Go to work guys. Drop in your skill modifications, mechanics changes, sets and items modifications, QoL wishes. Let’s get it all sorted, stacked, and documented.
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My wishlist regarding wizard changes. There’s more to it, but if just these three happen (especially the vyr and chantodo propositions), then I’d be delighted all the same.
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Thanks @Oblivion…
I would usually drop a huge post but we need more Wizards putting their ideas here. There is so much to improve the ask can be somewhat overwhelming at first. I’ll leave a small crumb… Teleport.
Teleport should be equivalent to Monk Dash. Currently we need iAS and CDR in large amounts to bring it up to Dash without modification. Lower the frames needed to completion a single teleport and lower the base cool down of the skill.
3 Likes
Wizard suffers from two major issues:
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Only Vyr chantodo and frozen orb offer a different playstyle, whereas all other skills (energy twister, explosive blast, hydra, meteor, at:sd manald) depend on the EXACT same playstyle, channeling. Deathwish and etched are highly resistant to change: not only do they offer a x10 multiplier, but the extra casts from sigil are really powerful, thus simply matching their multiplier won’t be enough to replace them.
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Worst sets in game by far due to overlap: only Vyr supports a totally different playstyle while all other sets and LoD are generic bonuses to multiple/all skills. Even the new set gives the same exactly playstyle, only weaker than LoD. Highest multiplier wins. Super exciting stuff, top notch game design.
Solutions:
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Offer two new legendaries per skill that will replace both deathwish and sigil, hopefully with extra gimmicks and not only higher multipliers. For example, cooldown and higher range for explosive blast, or extra cast for thunder crash meteor. Two is essential, since sigil will command a channeling gameplay even without deathwish.
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Change the sets from generic multipliers to highly specific which change the skill at its core. Example: DMO can become a primary skill set with damage applied instantly from bubbles or something like that. GoD, Leapquake, Jade and Vyr are good examples of sets changing the way you play that cannot be replicated by LoD.
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Make deathwish and sigil skill-specific. Keep one channeling build, like hydra or whichever. This should be combined with (1)
I agree this is a problem. I have some suggestions that I’ve made before that would create 2 new and completely different playstyles.
The Smoldering Core
Increases the damage of meteor by 50% per second, stacking up to 10 times.
Note: Meteors proc’ed from Tal Rasha and Etched Sigil benefit from this bonus, but only manually cast meteors reset the stack count.
Jang’s Envelopment
Enemies damaged by Black Hole are slowed by 60% and take 100% more damage from meteor for 3 seconds.
Why it’s not overpowered: because the Grand Vizier is also a 2H staff, one of these weapons must be equipped. The player would have to choose between equipping a 2H staff for manually casting meteors (but losing the channeling bonus of DW + ES) or equipping DW + ES and cubing Smoldering Core or Grand Vizier. SC is the bigger damage bonus, so for the classic build this would be a slight buff (which it needs).
New playstyles:
- The first new playstyle would be manually casting meteors, similar to the old bazooka build, but not as OP or complicated. Jang’s new bonus would entice players away from Fazula’s, and the 10 second max to the damage encourages players away from using Archon timing. The result is a build that rewards patience and stacking up buffs with a big payoff.
- The second new playstyle centers around Tal Rasha meteors. Since the damage bonus from SC doesn’t reset from TR procs, every meteor that’s spawned from TR set bonus will be full power. This means that players are incentivized to proc a new meteor every 2 seconds using a different element. To make sure that all elements have full damage, this would actually give SoJ a purpose. Sample skills to use would be flame blades, arcane attunement, absolute zero, and storm armor. Each of these skills buffs the element of the meteor being procc’ed (except for storm armor, which is most likely needed to proc karini).
Other suggestions are in this thread Wizard set suggestion for patch 2.7
Personally I’d love to see Signature Spells buffed. There are plenty of supporting legendaries, but few have damage modifiers. Myken’s, Mirrorball, and Velvet Cameral all need modifiers. Fragment of Destiny needs either a huge buff or to be opened up to all Signature Spells. I really miss my Spectral Blade build!
And like others have said, Ray of Frost and Disintegrate need buffs. There’s no reason why there’s not big bonuses on Light of Grace and Slorak’s Madness.
Channeling as a whole needs some serious do-over. It irks me to no end that the channel skills on their own are pretty useless and 99% of the dps is dealt by Etched Sigil autocasts. Still a real channeling build is weak on its own and they went down the wrong road there a long time ago. Thus let me talk a bit about the elephant in room, aka Deathwish - this is an item that needs the nerf bat, because it’s toxic to the class as a whole in its current state.
The obvious solution is to make it channel skill only. But that would flat out nerf channeling even harder, since the autocasts will loose a lot of power by that. But we have to be careful here, since we need some mechanic that doesn’t promote unwanted stuff like Bazooka. So, how should this be addressed? Well, maybe like this:
Deathwish :
Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, Electrocute and Ray of Frost have their ramp up time removed, attack 100% faster and deal 350-400% increased damage. The damage increase also applies to Disintegration Wave while in Archon Form.
Hergbrash’s Bindings :
Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate and Ray of Frost deal 250-300% increased damage and have their Arcane Power costs reduced by 80%.
Etched Sigil :
While channeling Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, Electrocute or Ray of Frost you automatically cast one of your other Arcane Power Spenders every second. Your channeling skills and autocasted attacks deal 250-350% more damage.
Sloraks Madness:
+15-20% to Arcane Damage (additional primary, rerollable)
Disintegrate gains the Chaos Nexus rune and enemies hit by the beam become marked for 10 seconds. Your Explosive Blasts will also detonate on all marked targets and the damage of Disintegrate and Explosive Blast is now increased by 400-500%.
Light of Grace:
+XX-YY% to Cold damage (additional primary, not rerollable)
Ray of Frost gains the Frozen Storm rune, deals 500-600% increased damage and the beams now pierce.
Blackhand Key:
Arcane Torrent gains the effect of every rune, deals 450-500% more damage and can be channeled while moving. Static bonus to attack speed or movement speed become interchangeable and your movement is unhindered.
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Teleport is terrible at enabling mobility by itself.
I’ve been playing Necromancer lately, and Blood Rush’ 5s cooldown puts teleport to shame.
The Illusionist passive reset effect is also not always a consistent means. Love the Movement speed it provides though.
As a subset to this, Aether Walker needs to provide more than just mobility if it is to take over a weapon slot.
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More options for Movement speed.
Sleek Shell and Scramble need to be buffed, and more movement speed increasing options need to be added across wizard skills, runes, and items in general.
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Remove the Deathwish multiplier. Channeling multipliers can exist on Etched Sigil Alone.
97% of all channeling builds desire to use Etched Sigil anyway. This would open up a weapon slot for more interesting options (MSR, Echoing Fury, OID, Furnace, AW anyone?).
If builds are currently locked up with 4 weapon multipliers, such as with FO channeling, they’ll now also have the option to place all multipliers.
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Merge SoJ’s Legendary Power with Convention of Elements.
SoJ’s power doesn’t give large benefit to any single element, single skill build. Moving this power to CoE would lay the groundwork for enabling multi-skill and multi-element builds to function better and be more competitive.
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We need more options for Shielding than just Deflection+Galvanizing Ward+ABBs.
Diamond Skin would be a great option for a lot of CDR based builds, but it’s base cooldown of 15s is simply too high.
I sometimes still opt for DS but I often have to also rely on other sources of shielding to survive. I suggest reducing the base cooldown to 7s. This is low enough so that any Wizard with 60% CDR can keep permanent uptime. and Anyone with 17% CDR can permanently refresh with Enduring Skin.
Dominance could use significant buff on duration and effect.
Perhaps one of the lesser used wizard armors, Energy armor, could also interact to boost shielding the Wizard gets? This would make it a more desireable pick.
A shielding indicator would also be nice QoL, but that’s not as important as other things, imo.
- Signature / Primary damage dealing builds need to be available as competitive options.
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Unstable Anomaly needs to additionally prevent dying.
Yes, you can still die through the 400% shields, especially to reflect Dune dervish or Sand Dweller.
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Channeling Skills: Disintegrate and Ray of Frost.
Both of these need their base AP costs reduced to be more competitive.
Increases to proc coefficients or area of effect (with the cast of RoF) would also help to allow them to be more competitive with Static Discharge and Flame Ward.
A lightning rune for disintegrate would also be great for allowing more non-archon Manald Heal based builds.
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Familiar and Mirror image need total reworks.
Only Arcanot has any impact, and even then, for one skill slot, this is not often worthwhile.
I suggest making Familiar more interactive and / or giving more relevant bonuses. Mirror image needs to be reworked to either have an offensive or defensive / utility (stun, immobilize / cc) focus. It can’t be both. For example if casting MI gave additional casts for any other cc effect on your bar (Black hole, Calamity, Frozen Solid, Frost Nova, etc), this would be a very neat way to use them. Just a thought…
- Rebalancing all Force and Mastery skill multipliers, base or rune damage modifiers. Rebalancing Passives.
Skills: Twister, Meteor, EB, Hydra, Wave of Force, Blizzard, Arcane Orb, Archon.
Passives: Glass Cannon, Prodigy, Blur, Astral Presence, Cold Blooded, Temporal Flux, Dominance, Conflagration.
Can’t think of other QoL, better changes as yet. A good starting list though.
9 Likes
Move it? So you mean merge it into CoE, like this:
Each of your elemental’s damage bonus is now equal to your highest static elemental bonus to skill. Additionally you gain [150-200]% increased damage to a single element for 4 seconds as a non-static effect which rotates through the elements available to your class in the following order: Arcane, Cold, Fire, Holy, Lightning, Physical, Poison.
I’m game… where can I order this thing?
Another idea for SoJ would be changing it to something like this:
Any static elemental bonus to skill is now increased by XX% and affects each of the elements available for your class.
1 Like
Ah, yes, that is the intent and would be a better term to use. I’ll edit my post, thanks!
I like the SoJ version better; CoE being the most mandatory ring in the games rubs me wrong.
Thanks for the input guys.
I will repost something I replied to an older topic on Teleport, with some updates based on what was discussed later in that topic - essentially here is my Teleport suggestion:
I. Technical Improvements
• micro cooldown (Aether Walker) should be removed or at least shortened.
• casting animation should be faster and take attack speed into account
• the nasty path finding for Teleport should be improved
II. Changes to Skills (mechanic/runes)
Teleport [Defensive]
Costs: 50 Arcane Power per cast.
Teleport through the ether to the selected location up to 50 yards away.Runes:
- Safe Passage [Level 26] [Cold]
For 5 seconds after you Teleport, you will take 25% less damage.- Wormhole [Level 31] [Lightning]
Your pickup radius increases the maximum range of Teleport to 65 yards and you leave an after image at your old location that lasts three seconds.- Rush [Level 37] [Fire]
Reduces the resource costs to 30 Arcane Power per cast.- Fracture [Level 43] [Arcane]
You summon 2 Mirror Images after teleporting.- Calamity [Level 59] [Arcane]
Cast a short range Wave of Force upon arrival, dealing 175% weapon damage as Arcane to all nearby enemies and stunning them for 1 second.
Illusionist [Passive]
When you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage within 1 second, the cooldowns on Mirror Image and Slow Time are reset and your Teleport skill will not consume Arcane Power for three seconds.
When you use Mirror Image, Slow Time, or Teleport, your movement speed is increased by 30% for 3 seconds.
III. Changes to Items
Aether Walker [Legendary Wand] [RETROACTIVE CHANGE]
Teleport gains the Calamity rune, releases your Wave of Force and now stuns for 2 seconds. Enemies hit by Wave of Force take 300-350% increased damage from your Arcane Power spending or generating skills for 5 seconds.
The Oculus [Legendary Source] [RETROACTIVE CHANGE]
blue affix “Reduces cooldown of Teleport by [1 - 4] seconds” retroactively replaced by “Reduces cooldown of Unstable Anomaly by [11-15] seconds”
Legendary Affix retroactively replaced by:
You gain the Unstable Anomaly passive and when the passive is triggered your active cooldowns, including potions, are reset. While Unstable Anomaly is on cooldown all damage dealt is increased by 75-100% and all damage taken is halved.
Cosmic Strand [Legendary Source] [NOT RETROACTIVE]
Black Hole gains the Supermassive rune, lasts for three seconds and your pickup radius increases its area of effect further (up to a maximum of 30 yards). Enemies hit by Black Hole take 250-300% increased damage from your Arcane Power spending or generating attacks for 6 seconds.
IV. Reasoning
Changing Teleport to resources will make the old Teleport items obsolete, hence the retroactive changes. I know, those are hated, but I think this time they would be okay and most players will welcome them.
Regarding items… I originally planned to make The Oculus a Black Hole item, but I remembered that this thing is present in Vanilla, while Black Hole is a RoS only skill. Conclusion: that won’t do. Thus, I went for an Unstable Anomaly mechanic which is something new and it would work for D3 Vanilla.
I also removed the 30% RCR from my original Rush rune suggestion, as there is Cindercoat in the picture - reduced costs and additional RCR might be overdoing it a little.
Finally I choose Cosmic Strand to become a Black Hole item, which has been reworked as well, now it should improve Black Hole utility instead of plainly upping its damage.
4 Likes
I like some, but not all of the ideas. Would be interesting to see Teleport converted to AP only in the least.
I especially like the idea of giving Teleport more elements that could apply elemental exposure debuff stacks or function as a Tal Rasha stack.
As a player, it is nice to be able to escape danger when truly under duress, however:
Taking a whopping 15% of your maximum life in damage is simply not feasible for some builds at certain GR levels, and leads to slower clears with less Illusionist procs, or the wizard intentionally taking too much damage - sometimes to the point of dying.
I would much prefer allowing an out - adding something the player has more determination over to counter the randomness of taking damage in certain scenarios (vs. different mob types). Perhaps:
After spending X amount of arcane power OR when you take more than 15% of your maximum Life in damage within 1 second
I like the idea for combining Calamity with Wave of force in some way as you’ve suggested. One of the more fun things to do as a Wizard is Calamity stomp density. ohhhhh. What if it scaled Wave of force with density too, eh, or proc’d area damage?
Giving a damage debuff multiplier would work well with most build playstyles. Most need to reposition often. However, I can see it being troublesome for builds like Frozen orb, which are more ranged focused, as we’d have to teleport near density, then back out again before attacking. I like that it would require AP to proc the bonus. This adds more flavor to optimizing any build, however, it might favor Generator builds over spender builds for this reason, as they’d be more synergistic with the cost of teleport. Is this a bad thing? maybe not, would have to see.
This idea - Not near enough utility for an offhand slot, would not be chosen in it’s current form. Pretty neat additional effect though.
I like the idea of increasing the radius of Black hole - At least for some runes, it feels too small. For example, with event horizon, when trying to target elite spawned affixes. An item that increased the Radius significantly would be really cool.
Supermassive could still function as the larger radius, it would have to be made larger as well though.
Spellsteal and Absolute zero would benefit most from the radius increase but perhaps this is okay, for it being tied to an item.
As an aside, Blazar needs additional utility added. Maybe having Blazar apply a Crit and / or DR debuff with a longer duration would work well?
I also like the idea of the damage debuff multiplier to make the radius increase a little more appealing, however, I worry that this is perhaps too much utility with Black hole, and would make it a mandatory pick over, say, Ranslor’s Folly, or opting to not include a pull, which is also very appealing playstyle for some players.
Anyways, good thoughts.
I think Teleport does scale to reduce it’s cast animation interval with increased attack speed. I’d have to retest it though, I haven’t done that in awhile.
My concern is for those builds that use Cooldown Reduction but don’t use attack speed. They should have some allowance for reduced cast animation interval as well. Perhaps scaling to reduce with Cooldown in some manner as well?
Last I remember on this is that it does scale with attack speed. I can test this again when I get home from work. Easy way to do it is vyr wizard, get a bunch of archon stacks to max APS and then spam teleport w/ aether walker outside of archon.
My stance on teleport is that yes, it sucks on it’s own, but it’s amazing when combined with movement abilities/items. Example illusionist passive, aether walker or in-geom weapons. This is on par with other classes. Teleport with illusionist passive is the 2nd best movement ability while pushing in my opinion.
Is teleport the best for supper fast speed clears? No, and the wizard isn’t built for that outside of Vyr Archon Chantodo.
Does teleport need any changes in my opinion? No. I actually like how it works and I think it’s balanced. It requires you to give up damage for speed as how it should be. Teleport’s base is worse than blood rush, but teleport is better than blood rush for pushing and it’s tied with blood rush in speeds.
Edit: Basically I believe Wizard needs other changes way more than changes to teleport. Like fixing firebird and DMO set mechanics
Fixing Firebird and DMO sets should be the #1 priority. They both need mechanical changes and number tweaks.
Firebird:
(2) set should increase fire damage by #% as well as receive a damage reduction of 90% for 2 seconds after reviving from the meteor
(4) set should change to have the dot damage base itself off the ability damage. IE if a fire meteor did 3million damage then the ignite dot should do 3000% of that 3million. Stacking with itself so it didn’t over write the damage of course
(6) set stacks should linger for 10 seconds after killing an enemy and have the %damage/damage reduction modifiers adjusted
DMO changes would be better for someone else to give their insight as I personally don’t like the playstyle. I know I wouldn’t be able to give good feedback on any changes.
One other change I want to see is a major buff to Frozen Orb Tal’Rasha or LoD/LoN. I absolutely love this play still and I would play Frozen Orb in a heart beat if it became competitive.
The thing DMO really needs is for Slow Time to surround you. From there, they just up the multiplier on the set and tweak legendaries. It would just fine. Even fun.
Frozen Orb change can be in the form of a damage buff on a belt item. Maybe something like launch 3 orbs each dealing 300% more damage
I’ll be sure to test as well when I get the chance.
I think almost anyone who’s played the wizard firebird wouldn’t argue that firebird certainly needs to be prioritize when it comes to any changes. But they’ve already confirmed that they’ll be looking at every set, so Firebird definitely will get some attention. Hopefully it’ll get some worthwhile changes.
If they’re not going to overhaul or revamp firebird, then it needs to be simplified. Get rid of the needing more than one fire skill, change the damage boost from a global to only fire damage, make the damage boost and damage reduction attainable just from attacking with fire. Tbh, with how many times they touched on firebird, perhaps a simplification would be best at this point instead of an overhaul.
Either that, or create a legendary power that makes your attacks (arcane spenders and signatures) apply slow time debuffs on enemies while a slow time bubble is up.