Frustrated with my wizard box.

Discussion in 'Casters' started by Daedly, Apr 25, 2019.

  1. Daedly Augur

    A little frustrated with the performance I am getting out of my Wizard box. Looking for some tips or insight on why I might be experiencing what I would consider comparatively low DPS. Particularly when I look at my wizard compared to mage. All characters at 110.

    Group make up:
    Cleric
    SK
    Magician
    Wizard
    Enchanter
    Ranger

    With the exception of the SK, the rest are all background characters on the same computer via keybroad casting. So from the get go, their performance isn't stellar. The Mage, Wiz, Ench, and RNG are all outfitted with conflagrant plus the common GMM drops are all only a couple thousand AA past the Autogrant. Most of those new AA spent on passive damage increases via synergies, crit chance and crit damage.

    Parsing out some GMM Howling HA's of 1100+ seconds, I was seeing a pasre of something like this:
    Mage 120k
    Ranger 65k
    Wiz 56k
    Ench 35k

    I went through some the spell casting data and made some tweaks, then my next parse of the same mission looked like close to this:
    Mage 130k
    Ranger 75k
    Wizard 74k
    Enchanter 45k

    On both parses, it seemed on single mobs the wizard was averaging about 8 casts per mob.

    With the exception of twincast and wizards bum harvest, I have the the first spell in the wizards, mages, and enchanters multibind to trigger their synergy's.

    I have an assist macro I use on my wizard with the appropriate pauses as such:
    /Xtar 1
    /Pet swarm
    /Cast Vortex
    /Cast Lower Element

    For his multibind I have:
    Bumb harvest - Vortex - Twincast - Braid - fire ether - claw - ice ether

    I use improved familiar and pyromancy. Enchanter runs Twincast aura and bolstering(not sure I am using it correctly though).

    I can try and provide some actual parse I info when I get home from work if someone is interested.

    I expected my wizard to be closer in DPS to my mage, and it is making me wonder if I am doing something terribly wrong. So, my question(s).

    Given the little information I provided, is there fundamentals of a wizard that I am getting wrong? Is the difference in DPS just due to the short duration fights of GMM mobs? Is this normal for the basic gear and Autogrant when comparing Wiz and Mage and things will even out as the wizard get more AA?

    Typed this on my phone, so I am sorry for any bad grammar, spelling, or auto corrects.
  2. Brohg Augur

    dunno what "bumb" harvest is? if it's not Musing Gambit, it's very likely the wrong spell to keep mana up with. It's unlikely, too, that whatever it is should be at the front of the line, multibind-wise

    You haven't mentioned Forces AA. The multibind should include with those 3 /alt activate lines. Lower Element can be on that social, as well, getting you off the /pause thingy faster

    [IMG]

    Forces social alone should boost dps by 10-12k

    Multibind ought to favor Claw instead of, as it looks to do now, favor Ethereal. Claw is a little less intrinsically good than the magician version Chaotic, but includes the key features of being efficient damage that refreshes the powerful spells (Twincast, Braid, and Gambit).

    so:
    Twincast
    Claw
    Braid
    Gambit
    (gap here to drop in Cloudburst if you're not trying to autofollow)
    Ethereal
    Ethereal

    Annnnd yeah, probably not going to beat the magician outside burns, still. Servant & pet provide too high a baseline if you're not microing your spell order.
    Sancus and Daedly like this.
  3. kizant Augur

    Try Mana Repetition instead of Bolstering and as you're buying Focus AAs keep in mind that Skyblaze will do more damage than Icefloe after you put a few points in. So, you may want to balance that a little as you go. But no, you're not going to approach 130k sustained dps in your situation no matter what you do. You'd have to really focus on the wiz and add AA nukes/dicho, etc to get into the 90s.
    Daedly likes this.
  4. Daedly Augur

    Crap, yeah I meant Gambit. I must have just made the other name up in my head. I have all the forces bound to to the multibind.

    I will have to check out that cloudburst.

    My first multibind I had was Twincast - Gambit - Vortex - Claw - Braid - Fire Ether - Ice Ether.

    But after looking through my parse, my claw cast count was way higher than my Ethereals, and according to the parse, Ethereal averaged more per hit. So, I spent a little time on the dummy and it seemed that claw was refreshing my spells more often than I realized making it take longer to get to my better DPS spells. So, when I thought about it, I moved Gambit ahead of Twincast as not to waste any casting time if Twincast was up. Then I moved claw back behind Braid and Fire Ether to increase their cast counts. It gained me about 12kdps. Going through more Mana now though.

    I will give your bind a shot next though and see what I get.
  5. Daedly Augur

    Alright thank you sir. Forgot to add that I had the Forces in my multibind. Haven't upgraded them yet. I have noticed the occasional stuttering in casting with them. Not sure how often it happens as the screen is in the background though. Seems like as basically a pure DPS class, I was expecting to see a bit more out it. Was hoping I was just doing something wrong. Appreciate the response.
  6. Brohg Augur

    Dummy - guild hall? Where Twincast buff never fades? yeah, chain Ethereals definitely going to raise dps there :)
  7. Daedly Augur

    No, I had removed the Twincast when I checked stuff out the guild hall. The DPS increase was from actual parses. Point of reference though, I was using pyroblade in my assist macro before I changed to my Ethereals. So the DPS increase might just have been from me dropping that out.

    Gonna try yours out tonight.
  8. Sancus Augur

    You can't properly account for the benefit of Claw in the guild hall. It's not a strong spell in and of its own damage, but its various procs (especially Twincast, and also Syllable of Refreshment) make it very strong in a sustained lineup by augmenting the damage of your other spells.

    If you want to get a better idea of lineups with twincast procs from Claw worked in, /testcopy, go to the arena, and make sure to unfreeze buff timers.
  9. Daedly Augur

    I think I gave the wrong impression in my post. My DPS numbers were from doing the same GMM HA 2 times with a different setup, and also from memory, so grain of salt lol.

    My time on the dummy I was just checking the cast order of my multibind. I don't know for sure, but the low cast count of my Ethereals that I seen on the the first HA parse seemed to coincide with what I was seeing happening with Claw so early in my multibind. That is to say it seemed like Claw was refreshing my spells enough that it actually lowered my Ethereals being cast fairly significantly.

    So with my multibind of Twincast - Gambit - Vortex - Claw - Braid - Fire - Ice.
    Claw would refresh all before it and roughly by that time Claw was coming back up. If Claw did another refresh, the cycle may repeat again. Combine that with fast kills and I figured I probably just wasn't getting enough damage down to truly see the benefits of Claw being early. So I tried moving Claw behind Braid and Fire so that I know if they were up they would get cast for sure. That and if they were down, It would just skip to Claw which may or may not refresh. Forces mixed in as well.

    I seen an increase in DPS, not as much as I would have liked, but I made other tweaks as well. So I don't know if the Claw position change was what gave it, but when looking at cast count, it gave the desired effect of more Ethereals.

    Gonna try the other setups tonight though.
  10. IblisTheMage Augur

    A bit embarrased to advice when you have the key experts already giving advice above, but I had the following thoughts:

    Mage synergy aids fire nukes only, does your wiz multibind somehow make it probable that a big fire nuke will pick up the mage synergy within the 12 sec you will have between RS pet casts?

    Maybe reroll the ranger to a bard?

    And a question:
    How much dps are you getting of your SK?
  11. Pirlo Augur

    Just logged in to comment on this.

    Yeah it's frustrating being a wizard these days, we appear to be in the down cycle as far as the typical up or down in the dps cycle.
    We were strong a few years ago but it's obvious that we have stagnated.

    Who knows, we might new AAs later in the year or the new expansion (confirmed?) will give us the boost we need to have fun again.

    Right now, I only get groups because of my good looks and charm
    ;)
    gnomeboss likes this.
  12. Malevolus New Member

    Definitely find this thread interesting. Kizant - you mention dicho only briefly in a post above. Would it not be appropriate to add dissident to the multibind? Still learning my wizard as well.
  13. Daedly Augur

    The SK was doing the most do. He is the screen I have up 99% of the time. On top of that, most of the pulls we're 6+ and usually 2her with a few damage discs on him. The rest of them I have set up to do a disc here and there automatic. But for the most part they are set it and forget it. I wanna say that my SK was around 160k for the examples I gave though.

    So to that point, I am really not sure what any of them are triggering synergy's with lol. I just try to use their synergy triggering spells as their first or second casts.

    I have made some progress it seems though, with a 2000+ second stint in OT this morning, my wizard was at about 85k. Mage was still first with like 113k, then ranger with like 108k and my SK in the 95k range.

    Went over my cast count and average spell damage on my mage too. If it works likey Wiz info did, I should be able to squeeze out some more from him by moving his chaotic further down my multibind to get more Spears in.
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  14. Daedly Augur

    Hey bud,

    Yeah, I was a little taken back. I mean, he is just a box, so I wasn't expecting a whole lot out of him. Just seems to suck as a caster when you have short duration fights. I never realized just how important each cast is for them, especially with only getting 8 casts in per mob. That's with some of those casts being AA during GCD.

    Barely know my wizard though, don't know how that could be addressed. Maybe my problems are more from my own ignorance than the play style of a caster /shrug.
  15. Daedly Augur

    I removed it from mine just because of the Mana it was costing me.
    kizant likes this.
  16. kizant Augur

    Mana was the main reason. Sustaining a fight that long with RoS group gear you'd really need to pay attention to gift of mana procs to use dissident regularly. Even the AA nukes might be a bit much. It might be a good idea to only use one or two of them.
  17. kizant Augur

    The wizard box will have a good burn when you need it but yeah sustained can be pretty bad with lots of short fights. You need enough hits to make vortex worth it and you need to be constantly casting for claw to proc twincast enough. If it's a lot of adds one at a time where you're only getting in 2 or 3 hits with a lot of your twincast times going to waste and you're not able to AE at all. It's definitely going to be worse than a number of other classes that's for sure.
    Sancus likes this.
  18. Ashigaru Augur

    Probably a dumb question (as I also box a wizard) - why wouldn't Stormjolt vortex be in the multi-bind. Don't you always want that debuff on the mob?

    Great hints here BTW, thanks folks
  19. Brohg Augur

    On group mobs, you're going to lose closer to "all" its potential than "most of it" if you don't make sure it's the first spell cast.
  20. Ashigaru Augur