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M15: Control Wizard Class Changes
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Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 41Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Hey there Control Wizards,
In M15, Control Wizards will be getting a ton of various changes to core mechanics, powers, and feats. We really felt that Control Wizard had a ton of awesome interactions between powers but that they didn’t intertwine well or had conflicting gameplay elements. To address this, we have taken a look at many Class Features, mechanics, and bugs and tuned them accordingly. The main reason there are so many changes is that we didn’t want to fix Control Wizard halfway and leave them in a state where some things worked well together (and became the default build) and others were pushed to the side.
Two of the biggest bugs with feats were found in Blighting Power and Tempest Magic. Both of these feats were intended to grant 6% and 5% bonus damage (respectively) but actually granted ~19% and 33% in the situations where they were applied. This has been fixed and is a majority of the reason why Control Wizards got a flat 25% damage increase and an additional 20% increase to cold damage powers. The other reason was the nerf to Chilling Presence, which is explained further below.
Another one of the big bugs that plagued Arcane builds was that Arcane Mastery rarely did exactly what the tooltip said it did, in regards to additional bonuses on other powers. And, when it did do what the tooltip said, the numbers didn’t quite line up. Almost all of the Arcane Mastery bonuses on powers have been adjusted and Arcane Mastery itself has had changes to it.
We want Arcane Mastery to feel more meaningful, so it has had its duration reduced and its effectiveness increased so that you care about how many stacks you have active. Also, things like disintegrate now benefit greatly from Arcane Mastery. With this, we hope to see some Arcane-based builds or builds that utilize Arcane Presence with other elements.
Finally, we wanted to reduce the power of Chilling Presence so that Control Wizards had options to choose other class features. Instead of hindering Chilling Presence too hard, we decided to reduce its power by half and then bring other class features up to par.
In M15, Control Wizards will be getting a ton of various changes to core mechanics, powers, and feats. We really felt that Control Wizard had a ton of awesome interactions between powers but that they didn’t intertwine well or had conflicting gameplay elements. To address this, we have taken a look at many Class Features, mechanics, and bugs and tuned them accordingly. The main reason there are so many changes is that we didn’t want to fix Control Wizard halfway and leave them in a state where some things worked well together (and became the default build) and others were pushed to the side.
Two of the biggest bugs with feats were found in Blighting Power and Tempest Magic. Both of these feats were intended to grant 6% and 5% bonus damage (respectively) but actually granted ~19% and 33% in the situations where they were applied. This has been fixed and is a majority of the reason why Control Wizards got a flat 25% damage increase and an additional 20% increase to cold damage powers. The other reason was the nerf to Chilling Presence, which is explained further below.
Another one of the big bugs that plagued Arcane builds was that Arcane Mastery rarely did exactly what the tooltip said it did, in regards to additional bonuses on other powers. And, when it did do what the tooltip said, the numbers didn’t quite line up. Almost all of the Arcane Mastery bonuses on powers have been adjusted and Arcane Mastery itself has had changes to it.
We want Arcane Mastery to feel more meaningful, so it has had its duration reduced and its effectiveness increased so that you care about how many stacks you have active. Also, things like disintegrate now benefit greatly from Arcane Mastery. With this, we hope to see some Arcane-based builds or builds that utilize Arcane Presence with other elements.
Finally, we wanted to reduce the power of Chilling Presence so that Control Wizards had options to choose other class features. Instead of hindering Chilling Presence too hard, we decided to reduce its power by half and then bring other class features up to par.
Baseline:
- The base damage of all control Wizard powers has been increased by ~25%
- All Cold damage powers have had their damage increased by an additional ~20%
- Arcane Mastery: has been slightly revamped:
- Arcane Mastery now lasts for 8 seconds (down from 10)
- Arcane Mastery no longer fades when combat ends
- Arcane Mastery damage bonus increased to 4% (up from 3%)
- Arcane Mastery no longer increases Lightning and Fire damage dealt
- The effects that Arcane Mastery has on other powers are now accurately detailed in their tooltips
- Chill: Stacks of chill now last for 3 seconds (up from 2.5 seconds)
- Control Mastery: This power is now correctly displayed in the Control Wizards powers sheet. (Functionality unchanged)
- Control Mastery: Control effects against non-player enemies are 2.5x as effective
- Smolder / Rimefire Smolder: Fixed an issue where re-applying Rimefire smolder, particularly through Critical Conflagration, would cause the DoT timer to reset
At-wills:
- Storm Pillar: Charge time reduced to 1.25 seconds (down from 1.5)
- Storm Pillar: Now creates a pillar of lightning if charged for 80% of the total charge time (down from 100%)
- Storm Pillar: Pillar of Lightning now deals ~17% less damage
Encounters:
- Repel: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
- Conduit of Ice: Duration increased to 6 seconds (up from 5)
- Conduit of Ice: Fixed an issue where the first stack of Chill was not correctly being added to the bonus damage
- Ray of Enfeeblement: Duration increased to 8 seconds (up from 5)
- Ray of Enfeeblement: Duration no longer increases based on Arcane Mastery stacks
- Ray of Enfeeblement: Debuff effectiveness now increases by 1% per stack of Arcane Mastery
- Ray of Enfeeblement: Damage dealt reduced by ~25%
- Ray of Enfeeblement: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
- Disintegrate (Reworked): No longer "instantly kills" foes when they are below a weapon damage threshold
- Disintegrate: Now deals 100% more damage to foes below 25% hit points
- Disintegrate (New): The Damage bonus granted by Arcane Mastery stacks are twice as effective for Disintegrate
- Disintegrate (Spell Mastery): Now deals 300% increased damage to foes below the Health Threshold
- Disintegrate: Damage per rank reduced to 10% (down from 15%)
- Imprisonment: Cooldown reduced to 28 seconds (down from 40)
- Imprisonment: Now grants one stack of Arcane Mastery when used
- Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Now grants one additional stack of Arcane Mastery when used
- Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (down from 20)
- Imprisonment: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
- Entangling Force: Base Cooldown changed to 16 seconds at all ranks (down from 20-14 based on rank)
- Entangling Force: Cooldown is no longer affected on each rank up
- Entangling Force: Base Duration decreased to 1.25 seconds (down from 1.5 seconds)
- Entangling Force: Duration is now increased by 0.25 seconds (up from maximum possible .2 seconds) per rank
- Entangling Force: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers.
- Entangling Force (Spell Mastery): Now correctly increases the duration of the hold
- Entangling Force (Spell Mastery): Hold duration increased by 1 seconds (up from 0)
- Entangling Force: Fixed an issue where this power would not deal damage to control immune enemies
- Steal Time (Reworked): Removed a portion of the delay that occurs after the power had finished casting
- Steal Time: This power now slows targets for the entire duration of its cast, rather than just the first half of it.
- Steal Time: The slow now stacks 4 times (up from 3)
- Steal Time: The slow now correctly applies one 20% slow every stack, instead of both a 20% and 30% slow.
- Steal Time: When cancelling the power early, the cooldown is now reduced by 50%, instead of ~66%
- Steal Time: The slow duration is now increased by 0.2 seconds for each stack of Arcane Mastery (up from 0.1 seconds)
- Steal Time: The buff duration applied through spell mastery is now increased by 0.2 seconds for each stack of Arcane Mastery (up from 0.1 seconds)
- Steal Time: When used with Spell Mastery the buff is now applied to allies while casting the power.
- Steal Time: Movement speed buff decreased to 80%, down from ~92%
- Steal Time: Fixed an issue where the Spell Mastery version of this power would deal 0 damage multiple times.
- Steal Time: The stun that is applied now correctly scales with each rank-up.
- Fanning the Flame: Fixed various tooltip errors
- Fanning the Flame: Now applies Smolder to the primary target
- Fanning the Flame: All damage dealt by this power is now increased by 10% per rank (down from 10% for the main hit and 12% for others)
- Fanning the Flame: Gathering Flames and Spread damage increased by ~7%
- Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the DoT effect would only deal damage 3 times (instead of 4)
- Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the DoT effect timer would reset when re-applied
- Fanning the Flame: Fixed an issue where the Action Points gained from this power were 75% of what they should have been
- Icy Rays: Immobilization duration increased to 1.5 seconds when used on the same target (up from 1.25 seconds)
Post edited by frozenfirevr on
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Class Features:
Daily Powers:
Feats
Heroic Feats:
Oppressor Feats:
Thaumaturge Feats:
Renegade Feats:
Will chaos magic proc from DoTs?
Imprisonment: Now grants one stack of Arcane Mastery when used
Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Now grants one additional stack of Arcane Mastery when used
Imprisonment (Spell Mastery): Cooldown reduced to 14 seconds (down from 20)
Imprisonment: The amount of AP granted by this power has been adjusted to be more in-line with other encounter powers
There's a significant oversight here: Imprisonment is still in the game.
*goes back to digesting the changes*
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
I had all but completely given up on any kind of attention, love, or focus being shown to CWs.
The last time a saw a list of CW changes this long, years ago, most CWs left the game.
I can't tell you how encouraging it is to see this list. I've not particularly being after more class DPS, but I've definitely wanted to see changes relative to other classes that will see parties actually see value in taking a CW along. Additionally, it's pretty obvious that vast majority of CWs want a viable DPS role.
I understand that this is the starting point of your changes across classes, and I hope the balance ends up well, but above all, I really appreciate that you're putting this level of care and attention into this process
Thank you.
and I agreee @vorphied ... imprisonment??? who uses that??? lol
@frozenfirevr is the renegadge spec even viable?? if you are playing endgame, do those players who have thier stats already balanced need those buffs??? a little extra crit or arp when they already have what they need?
i am honestly not sure what I feel about this.
Guild Leader - Valaurakari Ascension
VA is the creator and proud member of The Round Table Alliance
Should be kinda cool for CWs to be a more potent support role, but I'm not totally sure that CW as a DPSer is getting much of a buff here. Unless the flat 25% buff to everything is sufficient to make Thaums keep up with other strikers -- maybe it is.
It certainly does seem that Shatter DPS meta is being retired & repurposed as a nice PVP capstone, reducing opponent damage & rewarding lots of chill.
Civil Anarchy | Nyv's Workshop for MW Professions | Better raid coordination with NWRaid.com
Respectfully, Chaotic Growth is still useless. Healing and mitigation that isn't guaranteed when you most need it is not valuable, and we have other classes to provide powerful, reliable burst healing.
Chaotic Nexus has no value for end-game parties.
Chaotic Discipline is good.
Chaotic Fortitude is of extremely niche usefulness...which may be okay now since it won't prevent a different version of Chaos Magic from being applied.
Chaotic Speed looks like a fun utility bonus, and the Deflection could be situationally useful.
Contagion - Cleric
Testament - Wizard
Pestilence - Ranger
Dominion - Paladin
NIGHTSWATCH
CWs were already undesirable for anything other than Cradle of the Death God, why relegate the class to the garbage bin?
Also, you might want to rethink Power Surge, replacing a useless feat with another equally useless feat doesn't seem productive.
I fear that CWs will almost never get into groups for endgame content if the changes were to go live as-is.
Thomas Foss, Lead Designer, even stated in a recent Nova interview, that it was unfortunate that, at the time, mages had to be "Control Wizards" and couldn't just be "Wizards". Clear implication that they were forced by D&D licensing, at the time, to go with a control role.
For the last 3 years Cryptic have been free to drop the word "Control" from "Control Wizard", but that would be a serious rework of the class, and they're more likely to put that level of effort into a new class.
I'll happily take rework of the existing levers to make the CW a valued member of end-game parties.
- Steam Time cannot proc weapon enchantments.
- Storm Pillars arcs cannot critically strike.
- Storm Pillar counts as a phyical object in game and can be knocked back/pushed with certain enemy attacks.
- Assailant cannot critically strike and does not scale with debuffs.
- Abyss of Choas Cannot critically strike and does not scale with debuffs.
- Conduit of Ice is a cold power that doesn't add chill. The off tab version should add chill to the primary target.
Feedback
- All damage should be increased by a further 24%, you took away 24% by changing chilling presence. You only replaced the bugged damage bonuses.
- CW Capstones are very Weak. Shatter Strike 'change' was not needed. It wasn't overperfoming. Assailant is also weak. It would be nice if Assailant proced on every hit for a % of weapon damage against any target. It would improve the consistency in CW damage a bit more.
- Arcane Presence should do more than 1% damage increase to each element. At best its 5%. 2% or 3% would be good.
- Power Surge should increase the next activated powers by % rather than an at will.
- Storm Pillar still takes too long to charge for it to be useful. It still feels a bit clunky.
I'm for for the CW class starting to look more like the intended design. This is the fresh look opportunity to have it all start making sense.
Bring back the Thaumaturge for DPS!
then they put the shatter cap in, and that was worth having some points in the opressor tree, to the detriment of having points in Thaum. You lose out on spell twisting and then spend a heap of time money and resourses trying to get some recovery back on your toon.
now they are putting a new thing in the renegade tree so that you can help buff ap gain... so if you want to run in a group of pugs you will need to be a renegade to even get a look in. that part doesnt bother me, cause i dont pug, i only run with my guild, but it will make a new "meta" for other wizards who pug.
the real question in my mind is how much this ap gain really matters when you run end game and you have people with artificers builds and stupid high buffs and recovery rates. probably wont even be a drop in the ocean - but the testers will sort that out.
so what is the point of a wizard??? we cant control bosses, so no point being an opressor. We apparently arent meant to be classed as a dps, cause they devs nerfed and confused us enough to not make that viable. and we arent buffers, cause at end game the players already have all the arp, crit and ap gain that they need.
i have played this class for 4 years and i love it. but i have seen it go from a good dps toon to being twisted and contorted to the point where we cant compete dps wise against other classes, and the meta excludes wizards from pug runs.
Mind you, i want to add that i am not complaining about my wizards damage. she holds her own as much as she can and i have no trouble main dpsing the endgame dungeons, however, she could be better if the game allowed it, and the devs stopped HAMSTER it up.
my opinions are based on my gaming experience in neverwinter, and i am not the best at numbers. I would be more than happy for someone to prove me wrong with the stats.
Having said all of that, i will have to reserve my final judgement until i play the new content.
Guild Leader - Valaurakari Ascension
VA is the creator and proud member of The Round Table Alliance
I disagree with "we apparently aren't meant to be dps". That's an abandoned "Control Wizard" 4th edition D&D thing from the time of NWO launch. D&D owners WotC dropped all that 3 years ago, and Crytpic have been free to drop it as well. It was a bad idea that didn't last (except here). You'll typically hear that from players of other DPS classes, basically lobbying. It's all part of the MMO game balance concerns. Don't be fooled - at the highest levels, anywhere else, mages are very heavy damage dealers.
It's not clear if the damage increase is a purely compensatory change for other nerfs, or if we'll actually end up valued members of parties.
If we're not valued members of parties at the end of this, then yeah, time to go play elsewhere. This, however, is definitely the opportunity we've waited 3 years for.
I'm more wondering if Evocation will be worthwhile now for overland farming.
Dead🔪Dead🔪So, Icy Veins used to be 12%/24% damage boost. Now it's 6%/12%. But CW damage was increased by 45%! But it was reduced by about the same amount! So ... uhhh... huh.
I suppose ditching Chilling Presence and Icy Veins opens up different options now.
That is a LOT to digest and it's kinda hard to see which end is up. With such a large flat damage boost, especially for cold powers, it *seems* like it'd have to be an overall boost. It was silly for Opp to be the DPS path, but unless the general damage boosts alone are enough to make us first-rate DPS, Assailant seems like it could still use some love.
The Renegade changes are interesting. If each Chaos Magic effect can proc simultaneously at 5% chance, it would take a while to get them up, but you could potentially have all 6 of them up on average every 20 attacks. That could add up to a LOT of buffs being up a LOT of the time! Renegade would be a complete game-changer for groups up to around ~14K, and still decent beyond that. It gets even better with Trials and BHEs.
As for 'Uncontrolled Obliteration', that totally depends on just how "randomly" (or rarely) it really triggers.
Compared to what powers of other classes are capable of, it wouldn't hurt to make the feat last for 20 seconds with the 20 second cooldown.
Shard of Endless Avalanche could use some love:
First, when cast from spell mastery, you don't gain a stack of Arcane mastery, since oftentimes, you cast the Shard away from you.
I'd also like to see its travel speed and distance increased, to make it a more reliable "AoE CC far-range engage ability".
This could be compensated with a longer cool down, since using this ability mid-fight is generally less desired.
As people have stated, the trigger chance on Chaos Magic is currently a little bit underwhelming.
Lastly, I'm not sure about the design change to Disintegrate: The spell becomes really good once a target is below 25% health. This could lead to people changing the active abilities during a boss fight (slotting Disintegrate into mastery), which i don't like the idea of. I'd rather have the ability fulfill a consistent role, which does not promote swapping abilities mid-combat.
Generally speaking, I'm excited about the changes and happy that you take a more thorough look at the CW.
Maxell
class-cw
As for the Oppressor path I dislike the update.
As for the thrum path and new feat not really an update.
Renegade is the lone path with a decent change to feats, etc...but as the buff path it is still not as good as a templock or a 2nd dc.
This update for this cw is a failure from my point of view. I am not happy and my cw will probably be put on the back burner come mod 15.
Go back to the drawing board for the cw pleas, it needs more work.
Disclaimer: These are my damage measurements! I'm not a BIS CW and I might not use the best build. Should other people's damage measurements differ significantly, please reply!
Assailing Force
I ran a few combat tests and assailant dealt only about 10-16% of my damage, which means that Assailant is as strong as a multiplicative 11-20% damage increase buff.
When compared to keystones of other classes, Assailant is quite weak. For instance, it pales in comparison to GWF's destroyer's purpose, which can give up to 50% more damage (after a buildup), among other benefits. Similarly, HR's biting snares grants them 30% more damage among AP generation and root duration.
However, Assailant is a pure damage keystone and thus should be at least as strong as biting snares. Given the Nerf to chilling presence, this could be a good way to give dps-focused CWs more damage, without having them rely on a single overpowered class feature.
In my opinion, the damage of assailant is not the primary problem, but the frequency it is triggered at: Over the course of a couple of encounters, fighting 42 non-boss enemies total, assailant only triggered 81 times, around twice per enemy, dealing around 30k damage each time and contributing to 10% of my damage dealt. When fighting a hunt boss, assailant dealt around 16% of my damage.
In both cases, that's not enough damage dealt, because if assailant were to compete with a multiplicative 50% damage buff, it would have to deal 33% of my damage. Therefore I suggest doubling the frequency at which assailant triggers, as well as increasing the damage it deals against non-boss enemies by an additional 50%. (Such as raising the % damage to 22%, but leaving the maximum weapon damage at 800%) This would lead to assailant contributing to ~32% of my damage against bosses and ~30% against normal enemies. Assailant may need a damage reduction in PVP as a result, however that is not something I can speak about.
In general, Assailant could also benefit from having a 100% chance to proc, but with a cool down. From what i understand, an ability that hits multiple times can trigger assailant multiple times (like it can trigger storm spell multiple times), making such abilities more desirable. Given that icy terrain and conduit of ice (both hitting multiple times) are already used by pretty much every build, a change like that could widen the abilities used (at least for MoF, since SSM will not give up such abilities due to them triggering Storm Spell).
Shatter Strike
Initially, the keystone sounded quite promising, however both its damage and synergies seem underwhelming:
Frostbite removes all chill stacks when the effect starts, making you stack chill all over again (after which it is not removed, as long as frostbite doesn't trigger again). This is bad, due to the oppressor's chill synergies: Chilling Presence's and Conduit of Ice's bonus damage based on still stacks, the damage from blighting power and the reduction to damage dealt from Cold Infusion. Instead, frostbite should remove all stacks when the effect ends. This seems like a nice QoL change and prevents the keystone from being counter-intuitive.
Frostbite states, that the target takes damage as if it was controlled. Does this apply to the Frigid Winds feat and the double damage from Chilling Presence? If not, please consider changing the feat to do so and mention it in the tool tip. This would enable CW oppressor's to be strong(er) debuffers during boss fights and gives Shatter Strike the impact it needs during boss fights. (Also, the ability would have a lot of awesome synergies - something I like to see in general!) In that case, I'd be totally fine with reducing the duration and cool down of Frostbite to compensate for the buff. (I'm thinking of 5sec duration and 10s cool down for a little bit less than 50% up time).
Furthermore, shatter strike's damage is also underwhelming. Unlike Assailant, this is not such a problem, since Shatter Strike provides other nice benefits. The 33% weapon damage against control immune targets only amounted up to 5% of my damage dealt, while i was using 3 encounter powers that (presumably) count as control powers (chill strike, icy terrain, icy rays). Against normal enemies, shatter also only dealt around 5% of my damage. In both cases I'd like to see the damage doubled.
Lastly, just like Assailant, I'd like Shatter Strike to trigger 100% of times on frozen enemies, but only able to be triggered once during one freeze. This is for the reasons stated above and also would give the spell more consistency. I'd be even better if Shatter's damage was delayed by 0.5-1s, so it doesn't reduce the freeze duration as much.
Thanks for reading this in-depth post and hopefully implementing
allsome of the suggested changes.1. Be allowed to Critically Strike - As its not a power that deals damage based on a damage like Creeping Death/SoD... it should be able to.
2. Scale with Debuffs.
3. Proc off At Wills/Encounters/Dailies. Other Thaum Feats have been changed to do so.
4. Have Consistency. Have 100% chance to proc off Powers.
5. Remove the HP Cap & adjust damage values. It should be dealing around ~20% of your damage to perform like a capstone feat. Try to avoid putting in a ICD because cooldowns make powers less desirable and wizards shouldn't be punished for getting to a point where they can spam powers a lot.
A further increase is needed and would make up for the loss in damage from the fix to Tempest Magic, change in Arcane Stacks, rework to Chilling Presence (Loss of 24% damage from the vs Frozen Targets), rework of Shatter Strike and the nerf to Multiprocs in M13.
Assailant is a weird power. At low levels it functions relatively well but when you get to 70, it looses its power. At low levels it deals around 10-18% of your damage. But at endgame it deals a low 3-5%.
I think if these changes were done, people would enjoy playing CW.