Wizards defenses are underwhelming so we have Energy Armor, blur
wizards Offense is underwhelming so we have magic weapon, familiar.
Our AP is underwhelming so we have prodigy, Astral Presence
If you honestly think about it the skills that they have offered wizards to help "buff" the wizard may be one of the issues holding back the dev team.
The problem I see in this is the fact that to be even competitive in any format a lot of builds RELY on at a minimum the following:
Energy armor
Magic weapon/familiar
and sometimes (a lot of times) familiar even with Magic Weapon
Magic Missle or another signature that doesn't do damage (especially if they nerf conflag in the new patch)
now we have passives alot of builds especially T5/T6 require Blur, Prodigy, and one more damage buff with lackluster choices in that catagory, and sometimes you have the choice for a 4th free passive.
with all this being said, we honesty have a choice of 2 spells to pick from and 1 passive.
and thats just to make our class lackluster compared to any others atm.
this is mostly true. I would argue many of the passives from many other classes can be discarded as well, but wizard is unfortunately in the crossfire of other classes right now. If we rate the classes form Melee to range we get the following (in order):
Monk (you could swap between monk and Barb here but its not really the point Im making now)
Barbarian
Crusader
Wizard
Demon Hunter
Witch Doctor (again one could argue between WD and DH but not the point)
So with wizard stuck right in the middle, you have a weird issue at play. Wiz has no natural damage mitigation, so melee is difficult to pull off. I would consider any Woh build melee class since its within melee range, but that is also precisely why I rate it in the middle of the pack in the list above.
So its obvious that the most powerful wiz build in the game is a melee class style build, in which case those damage mitigation spells make a lot of sense. in fact many of the spells Wizard has from a defensive standpoint I would consider melee class defensive abilities. Frost Nova is melee class only with the exception of the Ice patch one where you can kite mobs through the ice and do damage/slow, but even then not enough damage at high T's to warrant designing a build around it. I have and can do T6 using a build utilizing this skill, but its a lot of work and can be very difficult to pull off sometimes.
Ranged spells are very expensive to use with the exception of MM/Conflag, which is why everyone is getting amped about it in the new patch, but in my opinion the damage output is still lacking compared to something like Woh because your attack speed is so greatly increased when using Woh. Plus, to ensure that all of your MMs hit a mob, you need to be pretty close, thus pushing those skills closer to melee style and endangering the wiz.
So yes I agree in higher T's everyone needs blur unless you are simply amazing at avoiding damage. Now this would not be the case if Wiz could teleport without a cool down. DH can manage this because essentially they can jump from spot to spot without a cool down. This is a skill wizard needs and no it doesn't need to be a passive on a weapon, that will just make a build that can mitigate damage, not necessarily deal damage. You completely remove so many useful weapons by attaching a no-cooldown on teleport to one weapon.
So because wiz must take advantage any and all damage mitigation, we are forced to keep a few skills on lock. Now I have seen some of this mitigated by continuing to paragon, but realistically this will take a lot of time. Maxing out armor/LOH/life regen/all res will take a very long time, and other classes are not in the unfortunate position to rely on those paragon points as much as wiz seem to.
That being said Im not sure what the immediate fix is. I have argued before that many of the skill used to slow down or stun enemies should deal damage, as this method is one of the only ways wiz can thrive in the melee/ranged gray area. If more of the skills used to keep mobs at bay deal damage, then a wiz can utilize movement (teleport) and damage dealing ranged attacks that do not CC mobs much more effectively. I also would continue to argue that because Wizard can cast Mirror images, those images should deal a far more damage. Right now they simply do not provide the distraction/damage that makes them very useful in endgame since using that skill slot takes away a slot that could be used for damage skills. By making slight changes here to damage dealt from cc skills and adding damage to non-damage dealing skills like Mirror image I could see many wizards avoiding damage while still being welcomed in the t6 and above campaigns.
I would also argue that skills like meteor should produce knock backs, and probably should be less expensive to cast given that they are used primarily as main damage dealers. Right now, unless you are running cinder coat, you cannot really run a meteor build unless, again, you use prodigy.
There are many ways to argue these points, but all in all I played my wiz in PTR and was unimpressed. I actually disliked the style of play and felt like if things were to stay the same, I would probably switch over to my DH as a main.
Wizard just feels weak when playing in coop compared to others, this can be my horrid rng playing in (paragon 294, gained like 200+ in reaper. not as much as the best but a lot). Seen my first tal rasha last night (a imo good rolled chest, could be better but good) and a firebird chest recently, other than that only seen 2 vyrs boots.
Either way the point is that sure, i may be fucked due to rng, but i also just find my abilities to hit for shit and cost stupid ammounts of arcane power.
It has come to the point where i am not sure i want to play my wiz anymore as it just feels like if i ever want to progress beyond t3 (havent tried t4 but cba, takes too long to kill stuff in t3) i have to farm twice as much as the other classes.
Also the fact that we got so few items actually doing fun stuff to our spells, or just doign what they they promised, being game changers. Other classes get lots of fun stuff doing that, wiz, well we got ehm, wand of woh? Not sure we got any other big game changers tbh. Well mirror ball ofc but its mandatory.
Ofc it may just be me missing em, but it feels like we were the class that got balanced the least, and when one of builds (i know it was bugged) like frozen orb seem to catch extra wind and actually work, well too bad! The none fire build that allowed you to go from more than t1-t4 has to be nerfed!.
Final thing about frozen orb is a rant as it made me quit originally, no fun farming new items that are both not frost dmg or arcane orb specialised when i had quite a lot that was focused on it. (Originally when i played it i had no id ea it was bugged thus i feel that the so called b ug fix was, well uncalled for).
All in all, give me lower costs on ap spenders or give me far more dmg on them. Currently they feel like they cost a ton and they deal shit dmg
For defense, our defense tends to be, well, on par with Monks, or better. We can get quite a bit of all-res from our high Int, Energy Armor is quite a strong buff, and we have multiple extremely strong defensive passives. Sure, we aren't as tanky as Crusaders, but nobody is!
For offense.. Taking a look at raw damage, the top damage sheet players (Diabloprogress.com, elemental dps) are almost all A) Demon Hunters, or Wizards. However, Demon Hunter's skills are mostly all single-target, with a few AoE. Wizards? Almost everything a Wizard does is AoE. Wizards are THE AoE king. Demon Hunters can kill single-target things, AKA Malthael, faster then Wizards, but Wizards will clear trash faster then everything.
Now, skill set... If you take a look at pretty much everybody, with the exception of Witch Docters, people tend to have 1 spender, 1 generater, and the rest go into various buffing skills. Warriors and Battle Cry, Monks and Mantra's, Crusader's and Laws, Demon Hunter and Pet/Turret, ect. Generally at least 3 of their skills goes to some sort of buff/heal/thing. Unless you are running a constant spender build (Some builds can take out their signature spells), you WILL have to use a signature spell. Everyone.
So, when it comes down to it, all classes have only 2 skill slots "open", which generally goes to a Spender, and a Defensive.
Barb Example- All 3 Tactics should be used- War Cry (Huge toughness/healing boost), Battle Rage (Huge Damage Boost), and Threatening Shout (An additional Toughness boost). You grab your Signature Spell/Builder (Bash, Cleave, Frenzy, maybe Weapon Throw), and your Spender (Hammer, Rend, Slam, Spear, WW. Depending on your build, other options may open up). So, you have 1 free spot open. You can either invest it into Utility/Movement/Defensive (Leap, Stomp, Sprint, Charge, Suppression), or Extra Damage (Overpower, Revenge, Earthquake, Berserker, Ancients, or Avalanch).
So, its essentially the same thing as Wizard here for builds. Now, as you gain more Toughness, you may be able to drop War Cry or Threatening Shout. If you get the right build, you can drop a Signature Spell and trade it in for an extra Defense/Damage ability, or drop your spender and do the same.
Of course, for Wizards, there really isn't much dropping for Magic Weapon/Familiar/Energy Armor. The main reason for this is because all 3 will provide a VERY large damage boost. Magic Weapon- +20% damage. Familiar, +10% damage. Energy Armor, +5% crit.
IMO, Energy Armor-Pinpoint Barrier SHOULD be changed. Energy Armor should buff Toughness only. Because it buffs Toughness AND damage with that single Pinpoint Barrier, it's pretty much dominant in ALL builds. Magic Weapon-Force Weapon is fine, as you see quite a bit of variance in that. (Lightning Builds use Electrify, Fire builds use Ignite, with Arcane/Frost using Frost Weapon, unless you need the defensive benefit of Deflection). Familiar... Could use some adjustments.
Anyway, chaning Energy Armor-Pinpoint Barrier would open up Storm/Frost Armor in many more builds. Changing a few runes for both of those to deal different elemental damage would open them up even further. Thus you take Energy Armor for the significant amount of Toughness, Storm for more damage, and Frost for a cross between Damage and Toughness.
One last thing for AP- Astral Presence is generally skiped in the majority of builds. The only time you take Astral Presence is if you are using a channeling build. Otherwise, you do NOT take Astral Presence. Our resource system is basically on par with WD's resource system.
I started playing wizard a little a couple days ago, and TBH the class feels a lot stronger than i expected it to be. I was under the impression that i'd be stuck in lower torment, but was pleasantly surprised that even T5 feels pretty easy already. That's actually far less time spent than any of my other classes to get decent speed T5 clears.
I already played the other 5 classes, and Monk, barb, and even WD felt much weaker until I was able to get some keys items for them. In the case with barb and monk, i needed full set in order to do T5-6 at a decent rate. WD really felt like it needed both TMF and the pet damage hat in order to properly do even T4-5. Though wizard is the last class I'm playing, I did happen to have 3p Vyr's set already from playing the other classes, so it's really not a "fresh start" even though I just started playing the character. I'm using Vry, Aug, and Borns on my Wiz now.
Something I noticed about wizard is that it can deal pretty solid damage, yet a lot of damage is taken in the process (in large part because i'm playing as a melee or short range archon most of the time). I considered dropping glass cannon, but at the end decided to keep it since it seems once enough affixes are on the ground, i'm pretty much dead (or take a long time stutter stepping and kiting). It seems like one of the "kill before getting killed" styles of play, somewhat similar to leap quake where the barb actually has no healing aside from globes and a bit of LoH from paragon.
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wizards Offense is underwhelming so we have magic weapon, familiar.
Our AP is underwhelming so we have prodigy, Astral Presence
If you honestly think about it the skills that they have offered wizards to help "buff" the wizard may be one of the issues holding back the dev team.
The problem I see in this is the fact that to be even competitive in any format a lot of builds RELY on at a minimum the following:
Energy armor
Magic weapon/familiar
and sometimes (a lot of times) familiar even with Magic Weapon
Magic Missle or another signature that doesn't do damage (especially if they nerf conflag in the new patch)
now we have passives alot of builds especially T5/T6 require Blur, Prodigy, and one more damage buff with lackluster choices in that catagory, and sometimes you have the choice for a 4th free passive.
with all this being said, we honesty have a choice of 2 spells to pick from and 1 passive.
and thats just to make our class lackluster compared to any others atm.
thoughts?
Monk (you could swap between monk and Barb here but its not really the point Im making now)
Barbarian
Crusader
Wizard
Demon Hunter
Witch Doctor (again one could argue between WD and DH but not the point)
So with wizard stuck right in the middle, you have a weird issue at play. Wiz has no natural damage mitigation, so melee is difficult to pull off. I would consider any Woh build melee class since its within melee range, but that is also precisely why I rate it in the middle of the pack in the list above.
So its obvious that the most powerful wiz build in the game is a melee class style build, in which case those damage mitigation spells make a lot of sense. in fact many of the spells Wizard has from a defensive standpoint I would consider melee class defensive abilities. Frost Nova is melee class only with the exception of the Ice patch one where you can kite mobs through the ice and do damage/slow, but even then not enough damage at high T's to warrant designing a build around it. I have and can do T6 using a build utilizing this skill, but its a lot of work and can be very difficult to pull off sometimes.
Ranged spells are very expensive to use with the exception of MM/Conflag, which is why everyone is getting amped about it in the new patch, but in my opinion the damage output is still lacking compared to something like Woh because your attack speed is so greatly increased when using Woh. Plus, to ensure that all of your MMs hit a mob, you need to be pretty close, thus pushing those skills closer to melee style and endangering the wiz.
So yes I agree in higher T's everyone needs blur unless you are simply amazing at avoiding damage. Now this would not be the case if Wiz could teleport without a cool down. DH can manage this because essentially they can jump from spot to spot without a cool down. This is a skill wizard needs and no it doesn't need to be a passive on a weapon, that will just make a build that can mitigate damage, not necessarily deal damage. You completely remove so many useful weapons by attaching a no-cooldown on teleport to one weapon.
So because wiz must take advantage any and all damage mitigation, we are forced to keep a few skills on lock. Now I have seen some of this mitigated by continuing to paragon, but realistically this will take a lot of time. Maxing out armor/LOH/life regen/all res will take a very long time, and other classes are not in the unfortunate position to rely on those paragon points as much as wiz seem to.
That being said Im not sure what the immediate fix is. I have argued before that many of the skill used to slow down or stun enemies should deal damage, as this method is one of the only ways wiz can thrive in the melee/ranged gray area. If more of the skills used to keep mobs at bay deal damage, then a wiz can utilize movement (teleport) and damage dealing ranged attacks that do not CC mobs much more effectively. I also would continue to argue that because Wizard can cast Mirror images, those images should deal a far more damage. Right now they simply do not provide the distraction/damage that makes them very useful in endgame since using that skill slot takes away a slot that could be used for damage skills. By making slight changes here to damage dealt from cc skills and adding damage to non-damage dealing skills like Mirror image I could see many wizards avoiding damage while still being welcomed in the t6 and above campaigns.
I would also argue that skills like meteor should produce knock backs, and probably should be less expensive to cast given that they are used primarily as main damage dealers. Right now, unless you are running cinder coat, you cannot really run a meteor build unless, again, you use prodigy.
There are many ways to argue these points, but all in all I played my wiz in PTR and was unimpressed. I actually disliked the style of play and felt like if things were to stay the same, I would probably switch over to my DH as a main.
Either way the point is that sure, i may be fucked due to rng, but i also just find my abilities to hit for shit and cost stupid ammounts of arcane power.
It has come to the point where i am not sure i want to play my wiz anymore as it just feels like if i ever want to progress beyond t3 (havent tried t4 but cba, takes too long to kill stuff in t3) i have to farm twice as much as the other classes.
Also the fact that we got so few items actually doing fun stuff to our spells, or just doign what they they promised, being game changers. Other classes get lots of fun stuff doing that, wiz, well we got ehm, wand of woh? Not sure we got any other big game changers tbh. Well mirror ball ofc but its mandatory.
Ofc it may just be me missing em, but it feels like we were the class that got balanced the least, and when one of builds (i know it was bugged) like frozen orb seem to catch extra wind and actually work, well too bad! The none fire build that allowed you to go from more than t1-t4 has to be nerfed!.
Final thing about frozen orb is a rant as it made me quit originally, no fun farming new items that are both not frost dmg or arcane orb specialised when i had quite a lot that was focused on it. (Originally when i played it i had no id ea it was bugged thus i feel that the so called b ug fix was, well uncalled for).
All in all, give me lower costs on ap spenders or give me far more dmg on them. Currently they feel like they cost a ton and they deal shit dmg
For offense.. Taking a look at raw damage, the top damage sheet players (Diabloprogress.com, elemental dps) are almost all A) Demon Hunters, or Wizards. However, Demon Hunter's skills are mostly all single-target, with a few AoE. Wizards? Almost everything a Wizard does is AoE. Wizards are THE AoE king. Demon Hunters can kill single-target things, AKA Malthael, faster then Wizards, but Wizards will clear trash faster then everything.
Now, skill set... If you take a look at pretty much everybody, with the exception of Witch Docters, people tend to have 1 spender, 1 generater, and the rest go into various buffing skills. Warriors and Battle Cry, Monks and Mantra's, Crusader's and Laws, Demon Hunter and Pet/Turret, ect. Generally at least 3 of their skills goes to some sort of buff/heal/thing. Unless you are running a constant spender build (Some builds can take out their signature spells), you WILL have to use a signature spell. Everyone.
So, when it comes down to it, all classes have only 2 skill slots "open", which generally goes to a Spender, and a Defensive.
Barb Example- All 3 Tactics should be used- War Cry (Huge toughness/healing boost), Battle Rage (Huge Damage Boost), and Threatening Shout (An additional Toughness boost). You grab your Signature Spell/Builder (Bash, Cleave, Frenzy, maybe Weapon Throw), and your Spender (Hammer, Rend, Slam, Spear, WW. Depending on your build, other options may open up). So, you have 1 free spot open. You can either invest it into Utility/Movement/Defensive (Leap, Stomp, Sprint, Charge, Suppression), or Extra Damage (Overpower, Revenge, Earthquake, Berserker, Ancients, or Avalanch).
So, its essentially the same thing as Wizard here for builds. Now, as you gain more Toughness, you may be able to drop War Cry or Threatening Shout. If you get the right build, you can drop a Signature Spell and trade it in for an extra Defense/Damage ability, or drop your spender and do the same.
Of course, for Wizards, there really isn't much dropping for Magic Weapon/Familiar/Energy Armor. The main reason for this is because all 3 will provide a VERY large damage boost. Magic Weapon- +20% damage. Familiar, +10% damage. Energy Armor, +5% crit.
IMO, Energy Armor-Pinpoint Barrier SHOULD be changed. Energy Armor should buff Toughness only. Because it buffs Toughness AND damage with that single Pinpoint Barrier, it's pretty much dominant in ALL builds. Magic Weapon-Force Weapon is fine, as you see quite a bit of variance in that. (Lightning Builds use Electrify, Fire builds use Ignite, with Arcane/Frost using Frost Weapon, unless you need the defensive benefit of Deflection). Familiar... Could use some adjustments.
Anyway, chaning Energy Armor-Pinpoint Barrier would open up Storm/Frost Armor in many more builds. Changing a few runes for both of those to deal different elemental damage would open them up even further. Thus you take Energy Armor for the significant amount of Toughness, Storm for more damage, and Frost for a cross between Damage and Toughness.
I already played the other 5 classes, and Monk, barb, and even WD felt much weaker until I was able to get some keys items for them. In the case with barb and monk, i needed full set in order to do T5-6 at a decent rate. WD really felt like it needed both TMF and the pet damage hat in order to properly do even T4-5. Though wizard is the last class I'm playing, I did happen to have 3p Vyr's set already from playing the other classes, so it's really not a "fresh start" even though I just started playing the character. I'm using Vry, Aug, and Borns on my Wiz now.
Something I noticed about wizard is that it can deal pretty solid damage, yet a lot of damage is taken in the process (in large part because i'm playing as a melee or short range archon most of the time). I considered dropping glass cannon, but at the end decided to keep it since it seems once enough affixes are on the ground, i'm pretty much dead (or take a long time stutter stepping and kiting). It seems like one of the "kill before getting killed" styles of play, somewhat similar to leap quake where the barb actually has no healing aside from globes and a bit of LoH from paragon.