3% more damage compared to 5000 power. My Crit vs power guide has graph/tables showing the percentage gain in power relative to how much power you already have. In most cases after getting sufficient crit, recovery and ArP the RoI on power wins out for sustained average DPS."
Quoted from "Kaelac’s guide to damage, tenacity, reisistance and debuffs in Neverwinter" thread.
My conclusion- yes approx 167 power = 1% sheet damage increase(compared to zero power). But inreAlity the damage gain is effected by how much power you currently have. Which is why people say power doesn't have dimR, yes it doesn't in sheet numbers, but in actual damage pov it in fact suffers from dimR.
Change Unrestrained Chaos to feat that will make EotS viable again (EotS ICD decreased to 5 seconds after putting 5 points in it)
Loosing EotS hurts Renegade Spellstorms too much. And Renegades have too many feats that are of no practical use. Nobody uses Maelstrom, everybody uses EotS. Why not just replace Unrestrained Chaos which buffs unused daily, and replace it with feat that will buff the only worthwhile end game Spellstorm power? Renegade Spellstorms will have their chance for burst damage back and at least ONE viable end tree powers option to look after.
Otherwise it looks like promoting MoF and Oppressor/Thauma builds.
Bids he then the spruces to singer him an anthems!
And the Woodsie Lord binders them fleshes to stone!
0
dingleberrytruthMember, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Knight of the Feywild UsersPosts: 25Arc User
"Power is not included on the graph, but from module 3 every 500 power is a 3% increase in the multiplier for damage/healing (coefficient of 0.00006) which is roughly 167 power per 1% (see Equation 2). Having higher power basically increases your damage output linearly. For example, at 5000 power you will do 30% more damage compared to when you had zero power. Now be careful in drawing conclusions here- don't fall in the trap of thinking +167 power is 1% more DPS. It isn't. If you now have 5500 power you will do 33% damage compare to if I had zero power. The actual percentage gain in damage is (1.33-1.30)/1.3= 2.3% more damage compared to 5000 power. My Crit vs power guide has graph/tables showing the percentage gain in power relative to how much power you already have. In most cases after getting sufficient crit, recovery and ArP the RoI on power wins out for sustained average DPS."
Quoted from "Kaelac’s guide to damage, tenacity, reisistance and debuffs in Neverwinter" thread.
My conclusion- yes approx 167 power = 1% sheet damage increase(compared to zero power). But inreAlity the damage gain is effected by how much power you currently have. Which is why people say power doesn't have dimR, yes it doesn't in sheet numbers, but in actual damage pov it in fact suffers from dimR.
-LocKitUP
People also need to understand that percentages are not equal (huh?).
IE. 166 power = 1% damage is not equal to the equivalent of 1% arp if it isn't capped.
ie, if ur ARP is at 23% and u add 1% more arp, it is still far more than 166 power. You'd have to inspect the formula at this juncture, which i'm no wiz to explain in detail.
What frustrates me is the general muted response to ICDs for EoTs.
Where is the upside to taking Spellstorm with these changes? It becomes a role reversal where people took MoF just to be different or an over valuation of 5% damage increase to party. Except, spellstorm doesn't bring any noteworthy contribution in future.
What frustrates me is the general muted response to ICDs for EoTs.
Where is the upside to taking Spellstorm with these changes?
There isn't any response not many seem to care that renegade is basically a pointless path at the moment , these changes all seem to be pvp focused anyway , look at the capstone for Thaumaturge , it is really great in pvp but what use is a capstone that can affect one single target in pve , it is sad the balance guy seems to have been manipulated to change so much so that the game seems pvp focused , especially considering the tiny percentage of actual pvp players.
What frustrates me is the general muted response to ICDs for EoTs.
For me ICD on EotS is a matter of be or not to be Spellstorm Renegade. Ss Renegades were never top one tree (maybe that's the reason behind muted response), but now they will come near extinct, I fear.
What is the point of levelling Spellstorm rene. anyway? You reach your end-tree powers and:
1. Got daily nobody uses.
2. Got feat nobody will use, because of ICD.
3. Got encounter nerfed so badly, DPS builds won't be using it.
Bids he then the spruces to singer him an anthems!
And the Woodsie Lord binders them fleshes to stone!
question one about the shield spell how is it interact with the ignored damage from defense and or tenacity. to make it simple if shield is at 50% for exemple is damage are first calculate with all resis and neutra and then on this final number shield take 50% of or is shield is added with RI and sum is cap at 80% damage resistance
Question two, specificatly about pvp set for CW. the t4 set bonus effect is time reduction for tab spell and some more damage for tab spell. Problem is with all new change, shield will be practically a must have because due to lost of damage and the fact that wizard are in paper. we will need to get a good def lvl. All pvp set give same bonus, only ice set offer a different path for pvp. As you can understand it give a major problem for CW as we have a lost a choice if we want to do a pvp party. So do you intend to modifie somethings ?.
Here some sugg that may help the bonus time given from pvp set reduce the time for unstable to goes back to stable if shield is stacked on tab, and for the 8.5% damage, if shield is stacked on tab he give 8.5% extra control resist.
Question 3 about damage resist vs neutra ignored. it's max 80%. ok but if someone RI goes for exemple to 90% and someone neutra ignored have 20% ignored is the final damage resisit is 70 (90-20) or 60(80-20)
THose question may not look directly with actual change but the change on control wizard are so big that at least some but maybe a big amount of player have to think to change equip. and changing equip mean change about secondary equip like ring but also enchant. So i'm trying to take some advance to don't have to farm for 2 month after v4 just to change my set to be playable again.
As you can understand Having to pay again for changing my equip because you made change not by putting a new better set but by making old one unusable is not a correct option. So having possibility to anticipate and starting my new set before change so i won't be in trouble when v4 arrive and not be with months to farm just to became again playable. The other possiblity is that old set have a new work as i suggested
Shield: - same buff should be same on or off mastery -
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 25%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 30%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 35% Mastery should have a different effect other than just DR
Love the change to freeze, thanks for that if works correctly.
Now rework shard of endless avalanche on tab for pvp to make it hit more than 1/2 k crit (less than almost any at-will) and i'm done with this thread.
Agreed we need more damage on shard in pvp after the changes like he said we hit 1-2k crits and for a power that is on tab and requires some amount of skill to land unlike other skills we should be able to keep our damage on it, limiting the amount of players it can hit and keeping the damage we have now would be perfect and just what we need to keep our playstyle alive in pvp
- [Tempzy]
0
ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited July 2014
Icy terrain/SM conduit of ice combo will be nasty now.
Comments
I completely agree, you basicly end up waising 5 points if you are a renegade now which kinda ruins the path progression imo. Another option though would be for them to rework energy recovery into something useful.
Smoulder's interaction with alacrity is currently broken. When alacrity is triggered by smolder the blue indicator will pop up as normal, but the cooldown of icy terrain is not reduced. This occurred 100% of the time in my testing.
I tested this by casting icy terrain only, against training dummies, on my MoF CW. Normally smolder would trigger Alacrity at the beginning of the cast (since smolder is added on crit with critical conflagration), but the cooldown would not be reduced. It might be that alacrity is triggering too fast for the encounter power to go on cooldown and the reduction is applied before the cooldown actually starts.
I've been open so far about CW changes as admittedly they are inexplicably strong in PVE. However, this was only evident with the changes to power mechanics as compared to mod 2. I enjoyed following a rotation of skills utilizing the High Vizier set and Thaumaturge feats, maximizing potential for both personal and party dps.
However, in the current version where 166 power gives you a 1% increase damage, many geared CWs are stacking power and forsaking other survivable aspects of their character and merely throwing whichever skills are off cooldown. And it still works. Mobs die too fast for rotations to matter. Or other classes to matter.
I wasn't surprised about nerfs to damage. It's fine. Long time coming. But the changes still doesn't solve the issue I pointed out in Para2 vs mod2 and before. But nevermind, each to his own playstyle.
My main concern is this:
Eye of the Storm.
As much as people try to advocate for MoF in terms of min maxing for dungeons, it is... definitely inferior to Spellstorm in terms of damage delivery. One could argue that over time, the dots from MoF would surpass a Spellstorm's damage. But here's the news, nothing in the game lives long enough to see the reality of that coming true. I doubt it would even come true, mainly because of EoTs.
It's too strong. But this is the defining aspect of Spellstorm.
Often I see theorycrafters regard EoTs utility in terms of uptime. And often I disagree how this passive should be viewed. Here's why.
The bulk of a CW's damage comes from a rotation of encounters. Unlike other classes where at-wills deal a respectable amount of total damage, ours comes mainly from encounters. If we were to line up a graph, our dps comes in cycles, as and when our encounters go off cooldown and we cycle encounters in a given order for maximum damage.
Let's use an example in Live context: 6-9 corrupted bears from a HE.
Steal time (procs EoTs reliably) > Shard cast > CoI > Shard push/detonation > Icy Terrain.
The result of this is Shard and CoI becomes a crit. I am able to reliably crit on my most damaging skills.
Assuming I am still using this set of encounters on preview, the result is still the same albeit lower damage on some encounters due to changes.
The problem comes in my second cycle of encounters. With a 25 second ICD I am unable to visibly see a cooldown, nor will I be able to reliably proc EoTs simply because whilst cycling my encounters it may still be on ICD. So during the course of my rotation, EoTs might very well proc on Icy Terrain, the end of my rotation. This happens several times.
So what use is this concept of "uptime" when most of the "uptime" falls during the down time of my encounters. Whether or not duration lasts for 3 seconds or 10 seconds wouldn't matter if the concept of an ICD causes this situation.
As far as passives go, EoTs is the only one worth looking at under Spellstorm, and the only thing steering a choice into this paragon. MoFs have viable passives but unattractive because it is overshadowed by EoTs.
(not to mention that rimefire damage is credited to other CWs who applied chill thus you lose out on Paingiver. Yes this matters to some players)
EoTs just went from overpowered to... underwhelming. It's as useful as Storm fury in PVE. (I hope this means something)
We have to admit that EoTs was overpowered fellow cws, but don't be lulled into believing that you all deserve to take every nerfbat blindly. Do consider what I just put forward.
Nerf EoTs, yes, but not in the form of ICDs, not for EoTs. Hell put a crit severity penalty when using the passive. 20% 30%, just not ICDs.
Still I'd advocate to give Renegades a feat that would reduce this enormous cool down time on encounters and cancel ICD (or decrease to 5 sec. max) on feats (EotS).
Lots of players have already stated that ICD kills EotS. Make it useful for a cost of choosing Renegade tree and 5 heroic feat points. We are talking about end tree Spellstorm Mage feat. There is nothing left for us with this feat nerfed (nobody uses Maelstrom, some maybe will suffer buggy shard for longer prone but surely not for damage, nobody will use EotS with ICD). I guarantee that any CW who can choose between feat supporting aoe skills and control ALL THE TIME will not waste a slot for feat that is useless even for 10 seconds.
I don't think I'll be mistaken if I say Renegades would prefer feat which decreases cool down time for encounters and feats, instead of Unrestrained Chaos or Energy Recovery - almost nobody uses these two.
Masterful Arcane Theft - Steal time and Ray of enfeeblement does 5/10/15/20/25% more damage, their casting time is also reduced .1/.2/.3/.4/.5seconds
This will bring it in line with Thaumurgist Transcended Master
It reduces damage an insane amount, thank you.
After
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 25%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 30%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 35%
This is good for both spell mastery or regular slot,
Spell Mastery I'd add 100% weapon damage pulse while unstable. Not a push, just ae damage pulse.
Even tested thaum again but removed nightmare wizardy to prep for the incoming patch changes. It still performed better imo than renegade. Everything dies faster as thaum, as renegade it's a struggle to stay alive solo'ing epic encounters in IWD.
Moving nightmare wizardry further into the tree isn't going to help anyone, since no one will play renegade in it's current state.
Moving Nighmare Wizardry up a slot in the Renegade tree is a change I agree needs to be made. It does serve to make the Renegade tree a more viable choice. However, it does this by making the Thaumaturge and Oppressor trees LESS useful and brings them back to the usefulness of the Renegade tree rather than moving the Renegade tree up. Nightmare Wizardry had a fairly high up time; especially on enemies with high HP. Losing Nightmare Wizardry will serve to reduce the damage of Thaumaturge and Oppressor CW's by at least another 10-15% on top the damage already lost to intentional nerfs and the fixing of bugs (Evocation, Wizard's Wrath, etc) which already represented a 40-60% loss. It would be nice if you could buff some of the feats in the other trees so there is something worth spending points on. There are several very lackluster feats. With Nightmare Wizardry gone I look at the feat tree and think "well I have 10 points to spend...I guess I'll put them in ______. Not that it will help much." Things like Severe Reaction, Brisk Transport, Energy Recovery, Unrestrained Chaos, and Reaper's Touch are a pu-pu platter of useless feats that people are going to be stuck choosing from.
CoI on tab, icy terrain, shard, steal time; evocation, spell storm; magic missile and chilling cloud. 13k GS HV set with lesser plague fire and soulforge.
To note though - Shard is still buggy, so not all of them worked as intended (missed targets, didn't move, etc) so both sets worked out slightly differently.
Thaum obviously pulled ahead in damage, the difference was 15.6k overall damage and most likely in longer runs, damage will pull even further ahead.
I am new to logging, so I am assuming that nightmare wizardry combat advantage is bundled in with the damaging encounter/skill/debuff. If not, please correct me as that would bump up the renegade dps.
However with the move of nightmare wizardry, renegade will be exclusively bringing the "group buffs" along with the chaos magic "buffs". Hypothetically making runs as a group more efficient and less solo; BUT there are other classes that can bring combat advantage to the group (HR) if they have Aspect of the Pack SLOTTED (doesn't even have to proc). So in those regards, a renegade CW can still be less efficient in such case loosing one of their bread and butter paragon features to another class.
With the change to nightmare wizardry, it will now make it a more conscious effort on what to bring to the table. Group or self buff, and will now work some what as intended for the renegade tree. Though as stated quite a few times already, lots of the renegade feats are extremely lacking and I skipped them all together and put the 10 points into tempest magic and malevolent surge (thaum).
Though in my game play so far on preview, it is much more difficult for a renegade to go against harder hitting mobs, such as in icewind pass with the barbarian raiders and bear riders (elites from HE's). Thaum had it easier since they could nuke them down faster while having the same control features.
For the ease of viewing, these are links to images of the parses.
Renegade
http://imageshack.us/a/img674/4034/64aef1.jpg
Thaumaturge
http://imageshack.us/a/img537/9950/858868.jpg
Now that Nightmare Wizardry have moved up and out of reach from other trees, there is now calling to buff their trees back up. While that is a problem because the chain of effect effectively means they are losing damage, my biggest concern is not buffing the renegade tree but make it viable. Again, renegades are not charity wizards. If this is the decision and what you, as designers intend, please make an announcement to rename it so I and the rest of the faithful renegades can cut our ties with this lackluster tree.
Forgot to add this, but please increase the radius of icy terrain. Having to sit in someone/something's lap in order to make sure that the target is in it's radius is just annoying and inefficent. The radius in tab is just as annoying since it's such a small target area, takes too much time to get an accurate placing with moving targets, especially if you need it at your feet then.
Thank you for making freeze no longer break because of damage. Freeze, currently, is mostly useless as a control feature because enemies are not frozen for any duration in a group setting because of damage from party members. This will fix that. However, I am a bit concerned that this change will mean that there is no longer much benefit to being an Oppressor CW. Shatter sometimes adds a 5 second stun onto the end of freeze. That is a massive improvement over what is on live because of just how ineffective freezing was as a means of control. The stun gave control. Going from 0.5 seconds of control to 5.5 seconds was a huge improvement. But now that damage won't break the freeze every CW, Oppressor or not, can very effectively use ice as a means of controlling enemies for ~5 seconds. The stun from Shatter is much less useful because not that many enemies will need to be held in place for longer than the ~5 seconds freeze will give you. A chance to inflict a 5 second longer stun on top of the ~5 second freeze isn't a huge benefit especially since you can use spells to just freeze them a second time without too much trouble. You may want to re-work Shatter so that it still gives a control benefit equal to the damage benefit the Thaumaturge capstone gives. For example, you could reduce the duration of freeze by 1/2 then make the Shatter double the duration of freeze. That way only Oppressor's could have access to the 5 second freeze and the other trees would have to make do with 2.5 seconds. Or you could make it so that only Oppressor freezes do not break from damage. Another option would be to make Icy Terrain have a significantly bigger radius for Oppressors which would allow us to control the battlefield better. Looking at the feats currently I'm thinking that I would pick Thaumaturge for the damage then just use CoI on tab and Icy Terrain and get pretty much the same control as an Oppressor does.
Also with a ~5 second freeze you may want to look into fixing Icy Terrain so that it can apply damage to frozen targets. Currently it does 0 damage to frozen enemies. I assume you did that so that it wouldn't apply stacks of chill to an already frozen target, but there really should still be damage ticks even without the chill stack. Once these changes go live if I were to slot Orb of Imposition, freeze an enemy, then use Icy Terrain on them they will take no damage from it for the duration of the spell. That doesn't seem appropriate.
Agreed with the points above. I think this would be a pretty reasonable solution to it.
2. Assailing Force is RIDICULOUS, you can EVISCERATE ANY players with 50k+HP within 30 seconds. It's bugged and does more dmg than it should. Give it ~20 sec ICD.
Shield: - same buff should be same on or off mastery -
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 25%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 30%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 35%
1- I mentioned same thing about shield.
Mastery ability should offer some other aspect other than more defense. I recommended a shield pulse while unstable on mastery tab.
2- Assailing force makes up for a lot of damage lost to Shard nerf. It does not need a cool down and works fine.
3- Renegade tree is lacking substatially in Burst DPS department which is what Renegade is known for.
Thanks...
Lrn2DevPost:
Hey guys, we are making a small handful of changes to fix a couple of things we have noticed that are a tad out of line as well as give Renegades more party utility.
Control Wizard: Assailing Force: This feat is now half as effective on players.
+1 to this. Severe Reaction is amazing.
19.9k PvP Control Wizard
<Complaints Department>
And with Renegade you have to pick the "awesome" Reapers Touch.
Yay...
Are you sure about this? I heards its 230power~1%dmg
"Power is not included on the graph, but from module 3 every 500 power is a 3% increase in the multiplier for damage/healing (coefficient of 0.00006) which is roughly 167 power per 1% (see Equation 2). Having higher power basically increases your damage output linearly. For example, at 5000 power you will do 30% more damage compared to when you had zero power. Now be careful in drawing conclusions here- don't fall in the trap of thinking +167 power is 1% more DPS. It isn't. If you now have 5500 power you will do 33% damage compare to if I had zero power. The actual percentage gain in damage is (1.33-1.30)/1.3= 2.3% more damage compared to 5000 power. My Crit vs power guide has graph/tables showing the percentage gain in power relative to how much power you already have. In most cases after getting sufficient crit, recovery and ArP the RoI on power wins out for sustained average DPS."
Quoted from "Kaelac’s guide to damage, tenacity, reisistance and debuffs in Neverwinter" thread.
My conclusion- yes approx 167 power = 1% sheet damage increase(compared to zero power). But inreAlity the damage gain is effected by how much power you currently have. Which is why people say power doesn't have dimR, yes it doesn't in sheet numbers, but in actual damage pov it in fact suffers from dimR.
-LocKitUP
Change Unrestrained Chaos to feat that will make EotS viable again (EotS ICD decreased to 5 seconds after putting 5 points in it)
Loosing EotS hurts Renegade Spellstorms too much. And Renegades have too many feats that are of no practical use. Nobody uses Maelstrom, everybody uses EotS. Why not just replace Unrestrained Chaos which buffs unused daily, and replace it with feat that will buff the only worthwhile end game Spellstorm power? Renegade Spellstorms will have their chance for burst damage back and at least ONE viable end tree powers option to look after.
Otherwise it looks like promoting MoF and Oppressor/Thauma builds.
People also need to understand that percentages are not equal (huh?).
IE. 166 power = 1% damage is not equal to the equivalent of 1% arp if it isn't capped.
ie, if ur ARP is at 23% and u add 1% more arp, it is still far more than 166 power. You'd have to inspect the formula at this juncture, which i'm no wiz to explain in detail.
What frustrates me is the general muted response to ICDs for EoTs.
Where is the upside to taking Spellstorm with these changes? It becomes a role reversal where people took MoF just to be different or an over valuation of 5% damage increase to party. Except, spellstorm doesn't bring any noteworthy contribution in future.
There isn't any response not many seem to care that renegade is basically a pointless path at the moment , these changes all seem to be pvp focused anyway , look at the capstone for Thaumaturge , it is really great in pvp but what use is a capstone that can affect one single target in pve , it is sad the balance guy seems to have been manipulated to change so much so that the game seems pvp focused , especially considering the tiny percentage of actual pvp players.
For me ICD on EotS is a matter of be or not to be Spellstorm Renegade. Ss Renegades were never top one tree (maybe that's the reason behind muted response), but now they will come near extinct, I fear.
What is the point of levelling Spellstorm rene. anyway? You reach your end-tree powers and:
1. Got daily nobody uses.
2. Got feat nobody will use, because of ICD.
3. Got encounter nerfed so badly, DPS builds won't be using it.
question one about the shield spell how is it interact with the ignored damage from defense and or tenacity. to make it simple if shield is at 50% for exemple is damage are first calculate with all resis and neutra and then on this final number shield take 50% of or is shield is added with RI and sum is cap at 80% damage resistance
Question two, specificatly about pvp set for CW. the t4 set bonus effect is time reduction for tab spell and some more damage for tab spell. Problem is with all new change, shield will be practically a must have because due to lost of damage and the fact that wizard are in paper. we will need to get a good def lvl. All pvp set give same bonus, only ice set offer a different path for pvp. As you can understand it give a major problem for CW as we have a lost a choice if we want to do a pvp party. So do you intend to modifie somethings ?.
Here some sugg that may help the bonus time given from pvp set reduce the time for unstable to goes back to stable if shield is stacked on tab, and for the 8.5% damage, if shield is stacked on tab he give 8.5% extra control resist.
Question 3 about damage resist vs neutra ignored. it's max 80%. ok but if someone RI goes for exemple to 90% and someone neutra ignored have 20% ignored is the final damage resisit is 70 (90-20) or 60(80-20)
THose question may not look directly with actual change but the change on control wizard are so big that at least some but maybe a big amount of player have to think to change equip. and changing equip mean change about secondary equip like ring but also enchant. So i'm trying to take some advance to don't have to farm for 2 month after v4 just to change my set to be playable again.
As you can understand Having to pay again for changing my equip because you made change not by putting a new better set but by making old one unusable is not a correct option. So having possibility to anticipate and starting my new set before change so i won't be in trouble when v4 arrive and not be with months to farm just to became again playable. The other possiblity is that old set have a new work as i suggested
R1 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 25%
R2 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 30%
R3 Stable: 50%, Unstable: 35%
Mastery should have a different effect other than just DR
Agreed we need more damage on shard in pvp after the changes like he said we hit 1-2k crits and for a power that is on tab and requires some amount of skill to land unlike other skills we should be able to keep our damage on it, limiting the amount of players it can hit and keeping the damage we have now would be perfect and just what we need to keep our playstyle alive in pvp