And why can't CW shine in 1v1 and GWF/HR shines in group play?
GWF does shine in group play. The best things to have in group play is CC and burst and they have both. What's weird right now is that GWF is also great in 1v1, but that should be changing (hopefully).
CW shouldn't shine in 1v1 because it has so much CC, which is so great in group play.
But I guess to answer the heart of your question, if every class was equal 1v1 and equally good in group play, the game would be boring.
"Diversity balance" in Neverwinter? Let's reach normal balance first. And who the hell said that CW is the support class that can't 1v1? Why is HR not the support class that can't 1v1?
Because HR has no CC. CC is the best thing to have for support, and CW has the most.
I want to see you on your CW with a GWF against a GWF and HR.
In Mod 4, a CW/GWF should easily beat a HR/GWF. Just CC/burst down the HR and then take care of the GWF. HR can't dodge icy root so there's no reason you can't.
I transferred a low-level CW to the preview shard, and I couldn't kill the last boss on Icespire Peak (the wolf) and the last boss on Mount Hotenow (the giant) alone. I couldn't even get their HP to half-way.
I didn't go to the Whispering Caverns but since there are more control immune monsters there I don't think it would be different too.
I've posted about low lvl CW under power too.
The game has been geared towards everyone having a 17gs CW with Perfect weapon/armor enchants.
GWF does shine in group play. The best things to have in group play is CC and burst and they have both. What's weird right now is that GWF is also great in 1v1, but that should be changing (hopefully).
CW shouldn't shine in 1v1 because it has so much CC, which is so great in group play.
But I guess to answer the heart of your question, if every class was equal 1v1 and equally good in group play, the game would be boring.
Sorry, but I don't understand that logic. CW should shine in 1v1 because it has control powers and thus can control its opponent.
Just to back up a little. I'm hoping that it's possible to get a comment from a developer on this. From one of the opening posts
Well Stated Mac.
I have been a CW since my first day in beta. This new (2nd) set of changes radically alters the PvP landscape. Please consider rolling back these changes. They seem to have created more bugs with the new reroll race tokens anyways.
Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Wow, after tons of feedback, this is the solution they came up with? 15% Boost on MM is minuscule and I wouldn't take Focused Wizardry now because the drawback is greater than the actual benefit. PVP only maybe but come on... I'm just shaking my head in disbelief...
I don't really understand what's driving the MM nerf. It was a single target at-will and chilling cloud is more AoE type. With these changes, we are now getting forced to make a single build CW, cookie cutter types and pretty much takes out the versatility that we had. Completely disastrous.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Focused wizardry: Sorry but here i don't understand it (not the back draw princip). describ like this i understand if i put 1 point i get 10% single target but -30 aoe damage, 2 point 20 -20 and 3 points 30 - 10. Am i correct?.
For magic missile, need to be tested but not sure it will be enough to solve the problem at low lvl. Yesterday i died after using all heal on the first quest of the game. with all other class i started i never even have to use heal there. Since low lvl dongeon are the entrance door for the game i really suggest you to find a way for that low lvl since at that point magic missille is not a choice, not an option but practically your only way to do damage. (i'm not necessarly speacking of increasing source damage but any way that will permit for fresh starter to be able to lvl up when they choose CW)
Edit one more question.
Practicaly all other class have in a way or an other CC immun system, CW is the only class without any way for CC immun. In V1 CW was the only ranged class, but now there is 3 ranged class so is no more understandable
0
seventhpillarMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 216Arc User
Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Initial Feedback:
With all due respect, it seems like we are now becoming cornered into making a cookie cutter CW and forces you pretty much abandon versatility. Now we have to choose either PVP base or PVE base. Kind of sad. I wouldn't take Focus Wizardry if that's the case because it ends up becoming a handicap IMO. Also, MM boost is welcomed but I think still not enough. I understand MM is single target and Chilling Cloud is AoE based so I still don't get why MM is getting nerf in the first place. I hope you reconsider some of the option we have provided in the previous posts instead of these.
Suggestion: Revert focused wizardry and just buff Reaper's Touch. I think that would make it better.
Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
So a feat that I will now be forced to take in order to buff my single target damage in PvP to something reasonable, further cripples the use of Shard in PvP with a 10% damage reduction...
Please review the posts given by the CW PvP community members such as myself, virus, mel, tempzy, adamy, zengiah, psycho mike and others as we have all given feedback on the negative direction CWs are heading in PvP with these changes. Every post by these players contains honest claims that Shard now severely under-performs in PvP, but nothing has been done about it.
I would like to see PvP survivability worked into Heroic feats like Battlewise/Lightning Teleport in addition to the one encounter that was given a boost (shield), since we are otherwise pigeonholed into using shield as the only means of boosting survivability.
You could argue that most PvP CWs are already running the same encounters or builds, but the difference lies in how skilled they are with that rotation and keeping synergy with other classes in clearing other players. As I said before, removing shard viability and inserting an easy mode damage proc capstone will inevitably result in everyone using the same things with a diminished dependency on skill.
CWs will remind me of the current GWF meta -- shield on bar (unstoppable) and continuous rolling of my face across the keyboard to spam my three single target encounters until the other player dies by an assailant proc.
So a feat that I will now be forced to take in order to buff my single target damage in PvP to something reasonable, further cripples the use of Shard in PvP with a 10% damage reduction...
Good job, now you have successfully completed the destruction of one of the two viable pvp builds for this class..
So a feat that I will now be forced to take in order to buff my single target damage in PvP to something reasonable, further cripples the use of Shard in PvP with a 10% damage reduction...
OMG. I didn't even think about that. Everybody were asking for boosting shard 25-30% on TABB but instead we got another 10% nerf on it.. Now it needs a 30-40% boost on TABB to make up for the new nerf.
Now I'm getting tired. They forcing all CWs to use the same powers.
Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Can you stop ruining shard in pvp for us, a Dev probably you said you want to see people in pvp still using it and keeping the prone etc as it requires some skill to land the encounter and yet you're pushing the power further and further away from us in pvp as making it more or less useless can you please give your head a wobble and think about how you're affecting people that like the class to not just be faceroll in pvp idk wtf is wrong LISTEN TO WHAT 90% OF THE PVP CW'S ARE BEGGING OF YOU
I don't think I have posted here yet because I very rarely pvp but enough is enough , the module is 2 weeks away and we are running out of time , Shard needs a major boost and EotS needs to be linked to a reworked feat that gives it a faster cooldown , CW are just being turned into one single viable build in pvp and damage in pve is an absolute joke , fair enough we needed pulling back but the class has been gutted .The damage nerfs will make it nigh on impossible for most new CW's to even level up , every change is being done using figures based around capped BiS ,perfect/rank 10 geared up characters , it's insane.
I don't think I have posted here yet because I very rarely pvp but enough is enough , the module is 2 weeks away and we are running out of time , Shard needs a major boost and EotS needs to be linked to a reworked feat that gives it a faster cooldown , CW are just being turned into one single viable build in pvp and damage in pve is an absolute joke , fair enough we needed pulling back but the class has been gutted .
The sad thing is that the "viable" build you talking about isnt really viable against other classes in PvP like GWF/HR/TR.
I don't think I have posted here yet because I very rarely pvp but enough is enough , the module is 2 weeks away and we are running out of time , Shard needs a major boost and EotS needs to be linked to a reworked feat that gives it a faster cooldown , CW are just being turned into one single viable build in pvp and damage in pve is an absolute joke , fair enough we needed pulling back but the class has been gutted .The damage nerfs will make it nigh on impossible for most new CW's to even level up , every change is being done using figures based around capped BiS ,perfect/rank 10 geared up characters , it's insane.
just to correct you, CW is not turned into 1 single viable class since nerf done on shield or assaillant are not done yet (not 100% sure for assaillant but sure for shield). it actually turned in 0 pvp viable class. and only actually the top ten pvp CW will be able to play in pvp with little chance the rest that are not pro for dodge will simply be one striked by GF GWF TR and HR (maybe olso warlord)
How ever, based on the time gentleman crush give to put it on the test server and with the official time of V4 it is probably the last change that we will get and they probably won't touch a thing before it goes on test server. So that do not even give a thing to complain anymore nor trying to give return
May I ask what spells and abilities Focused Wizardry is supposed to positively affect, negatively affect, and have no effect on? From my testing as it is on the preview server Magic Missile, Chill Strike (only when not tabbed), Icy Rays, and Ice Knife are the only real "damage" spells that benefit from Focused Wizardry (Ray of Frost, Repel, and Entangling Force don't do enough damage for a damage boost to really make any difference in dps output). It has no effect on other things like Storm Spell, and Ray of Enfeeblement. I haven't had the time to test damaging single-target feats like Creeping Frost, Warped Magic, Shatter, and Assailing Force. I also know that some of the categorizations of "single-target" and "AoE" are screwy so some spells we wouldn't think of will get a 10% reduction.
Before I can assess whether Focused Wizardry will be a benefit or a detriment to my style of my play it would sure help if I knew what things it affects and what ones it doesn't. With this adjustment going up a week before the Mod 4 release date I doubt I'll have time to test it and find out for myself.
Feedback: Focused Wizardry
I think this will greatly help the CW PvP community (complaints about shard aside). Icy Rays and Ice Knife, in particular, are going to be very dangerous. I don't know for sure how it will affect PvE's. I'll have to test to see if the benefit outweighs the cost. However, this will definitely adversely affect leveling CW's. Focused Wizardry is now 3 points or none. It would be foolish to spend 1 or 2 points in it. That would badly gimp your character. That's not a problem for a level 60 character doing a respec. But for a new character just playing through the content this feat will be avoided because no one will want to live with a 30% decrease in AOE damage for any length of time on top of all of the other nerfs that have been rolled out. Why not just make it a flat 10% reduction in AoE damage for Ranks 1, 2, and 3?
I think it is fair to point out that with the 15% damage boost to Magic Missile and three points in the new Focused Wizardry Magic Missile will do identical damage to what it does on live. When you take into account that its armor penetration has been fixed it will do more damage in in Module 4 than on Module 3.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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ghoulz66Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 3,748Arc User
edited July 2014
Baha, a 30% buff to weak single target powers and nerfing AoE by 10% is going to HURT dps unless you're spec'd solely for pvp.
Considering you ALREADY had nerfed those powers, a 30% buff will take them only slightly above the current damage in mod3.
Hey all we are making a few changes to improve Single Target feel and bringing Magic Missile up a little bit. These changes wont make it in this week, but should be in an upcoming preview push either next week or the week after.
Focused Wizardry: Now increases single target damage by 10/20/30% but reduces AoE damage by 30/20/10%.
Magic Missile: Damage increased by about 15%.
One of the more controversial parts of the change will be the direct decrease to AoE damage given by Focused Wizardry. We wanted it to be an important choice that helps refine your role and improve your position as "focused on priority targets with single target spells" but we couldn't just put 10/20/30% in there without some kind of draw back or it became an always correct option at that tier. Therefore we have opted to give it a drawback that you can decrease as you put points into it. This means that if you take Focused Wizardry you can still use AoE powers in cases where they overtake Single Target powers (generally when they would affect 4 or more targets is this breakpoint) without losing too much of the effectiveness there while still getting a nice solid Single Target boost. Secondly we brought Magic Missile up a bit. It was still performing quite well in our testing, but we found that it didn't fit well enough into most PVE situations any more so we wanted to make it a little more competitive choice for PVE players. This means that Chilling Cloud still performs better when 3~4 targets will be up for any meaningful time, but Magic Missile is a consistent source of Arcane Mastery and is still very important and competitive when making that choice.
Thank you all for your continued feedback!
Chris "Gentleman Crush" Meyer
Curious, but why is it setup like 10/20/30% single target and 30/20/10% AoE? That sets it up so that unless you max it out, its pointless to put any points into it since it simply nerfs you more than you gain until its maxed.
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degraafinationMember, Neverwinter Beta UsersPosts: 0Arc User
Perma-freezing shouldn't be in the game. Anything that let's one class kill another without the other class being able to do anything is messed up.
That single target increase is really worrisome for HRs going against CWs, also. No CC break, no CC, nerfed self-healing, against a class that can perma-disable, and now suddenly gets 30% more damage. I don't see HRs having any chance.
Perma-freezing shouldn't be in the game. Anything that let's one class kill another without the other class being able to do anything is messed up.
That single target increase is really worrisome for HRs going against CWs, also. No CC break, no CC, nerfed self-healing, against a class that can perma-disable, and now suddenly gets 30% more damage. I don't see HRs having any chance.
Wait wait wait wait, hold up there. You're worried about HRs vs CWs? hahaha - sorry, moderators, but this has got to be some kind of joke.
You do realise that all CW single target skills were nerfed roughly 30% each. Basically all this skill does is give us back our live single target damage, which lets face it still stinks vrs HRs anyway, and takes away from our AOE damage (which if you have read the entire thread already, has been nerfed between 10 and 60% depending on the skill).
May you guys just stop "predicting" things without testing it on preview? The changes are not up yet. And Crush told us, they will be in a week or 2 weeks time (I think they've already gave up on trying to have classes tested and ready before M4).
This change is very disappointing, though. Further Shard nerf, no word about EotS, no word about Renegades, no word about Spellstom mages, and no word about how fresh CWs will have a very hard time trying to level.
Bids he then the spruces to singer him an anthems!
And the Woodsie Lord binders them fleshes to stone!
Comments
GWF does shine in group play. The best things to have in group play is CC and burst and they have both. What's weird right now is that GWF is also great in 1v1, but that should be changing (hopefully).
CW shouldn't shine in 1v1 because it has so much CC, which is so great in group play.
But I guess to answer the heart of your question, if every class was equal 1v1 and equally good in group play, the game would be boring.
Because HR has no CC. CC is the best thing to have for support, and CW has the most.
In Mod 4, a CW/GWF should easily beat a HR/GWF. Just CC/burst down the HR and then take care of the GWF. HR can't dodge icy root so there's no reason you can't.
The HR/GWF team would be severely lacking on CC.
I've posted about low lvl CW under power too.
The game has been geared towards everyone having a 17gs CW with Perfect weapon/armor enchants.
Well Stated Mac.
I have been a CW since my first day in beta. This new (2nd) set of changes radically alters the PvP landscape. Please consider rolling back these changes. They seem to have created more bugs with the new reroll race tokens anyways.
anyone got any decent builds yet?
Wow, after tons of feedback, this is the solution they came up with? 15% Boost on MM is minuscule and I wouldn't take Focused Wizardry now because the drawback is greater than the actual benefit. PVP only maybe but come on... I'm just shaking my head in disbelief...
I don't really understand what's driving the MM nerf. It was a single target at-will and chilling cloud is more AoE type. With these changes, we are now getting forced to make a single build CW, cookie cutter types and pretty much takes out the versatility that we had. Completely disastrous.
Focused wizardry: Sorry but here i don't understand it (not the back draw princip). describ like this i understand if i put 1 point i get 10% single target but -30 aoe damage, 2 point 20 -20 and 3 points 30 - 10. Am i correct?.
For magic missile, need to be tested but not sure it will be enough to solve the problem at low lvl. Yesterday i died after using all heal on the first quest of the game. with all other class i started i never even have to use heal there. Since low lvl dongeon are the entrance door for the game i really suggest you to find a way for that low lvl since at that point magic missille is not a choice, not an option but practically your only way to do damage. (i'm not necessarly speacking of increasing source damage but any way that will permit for fresh starter to be able to lvl up when they choose CW)
Edit one more question.
Practicaly all other class have in a way or an other CC immun system, CW is the only class without any way for CC immun. In V1 CW was the only ranged class, but now there is 3 ranged class so is no more understandable
Initial Feedback:
With all due respect, it seems like we are now becoming cornered into making a cookie cutter CW and forces you pretty much abandon versatility. Now we have to choose either PVP base or PVE base. Kind of sad. I wouldn't take Focus Wizardry if that's the case because it ends up becoming a handicap IMO. Also, MM boost is welcomed but I think still not enough. I understand MM is single target and Chilling Cloud is AoE based so I still don't get why MM is getting nerf in the first place. I hope you reconsider some of the option we have provided in the previous posts instead of these.
Suggestion: Revert focused wizardry and just buff Reaper's Touch. I think that would make it better.
So a feat that I will now be forced to take in order to buff my single target damage in PvP to something reasonable, further cripples the use of Shard in PvP with a 10% damage reduction...
Please review the posts given by the CW PvP community members such as myself, virus, mel, tempzy, adamy, zengiah, psycho mike and others as we have all given feedback on the negative direction CWs are heading in PvP with these changes. Every post by these players contains honest claims that Shard now severely under-performs in PvP, but nothing has been done about it.
I would like to see PvP survivability worked into Heroic feats like Battlewise/Lightning Teleport in addition to the one encounter that was given a boost (shield), since we are otherwise pigeonholed into using shield as the only means of boosting survivability.
You could argue that most PvP CWs are already running the same encounters or builds, but the difference lies in how skilled they are with that rotation and keeping synergy with other classes in clearing other players. As I said before, removing shard viability and inserting an easy mode damage proc capstone will inevitably result in everyone using the same things with a diminished dependency on skill.
CWs will remind me of the current GWF meta -- shield on bar (unstoppable) and continuous rolling of my face across the keyboard to spam my three single target encounters until the other player dies by an assailant proc.
twitch.tv/ezracw | absolutegaming.guildportal.com
#BringBackShard | M5 CW Bug List | My M3 PvP Gameplay
Good job, now you have successfully completed the destruction of one of the two viable pvp builds for this class..
OMG. I didn't even think about that. Everybody were asking for boosting shard 25-30% on TABB but instead we got another 10% nerf on it.. Now it needs a 30-40% boost on TABB to make up for the new nerf.
Now I'm getting tired. They forcing all CWs to use the same powers.
/ ZengiaH PvP CW @ Disrespect (former Enemy Team)
Can you stop ruining shard in pvp for us, a Dev probably you said you want to see people in pvp still using it and keeping the prone etc as it requires some skill to land the encounter and yet you're pushing the power further and further away from us in pvp as making it more or less useless can you please give your head a wobble and think about how you're affecting people that like the class to not just be faceroll in pvp idk wtf is wrong LISTEN TO WHAT 90% OF THE PVP CW'S ARE BEGGING OF YOU
The sad thing is that the "viable" build you talking about isnt really viable against other classes in PvP like GWF/HR/TR.
just to correct you, CW is not turned into 1 single viable class since nerf done on shield or assaillant are not done yet (not 100% sure for assaillant but sure for shield). it actually turned in 0 pvp viable class. and only actually the top ten pvp CW will be able to play in pvp with little chance the rest that are not pro for dodge will simply be one striked by GF GWF TR and HR (maybe olso warlord)
How ever, based on the time gentleman crush give to put it on the test server and with the official time of V4 it is probably the last change that we will get and they probably won't touch a thing before it goes on test server. So that do not even give a thing to complain anymore nor trying to give return
May I ask what spells and abilities Focused Wizardry is supposed to positively affect, negatively affect, and have no effect on? From my testing as it is on the preview server Magic Missile, Chill Strike (only when not tabbed), Icy Rays, and Ice Knife are the only real "damage" spells that benefit from Focused Wizardry (Ray of Frost, Repel, and Entangling Force don't do enough damage for a damage boost to really make any difference in dps output). It has no effect on other things like Storm Spell, and Ray of Enfeeblement. I haven't had the time to test damaging single-target feats like Creeping Frost, Warped Magic, Shatter, and Assailing Force. I also know that some of the categorizations of "single-target" and "AoE" are screwy so some spells we wouldn't think of will get a 10% reduction.
Before I can assess whether Focused Wizardry will be a benefit or a detriment to my style of my play it would sure help if I knew what things it affects and what ones it doesn't. With this adjustment going up a week before the Mod 4 release date I doubt I'll have time to test it and find out for myself.
Feedback: Focused Wizardry
I think this will greatly help the CW PvP community (complaints about shard aside). Icy Rays and Ice Knife, in particular, are going to be very dangerous. I don't know for sure how it will affect PvE's. I'll have to test to see if the benefit outweighs the cost. However, this will definitely adversely affect leveling CW's. Focused Wizardry is now 3 points or none. It would be foolish to spend 1 or 2 points in it. That would badly gimp your character. That's not a problem for a level 60 character doing a respec. But for a new character just playing through the content this feat will be avoided because no one will want to live with a 30% decrease in AOE damage for any length of time on top of all of the other nerfs that have been rolled out. Why not just make it a flat 10% reduction in AoE damage for Ranks 1, 2, and 3?
Considering you ALREADY had nerfed those powers, a 30% buff will take them only slightly above the current damage in mod3.
Curious, but why is it setup like 10/20/30% single target and 30/20/10% AoE? That sets it up so that unless you max it out, its pointless to put any points into it since it simply nerfs you more than you gain until its maxed.
I am specced solely for PVP. I am very excited about these changes.
Join Essence of Aggression: PVP-ing Hard Since Beta!
Wrong, your damage will still go down because although you get a bump from focused Wizardry, you lose damage from Learned Spellcaster...
That single target increase is really worrisome for HRs going against CWs, also. No CC break, no CC, nerfed self-healing, against a class that can perma-disable, and now suddenly gets 30% more damage. I don't see HRs having any chance.
Wait wait wait wait, hold up there. You're worried about HRs vs CWs? hahaha - sorry, moderators, but this has got to be some kind of joke.
You do realise that all CW single target skills were nerfed roughly 30% each. Basically all this skill does is give us back our live single target damage, which lets face it still stinks vrs HRs anyway, and takes away from our AOE damage (which if you have read the entire thread already, has been nerfed between 10 and 60% depending on the skill).
This change is very disappointing, though. Further Shard nerf, no word about EotS, no word about Renegades, no word about Spellstom mages, and no word about how fresh CWs will have a very hard time trying to level.