Wizards: I see none, what's the scoop?

It's not the aim of most of the people complaining.

You are incorrect. I specifically called out 'other' classes and not just DPS classes for a reason.

This is also false. I explained our ideal situation and based on the current game there is no raid situation where that would could happen.

Thanks friend.

Why do you keep repeating this? Nobody is saying anything like you're complaining about. If you're just trying to convince me that you're an idiot then you can stop now. I'm already convinced.

I don't like that so much DPS comes from procs, melee with staff actually adds good dps from the proc, it's kind of crazy I have to melee as a wizard and take ramp and other melee related issues to squeeze out some more dps, this also means if we are low on druids or chanters for the night my dps suffers a lot too from loss of proc dmg. Actually considered rerolling chanter as they are such game changers for us and we need more ones that can actually hit IoG once in an entire night, side tangent moan

I've spent the last couple of days trying to decide how to respond to this thread, because I do feel it merits a response. And before anyone gets his or her panties in a wad, don't let the necro icon fool you. My wizard is technically my main, but I do play the necro at least as often. Both are 115, raid geared, and either max AA (wizard) or nearly max (necro).

INT casters have been at a significant disadvantage compared to melee for at least the last five expansions. With the current spell revamp and intended epic nerf, the necro situation has changed, but let's not get sidetracked onto that quite yet. This is, after all, a wizard thread.

From my perspective, wizard dps issues can be broken down as follows:

1. Spell cast times, which affect crit damage
2. Global cooldown / recast delay
3. Resists / debuff requirements
4. Crit rates
5. Limited spell choices for optimum performance
6. Mana costs and regen abilities
7. ADPS needs

To address these, I'll number my commentary according to the numbers above.

1. Back in the day, wizard spells seemed to take forever to cast - because they did. Remember the five second cast time on Ice Comet? Big boom, but you had to wait a long time, with a greater chance of having your spell cast interrupted by stuns, to get there. Long cast times meant bigger crits, and shorter base cast times gave crap crit amounts by comparison. I believe this is still the case (Kizant can correct me if I'm wrong), and this could actually be tweaked by the devs without a need for massive spell overhaul so there's less of a penalty for shorter cast times. Math being math, a small change in the crit amount calculation could go a long way toward balancing dps between damage casters and melee.
2. I was told a long time ago that the global cooldown - the amount of time your spell gems stay grayed out before you can cast another spell - is 2.25 seconds. While that may not be exactly correct, it feels about right when chain casting. That's important because a spell with a base 3 second cast time and no spell haste could be cast once every 5.25 seconds. Realistically, everybody's got spell haste, so you're looking at a 1.5 second cast instead, but the GCD is still the same. In a perfect world, I could cast a spell once every 3.75 seconds. Why is the GCD so long? Is there a chance of bringing it down under two seconds? Spells like Ethereal Brand, with a 3.75 second base cast time, are less than optimal, but they do hit hard when they land. That leads to the next issue, which is spell resists and debuff requirements.
3. My group assist key includes an automatic cast of the Lower Element AA, max rank at 115. Playing with a friend in Velk's last night, Lower Element was resisted more often than not. With no mage, shammy, or chanter in the group to debuff the mob so Lower Element would land or be unnecessary, Claw of Sontalak Rk. III (-20 to fire) was usually resisted, as well. Even Ethereal Brand Rk. III (-50 to fire) was resisted fairly often. Why does it matter? Because every time I got a full resist, I was wasting nearly four seconds while doing zero dps and expending mana in the process. Meanwhile, my friend's melee toons were smacking the mob multiple times per second. A swing and a miss? Oh, dear! You get another shot at it in some small fraction of a second instead of the four seconds it takes for the wizard to try again. In my opinion, resist adjusts on wizard spells could use some serious attention. If the devs are uninterested in doing that, they could at least look into putting a decent resist modifier on the Lower Element AA so the doggone thing lands more often than not without requiring tash, malo or scent first.
4. As listed elsewhere in this thread, wizards seem to have the worst crit rate of any of the casting classes. Why is that? If wizards are supposed to be masters of the arcane, wouldn't it make sense for them to know how to keep up with every other class on spell crits? Again, a small tweak on the back end or additional AAs to purchase for an increase in crit chance could make wizard dps more competitive.
5. Szilent, bless his heart, made some good suggestions on ways for a wizard to recover mana through spell selection. While I applaud the suggestions, what does that actually do to the wizard's dps? If it takes you from fighting hard for twelfth place on a raid parse to somewhere around 26th, most wizards aren't going to look at rotating those spells in for several minutes as a cure for what ails us. That's another way of saying there's a very small selection of spells a wizard can cast that are worth memming. The rest, to be blunt, are garbage and never get used under any circumstances. Lures could be useful if they did any damage, but the level 113 Lure of Sontalak Rk. III does essentially the same damage as our level 90 ethereal. I can probably do just as much damage with the melee proc on the Velium Enhanced Arcane Staff as I can by casting that lure.
6. Wizard (and now necro) mana costs and regen abilities could use some love, particularly in group play. See the section on spell resists, above. You could get lucky with a Gambit / Harvest refresh, or you could go the entire seven minute duration to get back anywhere from seven to fifteen percent of your mana pool, depending on pool size and which spell you choose to cast. Given the length of the cooldown, that sure doesn't seem like much mana.
7. Last, but not least, the game seems increasingly to rely on ADPS. If your wizard has ever been unlucky enough to be in a raid group with no chanter and no druid (let's not talk about bards, because caster groups never get those), you might as well go melee the mob for all the damage you're going to do. Given the scarcity of wizards, you're not going to see Covenant fulfill (takes three unless you're burning), either.

Note to the developers: If you're interested in convincing any of the player base that wizard is a viable class, read numbers 1 - 4, above. Tweaking a few of those things, particularly crit amounts based on spell cast times, could yield significant results with minimal effort. The few of us who are left might even stick with the class if you do.

1. Ice Comet had a cast time of 6.25 seconds. It was reduced to 5 seconds when theyreduced the damage from 1100 to 800 a long time ago. Longer cast times have nothing to do with bigger crits. Crits are a multiplier of base damage. Longer casting spells do usually tend to have a higher base damage, but not always. The crit damage calculation is a flat multiplier, it doesn't need to be changed.

2. Whomever told you that is wrong. Long ago, before the spell system revamp, spells didn't have a global cooldown. This is why you would merely chain your best spell over and over again. When they revamped the spell system in TSS? TBS? they added the cooldowns. This is a per-spell configuration. Most spells have 1.5 seconds, but a few have more. Harvest is 3 seconds for example.

3. Wizard resist rates are horrible. I've tried many times over the years to get them changed, with no luck. The person you have to convince is the spell dev.

4. When Critical AAs were introduced in Luclin, all casting classes were given Spell Casting Fury in the Archetype Tab for critical chance (7%). Wizards alone were given Spell Casting Fury Mastery which gave additional critical chance to them as they were intended to be the best at it. Then, in Planes of Power the other casting classes gained Fury of Magic in the Class Tab. This was an inferior version of Spell Casting Fury Mastery at first. Over time however, Fury of Magic was made better and better while Spell Casting Fury Mastery languished. Often times the previous AA Dev would say he didn't want to give more ranks of Fury of Magic to the silk classes, but he would give it to Hybrids...only to forget and give it to the silk classes as well...except for Wizards because they didn't have Fury of Magic. It wasn't until the AA consolidation that Spell Casting Fury Mastery was renamed to Fury of Magic, but it wasn't upgraded to the same level as the other silk classes' version.

On a semi-related note, when crit chance and crit damage were split into separate SPAs, all classes EXCEPT Wizards gained an extra innate 100% crit damage bonus. Wizards already had this bonus, but when every other class gained it, Wizards did not get an increase. This was essentially a "passive nerf" in that it wasn't a direct nerf, but if everyone besides you get something, it is functionally the same as a nerf.

5. I don't generally have issues with mana on raids, but that's my own experience. Mana issues for me usually come from grouping with chain pulls.

6. The biggest issue is that our Harvest line hasn't scaled with our mana pools. In TSS when we first got the upgraded harvest line, it restored about 1/3rd of our entire mana pool, (6k restore with ~18k max mana). Our current harvest is 38k, but our mana pools are 380k+. Instead of restoring 1/3rd, it's restoring 1/10th. Now, with claw refreshing harvest 1/3rd probably would be too much, but it should still be more than 1/10th.

Not only this, but mana return used to be mainly a Wizard thing. Other classes didn't have it, or had really limited ones, and Melee classes didn't have any way to regain endurance than to med. This was a balancing mechanic that gave Wizards an edge. As other classes have gained mana returns, and melee gained infinite endurance via rest, this balance mechanic is no more.

7. For many years Wizards didn't rely much on adps because it didn't stack with our own abilities. I always tried to fight adps because I knew this is exactly what would happen if we came to rely on it. That said, there is still nothing that prevents us from having self only versions of the adps abilities that don't stack with them. Many melee classes have self-only non-stacking versions of adps mods, we should to. The issue is, as always, to convince the devs of that.

eh, Beimeith covered it.

Pretty much agree 100% with Beimeith. It was interesting to see the cumulative effect of not receiving crit upgrades, I knew it had happened but wasn't sure exactly where or how.

I also am fine for Mana on raids but in the group game in a fast pull environment run out of mana, I guess the lack of paragons, chanter, and bard mana along with Mod rods that you get on a raid is the issue.

I think on raids Gambit seems balanced, in the group game not so much. With reset procs and all the other mana regen coming in on raid its fine, maybe increase casted harvest amount as I never cast that on raid unless I die and it's up, in group game I potentially would use it more, if it gave more mana than it does.

ADPS sucks because when you don't have it you are doing 1/3 less dps, I think Beimeiths idea of some sort of self ADPS buff isn't a bad idea, maybe half the effectiveness of having a chanter? So if we don't get a chanter or druid we are not totally useless. Bake it into the familiar or a new aura or something?

And please please please make us not so reliant on procs, I hate it, Wizards should have big nukes not hundreds of little pinpricks that add up to something mildly threatening.

I should also add that it was recently discovered that the 1-3% innate crit chance Wizards have doesn't work the same way as SPA crit chance. It is NOT affected by critical damage mods but uses it's own crit damage calculation that results in ~50% damage bonus and as such should not be counted along with SPA crit chance.

When we look at our worst crit rate, we were overinflating Our worst in class rate by a couple percentage points?

Iirc, spell crits were invented for wizards. I had to spend way more AA points for this while other classes were getting other things to spend AA’s on. And of course the devs subsequently gifted better to all classes for pennies on my dollar. Devs fail.

Btw I love EQ, and all the things the devs have done for the game. I’m just tired of them failing wizards.

Thanks, Beimeith, for setting me straight on some of the things I've misunderstood all this time. I really appreciate it! Also thank you for clearing up the cast time on Ice Comet. I could've sworn it was at least six seconds, but when I looked it up, Alla's said five, so that's what I went with in my post.

The total reliance on someone else to debuff mobs so my spells land is probably the most frustrating thing about playing my wizard. You get tash and malo on raids, but in groups I would have to use my tash clicky and then Lower Element before I can begin to engage with dps. By that time the melee have the mob over half dead, making me wonder if the devs are really that unfamiliar with the way their game works. You know it's bad when I'm casting Scent with the necro first so Lower Element will land. Necros waste a lot of mana (even more with the current spell revamp) due to mobs that die before their dots wear off, but that doesn't frustrate me half as much as the full resists on my wizard. If I have to run my other toons around to debuff mobs for the wizard, I might as well just play the other toons and leave the wizard behind. Given the number of wizards in today's game at level 115, it looks like a lot of other people have made the same calculation.

And whether the global cooldown is 2.25 seconds or 1.5, it's too doggone long. If you capped haste and weapon delay so a melee toon could swing once every 1.5 seconds, can you imagine the meltdown we'd see?

Having played wizzy for nearly 20 years a few things annoy me.

1. Global cool down, waiting for my spell bar to not be greyed out so I can cast something! I don't mind having spell gems greyed out so we can't cast the same spell over and over but all of them
2. Force of Flame & Ice recast time should be lowered to be the same as Force of Will! I have a couple clickies to fill in when all 3 are on cool down.
3. Forces again, now these cost us mana they should be effected by our focuses. I hate getting you are too far away messages when my nukes land perfectly and the forces don't!
3. Cast time of TLs why do they still have such a long cast time?
4. TL to bind after the changes to not land while in combat, why does it still not work for me? Why have I got to cast a seperate spell to go to by own bind?
5. They want us to melee for procs but they don't give us cleave on legs, wasn't that long ago they added it to priests, why not int casters?
6. Why have we got endurance regen AAs when we don't use endurance for anything! Plans to let us use endurance when low on mana????
7. Line of Sight - If i can see all of it but its left foot, I can see it!

We are proberbly the only guild which runs with 7 wizzys, we are all stubborn and don't want to give up on the class, but pretty much at this stage of the expansion all of us are playing alts in the group game, mainly melee classes. So this is possibly the main reason the OP doesn't see wizzys around.

Wizard class is dead ...! other casters can bring the same/better dps and more utility to groups.

Solution (I think): bring the mana cost of wizards spells down by 50% . This will give more dps per mana than others without nerfing other casters. Less mana regen dependent. And bring the agro down by say 30% per dps as wizards.

Wizards don't need to bring anything but dps dps dps and more dps to groups as fast as they can dish it with less agro from mobs. That way groups will want them. Besides ports , they have nothing.
Finally druids can do the same for ports, plus they can nuke well and they can level up players (did I mention they can heal and eventually rez?, yea ...wizzys are dead lol).

Neither of these will do anything whatsoever to help Wizards.

Mana isn't a problem unless you're doing something very wrong nor is aggro.


Wizards need 1 thing, and one thing only: DPS.

Whether that comes from base damage increases, cast time reductions, focus effects, AAs, or buffs, it doesn't matter. It just needs to be something that increases dps.

Mana is a huge issue in CoV missions, spells do not cast fast enough to do the damage required to bring dragons down fast enough to avoid mana drains. Having got class AAs i'm not seeing any difference in DPS, so they either aren't working or doing very, very, very minor increases.

My rogue on the other hand (lacking in AA) can do more damage and has no end issues, if we didn't already have an abundant of rogues in the guild I would main change in the blink of an eye.

It’s funny I run a few box groups that run tank, ench/brd, healer - then 3 ber, mage, necro or wiz. I think wiz is getting retired. They were already hurting and now the hp of these t2 COV mobs - I think they are worse off this expansion. Switching to 3 monks or possibly rogues.

The insult that is the wizard class is multifaceted.
No pet.
Root always breaks.
Lowest caster crit rate - while non-crits do like 10% dmg of a crit. Now with cov a non-crit of our BIGGEST nuke does like 1% damage to a mob??!?
Our teleportation ability was given to everyone as birthright. God forbid devs get off their and make an ability to port to secondary bind like we have been asking for a decade now.
Why do we have to explode against mobs so quickly? Armor of wisdom lol hahah f u.
A resist was great in original EQ when a nuke did like 35% of a mobs health. Now one resist and our chance to do 2% dmg to a mob in 4 seconds goes to 2% damage in 8 seconds.
Our lowerElement AA - resisted about 66% of the time.
Every bot group has a mage and melee for dps, shouldn't they want a wizard for dps and teleport? No they don't.
Speaking of SK, can the clown that 'balanced' harmtouch balance manaburn?
Wizard merc vs Rogue Merc - shouldn't devs begin to get embarrassed at some point?
Root AA - 12 second recast time. That really helps when every nuke breaks root, thanks devs.
Why do dots do better dps and not break root? They have pets anyway, so why make dotters suffer?
What is the upside of a wizard ffs?

Root is for CC not direct DD DPS, yes I know Nec, Shm, Dru can root-rot, you should ask for a better snare maybe.

Root is for cc.... clearly you haven’t played the losing hand of a wizard.


Yet somehow root and dot is the exception I should overlook?

The wizard equivalent of root-rotting, is to spam your ice-root-spell on the mob until it dies. It has a dd-component, that is (sadly) unfocused and unaffected by AA's.

I use it when im soloing in super tight environments.

Devs priority SUCK! There, I said it!

This is correct. Ppl need to stop muddying the waters with talk of more mana regen or less aggro. We need more dps or we fall behind and cannot do the job we are intended for.