Writing is not my strong suit so sorry for any errors.
Hey guys,
Anyone who has spent any time on this forum and played wizard a fair bit is already going to know that this class is absolutely trash and appears to have received no semblance of critical thinking from whoever got the job to design its legendaries and abilities. So i'll just in point form tell you guys what sucks and then i'll go on about possible fixes.
AP spenders are unreliable or do terrible damage for their cost.
Archon our (sad) equivalent of Akkarats and WotB has a giant cooldown and the vyr's set does nothing to address this besides removing a measly 20 seconds.
All of the sets are underpowered and suck they are more suited for light shows (Tals) than they are at accomplishing anything.
The amount of time required to get a decent T6 wizard ridiculously outweighs the other classes.
I can't believe these guys have gone through 2 iterations on Firebirds and that this is the best they have come up with. Seriously... another dot?
Arcane orb should be the centrepiece of a high torment build rather it has been relegated to t1-t4 why? because the base damage is complete garbage and it costs 30 AP to cast. What did they do? they gave it a small damage buff.
why are hydras stationary? when all the other classes have moving pets. The name suggests something far cooler than the piece of shit we have now I remember in D3 vanilla as i was leveling my wiz how hyped I was about hydra then I saw it and was like "oh... boring"
Why is the mirror images damage so pathetic when compared to witch doctor where the pets do more damage than your actual character. I'm not sure about call of the ancients and how there damage is but im sure its better than mirror image damage.
Possible fixes
increase base damage of arcane orb to 750% and give them a good arcane option cause obliteration is fucking trash and should be taken out of the game immediately why do I give a damn about missle speed and at the same time reducing my aoe and making it explode on impact the trade off is not even close to worth it.
make vyrs a 5 piece set and make the 5 bonus cut the cooldown of archon in half (like akkhans)
Make some real synergy between disintegrate and sloraks besides a straight damage buff.
Make the tals meteors have lower cooldowns something like 4 seconds or 5 seconds and buff the damage of all meteor skills they cost 40 AP how the fuck are they so low.
Going to give Firebirds its own section. (Below)
Make the wands be useful most of the wands do absolutely nothing and may as well be yellows.
Buff chantodo's it was considered a great set back in vanilla now it is the perfect example of what a trash set is.
Increase mirror image damage to 180% weapon damage like the fetishes or maybe that's too much but the point is that it should be atleast equivalent to your own damage.
Firebirds Fix
Firebirds has been garbage since release no one will argue with that and even the current version of Firebirds on ptr is underwhelming and already has an exploit. it is so uninspiring and boring I could not think of a more boring set design.
Suggestions:
4 set - add 15% fire damage.
6 set - remove cooldown on molten impact
6 set - something like jades combined with the ptr passive like say after you get it up to 3000% you hit it with any fire runed meteor and then it consumes all the dot damage that would have been done in say the next 10 seconds and does it instantly and then the 3000% continues to tick as before.
6 set - how about something to do with the scorch rune on arcane orb like consuming the dot and having all the damage done instantly.
My main point here is that there are so many cooler options that what blizzard has opted for if someone gave me a day with the guy who designs wizard I could fix this class in a couple of hours.
Interesting Point
Something I realized while writing this post is that wizards options for good weapons are very limited when compared to other classes and beyond that the only viable weapons have insanely low drop rates. (I.E. Wand of Woh, and Thunderfury). Other classes like crusader have choices such as blade of prophecy, darklight. and fate of fell as well as the utility flail swiftmount. Witchdoctors have the starmetal, fleyer, and sunkeeper(BTW darklight and fate of the fell have 20%+ drop rates much better than 1.52% wand of woh). For barb you can use almost anything but preferred weapons are burning axe of sankis and sunkeepr. The list goes on and on the point is maybe the droprate of woh should be increased and atleast one more wizard specific weapon should be made that would be comparable to the options crusader and WD have.
Polls These are more for me to just see the general public consensus.
I would like to see something done with meteor and arcane orb for all the elements but, I don't feel fixing them through a set bonus is the way to approach it. I do agree with a lot of your opinions though a mobile hydra would be very nice as it would complement the new channeled spells much more. "Interrupting to recast every few steps is really annoying" Personally I wouldn't be against Archon being similar to what it was in vanilla but, a little more toned down maybe with a cap on how much time you can add so we don't have to get 70% CDR for it to be viable. We very badly need some interesting set items, Wizard has always been behind in that department.
Personally, I think its really just the fact that AP spenders cost too much, especially considering Energy armor is almost mandatory in higher tiers. I'd say if every arcane spender were dropped by about 30% you could actually pump out some decent dps. Or perhaps if generating arcane power on crits was just a baseline ability for wizards power regen.
Molten impact is such an incredible looking spell... if only all the meteors were like that, minus the ridiculous cd.
A big Issue I think comes down to wizards are extremely gear dependant on surviving CC. So many champ abilities such as jailer, waller, knockback, provide ample opportunities for enemies to mow us down in seconds. Wizards just aren't equipped to survive being chained in jailer 5 times in a row. Or to survive being stuck in a wall that spawns on top of you in a build without teleport. I'd probably say if anything, wizard defenses need a major increase, so that skills like deflection, or energy armor are not mandatory for survival.
Lastly, as many have stated before is that wizards have very little synergy when it comes to legendaries and builds. All the other classes have sets/legendaries that can stack together allowing amazing damage output. Most wizard legendaries are just so rare that having a powerful build comes down to luck. However, WoW, Serpent Sparkler, or Velvet Camarel are all just super rare. Really good, but still none of them synergize well with anything much. 2.1 might change that with WoW and firebird, Serpent Sparkler and Tasker and Theo, and Velvet Camarel with proc weapons/gems (Chain Lightning or Forked Lightning with mini conduit, anyone?).
Agreed, the main thing I gather from what your saying black is blizzard has to give somewhere increase drop rates of good weepons improve synergy and improve base damage and replace terrible AP spenders
I think the weapon variety doesn't needs to come from adding new leg(a wiz can also use a sunkeeper if u wanted to), but instead fixing the skill core itself as they are underpowered as compared to other class. this statement doesn't means a new leg for wiz is not required. I have been playing wiz class since 1.0 and really hope wiz could be balance and improved as compared to other class.
And maybe like what those in diablo official forum has mention, a really rare leg needs to feel powerful if it is so rare to get. If it get more common, then it wouldn't feel the powerfulness within. As compared to wd pet build, you really need a starmetal to feel the full power of pet, but it isn't as common drop as others too.
I used to think I didn't use a spender because MM - conflag was to strong... But i'm slowly realizing that all spells beside MM - conflag being too bad is closer to reality.
I've had similar thoughts myself to be honest. I like your ideas regarding the Firebird's set bonuses changes. I also agree that Vyr set is a major let down.
But there's a big porblem that you didn't really address which is the 3 skill slots we waste on Familiar + Magic weapon + Armor. If we had the ability to use only 1 of those and still gain the beneifts, we could then use more crowd control / mobility spells at the same time which can open up more options like Frost nova with cold blooded. Which brings me to another point, the cold blooded passive should have somethign more interesting to it. Something along the lines of the Frostburns / Winter flurry legendary afixes.
AS for channeling spells, obviously they need to straight up buff the damage but also adding a stat to an existing passive that makes chanelling skills knockback every few hits or so could potentially make them more viable especially in greater rifts where standing still is not the best thing you can do, and knocking the monsters back could somehow provide you with some extra time to deal more damage.
I really don't understand why they don't just buff underused skills. And yes, arcane orb damage should be a lot higher. Frozen orb / Spark / Scorch could all be awesome if they actually dealt some damage. And obliteration? It's just garbage right now and even with a damage buff it is just not worth it.
They also need to buff staves. Not only their damage but also make the legendary affixes actually mean something. My idea was to make a staff remove the delay on meteors. That, along with decent stat rolls, could actually make a viable 2h meteor staff build. Just simple things like that could make the wizard a lot more interesting.
I agree on this:
Familiar+Magic Weapon are now ONE skillImbues your weapon with the force of a familiar incrasing your dmg by 10% and attacking your enemys by 200% weapon dmg.
Runes like Ignite+Sparkflint
Force Weapon + Cannonear
Icicel + Deflection?
But maybe make it 20% dmg increase cause sparkflint + force wep used to be 30%
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Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
I really like the idea of some spenders changing into "charged" spells like revenge for Barb. That would be neat. And I also really like the meteor cool down reduced by 1 sec for very arcane spender cast. That would be way neat and add all kinda of fun complexity to the gameplay.
As a whole I'm pretty happy with where wizards are at because I'm not entirely concerned about being able to crush T6. But they do "hit a wall" quite often where it's is really difficult to keep dealing large amounts of damage after a short while. Too much arcane power generation, not enough cooldowns. If those issues could be fixed I think they'd be a whole lot more fun to play.
I think the other possible problem with wizards is that to do good damage (at least within a particular element) generally requires synergy between several class abilities. Sometimes 4-5 but in the process that means you're at odds with defensive or mobility options. The pet tanking of WD and the natural 30% damage reduction of all the other melee classes is huge. Demon hunters are ranged as well, but they're designed to kite and do damage on the move.
Wizards, on the other hand, are forced to stop and stand still for almost all their abilities which means at some point they need to tank mobs, and either die, or accept the fact they need to sacrifice significant damage for defense.
Lightning builds are pretty much the only items I've had the luck of getting... right now the signature items I'd say for lightning are probably Myken's Ball of Hate, Velvet Camarel, Wyrdward, and Ancient Parthan Defenders. These are the few wizard legendaries that actually synergize well together. Combine those two with Electocute: Chain Lightning or Forked Lightning Along with Electrify weapon and Shocking aspect, and you have an amazing light show... and lots of stuns... but little to no real damage. The changes to legendary procs with Thunderfury and Fulminator might change this though. Personally I'd love to see Two Handers finally get thier needed buff, and see Shaeffer's Hammer become a possibility. I'm also still a bit concerned with the damage output of electrocute vs its proc modifiers, especially when it comes to electrify weapon and shocking aspect... if not an increase in proc modifiers, I'd like to see the jump penalty reduced.
A 10 hit chain lightning hits for 204% weapon damage... get a velvet camarel and a 20 hit chain lightning does all of 209.8% weapon damage, merely because the initial hit starts at 63% weapon damage and drops by 30% with each jump.
However, one inherant problem with this build is taking Electrify weapon and Shocking Aspect... I've now pretty much locked myself out of the two largest defensive abilities a wizard has... energy armor and deflection weapon. Ancient Parthan Defenders might resolve this, but I've never seen one myself.
The rarity of that combination of items is also a huge problem. Myken's, Velvet Camarel, and Defenders are all some of the rarest items to drop. Wyrdward I think is in the next rarity tier down. Another issue is that some of these items on their own are not that powerful at all, save maybe mykens. Many of these items also have a good portion of stats effectively prerolled, so you if you get one, its almost guaranteed to be good. Personally, I'd rather see these items drop more often, and have the rarity based off of having a good roll, so that I could at least make a decent build between the effects, and then just hope I can upgrade the versions I have as time goes on. But when the major items for your build all have a 0.5% drop rate... the idea of getting all of them is just unrealistic.
I think Mirror image could be buffed to be more interesting way like
MI last until they die (default, not legendary). They deal same damage as wizard and benefit from pet buff (Tnt ETC).
Its kinda like sentry from DH M6 but this MI could "tank" damage but die easily since it has same HP like player.
They could use all the skill on wizard bar include channeling (hopefully doable).
set Effect like :
4 set - MI gain shield equal to Wiz's AP/100 * MI's HP * 2. This make +max AP a bit more useful. Default wizard have 100 AP, so the shield will be player max hp * 1.5. The more extra AP you get, the more the shield provided.
6 Set -MI benefit from legendary effect
6 set of this MI item + 4 set firebird = MI can revive.
There is also an existing legendary that give chance to revive MI but it is useless in current patch.
Also benefit to use the auto diamond skin wizard hat to keep the MI alive a bit longer.
MI skill CD should be tweaked a bit. All CD should be 0 at the start and they should have same CDR with player. This is to prevent player spamming MI and MI spam meteor molten impact then being replaced by new MI. The goal here is to keep the MI alive for a short time before they can cast something. The casting time should be equal like Sentry but longer CD skill like meteor molten should be around ~7sec. Normal Meteor 2.7sec (same as CA).
This Mirror image will be wizard "pet". once the New gem roll out...hohoho...pet wizard!
I love that they are changing up skills elemental type again, opens up for more options.
Looks like lightning is getting a tiny bit of love, about time.
Ough, 3s cooldown on explosive blast ? This looks like a massive buff for Wow, in addition with the precedent 60% dmg buff from the previous PTR iteration, and with Firebird... looks like something brutal. Ok, ok, I know, GR>35 & close combat = bad idea, but still ^^
Would no longer be Fire damage, so you'd lose Cindercoat and Magefists and Firebird's.
Ough, 3s cooldown on explosive blast ? This looks like a massive buff for Wow, in addition with the precedent 60% dmg buff from the previous PTR iteration, and with Firebird... looks like something brutal. Ok, ok, I know, GR>35 & close combat = bad idea, but still ^^
Would no longer be Fire damage, so you'd lose Cindercoat and Magefists and Firebird's.
no you don't there are 2 changes. The rune "Flash" removes the CD completly
Explosive Blast Cost: 20 Arcane Power / Cooldown: 63 seconds / Gather an infusion of energy around you that explodes after 1.5 seconds for 945% weapon damage as Arcane to all enemies within 12 yards. FIRST CHANGE
Well saw the post where they told demon hunters and monks later(?) That they really actively look at the input that is put up on the forums. If it is true (i really hope and think it is) Then There may yet be a future for wizards.
Also, i am not sure of their policy but with the addition of grifts, i really hope their philosophy would change a bit about balancing. Not sure what it is now, but with a potentially infinite difficulty system added, then making the vast majority of specs strong and a few overpowered (which may warrant slight balance nerfs to the overpowered ones) seems to be the better way, as it will allow us to use whatever spec we want outside grifts but inside them where the competition takes place is where we may, may not, be shoe horned into specific insane builds.
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Hey guys,
Anyone who has spent any time on this forum and played wizard a fair bit is already going to know that this class is absolutely trash and appears to have received no semblance of critical thinking from whoever got the job to design its legendaries and abilities. So i'll just in point form tell you guys what sucks and then i'll go on about possible fixes.
Firebirds has been garbage since release no one will argue with that and even the current version of Firebirds on ptr is underwhelming and already has an exploit. it is so uninspiring and boring I could not think of a more boring set design.
Suggestions:
Interesting Point
Something I realized while writing this post is that wizards options for good weapons are very limited when compared to other classes and beyond that the only viable weapons have insanely low drop rates. (I.E. Wand of Woh, and Thunderfury). Other classes like crusader have choices such as blade of prophecy, darklight. and fate of fell as well as the utility flail swiftmount. Witchdoctors have the starmetal, fleyer, and sunkeeper(BTW darklight and fate of the fell have 20%+ drop rates much better than 1.52% wand of woh). For barb you can use almost anything but preferred weapons are burning axe of sankis and sunkeepr. The list goes on and on the point is maybe the droprate of woh should be increased and atleast one more wizard specific weapon should be made that would be comparable to the options crusader and WD have.
Polls
These are more for me to just see the general public consensus.
Molten impact is such an incredible looking spell... if only all the meteors were like that, minus the ridiculous cd.
A big Issue I think comes down to wizards are extremely gear dependant on surviving CC. So many champ abilities such as jailer, waller, knockback, provide ample opportunities for enemies to mow us down in seconds. Wizards just aren't equipped to survive being chained in jailer 5 times in a row. Or to survive being stuck in a wall that spawns on top of you in a build without teleport. I'd probably say if anything, wizard defenses need a major increase, so that skills like deflection, or energy armor are not mandatory for survival.
Lastly, as many have stated before is that wizards have very little synergy when it comes to legendaries and builds. All the other classes have sets/legendaries that can stack together allowing amazing damage output. Most wizard legendaries are just so rare that having a powerful build comes down to luck. However, WoW, Serpent Sparkler, or Velvet Camarel are all just super rare. Really good, but still none of them synergize well with anything much. 2.1 might change that with WoW and firebird, Serpent Sparkler and Tasker and Theo, and Velvet Camarel with proc weapons/gems (Chain Lightning or Forked Lightning with mini conduit, anyone?).
And maybe like what those in diablo official forum has mention, a really rare leg needs to feel powerful if it is so rare to get. If it get more common, then it wouldn't feel the powerfulness within. As compared to wd pet build, you really need a starmetal to feel the full power of pet, but it isn't as common drop as others too.
But that doesn't change the fact that the fotm fire (mb+mm/conflag)spec is too strong.
Wiz needs some serious attention to the other elements, else blizz may as well rename the class to firebird.
I've had similar thoughts myself to be honest. I like your ideas regarding the Firebird's set bonuses changes. I also agree that Vyr set is a major let down.
But there's a big porblem that you didn't really address which is the 3 skill slots we waste on Familiar + Magic weapon + Armor. If we had the ability to use only 1 of those and still gain the beneifts, we could then use more crowd control / mobility spells at the same time which can open up more options like Frost nova with cold blooded. Which brings me to another point, the cold blooded passive should have somethign more interesting to it. Something along the lines of the Frostburns / Winter flurry legendary afixes.
AS for channeling spells, obviously they need to straight up buff the damage but also adding a stat to an existing passive that makes chanelling skills knockback every few hits or so could potentially make them more viable especially in greater rifts where standing still is not the best thing you can do, and knocking the monsters back could somehow provide you with some extra time to deal more damage.
I really don't understand why they don't just buff underused skills. And yes, arcane orb damage should be a lot higher. Frozen orb / Spark / Scorch could all be awesome if they actually dealt some damage. And obliteration? It's just garbage right now and even with a damage buff it is just not worth it.
They also need to buff staves. Not only their damage but also make the legendary affixes actually mean something. My idea was to make a staff remove the delay on meteors. That, along with decent stat rolls, could actually make a viable 2h meteor staff build. Just simple things like that could make the wizard a lot more interesting.
Familiar+Magic Weapon are now ONE skillImbues your weapon with the force of a familiar incrasing your dmg by 10% and attacking your enemys by 200% weapon dmg.
Runes like Ignite+Sparkflint
Force Weapon + Cannonear
Icicel + Deflection?
But maybe make it 20% dmg increase cause sparkflint + force wep used to be 30%
Those Who Do Not Know True Pain Cannot Possibly Understand True Peace...
As a whole I'm pretty happy with where wizards are at because I'm not entirely concerned about being able to crush T6. But they do "hit a wall" quite often where it's is really difficult to keep dealing large amounts of damage after a short while. Too much arcane power generation, not enough cooldowns. If those issues could be fixed I think they'd be a whole lot more fun to play.
Wizards, on the other hand, are forced to stop and stand still for almost all their abilities which means at some point they need to tank mobs, and either die, or accept the fact they need to sacrifice significant damage for defense.
Lightning builds are pretty much the only items I've had the luck of getting... right now the signature items I'd say for lightning are probably Myken's Ball of Hate, Velvet Camarel, Wyrdward, and Ancient Parthan Defenders. These are the few wizard legendaries that actually synergize well together. Combine those two with Electocute: Chain Lightning or Forked Lightning Along with Electrify weapon and Shocking aspect, and you have an amazing light show... and lots of stuns... but little to no real damage. The changes to legendary procs with Thunderfury and Fulminator might change this though. Personally I'd love to see Two Handers finally get thier needed buff, and see Shaeffer's Hammer become a possibility. I'm also still a bit concerned with the damage output of electrocute vs its proc modifiers, especially when it comes to electrify weapon and shocking aspect... if not an increase in proc modifiers, I'd like to see the jump penalty reduced.
A 10 hit chain lightning hits for 204% weapon damage... get a velvet camarel and a 20 hit chain lightning does all of 209.8% weapon damage, merely because the initial hit starts at 63% weapon damage and drops by 30% with each jump.
However, one inherant problem with this build is taking Electrify weapon and Shocking Aspect... I've now pretty much locked myself out of the two largest defensive abilities a wizard has... energy armor and deflection weapon. Ancient Parthan Defenders might resolve this, but I've never seen one myself.
The rarity of that combination of items is also a huge problem. Myken's, Velvet Camarel, and Defenders are all some of the rarest items to drop. Wyrdward I think is in the next rarity tier down. Another issue is that some of these items on their own are not that powerful at all, save maybe mykens. Many of these items also have a good portion of stats effectively prerolled, so you if you get one, its almost guaranteed to be good. Personally, I'd rather see these items drop more often, and have the rarity based off of having a good roll, so that I could at least make a decent build between the effects, and then just hope I can upgrade the versions I have as time goes on. But when the major items for your build all have a 0.5% drop rate... the idea of getting all of them is just unrealistic.
MI last until they die (default, not legendary). They deal same damage as wizard and benefit from pet buff (Tnt ETC).
Its kinda like sentry from DH M6 but this MI could "tank" damage but die easily since it has same HP like player.
They could use all the skill on wizard bar include channeling (hopefully doable).
set Effect like :
4 set - MI gain shield equal to Wiz's AP/100 * MI's HP * 2. This make +max AP a bit more useful. Default wizard have 100 AP, so the shield will be player max hp * 1.5. The more extra AP you get, the more the shield provided.
6 Set -MI benefit from legendary effect
6 set of this MI item + 4 set firebird = MI can revive.
There is also an existing legendary that give chance to revive MI but it is useless in current patch.
Also benefit to use the auto diamond skin wizard hat to keep the MI alive a bit longer.
MI skill CD should be tweaked a bit. All CD should be 0 at the start and they should have same CDR with player. This is to prevent player spamming MI and MI spam meteor molten impact then being replaced by new MI. The goal here is to keep the MI alive for a short time before they can cast something. The casting time should be equal like Sentry but longer CD skill like meteor molten should be around ~7sec. Normal Meteor 2.7sec (same as CA).
This Mirror image will be wizard "pet". once the New gem roll out...hohoho...pet wizard!
WotB CD: 120s
Don't complain about archon's CD.
Looks like lightning is getting a tiny bit of love, about time.
Also, i am not sure of their policy but with the addition of grifts, i really hope their philosophy would change a bit about balancing. Not sure what it is now, but with a potentially infinite difficulty system added, then making the vast majority of specs strong and a few overpowered (which may warrant slight balance nerfs to the overpowered ones) seems to be the better way, as it will allow us to use whatever spec we want outside grifts but inside them where the competition takes place is where we may, may not, be shoe horned into specific insane builds.