get on preview and test it its not nearly as bad as you think in fact you wont notice it as much for me im actually seeing it proc more than before.
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romotheoneMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 729Arc User
edited June 2015
It is definitely a huge damage nerf to the SS CW. The reason why procs become more visible is because they don't crit but everything else does. Before, it used to add up and display it at once, now all you see is yellow.
Well its a % chance to proc so in short term testing yes you may see it proc more.
As for it not being a big deal, we will see. Some small tests have already been done and it sounds like the .5 ICD is PER SPELL and PER TARGET so if both of those are true- yes it is a smaller nerf (but still a nerf due to it not critting)
If either of those are not true, then its a rather large nerf.
Thrilling question: What about simultaneous procs...
...I guess we'll have to wait until the first ACT parses are there. If, e.g. an opening IT with EotS still triggers StSp on every affected mob, no big deal. If only one mob gets struck by lightning then - uh-oh.
There is no simultaneous. If multiple things are happening at once, "a coin is flipped" to make one thing first and the other following.
That was well written BlackyLuke. Thanks for taking the time to explain the developments of the CW. I only started in Mod 5, and looking at the past modules it seems there were many road bumps leading to where we are now.
I see your perspective in how this might elevate the MoF over the SS CW. I main a spellstorm mage, and yes my class feature is going to be nerfed, but I'm not going to abandon my paragon just yet. I've invested a lot into this particular build and enjoy how it plays. Hope you don't go looking down on your spellstorm mage cousins though, usually other classes don't really differentiate between the two, just saying .
If anything, this change to storm spell will probably be remembered just like the previous class re-balances you outlined in your post, and nothing more. The wheel continues to turn ...
Indeed, it is just another change and now the introduction of "Disintegrate" makes sense too it is a non-paragon restricted pure damage spell. As mentioned every CW Encounters has a secondary effect to damage and for "Disintegrate" its basically situational more damage.
If you wanna do some more damage, there you go slot "Disintegrate"! I do see Spellstorm being quite decent still definitly a strong paragon. Personally I see it from a min/max point and depending on details Master of Flame might take over, but even I won't judge that as of now.
Excellent post. I, for one, am happy to finally be able to consider alternate class features. As a side note, did they remember to update the tooltip to mention the internal cooldown ?
Doubt it, Transparency is one of Neverwinters major weaknesses. In general I recommend to never trust a tooltip alone. Without exaggerating over 50% are flat out wrong. Luckily lots of players (including myself) do extensive testing and some even publish their data and test results.
Thrilling question: What about simultaneous procs...
...I guess we'll have to wait until the first ACT parses are there. If, e.g. an opening IT with EotS still triggers StSp on every affected mob, no big deal. If only one mob gets struck by lightning then - uh-oh.
There is no simultaneous. If multiple things are happening at once, "a coin is flipped" to make one thing first and the other following.
...so uh-oh.
Good thing my CW already is Opp built... ...might save me the respec.
The inevitable upcoming Lostmauth nerf will have less of an impact on CWs than GWFs. Even more so now that Storm Spell won't activate it. GWF's will defintely lose more damage than we do. We'll put on our +4 INT or +2INT/+2CHA belts and then we'll see who really cries.
Im cw, im spellstorm, i will live with change. im 3kgs and had hard time solo pala 2,5k gs. next time i will have to work harder, ok.
But what next? trs, pallas, bows, etc will be nefred? edit. just nefr them on pvp leave pve alone.
perhaps it time instead of nefring classless time to look at mobs, dungeons difficulty so we can do epics runs with friends, guilds and can enjoy time doinig them together again.
When I was a new player in mod 4, I mained a MoF CW. I remember getting kicked frequently because I was using a plague fire debuff enchant with master of flame, and not a vorpal SS mage.
'You don't do max DPS, you're a weight for the group, we kick you'
That's about when I started getting into warlock, and I haven't stopped since.
Thats bad to hear, but I assure you that whoever kicked you lost a valuable addition to their team.
Master of Flame does bring significant damage to the party, but it focus on boosting party dps over personal dps.
Scroll through combat log or use ACT to organize it better. You'll see that the actual dmg compared to base damage (in ACT shown by effectiveness) will be higher with a Master of Flame Renegade CW!
That's a really all over the road way of saying I don't think you should do dps because I divined the intention from mind's of the devs because I think so.
Cw isn't even 2nd top damage this mod. The nerf is a haircut of 20% of all damage. Will it kil the class, no obviously not. You're out of your might mind if you think its anything but irritating.
MoF has always been the lol of course you contribute path.
CW has always been a heavy damage class. Maybe not at the absolute top but always pushing it for 5 mods.
This role talk is always amusing because it always seems to come when it suits people. I could care less what some flavour text says. Striker just entitles you to decent single target damage, should gwf be better at tanking and more in line with tr single target? Oh? no. I wouldn't suggest it either. Lets not bandy about the grognardisms then.
We've also missed a key point in the road before the begging of mod 4 where the devs decided to reduce the damage on a lot of cw encounters. It was hardly just sudden storm, shard is a dead power. For what its worth I thought the eots change was a buff the way it ended up. Anyway they buffed the stormspell because they recognised they went too far and it was getting close to launch. My point here is it was in as a compensation. No one wanted all their damage to be coming off a proc but we made the most of it. Now we're just going to have a bunch of wet noodle encounters
The devs gutting the sw isn't my fault. I've said it should be buffed on a number of occasions. I don't think the class I main should be balanced on the basis of their wrecking another one.
Sadly im unable to fully understand what you try to say, im not a native english speaker after all.
Sure the Devs may have had another idea in mind and I just bring in my own White Knight Fight against CWs doing damage.
You can look at it that way.
Agreed on the second point too, looking at the overall damage of a group the change will seem minor and thats what counts in dungeons after all.
CWs are great for damage, because of AoE, it is conceptual to Area of Effect.
I tried to keep it short with my text, which I failed after all, but I did not want to explain every single change to CW over the past two years. That's why I didn't go into all M4 changes just mentioned there were some.
My opinion is not purely based on other classes, but the word is class balance over all so my point is if the CW has close to SWs damage output, but CWs bring in utility too ill always choose a CW. Also comparing SWs to GWFs on the other hand ... Oh boy.
I personally think it comes down to having not much AoE on the SW and one daily giving it GOD LEVEL-AoE which makes it hard to balance, but lets not talk about SWs in this thread.
After all im not a game designer just another filthy casual so don't ask me.
I cannot agree on Master of Flame being the "lol of course you contribute" path. I think it has a lot of potential, I think it could use a buff too there could be more... Maybe we see more Paragon specific feats, class features, dailies, encounters, at-wills or mechanics in the future I'd be excited!
GWFs know lostmauth belt is going to get reduced and will not cry about it, we will just put on a greater dex belt (feed the lostmauth one to it) and go out and do good damage.
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beckylunaticMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 14,231Arc User
I am wondering was this really written by our community manager? Looks to me like an edited post to troll on people.However,on the side note it is true that mamalion suggested this nerf to panderus long time ago so i guess our dear dev finally listened to him and took out his nerfhammer.
Uhh... it was a forum game. About on par with "last post wins" as far as my interest in it goes, but context matters.
I will attempt to say what I mean a little more clearly then.
I was making the point that unless you can point to an instance where the devs explained their mind for this mod it sounds like you are making a guess about their intentions. Our guesses often resemble our own wishes. That is true as much for myself. I would accept you say that you saw them say it as well but you seemed to base your guess around level design making their intention obvious.
The changes to the powers in mod 4 seem very relevant to me because we are finally arriving to their consequences. My thoughts as a cw are should I continue to attempt to proc much poorer stormspells or should I attempt to use higher damage encounters. What are higher damage encounters? Maybe chillstrike and suddenstorm and disintegrate. This would make life much harder for the other players. So i can do maybe very mediocre damage and pathetic control or pathetic damage and mediocre control.
I don't think saying that you have the role "controller" is sufficient justification for reducing damage. Everyone discusses roles in a way that is convenient for them personally. I made the joke that if we choose a strict interpretation should not then the sw and gwf damage be reduced to TR levels of pve damage. This is obviously crazy and none of us want this to happen. So my point about roles is that they are not useful as rules but only as guidelines or descriptions for people who do not know about the game.
I won't argue master of flame. I said it should be buffed elsewhere many times because I do not feel that it has been close to a competitive choice for a long time because I think you should be as useful in a group where you are the only cw.
So i can do maybe very mediocre damage and pathetic control or pathetic damage and mediocre control.
That seems a little exaggerated.
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romotheoneMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 729Arc User
edited June 2015
After some testing, I have to say, rebellionstuff was right. The 0,5 sec ICD is not even noticeable, storm spell without crits still hits for 20k. I got overwhelmed by the hype-train and jumped onto it, now calm down everyone.
The inevitable upcoming Lostmauth nerf will have less of an impact on CWs than GWFs. Even more so now that Storm Spell won't activate it. GWF's will defintely lose more damage than we do. We'll put on our +4 INT or +2INT/+2CHA belts and then we'll see who really cries.
They'll still be lightyears ahead. At some point the buff wheel will come round to us again. I'm just hoping the rebalance is something that makes longtermish sense for once and not random buffs see what happens, push it to live. Like when they increased suddenstorm casting speed because we seemed to be too weak in pvp.
"*The SW is a little weak at the moment while Damnation clearly overperforms the class as a whole needs a buff, just a minor ones to make him the best ranged DD again."
Play with your SW then!
There are false points on many level!
"The SW did not have something like this on most of his Powers. He was a pure Damage Dealer who also had some utility (definitly more than for example a GWF), but far less control and not much debuffing.
With the new SW, finally the role of the Control Wizard could be defined properly again. While he still had the most AoE he was not necessarily the main damage dealer of the party."
You expect us to cheer for that?
CW suffered big nerfs in the beginning of mod4.
Storm spell was some compensation.
"So the CW will still be great for parties! Renegade is awesome, you can use MoF and maybe go more support than ever before! CW will still do more damage than primary support classes that is sure and you can also use cool spells like Shard of Endless Avalance again and many more!"
Go and support your "nice" SW and GWF friends then!
He's not being utterly unreasonable unlike other people one could mention. Odd belief in a right to higher damage but its what happens when people lock onto phrases like striker. Maybe its mmo players and people who lock on to way things should be. Head cannon.
Maybe I said was exaggerated but not a whole lot. Mediocre but with the sense of being lower. I think that's where we will end up but if you try for more its going to be very ugly. I guess some people mean press v on mythic dc artifact and burst out oppressive every 30-40 seconds when they saw control. I can do that but its not a good answer to what control should look like for the low geared.
I'll presume you agree with the rest then since you just nitpicked the one thing.
Oh and for what its worth the sw used to have the potential for very usefull off healing. It wasn't necessarily just a pure nuke but generally speaking all of the classes have had alternative functions. GWF was once a credible tank even. This is the first time cw is off damage. No surprise many cws don't like it at all.
The ICD is on you, so you can only trigger Storm Spell (i.e. shoot lightning automatically) at a maximum of every .5s, however, it can strike as many targets as your spell hits (and indeed will) so as long as you are activating powers more slowly than twice a second, you will never actually *see* the ICD. When this becomes obvious is when you are stacking several effects that count as striking quickly (such as Icy Terrain + Conduit of Ice + Steal Time), and in cases like that it will be throttled back. This is primarily an AoE nerf in practice, but in some rare cases could affect single target rotations as well depending on your attack frequency.
As far as not critically striking, because of the way the power functions it was *always* critically striking and could never not crit, which meant that vorpal and other effects that boost critical severity were worth several times more value on this feature than intended when it originally got buffed. Since it cannot just natively crit (because it actually latches on to your powers so their targeting is inherited), I've opted to prevent it from critically striking instead of lowering the damage, which puts it more in line with where it should be. This is the bigger of the two nerfs. In cases where it was making up 30% of your damage, it will probably fall closer to 18%, which is much more in line with what we wanted from this feature in comparison with the options MoF brings to the table.
Different AOE/encounters have a chance to proc on the SAME mob. Essentially this equates to taking the crit damage away from normal procs. OH feature still can crit and proc on non crit hits. Still a substantial nerf, but is it big enough for us to consider moving away from the class feature....probably not. Will we rethink the Power/Crit ratio on stats...probably so.
EDIT: See Gentlemancrush above. A little different than what we may have thought.
The ICD is on you, so you can only trigger Storm Spell (i.e. shoot lightning automatically) at a maximum of every .5s, however, it can strike as many targets as your spell hits (and indeed will) so as long as you are activating powers more slowly than twice a second, you will never actually *see* the ICD. When this becomes obvious is when you are stacking several effects that count as striking quickly (such as Icy Terrain + Conduit of Ice + Steal Time), and in cases like that it will be throttled back. This is primarily an AoE nerf in practice, but in some rare cases could affect single target rotations as well depending on your attack frequency.
As far as not critically striking, because of the way the power functions it was *always* critically striking and could never not crit, which meant that vorpal and other effects that boost critical severity were worth several times more value on this feature than intended when it originally got buffed. Since it cannot just natively crit (because it actually latches on to your powers so their targeting is inherited), I've opted to prevent it from critically striking instead of lowering the damage, which puts it more in line with where it should be. This is the bigger of the two nerfs. In cases where it was making up 30% of your damage, it will probably fall closer to 18%, which is much more in line with what we wanted from this feature in comparison with the options MoF brings to the table.
You explained it. Why do I feel worse? Why can't I just be happy.
The ICD is on you, so you can only trigger Storm Spell (i.e. shoot lightning automatically) at a maximum of every .5s, however, it can strike as many targets as your spell hits (and indeed will) so as long as you are activating powers more slowly than twice a second, you will never actually *see* the ICD. When this becomes obvious is when you are stacking several effects that count as striking quickly (such as Icy Terrain + Conduit of Ice + Steal Time), and in cases like that it will be throttled back. This is primarily an AoE nerf in practice, but in some rare cases could affect single target rotations as well depending on your attack frequency.
As far as not critically striking, because of the way the power functions it was *always* critically striking and could never not crit, which meant that vorpal and other effects that boost critical severity were worth several times more value on this feature than intended when it originally got buffed. Since it cannot just natively crit (because it actually latches on to your powers so their targeting is inherited), I've opted to prevent it from critically striking instead of lowering the damage, which puts it more in line with where it should be. This is the bigger of the two nerfs. In cases where it was making up 30% of your damage, it will probably fall closer to 18%, which is much more in line with what we wanted from this feature in comparison with the options MoF brings to the table.
GC - Can you please explain more why you would not then go back and re-evaluate the encounter powers that you nerfed back before mod 3 that required this compensatory buff to storm spell? Most of us would have preferred not having to rely on this crutch to make up lost damage. This is too large of a nerf, and stormspell should at least be able to crit based on our innate cc%
Comments
As for it not being a big deal, we will see. Some small tests have already been done and it sounds like the .5 ICD is PER SPELL and PER TARGET so if both of those are true- yes it is a smaller nerf (but still a nerf due to it not critting)
If either of those are not true, then its a rather large nerf.
There is no simultaneous. If multiple things are happening at once, "a coin is flipped" to make one thing first and the other following.
Indeed, it is just another change and now the introduction of "Disintegrate" makes sense too it is a non-paragon restricted pure damage spell. As mentioned every CW Encounters has a secondary effect to damage and for "Disintegrate" its basically situational more damage.
If you wanna do some more damage, there you go slot "Disintegrate"! I do see Spellstorm being quite decent still definitly a strong paragon. Personally I see it from a min/max point and depending on details Master of Flame might take over, but even I won't judge that as of now.
My thanks to you.
Doubt it, Transparency is one of Neverwinters major weaknesses. In general I recommend to never trust a tooltip alone. Without exaggerating over 50% are flat out wrong. Luckily lots of players (including myself) do extensive testing and some even publish their data and test results.
...so uh-oh.
Good thing my CW already is Opp built... ...might save me the respec.
But what next? trs, pallas, bows, etc will be nefred?
edit. just nefr them on pvp leave pve alone.
perhaps it time instead of nefring classless time to look at mobs, dungeons difficulty so we can do epics runs with friends, guilds and can enjoy time doinig them together again.
Thats bad to hear, but I assure you that whoever kicked you lost a valuable addition to their team.
Master of Flame does bring significant damage to the party, but it focus on boosting party dps over personal dps.
Scroll through combat log or use ACT to organize it better. You'll see that the actual dmg compared to base damage (in ACT shown by effectiveness) will be higher with a Master of Flame Renegade CW!
Warlock is a fine class, gratz.
Sadly im unable to fully understand what you try to say, im not a native english speaker after all.
Sure the Devs may have had another idea in mind and I just bring in my own White Knight Fight against CWs doing damage.
You can look at it that way.
Agreed on the second point too, looking at the overall damage of a group the change will seem minor and thats what counts in dungeons after all.
CWs are great for damage, because of AoE, it is conceptual to Area of Effect.
I tried to keep it short with my text, which I failed after all, but I did not want to explain every single change to CW over the past two years. That's why I didn't go into all M4 changes just mentioned there were some.
My opinion is not purely based on other classes, but the word is class balance over all so my point is if the CW has close to SWs damage output, but CWs bring in utility too ill always choose a CW. Also comparing SWs to GWFs on the other hand ... Oh boy.
I personally think it comes down to having not much AoE on the SW and one daily giving it GOD LEVEL-AoE which makes it hard to balance, but lets not talk about SWs in this thread.
After all im not a game designer just another filthy casual so don't ask me.
I cannot agree on Master of Flame being the "lol of course you contribute" path. I think it has a lot of potential, I think it could use a buff too there could be more... Maybe we see more Paragon specific feats, class features, dailies, encounters, at-wills or mechanics in the future I'd be excited!
Uhh... it was a forum game. About on par with "last post wins" as far as my interest in it goes, but context matters.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
I was making the point that unless you can point to an instance where the devs explained their mind for this mod it sounds like you are making a guess about their intentions. Our guesses often resemble our own wishes. That is true as much for myself. I would accept you say that you saw them say it as well but you seemed to base your guess around level design making their intention obvious.
The changes to the powers in mod 4 seem very relevant to me because we are finally arriving to their consequences. My thoughts as a cw are should I continue to attempt to proc much poorer stormspells or should I attempt to use higher damage encounters. What are higher damage encounters? Maybe chillstrike and suddenstorm and disintegrate. This would make life much harder for the other players. So i can do maybe very mediocre damage and pathetic control or pathetic damage and mediocre control.
I don't think saying that you have the role "controller" is sufficient justification for reducing damage. Everyone discusses roles in a way that is convenient for them personally. I made the joke that if we choose a strict interpretation should not then the sw and gwf damage be reduced to TR levels of pve damage. This is obviously crazy and none of us want this to happen. So my point about roles is that they are not useful as rules but only as guidelines or descriptions for people who do not know about the game.
I won't argue master of flame. I said it should be buffed elsewhere many times because I do not feel that it has been close to a competitive choice for a long time because I think you should be as useful in a group where you are the only cw.
That seems a little exaggerated.
They'll still be lightyears ahead. At some point the buff wheel will come round to us again. I'm just hoping the rebalance is something that makes longtermish sense for once and not random buffs see what happens, push it to live. Like when they increased suddenstorm casting speed because we seemed to be too weak in pvp.
"*The SW is a little weak at the moment while Damnation clearly overperforms the class as a whole needs a buff, just a minor ones to make him the best ranged DD again."
Play with your SW then!
There are false points on many level!
With the new SW, finally the role of the Control Wizard could be defined properly again. While he still had the most AoE he was not necessarily the main damage dealer of the party."
You expect us to cheer for that?
CW suffered big nerfs in the beginning of mod4.
Storm spell was some compensation.
Not to mention some SWs phobic attitude!
Should have stopped reading by that antiCW propaganda...!
Go and support your "nice" SW and GWF friends then!
I am waiting for my Sorcerer thank you very much!
I despise SWs and GWFs antiCW attitude...
Maybe I said was exaggerated but not a whole lot. Mediocre but with the sense of being lower. I think that's where we will end up but if you try for more its going to be very ugly. I guess some people mean press v on mythic dc artifact and burst out oppressive every 30-40 seconds when they saw control. I can do that but its not a good answer to what control should look like for the low geared.
I'll presume you agree with the rest then since you just nitpicked the one thing.
Oh and for what its worth the sw used to have the potential for very usefull off healing. It wasn't necessarily just a pure nuke but generally speaking all of the classes have had alternative functions. GWF was once a credible tank even. This is the first time cw is off damage. No surprise many cws don't like it at all.
Yes.
For purposes of 10 char
LEECHES
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
The ICD is on you, so you can only trigger Storm Spell (i.e. shoot lightning automatically) at a maximum of every .5s, however, it can strike as many targets as your spell hits (and indeed will) so as long as you are activating powers more slowly than twice a second, you will never actually *see* the ICD. When this becomes obvious is when you are stacking several effects that count as striking quickly (such as Icy Terrain + Conduit of Ice + Steal Time), and in cases like that it will be throttled back. This is primarily an AoE nerf in practice, but in some rare cases could affect single target rotations as well depending on your attack frequency.
As far as not critically striking, because of the way the power functions it was *always* critically striking and could never not crit, which meant that vorpal and other effects that boost critical severity were worth several times more value on this feature than intended when it originally got buffed. Since it cannot just natively crit (because it actually latches on to your powers so their targeting is inherited), I've opted to prevent it from critically striking instead of lowering the damage, which puts it more in line with where it should be. This is the bigger of the two nerfs. In cases where it was making up 30% of your damage, it will probably fall closer to 18%, which is much more in line with what we wanted from this feature in comparison with the options MoF brings to the table.
Different AOE/encounters have a chance to proc on the SAME mob. Essentially this equates to taking the crit damage away from normal procs. OH feature still can crit and proc on non crit hits. Still a substantial nerf, but is it big enough for us to consider moving away from the class feature....probably not. Will we rethink the Power/Crit ratio on stats...probably so.
EDIT: See Gentlemancrush above. A little different than what we may have thought.
You explained it. Why do I feel worse? Why can't I just be happy.
GC - Can you please explain more why you would not then go back and re-evaluate the encounter powers that you nerfed back before mod 3 that required this compensatory buff to storm spell? Most of us would have preferred not having to rely on this crutch to make up lost damage. This is too large of a nerf, and stormspell should at least be able to crit based on our innate cc%