Wizards Next Expansion

Discussion in 'Casters' started by kizant, Jun 16, 2019.

  1. kizant Augur

    I think the main focus should be for wizards to catch up a bit on short term burns but also to increase our normal upgrades by a little more than typical since the previous pattern slowly had us falling behind each time. Also, I don't want to make this a 'wish' thread where everyone posts crazy inflated ideas. Hopefully, everyone keeps things to something sensible.

    Core Abilities:
    1. Second Spire - 1 level for an increase of 40% crit damage
    2. Frenzied Devestation - 3 levels @ 5% each for an increase of 15% crit damage
    3. Fury of the Gods - 3 level @ 125 each for an increase of 375
    4. Mana Burn - 2 levels for an additional 1000k on the nuke portion and using 90k mana
    5. Arcane Fury - 2 levels @ 1% each for an increase of 2%
    6. Sorcerer's Vengeance - 3 levels @ 200 for an increase of 600
    7. Improved Familiar - 2 levels with standards increase is fine
    8. Improved Twincast - 1 level for an additional 1 charges
    9. Twincproc - 1 more level for an additional 1%

    New Ideas:
    1. Focus AA for Twincast to add 6 seconds to its duration
    2. 30 second force proc ability for either all procs or just sympathetic procs
    3. Change Sorcerer's Vengeance to work with procs in addition to spell casts

    Update AEs. Ours are a mess and I think everyone agrees.
    1. Lower the re-cast time on beams by 3s with the goal to have less spells to weave.
    2. Upgrade Self-Combustion and lower its re-cast by 3s and remove the excessive lockout time.
    3. Upgrade Ward of Destruction. At a minimum it should do 40k damage to be useful.

    This will probably be controversial but consider changing the max crit rate on rains. It was low to begin with and our base crit rate has increased significantly since RoF. Ideally, I'd make it 60% instead of 40%.

    Remove twincast blocker from the wildmagic line that started during TDS. I thought there may have been a good reason for that being added but all I could find is an old thread where some wizards were wrong about how ITC should work. Without twincast that line of spells is useless and we've already narrowed down wizards spell options too much. Why not save a useless spell line if it's such an easy fix?

    A note about Spires. Regardless of whether we can get increases to these abilities the current versions aren't balanced very well. There's zero scenarios where First Spire makes more sense to use than Second Spire. The current crit chance rate of First Spire should be changed to 19 to 20% for it to ever be an option. I'd suggest going with a ratio around 8.2 to 1 for comparing the two.
    Fortunbas, Xurn, Travestii and 5 others like this.
  2. Cadira Augur

    Kizant for wizard prez. At the very f****** least hope devs don't completely ignore stuff like this (they will ; ( ).
  3. Renotaki Elder

    I would be happy seeing any or all of the changes Kizant mentioned. Ultimately, if we can make wizard burst and AEs top tier again, I think that would really give wizards a strong identity. Many of the new things that could serve that goal were already mentioned above. Some changes i'd like to see would serve this purpose, and others are just where I think abilities could be better to fit their purpose.

    Along with these changes, maybe we could do away with the range limitation on the spell. Or, if that's too strong, make the spell be at .5x power (50%) at 60 units out so you don't need the whole pack of mobs to be inside you to hit hard.

    I'd like to see our Force of Will, Flame, and Ice be buffed again considering their noticeable mana strain when keeping them on cool-down. The current trend has been three level upgrades on each level increase expansion so there is an assumption that the next expansion will be one but:

    Force of Will, Flame and Ice - 3 levels @ 2150 base damage increase a level. Hopefully without an increased mana cost as well, but given current trends i don't know how likely that is.

    Arcane Fusion is easily beaten out by most other standard sympathetic procs on a regular basis and I think that's a sad state of affairs. I think a good boost for it would be removing the crit chance cap on it and a 30-50% increase in it's proc chance.

    An alternative to Kizant's suggestions if the devs wanted to go another route for burst damage would be a new crit chance burn at 200 - 300% increased crit damage with 1 minute up-time and somewhere from 15 to 20 minute reuse timer.

    Kizant's list is already pretty extensive so those are my only other big ones off the top of my head that aren't radical different ideas requiring a ton of development time or potentially busted power wise.
  4. -----Cinexa----- Elder

    Great suggestions Kiz - thank you. My suggestion is to ignore mages & necros this round - they've had enough love. /wink
  5. Brohg Augur

    This is a biggie , pretty much top of my list as a wizard. Wizard play should reward dynamic spell casting (within reason), and Wildmagic line felt basically ideal to me. If you're paying enough attention to slot it in when Twincast proc is running, then you're rewarded with a really good spell. Not crazy, but really good. And if you're not paying enough attention to take it out when ITC is on, there's a one-time whammy when it vaporizes the ITC counters :p and then you learn to be a better wizard.

    Also on Wildmagic I very much like the "chaotic forces barely in control" flavor for wizard casting. Ethereal Braid should be like that too. And probably the Force AAs, I'd consolidate those and pay back the lack of control vis-a-vis element by including a chance at powerful chromatic proc.

    And it casts fast, that's just nice. It's friendly.

    So yes, please. Unnerf Wildmagic line.
    Travestii and Fortunbas like this.
  6. kizant Augur

    Arcane Fusion is about 1% of my DPS and does fall way behind all my major procs. The only ones it beats are the small melee procs or the underfoot proc I use in my range slot. So, yeah that could use a pretty good bump if they intend to make it one of our more useful abilities. I mostly just ignore it at this point tbh.

    A new burst ability would be nice too. Especially if they just want to do standard upgrades to everything else. One new significant thing for burst would help.
  7. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    Thanks to Kizant and all for pushing this discussion. We need help and trying to figure out the best way to go now is great.

    Comments on Kizant's list:
    -Any changes to spire lines are going to have to be done for all classes. I'd honestly rather see these deprecated (not upgraded) and move on to class specific changes rather than keep trying to make these semi-balanced when extending power.

    -I'd rather go the other way on Frenzied Destruction - more counters. Right now (using Kizant's app with a simple Braid & two Ethereals weave) FD goes away in 2:30 … well short of the buff timer without twincast. Increase the counters so that the buff lasts as long as it should when doing a simple cast weave.

    We've talked about it in other threads … but I'd really like to see the counters just removed on this. But I think the chances are slim and none on that.

    -Until the Devs give some recognition that Harm Touch is way overpowered -OR- Mana Burn is way underpowered, I'd rather just leave the thing alone.

    -I'd love to see the reuse timers on Arcane Fury and Fury of the Gods drop down to 15 min (through more aas of course). I hate having 5 different timer rotations for our burns.

    -Can you explain more about the proc force ability? I'm missing something here and it's almost assuredly my miss.

    -On all AE suggestions … great? I so little use AEs personally that I'd prefer to stand back and let people more in the know go after changes.

    There are two things I'd like to focus on for the next expansion … removing the blocks on twincast and increase longer dps (4-8 minute range).

    On twincast, I'd like to see all special conditions removed. Twincast can be refreshed like a normal spell (i.e. with Force Rejuv). All dd spells can be twincast (removing the Wildmagic blockers that a few of you discuss above). I'd like it to apply to the dicho/diss line as well.

    And for the love of god, make twincast spell not be cast if ITC is running.

    Note that these changes would help druids and mages as well. I'm fine with that. Lets just get the devs to see that with all the melee/hybrid effect stacking out there, extra twincasts are the least of their problems.

    On longer dps... my thinking is that melee rules burst dps so much that it's going to be hard to give us enough umph to really matter. But Kizant and others have shown/talked about the real drop off in our dps around the 4 minute mark (when everything we have is pretty much gone). And the melee then just crush us on the parse.

    So whatever changes wizards push for, I'd like this to be taken into account. Since if we're helping ourselves in the 4-8 minute range, we're getting the most bang for our buck.
    Xurn likes this.
  8. kizant Augur

    Beasts have an ability that allows their main weapon proc to proc at 100% rate for a short time. This would be a wizard version that works off different procs. It's a new idea so they could implement it in a few ways but one way could be for all sympathetic procs to proc with 100% rate when a spell is cast.

    There's like 5 TBL events where we gain good DPS by AEing. Pretty much every recent expansion has a few events where if we don't AE we're going to lose a lot of DPS. So, it's a pretty important aspect to raiding.

    This would be nice but it's how the spell used to work and was changed in HoT I believe. It probably isn't very likely.
    Sancus likes this.
  9. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    As long as it's purely works for casting, I can get behind this.

    Unless it is given to everyone by default, I would not want time/effort spend on make wizards better at melee.




    I assume you are including the 3 GMM raids in your events...even so, that's not how we do most events. We generally have 4 wizards so maybe our utilization/setup is different than yours. I AE when it makes sense...and most of the time it doesn't for us.

    AE was a sizeable part of your post and someone else. I didn't want you do think I thought it irrelevant...just that I didn't have anything to add and would happily follow the lead of people who have considered the subject.
  10. Sancus Augur

    Edit: Okay, I'll try to make this a bit more constructive. What criteria do you use to decide when AEing makes sense?

    I'm... highly skeptical that you're utilizing AEs as much as you could/would "make sense."
  11. kizant Augur

    Yeah, I meant TBL as in the current expansion's raids. But only 1 event in GMM is included in the 5 that I was thinking of. Obviously, GMM3 has a lot of opportunities to AE. The reason AEs are a sizable part of my post is because our ideal lineup has an insane amount of spells compared to other classes with AEs.
  12. Brohg Augur

    I'm Very Much In Favor of an AEing revamp for wizards. AEing spells should have a spellbook & especially spellbar footprint commensurate with their applicability in fighting, and should be motivatingly powerful when their moments come. Not take 7 spells to engage, have further conditions on top of just "be fighting 5 unmezzed mobs", involve blowbacks, AND only be marginally more powerful than straight blasting each one-by-one with regular nukes that aren't so tetchy to target & chain.

    Pretty uninterested in Ward, though. Prime candidate for AA refund & deletion there.
  13. Vaarsuvius Apprentice

    Upgrades / changes

    1. +40% to Second Spire is fair.

    2. If Frenzied Devestation is upgraded I'd like to see additional counters / mana reduction as well as the crit damage boost.

    3. +125 x3 on Fury of the Gods is too low. I'd rather see +300 x5, as well as reducing the reuse by 2 minutes per rank. The reuse on this ability is far too high for what it actually does.

    4. I'd rather see Mana Burn returned to what it was like in TBM where the bonus damage was affected by criticals. It was debatably too powerful in TBM, but with the huge amount of inflation since then it certainly wouldn't be now.

    5. 1% x2 on Arcane Fury is way too low. This is an activated AA and the damage hasn't been upgraded since it originally came out many years ago. It should be 5 additional ranks of 5% along with 2 minute recast reduction per rank.

    6. 200 x3 on Sorcerer's Vengeance is way, way too low. As it is right now it costs hundreds of AAs for 4k damage per spell. Our belt slot has 5k on it and that is 1 single item. It should be 3 ranks of 1,000 minimum. Preferably 2,000/rank. It definitely needs to be higher than the belt.

    7. 2 standard ranks of Improved Familiar is fair, but I'd also like to see 1% crit chance added to each as well. The focus should be changed to allow it to stack with Bard Aria songs. This wasn't possible before but new focus effects have been added to alleviate stacking issues and this is a perfect thing to use that on.

    8. 1 more proc of Twincast is fair.

    9. 1 more 1% of Twinproc is fair.

    10. 2150 x3 for Force of Will/Flame/Ice is fair. I'd like to see the range increased to 300 as well which is what procs were changed to a few years ago. Right now if we stand at max range we can't use the Force AAs.

    11. Arcane Fusion should have the crit cap removed and proc chance increased, but also have the damage increased by 50k (a standard upgrade).



    12. Arcane Destruction 3 ranks that add +150k to the rune and 2 counters per rank. This currently has a 350k rune on it, and while that sounds like a lot, is less than a single round of modern combat damage. Seriously, the rune needs updating by a lot more than 150k per rank, but I'm trying to be realistic about what I can get here.

    13. Destructive Adept 2 ranks of 1%. Realistically I think it should be much higher than 1% per rank, but given that it's always been 1%/rank I don't have much hope of it being more than that.

    14. Harvest of Druzzil 3 ranks of +5k (or more) mana. Mana pools are in the 300,000 range. Harvest of Druzzil is currently 19.5k (~6%). It needs a serious boost to stay relevant, especially if the huge stat inflation continues.

    15. Pyromancy / Arcomancy / Cryomancy. Combine these already. Everything else that used to be split by element type like familiars / fury / etc. has been consolidated. Consolidate these too.

    16. Fury of Magic 3 ranks +2%. This would bring it up to 56% where other silk casters are 57%.

    17. Destructive Fury 3 ranks +10%. Wizards are supposed to be the best at crit damage, but we have the lowest amount (325 vs 340 for other silk classes).

    18. Mnemonic Retention 1 rank. That 14th spell slot taunts me daily.

    19. Twincast (passive) 3 ranks +1%. It's been a long time since this was upgraded.

    20. Lower Element. Add Magic resist.



    NEW things:

    Critical Affliction: (Add us @ the Cleric/Enchanter level: 11 ranks 3% per rank).

    Destructive Cascade: (Add us @ the caster level: 39 ranks up to 375% max).

    Teleport (group) to Second / Third Bind. 5m recast.

    Portable Wizard Spire. (It puts down a mini wizard spire and your group can teleport to. Like a fellowship campfire but for your group, not fellowship, and it only stays up a few minutes). Lasts 5 minutes. 30m recast.

    4th bind? (It's hard to come up with new idea for ports really).

    Speed of the Sorcerer: Activated AA that reduces spell cast times by .25 second per rank for 30 seconds per rank. 3 ranks. 15 minute reuse.

    Arcane Mastery of Fire/Ice/Magic: Passive AA that reduces Fire/Ice/Magic damage by 5% per rank, 3 ranks. Works the same as the "warding fire/magic" type 18/19 augs.

    Proc Mastery: Passive AA that increases damage of spell procs by 5% per rank, 3 ranks. (Like the Focus Tab for spells, but for procs instead).
    Xurn likes this.
  14. kizant Augur

    When you include improved familiar our base crit damage is 354% so we're not too bad off in that category. Also, I can't imagine they'd decrease mana usage at this point. They already messed up with TBL's overinflated items so I'd expects costs to start going up.
  15. Brohg Augur

    I know your list cleaves quite close to "realistic" asks, but another of my top asks for wizard class is to have the highest base damage nuke. No, dicho doesn't count since it's level 250'd out of normal effects and has a minute cool down. Wizards should have the biggest nuke and it should be more castable, like less restrictive/conditional, not less, than the second runner.

    In Norrath, it was base 1120 Ice Comet and a single cast chopped the highest level basepop in HALF.

    Ether Flame, when it came out, was 5848 compared to 3119 top I found for other classes. That was a BOMB, the whole party knew when the wizard got a Gift of Mana, because this was cast.
    Renotaki likes this.
  16. Renotaki Elder

    This definitely falls into the opinion category but I'm actually a pretty big fan of post consolidation Fury. It's a 3.9k pre crit mod to everything. It makes low base damage procs actually great (hi Stormblade) and really adds up with full raid support with all of the symp procs and melee procs possible to stack at once.

    It also scales really well with AE burns. For example, Wheel of Flame Rk. III has a base damage of 8763. Fury of the gods brings it up to 12663. As a point of comparison, Ethereal Skyfire Rk. III has an effective base damage of 44058 (40421 + 9% base from our Robe). Without Fury of the Gods in mind, you need 6 mobs to overtake it in base damage. (@52578 base). Due to a few other things, you can safely cast Wheel with 5 mobs up to do more damage than Skyfire, but I'm just using base damage to simplify it.
    With Fury of the Gods on, you only need four mobs to catch it up to where Ethereal Skyfire's base is at with the burn running (Skyfire: 47958 vs. Wheel: 50652). This does not take into account slightly nuanced differences like different symp proc rates via different cast times and Stormjolt Vortex effect tilting spells slightly more in single target damage favor but I think it really illustrates the idea. You can apply this logic to Beam, Self Combustion, and Splash of Phenocrysts too.

    That said... I do really wish both fury abilities were at a 15 minute reuse timers because it would make burn rotations so much better.

    If they made Manaburn like it was in TBM, then it really wouldn't be the best boost for the wizard class because it was a bigger comparative boost for Necromancers and Forced-proc classes. I guess it depends if you want wizards to have strong Adps or not. I'd more rather see it be a super strong single hit, but I'm pretty sure the devs don't want to mess with Manaburn anymore.

    It's up to Kizant to defend his own logic obviously but a big thing about our Thread of Potential belt is that it does not affect procs. One of the things he asked for in his "new things" section is changing SV to affect procs. If it did, it would be a lot better than the Belt and be good in a similar way that Fury of the Gods is good now. This is all still an opinion about what's "too low" or not, but it would be a lot better then our belt if it affected procs.

    IMO, wizards are the least "dotty" caster ever, but this would be a fun change. Numerous classes had dots messed with, so why not for the fun of it? Pyromancy has 20k base, so decent/ strong passive mods for it would make it actually quite beefy.
    Sancus and kizant like this.
  17. kizant Augur

    Yeah, having Sorcerer's Vengeance work with procs is how I was trying to make the ability useful. I'm not opposed to the alternative of just increasing the amount by a few k. I just know that our ability is very similar to the one that druids have and I think at least one other class. So, if they increased ours by a lot then they'd probably have to increase everyone's to be consistent. And they might have good reasons not to do that for other classes.

    Agreed about Fury of the Gods. It is super powerful and so is Arcane Fury. That's why I didn't suggest values that were very large for them. I think getting any upgrade at all to Arcane Fury is going to be difficult to acquire and I'd rather have 1% of that than 10% of Destructive Adept. Which I didn't bring up because I just assume they'll follow along with the standard increase they've been giving that ability.

    That said, I really do like the idea of changed Improved Familiar to have something besides SPA 124 so that it stacks with bard aura. I just don't know what that would be that wouldn't end up OP. It probably should have been SPA 461 if it weren't so broken. Maybe if it were like 10% it wouldn't be too bad.

    I really don't know what to think about DoT crits. If we had that right now then cryomancy would no longer be useful that's for sure. I kind of wish they would combine those three abilities into one thing but drop the DoT entirely. For example, a 10k cold nuke that procs 25% of the time off any cast that also added 5 counters of some value of SPA 297 and adds a weak snare. DoTs just aren't very wizard like and they create problems with mez and everything. Rather never have to worry about such things.
    Sancus likes this.
  18. kizant Augur

    I also think changing Dissidents aren't going to happen since they'd have to address everyone's concerns if they just fix ours. But yeah, increasing the base damage of our big nukes makes sense to me. The only issue is I think you have to compare what we can do with 2 nukes vs what others are doing with their line up. Unless you just want to spam 1 spell all the time or go back to long recasts or whatever. We don't really have 'a' big nuke.

    So, maybe the simplest way to start is just ask for the ethereal type 3 augment to be increased more than usual. Add 2500 on the top or something for a start. That way it's just changing one value in one spell and could be tweaked easily if they needed.
    Sancus likes this.
  19. Sancus Augur

    I really wish they'd look into utilizing 507 more heavily, since it's very similar to 124 (other than the need to divide the base1 value by 10). Currently it's only on Fierce Eye.

    Improved Familiar would be a great candidate for that change. As would Flames of/Thricewoven Power and Flames of/Thricewoven Weakness. Not that it would make the Wizard one worth using, but it's mechanically dumb that the negative proc negates all SPA 124 modifiers present.

    A modifier that could crit (or more, like 461) would be cool, but probably less realistic.
    kizant likes this.
  20. Drogba Augur

    I'd like to see a return of the self combustion & splash spell lines too.

    Would be nice if something could be done to make wizard burns better than half the melee classes that have overtaken them as well..