Sort of, I guess. Crusaders usually rain barrels from the sky, though. Who knew that outer space was filled with flippin’ barrels?
2 Likes
Wiz (and Saders) had the most new items this 2.6.10
Yet why is Wiz so rekt?
'Cause items are only part of the problem. Fundamentally the Wizard still has a lot of useless skills and passives.
Further, they’re absolutely terrible at speed running, and “Diablo 3” is basically synonymous with “GO FAST.”
3 Likes
Because of Deathwish. It effects almost everything.
They see us complaining… but they don’t want to respond. Already doubting my interest in Diablo 4 if this is how you apply “buffs” to a weak class that really needs a boost. PoE is looking interesting now.
I will take every opportunity to express how much I dislike this change. There were multiple threads in the PTR feedback about this:
…and many more. It really feels like they threw all the feedback to the wind on this one.
5 Likes
Hopefully m answers are understandable. I tried to combine two answers to mine.
LEXA
This is what I don’t get… why not fix things in one go …
Nobody knows, its too obvious and still they dont do it. Many things could be changed with some minor adjustments.
… but they could have done it without messing up existing channeling builds.
We still stand and channel when the DH is killing the next Elite back. An option for including Aether walker would have been helpful buw now we need 4 items.
…Remember, we have FIVE channeling skills on wizards and not a single one of them is useful on its own. …
In the majority of cases even the same rune is used.
OBLIVION
No. Taking care of the channeling predominance was the necessary step. Changing etched sigil wasn’t a step, it was a fall down a hill.
Even without DW players would have used channeling+ES for casting expensive skills like Meteor. Overtime you can cast skills and you also get a nice DPS buff. It would be Ok as pure Channeling Spell item and the autocast should work only on usability spells like BH, Bubble, DS etc. and give ES another affix for Defense. DW/LoG would be the Channeling DPS bringer
hat’s what they should have done with etched sigil and deathwish. Make them only buff the channeling skills while keeping etched sigil’s global autocast.
We are all asking for it for seasons
Wiz (and Saders) had the most new items this 2.6.10. Yet why is Wiz so rekt?
Well, WD got new numbers, still not strong enough. At least they got one very good build. We knew it during the PTR test. Any reaction → Nope
The best thing is, they try balance for a season theme. The 4-item requirements for ET/FO/Hydra are a joke. Whats the point of the 4th cube socket.
To compound that problem, they’ve trended towards the other class sets being 1-button hold down zoom-zoom sets.
1 Like
Hehe, you misread me there… I meant we wizards were neglecting Typhon and rather played Hydra with LoN/LoD because Typhon was annoying and pretty much underperforming with 1300% at that time - as we told them. Took two seasons for them to boost it to 2000%. But yeah, the FoD+WF combo is so dumb and awful… I would have sent that right back to the drawing board.
Just a little fodder - how would channeling and Meteor work?
What if Etched Sigil had been changed in a way that allowed us to manually cast the spenders while channeling WITHOUT breaking the channel - I mean instead of autocasts? If done correctly this would be a way more active gameplay compared to what channeling is now. And yeah, mobility… AETHERWALKER should be dealt with. We also requested a solution several times and get ignored over and over again.
Because wizard skills, as mentioned, have fundamental flaws and most of them are pretty much useless.
We have
• four signature skills and there no viable build
• 3 out of 4 secondary skills are stand-still-to-deal-damage channels (useless)
• Teleport is a pain in the rear to use - just compared it to most other classes
• we have three armor skills (active passive)
• Familiar and Magic Weapon have no item support (also active passives)
• Mirror Images is a sad joke
• Archon needs a rebalance (runes, Archon stacks only affect Archon damage)
• I’m not even discussing Blizzard, Wave of Force or Black Hole as DPS skills…
• Twisters suck. Hard.
…
Do our sets change that? Well…
• Tal Rasha - nice idea but underpowered + flawed (multi element doesn’t work)
• Firebird is literally on Blackthorne level, with a tad better damage
• DMO is a clunky mess
These sets do zilch for the skills they work with - there are literally no new mechanics, just generic damage stuff. Okay, Tal has auto meteors… but right now those are more of a gimmick. That said, the result is to be expected if the skills suck and our items for them are mostly outdated.
• Typhon VERY constraining and should have a seventh set piece
actually does change the base skill, which is nice. Issue is that the DR is tied to the head count. THAT at least should change to 40% per active Hydra. Then we are talking. Not to mention Hydra runes need a damage rebalance, Mammoth just outperforms everything else.
• Vyr… well, that one is actually decent, but needs rework on skill level
see above, change Archon stacks to only affect Archon skill damage. And then change Chantodo to make it benefit from stacks. WAY better compared to now and better to balance. That would fix a lot of issues and would remove Reverse Archon, which is also nasty. Bazooka anyone?
Mobility is a huge issue. I cannot repeat it enough… WIZ NEEDS MOBILITY!
Man, I wish I could take the feedback threads, go directly to a dev and have him do a third of it. Most Wizards would be jumping in joy.
2 Likes
Not if you give those skills decent support legendaries. For example, change OoID so that the damage boost only affects explosive blast, then increase the amount of the damage multiplier, and then buff WoH (have it gain Chain Reaction rune). If this is done while also changing deathwish and etched sigil so that their damage multipliers only affected channeling skills, but also keeping the global autocast, then they’ve had successfully created a multitude of builds whereas Explosive Blast serves as the main damage dealer independent of either dw and/or es.
You wouldn’t use deathwish nor etched sigil over OoID if you’re going for a pure explosive blast build (even with the auto cast effect). The same goes for our other arcane spenders, including meteor. Introduce alternative items without breaking existing builds for who know what reasons.
(Of course, this is all assuming that the 4th cube slot is indeed temporary).
5 Likes
Autocast was never the primary problem. The damage multiplier was.
Let’s look at two of the two biggest examples of egregious use of channel multipliers. Bazooka Star Pact and channeling hydras.
Neither of those builds actually relied on the autocast, or gained any appreciable amount of damage from it.
Star Pact gave you a free Star Pact, sure, but the vast majority of the damage in bazooka came from the manually cast Star Pact, since that has the AP spent damage bonus, the double dip on Arcane Dynamo, and benefits from AD. Sigil-cast Star Pacts had none of those things. Etched Sigil was in Star Pact bazooka builds pretty much entirely for the damage multiplier. Remove the autocast and the old bazooka still would have been bazooka.
Same with the hydra build. Sure, you get the odd refresh on your hydras from sigil casts when their duration expired, and some free Black Hole casts, but the build would still be completely functional without the autocast mechanic. Etched Sigil is there primarily for the damage multiplier.
In the most problematic channeling builds, the autocast mechanic wasn’t the problem. You could remove it and those builds still would use Etched Sigil, because they primarily wanted the multiplier.
The autocast mechanic mainly benefitted builds that weren’t the major problem, e.g. channeling Meteors or channeling Explosive Blast. It was the damage multiplier to all AP spenders, in combination with the global Deathwish multiplier, that was the primary problem.
In my mind this would have been the best way to move forwards. Instead, we’re left with a situation where previously viable builds that get played by a fair number of casual and semi-casual players (make no mistake, channeling meteors was a very popular build among a certain subset of wizards) are now no longer viable. But hey, here, have twisters instead.
The problem isn’t that they made changes. Changes were necessary. The problem is that they killed a bunch of fun builds without buffing anything to replace the loss of Etched Sigil. You liked Meteor and Explosive Blast builds? Whoops, too bad.
9 Likes
It doesn’t, and it shouldn’t.
I don’t want to be channeling to cast Meteor. I want to be casting Meteor. Or I want to be channeling.
Meteor is relatively easy to fix by itself, even if you keep the current Tal Rasha set. It just needs a Meteor-specific Wand that either further reduces the cost, or comes with APOC. And a damage increase. We could probably do enough with Electrocute and equipment that makes Signatures cast faster, plus Arcane Dynamo/Prodigy to do something functional.
Ideally, of course, Tal Rasha would be redesigned… Wizards have enough problems with mandatory spells on their bar; it’s idiotic that we have a set that forces us to have 4 different attacks. Elementalist Wizards are something that they probably dabbled in but never fully fleshed out. Time to forget it and make Tal’s an actual Meteor set.
Channeling is more difficult to fix simply because the game is based on moving fast and doing AoE damage, and channeling is for sitting still and targeting. If they stacked enough damage modifiers into it somehow it’s possible channeling could morph into RGK builds, which would be fine since something is better than nothing and it kinda makes sense thematically to use them to blast single enemies out of existence.
However, if channeling is ever going to be more than that then they need to make an item or a set that says “channeling spells can be cast while moving.” Otherwise it’s gonna go nowhere.
No need for wizards to need to channel while moving. Just improve teleport while also introducing an item that has the channeling skills deal their full ramped damage. After that, you’d only need to make sure the channeling skills deal sufficient amount of damage to warrant using.
3 Likes
Slorak’s Madness. It already buffs a channel skill, and has channel themed flavour text that would fit well with this power. Thematically, it would be a good fit. All they have to do is change it from Disintegrate to all channel skills, change the skill damage affix to a legendary affix multiplier to RoF + AT + Distintegrate, and add in that you start channeling at max ramp. Easy peasy.
2 Likes
Yep, exactly like that.
Disagree. D3’s endgame is all about breaking mechanics, time to break one of the most restrictive in the game.
We also need more movement abilities than Teleport. Boosting it is fine, but we need more variety. A base movement speed increase could be added to Storm Armor, and then have the Scramble Rune activate on our casting a spell instead of when we’re hit by something (which doesn’t ever help because we’re trying to avoid being hit). Galvanizing Ward could give a boost as long as the shield is active. Unwavering Will could give a bonus when you move, as long as you stood still long enough to activate the effect. Wave of Force, Black Hole, and Slow Time could all potentially get Runes changed or Legendary items/sets changed, respectively, to give movement speed based on how many enemies are hit.
There’s also sorts of things they could do. I hate the idea of getting locked into always Teleport.
Sure, we could get a boost to our movement speed (something that most classes could use actually), although not at the cost of improving teleport (that should come first). Also what you’re proposing would mostly just give wizards the ability to move while channeling, similar to that of some of the other classes, which imo is unnecessary as it would mostly benefit 1 or two of the our channeling runes (Arcane Torrent - Deathblossom, Disintegrate - Entropy, Ray of Frost - Sleet Storm). On the other hand improving teleport would accomplish the same and yet more (pretty much every build that could afford teleport).
We agree to disagree there… well, to be honest, I’m greedy so ideally I actually want it all. Channeling, Meteor, and Channeling Meteor. While we are at it… Tal Rasha:
This could very well be a Meteor set and keep the multi-element flair. How to do that? Well, first we need a damage dealer - which is Meteor. Now we add Stone of Jordan to the picture which makes all elements gain the same baseline buff. Now we reduce the autocast cooldown, and modify Tal Rasha set.
For starters we move the set (2) bonus into a legendary power and change the source to:
Tal Rasha’s Unwavering Glare:
• +Min/Max DMG
• Critical Hit Chance increased by +8.0-10.0%
• Meteor deals 175-200% more damage
+3 random magic properties
Legendary Power:
Attacking with Arcane, Cold, Fire or Lightning immediately pulls a Meteor of the same damage type from the sky. Each damage type has a 6 second cooldown susceptible to cooldown reduction effects.
Yeah yeah, legendary power on a set item. Whelp, who cares. That set is so far off from standard as can be. It has three non-standard gear pieces, no boots or shoulders. This set is not normal. So be it…
Doing that will allow several things. First, the autocasts are now a sole legendary power, as such this also works with LoN/LoD. The blue Meteor buff cannot be extracted, you actually have to wear this item to get it. It will be a competitor (for Meteor) that replaces Etched Sigil in terms of autocasts. It’s also a good fit that way. Now we need high CDR to get fast auto meteors… still Meteor by proxy (but now it’s not necessary to stand still and channel). You could even use Meteor itself to get a double strikes. SoJ will make all Meteors good, not only one type. You now need high cdr, though, which is why:
Tal Rasha’s Elements :
(2) piece bonus:
Arcane, Cold, Fire and Lightning attacks each grant a stack of Elemental Fury, lasting 8 seconds. At 4 stacks, switching between elemental attacks extends the duration by 2 seconds, up to a maximum of 12 seconds. Resource generating skills, as well as your Black Hole, Explosive Blast and Meteor skills deal XX% more damage per stack of Elemental Fury.
(4) piece bonus:
You take 15% less damage per stack of Elemental Fury.
(6) piece bonus:
Each stack of Elemental Fury increases your total damage dealt by XXXX%, reduces all cooldown times by 12.5% and expands the area of effect of your Black Hole, Explosive Blast and Meteor skills by 2.5 yards.
Of course this needs one other important thing - which is a change to Archon on the skill level: stacks should only boost Archon skills! Otherwise Reverse Archon would be a huge issue.
A big plus is that they don’t need to redesign the damn set dungeon for this. That thing might very well be the reason why we don’t see set revisions for the older sets.
Ah, yes:
yup, but we might also think out of the box and do some nasty things:
Sphere of Blades (new source)
Spectral Blade gains the Barrier Blades rune effect, attacks 25% faster and deals XXX% increased damage. Attacking an enemy within YY yards with Spectral Blades instantly teleports you to the target and strikes twice.
1 Like
I agree that this was a very poor change.
If you want to encourage people to try other skills, you make those skills more attractive.
5 Likes
Agreed, the title says it all!
The wizard community proposed changes to altering that Deathwish/ Etched Sigil combo this wasn’t the solution.
Seeing how the Sader performs I see absolutely no reason to have any changes to it, apart from reverting ES of course. It may even be room for a buff on the old setup!
What we all asked for was a fun viable alternative to the channeling.
The change to Fragment of Destiny is a welcome and positive step in the right direction, that it is tied to one spell is the one thing that makes it an eyesore.
As mentioned by others the mobility is one of the most important issues for the wizard class to be addressed.
The above should be looked upon for all classes and sets as speed indeed is important in D3.
That’s all for now hope we see these changes sooner than usual 
1 Like