New Guide

Nurfed_You - Harshlands wrote: »

So let me get this straight, instead of helping out wizzies in general hyper babies or no. You'd rather just ahve 99% of wizzies suck? nothing gets lvl'd the old fashioned way now, so i'd rather have a guide up so that ppl who actually come to forums for information can benefit from it. Maybe some of the hyper baby wizzies can learn a few basics. i mean most wizzies i see nowadays dont even run away when you seal them.

l

No, just the hyper-babies. And honestly, I don't see a point in pleveling. In my mind, hypers/ff (mostly ff) should be used for mid-high level players for whom grinding would just be nightmarish. I would say about after 80.

You miss out on learning how to do **** and instead skip to endgame where you just do the same thing every day. Everyone in my fac just does BH Rebirth, Nivy, FF and TW. Pre-endgame you do pretty much just grind and do bh/cs, but at least you end up making progress with it.

So when you plvl all of your toons to 105, how much have you actually gotten out of the game? I guess pleveling and skipping is your own choice, but it's really annoying when you see the other wizards stand there when they're sealed
when bm's only know how to use 5aps and carry a pair of half-decent axes for an occasional hf
or when veno's don't know luring requires that you unsummon the pet.

And also, since when would 99% of wizzies suck? The old way if you sucked, you ragequit because you knew you couldn't get to endgame. Now when things get rough, you just have to plevel to endgame bliss and r8/9. (Though the "bliss" has been downgraded to "contentment" due to the fact that most dd classes can do most of our jobs)

Ok, fine you win.b:shutup

Nurfed_You - Harshlands wrote: »

lawl, ppl plvl chars because you really dont learn anything by killing mobs. poke poke knock back seal poke poke. every mob in the game pre 80, dead.

that knowledge is now useless since he is 100 (bh squads dont want mobs sealed or knocked back)

Now you have a wizard, who didn't plvl, that has no idea how to pvp.

On the other hand the PvP side of the game has changed dramatically in favour of people willing to spend a lot and go for rank 9. So while people before enjoyed fights against more or less equally geared opponents wheny ou are talking about fights for grindspots and so on now especiallly on PVE servers people only go PK / PvP once their character is fully refined and geared. To maintain a good learning curve constantly fighting against slightly better enemies is the best training you can get. It is rather useless to take on some fights if the difference in gear is extreme. For instance i fought a r9 barb from my faction for training and was able to kite him and hit with undined sage bids but due to the fact that I myself only got r8 and he was fully stoned and refined the dmg was ridiculously low ~2.5k non crit on a charmed 26k hp barb. He then 1 shotted me with the 1 range attack barbs have because he did 5k+ dmg to me. So even if you apply the right strategy this wont help you winning if you dont have the firepower and hp/def required to win. So knowing the class and being successfull in PvP are also two different things. Do you really think the people fighting in PWI tournament are the best geared PWI players by incident? The only way to determine who's the better player would be to have a fight where both players would have to use standardized characters ( doesnt mean that they could not be modified but not in a way that 1 players normal attack does more dmg than other players ulti). And playing PvE also helps to get to know dungeons and to realize how to react in certain situations. I mean i saw lvl 80+ clerics who were not able to use purify properly ....
There are also many lvl 100 wizards who have no idea how to time their ultis and how to use elemental weaknesses .... I talked with some people who lvled up quickly to 100 and regreted it when they started to play dungeons because they had to learn those instances and skills straight from the start. Lvling up the old fashioned way helps to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your char better.

greetz harm0wnie

negativereaction wrote: »

any
so i guess your real complaint is, what, that those players make a bad name for their class while they're still learning to play at 100? so do the option 1 players, the only difference is they do it at level 50 so no one notices or cares. well, and that the level 100 players presumably learn faster if they're practicing by PKing against r8+.

well my real complaint is that PWI has so much more to offer for a player than lvling up fast to get to lvl 100+ and do PvP. Because apart from the BHs people only run Nirvana and FC when they go for dungeons. (Just think about the last unwined dungeon run or cardboss or lunar or trophymode or ...) Why? - because they dont play the game to enjoy it but to get to a point where they have it all stuff + lvl + they dont play to have fun with other players instead they look on their exp/h and coin/h and even worse they want to get there by themself. I have seen so many good games becoming unbalanced and boring simply because the company which ran those games decided to milk the cashcow.

You can't deny that PWI since tideborn and aps craze changed from a social oriented game where people were friendly and helpfull into a game were basically everbody is fighting on his/her own. And PWI encourages this behaviour because they can make money from. I am well aware that this is a company running the game but customer satisfaction helps binding players to the game while exploiting players to gain the quick buck is only good for maxing short term profits. With rank9 they made the gap between cash player and non cash player even higher and or forced non cash players to undergo extreme merchanting to remain competitive in terms of PvP.

So maybe my approach to the game is different but to be honest competing in a mmorpg is totally pointless because its just a question of how much do you want to spend(time/money). So I dont care much about PvP because i think other categories of games like 3d shooters are better suited for competitive gaming. But since many people lvl up fast just to do exactly that thing + many of them dont have patience to actually play the game the attitude of many players in PWI has become different. And think about it what happens with a player who has it all. Such a player rerolls because he's getting bored.

greetz harm0wnie

Nurfed_You - Harshlands wrote: »

@harmonie: what refine is yoru r8? i was fighitng r9 +10 vit stone barbs and winning not all that long ago, so i dont see hwo you only hit 2.5k unless your unrefined

Atm its +6 r8 sword and on average targets my sage bids hits 4-5k non crit without undine in TW. I guess the sharp dmg reduction is a consequence of +def lvls from gear + def lvls from set effects. I just took that example because here you can see the impact of def lvls which mainly are r9 + stones. I would have expected to do at least 4k dmg with undine that would have been ok because the debuff should minimize the impact of the +def but this shows that in fact only +att lvls would have helped = stones + r9 for me.

so it looks like I again lost interest in writing my guide (and school + work are really eating up my time).. so it doesn't look like I'll finish the guide. If anyone is interested I can post what I have and can add to it, but I don't wanna bother unless someone actually cares xD

I had a little different approach for my guide than you, and hadn't really gotten around to editing it and whatnot. Anyway, just figured I'd post this in case there is anything in here that someone might find useful. I took out alot of the random transitions/intros that don't matter.. I'm just including the few sections that I got at least a good start on.



The Wizards Niche
This is actually I think one of the more important concepts that every wizard needs to learn, but it isnt as simple as youd think. When I first started the game and heard we were a magic DD class, I just assumed our skills did more damage than other magic classes. That isnt exactly the case. Comparing one of our base skills like gush to a clerics great cyclone reveals they have the exact same damage. Not only that, they have the exact same slow effect, the same channel and cast time, the same cooldown, and even the same demon/sage effects. The only differences I could find were the mana cost (barely different), the range (28m cyclone vs 30m gush for sage/demon versions), and the animation. At first, I got a little frustrated wondering why I made a wizard if someone could make a cleric and do the same damage AND have buffs, heals, etc. Luckily I did some more research to figure out how we really differentiate ourselves from the other magic classes. What I found out is that its not the base skills that really matter, its the higher level skills and how everything works together that actually counts. Ill try to get into more specifics in a moment, but you should also realize that with the addition of 4 more classes, our niche has been significantly narrowed to basically being the best class for ranged AoE DPH and having the potential for some very high single target DPH. To illustrate some of these differences, Im just going to compare us to our closest relative: the psychic.
Many wizards felt replaced with psychics hitting the scene, being that a new magic DD class with higher base damage and lots of neat tricks that we dont have. When you look at their skills, most of them have slightly lower static damage and weapon multiplier than our equivalent skills, but black voodoo more than makes up for that (so they hit a little harder than we do). They also have an on demand ranged aoe stun, immune to physical for 9-11 seconds, chance to seal when you hit them, tricky self buffs, and even their own ulti. It even looked like their ulti would hit harder than ours if they were in black voodoo, which made things look even worse. Luckily the devs left psy aoes at 8m radius as opposed to our 12m radius. That may not sound like alot, but when you look at the area that we hit per spell, we are hitting twice the area that a psychic is.. which is HUGE. We can also use our ultis far more frequently than a psychic can. We build chi much faster than psychics; our base skills give us 15 chi each where a psychic only gets 10 (actually most magic classes get 10.. so we build chi 50% faster than other classes with base skills) and we have spammable skills for chi (like ele shell and frostblade) where a psychic really doesnt. A psychic can use their self buffs to build chi in downtime, but the long cooldowns mean they cant use them back-to-back like we can.. so we end up with a significant advantage in chi building over psychics. The way we use our chi is also much different. To stay alive, our only real chi drain is going to be distance shrink, which is pretty minor at 10-20 chi. Other than that, basically all of our chi can be devoted to the offense: dropping ultis or using sutra, which is a real luxury. Psychics on the other hand need to split their chi between earth vector (their on demand control skill), psy will, soulburn, tide spirit (sutra on roids), and stone smasher (their ulti). Although having more choices might sound like a good thing, you have to realize they dont really have any cheap defensive skills. They are just as dependent on chi offensively as they are defensively, and often times are forced to waste their chi trying to stay alive (where we have cheaper defensive options so we can devote all our chi for the attack). We also have the ability to use several ultis in a short time period, while stone smasher has a 1 min cooldown. Our ultis all have a 30 second cooldown, and being that we have more than one, we nearly always have one ready to use in the event an opportunity arises. It isnt all that uncommon to be running around building chi for a while with no groups of enemies to wipe out, and then all of a sudden have two great opportunities within seconds of each other. Its a huge plus having 3 different ultis, we never miss an opportunity because of cooldowns. Our ultis also have better effects.. BT is half physical (with twice base magic atk.. so hits harder than stone smasher), MS has a 6sec stun in the event it doesnt finish off an opponent, and BIDS has extra chance to crit (if sage). Not only all that, but the difference in attack levels actually goes down the more you have, so at end game with full r9, wizards higher weapon multipliers and static damage balances better with black voodoo (for more info on atk levels.. http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=698392&highlight=levels+demystified). I guess I should also mention that the extra range (30m vs 28.5m for psychics) is actually more helpful than you might think. If youve ever heard the joke about the bear and running shoes (http://www.joke-of-the-day.com/jokes/bear-run), youd get why range is important. All that matters is we have a tiny bit more range than the other classes, which means we are able to start channeling a skill before anyone else, which gives us the first hit advantage in many situations. I dont really know what else to say in terms of AoE DPH, we are just the undisputed kings/queens of AoE DPH. Before I move on, I do want to briefly mention single target DPH.
The other real advantage we have is our two single target debuffs (undine and spark) that work together. Spark is actually a genie skill that anyone can use, but we are the only class with a fire skill tree, so we are the only ones that benefit from it (it may as well be class specific to us). Every class has their own amps, but no other magic class has amps that come even remotely close to how effective these two are. Just keep in mind that reducing resists by like 60% (undine debuff) doesnt mean a 60% increase in damage. To be honest I dont know exactly how it is calculated, but I did a little testing not too long ago to get a rough idea on the results. This spreadsheet was mainly used to test genie spark, but I added in a number of other things to make it more complete. So if you arent scared off by a wall of numbers, Id highly suggest taking a look at it.. https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?hl=en&hl=en&key=tauRiuICfJ949xXxQSgn8_w&authkey=CN-3hpEJ#gid=0. For a class like psychics, they cant really increase their DPH beyond using generic skills like sparks (the chi ones.. 1x spark, double spark, sage/demon spark), frenzy, poison.. things that anyone can use. The real beauty in it is that we can use all of these as well, along with our own debuffs which means when we debuff a target, we can hit a single target significantly harder than a psychic, or any other magic class for that matter.
Keep in mind Im not saying we are better than psychics, or that they suck at all.. thats not even close to the case. Im simply stating our strengths, which are most easily shown by comparing ourselves to other classes. Psychics hit hard, they have a huge arsenal of amazing defensive skills that make them ungodly difficult to take down. We are irreplaceable in TW because of our AoE DPH, and awesome in PvP because we can do so much damage. In a super oversimplified way of looking at things, we are both magic DD classes, its just that we (wizards) have more offensive skills where psychics have more defensive skills.
Many of the differences between us and psychics are unique to just us, so they would also differentiate us from other magic classes as well, but I really dont want to make my guide only about what makes us different from the other classes. I think its good for new wizards to figure out the differences on their own, as reading about something only goes so far. Anyway, unfortunately our strengths as a class are all DPH, which is awesome for PvP where you can bypass charms, but nearly useless in pve.. unless you can one shot the mobs (if this is the case.. its likely other classes can too). PvE in general is almost always about dps, and due to class balance.. our DPH is great and our DPS blows. Just how it is. Add in that we dont have any awesome squad buffs, and you will come to this realization that we are always going to be near the bottom of the list in usefulness/being wanted for anything pve related. So if you are still planning on making a wizard, lets move on to the getting started phase.

Choosing Your Gear
Choosing your gear should actually be pretty easy. In general you just try to find gear around your level with good stats. I guess I should also mention that not all TT gear/molds etc are actually any good, they just mean that you know what you are getting. So for example, TT 90 green arcane boots are absolute **** and should never be worn, but TT90 green pants are amazing and every arcane class should wear them while 9x. Just use some common sense, different text colors wont help you stay alive or kill anyone, the add-ons (stats) on the armor are all that matter. This should be pretty simple, but youd be surprised how many people Ive seen running around in full TT70 or full TT90 because they thought TT armor was somehow magically better than other armors.. lol. So I mentioned that you should be finding gear with good stats.. but I guess I didnt really explain what stats are good. This might get a little mathy for some people, so Im going to make a small list of stats/addons that I look for, then Ill go a little more in depth as to why I like them for anyone that wants to know why.
Good stats (in no particular order)
+hp
+pdef
+mdef
+crit
-channeling
+attributes (str/mag/vit)
+def lvl
+atk lvl
+mag atk

Now for some easy math
Hp should be obvious, it provides the base survivability for your character. The more, the better. After hp, probably the next most important defensive stat would probably be the resistances (pdef/mdef). Resistances are used to calculate the damage reduction (shown by hovering your mouse over your resistances in the character window), but not everyone really gets how that works. I cant tell you how many times Ive heard people comment on how a few % reduction would hardly be noticeable and think they should skip it. Being that I dont know how to really explain this, Im just going to try an example. Pretend you have a lot of pdef which gives you 80% damage reduction from physical attacks. If you had a 100 damage physical hit coming in (after other reductions), the physical reduction from pdef would then reduce that hit down to 20 damage. Now lets pretend with some gear change that you got some extra pdef which brought your physical reduction to 81%.. some people think this scenario means you take 1% less damage.. which is somewhat misleading. You would be taking 19 damage from a 100 damage hit, which is actually 5% less physical damage than when you were at 80% reduction. It drives me nuts when somebody says.. oh its just another 3% reduction as if that actually means something. They need to add in a little more information before making a judgement (ex. 0% reduction -> 3% means youll take 3% less damage.. 50% -> 53% means you take 6% less damage).
While were on the subject, I figure I may as well add in some interesting facts about resistances and damage reduction %. Damage reduction is rounded both in the character window as well as in the actual calculations, so if adding some small amount of pdef doesnt change the damage reduction number.. you wont see any benefit in the said example. You might see some benefit if the pdef got changed because of debuffs or buffs (might hit another % reduction cutoff), but that really doesnt matter for this example. Another fun fact about the damage reduction is that it suffers from diminishing returns, meaning when you have a small amount of resistance, a small increase will give a lot of benefit.. and as you continue adding resistance, it will require more and more resistance to get that same benefit. Damage reduction from resistances are also capped at 90%, so it doesnt matter if you have 100 trillion of some resistance, it caps off at 90% reduction (I think 90% at level 100 is something like 30k or in that general area). You should also know that addons that say like “Reduce physical damage by 3%” are not added on to your physical reduction from resistances, it is totally separate. So using that same example, the 19 damage you took would then be reduced by an additional 3% (not 81% -> 84%).. which would probably be lost in rounding in this example (numbers in game are MUCH higher.. where you might be able to see a difference).
So other than hp and resistances, probably the last major gear based defense would be defense levels. I think defense levels were well described in Asterelles post (same link as before.. http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=698392&highlight=levels+demystified). Anyway, +def levels are actually pretty rare on gear addons, they are mostly obtained from set bonuses (nirvana or rank9) and jades of steady defense. You can gain another pretty significant increase in survivability from defense levels, but they are a lot more expensive to get.
Stat points hopefully dont really need much explanation, but Ill try anyway. I usually think of vit as just +hp, so 10vit = 100hp for us. It does give a bit more than that, a bit of resists and hp/mp regen, so having the choice between 100 hp or 10vit, you should take the vit. Strength is nice on a lot of gear because it allows you to take points out of your base strength to put into vit/mag or w.e you want. The way I think about it, if I have like a ring that has 8 strength on it, that would mean I could take 8 str out of my base str and put it into vit or mag (just watch out if some of your str gear shatters.. I remember someones love up and down shattered with like 55 mins left on sl.. all that +11 r9 gear became unequipped and he was absolutely useless in pvp for the next hour haha).. but I still like to think of it like 8str = 8mag = 8vit = 80 hp when Im deciding between gear. Dex is a little different because we dont really NEED any to equip gear (assuming we are AA), but it isnt all bad if it helps you get closer to like 20dex (for the extra 1% crit). The rest of the stats are just ways to increase your offensive capabilities (+mag atk, +atk lvl, +crit, -channeling). I was going to save crit and channeling for later, but while Im talking about stats.. I may as well dive into it.
There really isnt much to crit, it doubles your damage when it procs. Its nice, especially being that we are a DPH class. Channeling is a bit more complicated. It is basically just the delay after you click on a skill (where you cant do anything and the channeling animation is displayed) before the skill is actually used. When channeling time finishes, the distance is checked again and assuming the target is still in range, the damage calculation takes place immediately after channeling finishes. Some skills like pyrogram will then delay the damage to the target until roughly the animation hits the target (I like to call these projectile skills) while other skills such as gush damage the opponent immediately. Reguardless if the damage is delayed or not, the character will immediately enter the cast phase after damage calculation, which is just another delay until you can control your character again (and cast animation is displayed). Channeling time can be reduced by –channel gear or –channeling skills (like sutra.. and gear + skill based channeling do stack.. i.e. 24% from gear and demon wellspring would bring you to a total of -44% channeling), but cast time will always be there (only way it is reduced is by a sage/demon effect of a skill). If your channeling hits 100 or more, it is capped back to -90%. There used to be a bug that if you had between -90% and -99% channeling it would somehow reduce cast time to 0 as well, but that has been fixed in pwi. Dont let anyone tell you that bug still exists, because it doesnt. One common misconception about channeling is that it works similar to –interval in that having a lot will increase your dps exponentially. The problem is that our skills all have cast time, which guarantees we will never compare with the dps of an aps char. What channeling is good for is helping you kite. It is unlikely that a wizard focusing on channeling could use two skills in the time a wizard with no –channeling uses one, but it would mean the wizard focusing on –channeling wouldnt have to stand in the same place as long. So with a bm rushing towards you, that fraction of a second you save with channeling gear might just be what you need to finish using the skill and get out before the bm stuns you. It could also give you more skill choices because those longer skills end up not quite as long, and become far more practical to use. Anyway, getting channeling doesnt magically transform your character into a dps class, it is more of a subtle advantage. Anyway, one last thing Id like to re-touch on is that the damage is calculated often times before the damage hits. When I first learned domain, I tried to time the immunity to when I saw the animation hitting.. and kept getting owned (blaming it on lag). It made me mad that I was getting killed WHILE immune, because I didnt understand that the immunity needed to be used before the opponent finished the channeling phase of the skill (after damage calculation.. there is no stopping/reducing it). This also includes dot skills, so the damage is entirely determined when it initially hits. That means if you have a debuff that lasts 10 seconds, and use a dot skill that lasts for 20 seconds.. it will continue doing damage as if the target was still debuffed even after the debuff ends. This just drove me nuts when I had to learn this the hard way, and Im hoping somebody somewhere will find this useful. Anyway, moving on!

DaKillanator - Raging Tide wrote: »

just say what you'd want me to add to my guide Adroit xD

I'm so glad u said that ^^

Adroit, the info about the timing of damage calculations and its effects with projectiles, animation, and the debuff extension is a tour de force.

Adroit - Lost City wrote: »

So that is basically as far as I got, apparently pwi forums go crazy if you copy and paste punctuation.. it would cut off anything with quotes, apostrophes, etc.. I dunno why.

Thks a lot for the great guide so far b:thanks you are doing an awesome work, hope you can post more parts soon.

Regards.

Alex.

See now those are early game questions that I felt Asim's guide should of covered.

I'm seriously beginning to consider writing a Newbie wiz guide if he doesn't update his.

Fulcanelli - Raging Tide wrote: »

mini-bump of justice b:chuckle

Adroit: how is going the guide? don't you dare to abandon it!!!!!

thats all b:victory

I abandoned it, just lost interest when I realized how few people still use the wizard forums.. and of them how many would actually benefit from it. Maybe I'll get a second wind later on.. but I kinda doubt it.

Fulcanelli - Raging Tide wrote: »

b:infuriated noooooooo!!!! your guide it's very interesting and quite diferent from all other "standard guides" out there, it should be a nice complement.

you know... you can always do what everyone else does: post what you got and let it "open" for an improbable (hope not) future expansion b:avoid

I did post what I had :P I guess I could start a new thread though, iunno.

Fulcanelli - Raging Tide wrote: »

that doesn't count as a post, all the info is lost in between the pages of a whinning thread!!

make a new one and for god sakes do something to ease the wall of text... my eyeeees... my eyeeesss.... b:laugh

too much work, I actually had it pretty decent in a word document.. but like anything associated to pwi, the forum is buggy as hell and flips out with anything other than letters. It didn't like the hyphens, apostrophes, quotes etc etc.. not to mention removed all my formatting. Maybe later :P

Adroit - Lost City wrote: »

so it looks like I again lost interest in writing my guide (and school + work are really eating up my time).. so it doesn't look like I'll finish the guide. If anyone is interested I can post what I have and can add to it, but I don't wanna bother unless someone actually cares xD

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - just troll the other guides, adroit, its the only thing for which you are suited, it seems.