I made a wizard that I'm leveling up. I'm currently at 93 filling in some aa. I think I have a good handle on my burn aas at my level and it seems pretty straight forward up to 100. What I'd love some insight into is recommended spells. Right now I'm using all fire nukes and I'm using the long cast big dd ethereal line, the insta cast nuke, the recourse effect nuke (with twin set chance) and the wildspark nuke. Between spell timers I can pretty much cast continuously and dmg seems pretty good. When I click burns I just do more DPS wih the same set. I looked and spells from 94-100 and it all looks similar. Is there a better setup that would be more efficient? Should I be using othe spells that are better that I overlooked? IV thrown in rains when my group fights more than 1 at a time. Thanks for some insight.
I'm not entirely positive, but I believe that wizards just alternate fire and ice ethereals generally. My guess is the instant nukes, because they still add an additional global cooldown timer, are not worth casting for sustained or burst dps. With VoA I know their spell lineup changed a bit, but I think up through 95 at least, it's just alternating ethereals, with the occasional recourse nuke in there hoping for a twincast/spell refresh proc. The biggest difference between burst and sustained is the AA clicked and twincast/improved twincast, not a difference in spells cast so much. I only answered this because no other wiz had. I could be entirely wrong, I group/duo with a wizard fairly frequently, but haven't played one myself past like level 60. Plus, I'm also guessing you will now get responses correcting anything I've said that is wrong
Thank you for answering. I noticed there a magic based ethereal line too. Does anyone know why they would use those? I'm assume cold and fire are harder to resist since I notice the magic based nukes tend to get resisted more.
I am pretty sure the magic line has the stun to it, and from what I see, it has -50 resist adjust, same as fire/cold ones, for it's respective resist check. Are you sure it's not the stun portion that you are seeing resisted mostly? At 96 you get Claw of the Ashwing, a very good mana/damage ratio spell with a chance to proc twincast, forceful rejuv, etc.
Hrm just the way I do it, and I'm not a wizard but I box one occassionally: During both I use forces during the global cool down of the spells Sustained: Claw Force Hoarfrost Cascade Force Gosiks' Fire Force I use Ethereals during gift of manas, free mana procs from my chanter, etc. Burn: Ethereal force ethereal force ethereal force Ethereal weave when it's up and especially during IoG / twincast
I box a level 100 Wizard(4k aa), the typical sustained fight goes like this, Staff of Elemental Flux (insta resist debuff) Fire Claw Force of Will (spell GCD) Fire Ethereal Force of Flame (spell GCD) Fire Claw Force of Ice (spell GCD) Fire Ethereal Force of Will (spell GCD) Fire Claw Atols Spectral Shackles AA (spell GCD) Fire Ethereal Fire Claw *mobs dead about now* Harvest I never have problems with mana though I'm sometimes still casting harvest when the next mobs in camp.
I basically play my wizard in one of two ways, depending on whether harvest or twincast is available. When no harvest (druzzil or bucolic) or twincast is up and mana is below 50%, I cast Claw, Wildether Barrage, Incandescent Vortex. On GOM's I cast ethereal. However, when mana is good or one of the harvests / twincast is up (which could be from a Claw refresh), I purely casts Ethereals / Magic Instant until I need to harvest. When mana is still good but no twincast or harvest available, can mix in a Claw every now and then. The idea behind this is to make as much use as possible of harvest abilities. So if one is up, then we want to burn mana until we're low enough on mana to be able to use harvest. If no harvest is up, then be efficient and try to use Claws to get it refreshed. Of course, Force spells are woven in between any of these regular casts, as available.
I can tell you my perspective as a level 100 Wizard, reasonably high-mana wizard. I may not get it all right and I'll tell you that I relied a lot on people like Beimeith and others who have done the technical legwork on our DPS spells and what stacks and doesn't stack, etc. I suspect there's a better way to do this, but my setup is this. I have the first five slots on my first hot bar are all bound to the "J" key and the sixth is bound to the "K" key. My first five hot bar slots are in this order: Ethereal Weave (fire), Force of Will, Ethereal Incandescence (fire), Ethereal Hoarfrost (ice), and Ethereal Salvo (magic). My sixth is Claw of the Flamewing (fire). I don't have the other nuke AA's yet and I'll work them into my line up when I do get them so that they cast between actual spells when Force of Will's 20 second recast is still refreshing. If I'm lazy, I just mash down the "J" key and whatever spell is ready in my line up goes off. But usually, I hit my "K" key and Claw of the Flamewing procs. This spell totally rocks in my opinion. It process one of the following (I have the Rk. II spell): 1: 15% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Fire II 2: 15% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Ice II 3: 15% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Magic II 4: 12% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Mastery II 5: 10% Chance to trigger: Twincast Rk. II 6: 12% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Angerwarding 7: 15% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Mana Boost Rk. II 8: 6% Chance to trigger: Syllable of Refreshment I figure out what proc'ed looking at my buff bar. If I get Syllable of Fire, Ice, or Magic, I cast the appropriate resist-based ethereal spell. This is one reason a Wizard might use a magic ethereal. Then I'll probably do force of will and hit Claw again. If I get Mastery I just hit the "J" key, because resists don't matter. If I get a twincast proc I smile and don't hit claw and just mash my "J" key until it fades (note if I'm using ITC which has a certain number of twincasts, I don't use Force of Will on twincasts, maybe I'm wrong, but I want each of my precious twincast shots going to big nukes). If I get Syllable of Angerwarding, who cares? I ignore it (note I have Skullfreeze loaded and I pop that on incoming if I feel like my tank needs the help and I have concussive blast loaded along with Mind Crash and the other one whose name escapes me, which I pop if I think I'm about to get shredded along with -- But Hole in Space (or whatever it's called) trumps all of this and is my usual get out of jail card as long as I'm not dumping agro on the healer or something). The last two procs, mana boost and refreshement are why it's rare for me to go OOM. I'm either refreshing bucolic fairly often or I'm getting little boosts of mana. I used to use the three Havoc line of spells to proc a rejuv, but after they all got put on the same time, I've basically unloaded Havoc from my lineup. This may not be the highest DPS lineup, but in the group game, I'm pretty much always at the top of the group in terms of DPS, I'm not going OOM, I can sustain this rate unless I get a bad run of procs for a long time. I would emphasize that for me, if I have any form of twincast going, I don't cast Claw unless maybe the last second when I'm hoping for another proc of twincast (and yah, doesn't happen too often). So that's my system as a non-raid, group-geared (mostly) Wizard. When I do go on raids, I modify this system a little bit and I usually don't embarrass myself managing to get in the top five most of the time.
I continue to Claw even when Twincast is up, double the chance of more Twincast and Harvest refresh! Force of Will is 12sec with Hasten AA and the Force of Flame and Force of Ice are 20sec on independent CD so all worth getting max. I'll probably do another review on how I run my Wizard soon since he's just got a whole bunch of new toys.
Good point to think about and evaluate (continuing to Claw while Twincast is up). And I definitely look forward to polishing off my "Force of" AA lines. Hope you do another review on how you run your wizard. I'm always reevaluating my play style. I learn a lot from sites like this and people like you.
Just don't use Claw while using the Improved Twincast AA, except for the last charge (or last 2 or 3). If you proc a twincast from Claw, it will override the AA and you will be left with the short time of the proc'd version instead of the charges of the AA.
