Less about mechanics, and more about any niches that need to be filled.
Quite honestly, with LoN the way it is, I’d be happier with time spent to create or improve supporting legendaries.
Right now, beyond vyrs, wizard sets are not really fun, mechanically broken, and uncompetitive.
But with a new set, what persistent wrongs could be righted? A cold set? A lightning set (FINALLY?!) or, something something illusionist or blackhole related?
Look forward to your thoughts.
There is already plenty about this topic on the old forum, and I think most wanted a mirror image theme.
They are all terrible IMO, which is why I can’t stand playing Wizard. The most fun I had with the class is this season with a frozen orb LoN build. It didn’t rely on slow time and was actually quite fun.
Firebird: Set bonuses are crap - you actually need to NOT kill stuff to get a bonus - yeah awesome.
Tal’s: Can be fun, but just not for me. Maintaining the buff is tedious and annoying.
DMO: probably the most fun, but relying on slow time makes the set too plodding for my taste.
Vyr: Hard pass. Maybe I will like it when we can reassign the hotkeys while in archon form. Unitl then - nope - can’t stand it.
My wish list is far less about sets, and far more about legendary items. With the LoN being moved to a gem, I truly believe Blizzard’s focus should be here.
My number one personal wish is Hydra support. With an update to the Magistrate and to Serpent Sparkler, and add in some Hydra pants that can also roll elemental DMG (so we don’t always have to roll a WD Swampland), and a Hydra pet build should be viable. I’ll let others play with the math to make it so.
100%
So many trash class specifics. Would also like deathwish to be nerfed, with a separate non buff everything channelling wand (sloraks?) added.
I’d like DMO fixed before we got a new set. But if I HAD to put something out there, I’d do a Hydra/Blizzard set with Mirror Images being made permanent with a set bonus. I guess this would be contingent on Mirror Images being fixed too. /shrug
Oooh see there are multiple things to consider with a new set. There’s choosing which skills to be buffed by it, the thematic component, and lastly the most important part: “The Core Mechanic” has to be fun- Like actually fun I mean, not that Firebird’s BS we have right now. Of course having played for awhile I’ve had some . . . ideas on this subject.
Name: Isendra’s Enduring Vestments? Diamond Dragon Scales? Crystal’s Embrace? Horde Hydra’s Hatred?
7-piece Set: Chest, Shoulders, Pants, Wrist, Feet, Necklace, Helm
2-piece bonus: Diamond Skin and Mirror Image gain the effect of every rune. Additionally, Signature Spells, Channeled Spenders, Wave of Force, Blizzard, Energy Twister, Frost Nova and Hydras -cast by the Wizard- will also cast Diamond Skin and Mirror Image. (This cast will send DS and MI into their respective cooldown cycles)
4-piece bonus: Gain 10% damage reduction per Hydra and reduce the remaining cooldown of Diamond Skin and Mirror Image by 1 second every time Hydra deals damage.
6-piece bonus: Signature Spells, Channeled Spenders, Wave of Force, Blizzard, Energy Twister, Hydra and the damaging effects of Frost Nova, Diamond Skin and Mirror Image deal (8,000-10,000%) increased damage. Additionally while Diamond Skin is active, Hydras and Mirror Images will mimic Waves of Force, Blizzards, Energy Twisters, Frost Novas (cast at their current locations) Signature Spells (yes, Electrocute) and Channeled Spenders (in the form of a certain Channeled Spender corresponding to the element used: Cold=Ray of Frost, Fire= Convergence, Arcane= Disintegrate, Lightning= Static Discharge) -cast by the Wizard-.
*Some cool “flavor” to this set would be to show the up-time of Diamond Skin by having your Hydras and Mirror Images visually resembling your Diamond Skin texture.
Something like this hits multiple weak areas for the Wizard’s skills and at least to me is in the right direction on the “fun to play set” area.
I agree that Wiz has the most annoying sets, but they could all be easily fixed.
Firebird: decrease max stacks to 5
Tal: increase defense buff duration to 20 secs.
DMO: Slow Time is cast around you when you are hit (5 sec CD)
Archon: well… you said yourself, just let people re-arrange the buttons.
A few ideas for sets, at a high level:
I had a few other ideas, but they seemed a little far-fetched for d3, even thematically, and would require substantial support or work to deliver.
The video above presents these ideas at a high (concept) level, rather than specifically set in stone (2pc, 4pc, 6pc) format.
As also mentioned in the video, I’d prefer to shy away from “Cold themed” or “Lightning themed” “arcane themed” sets, as we should have an elemental based set that can cover all of these (Tal Rasha). We can keep the fire themed Firebird’s set as long as it is reworked.
as you said… lets take a quick look at our wands:
uhm… okay, maybe our offhands are in a better state?
ugh… I don’t even want to look at the hats anymore -.-
This is why I have mixed feelings about a new set. Also, if I look at the current set mechanics for wizards, most are gimmicky, weird and pretty annoying. Except Vyrs, but with Vyr I’m playing Archon class and not Wizard class. Going by that logic the fifth set will likely annoy me as well.
But if I had to choose? Then I would probably join Venaliter with this one:
Hydra, Blizzard, Mirror Images…
We have a fire set that works with almost every skill (but best with fire spells). But it’s terrible mechanics, and weaker than LoN in almost every way.
But we also have a multi-element set that theoretically works with every damage dealer. But when you account for teleport and ice armour, the state of our supporting legendaries, your actual damage dealing skill choices suddenly become pretty limited really quickly.
This was always exceptionally frustrating imo, as it left the majority of our skill runes (+50% skill runes are arcane) unsupported. Also, for years, the fantasy of being a “frost mage” or “lightning mage” in the same way one could be a firebird mage, was just shrugged at by developers.
With LoN and now LoD, as long as this remains competitive, then the impetus for elemental sets has been diminished.
Then came DMO.
It was extremely underwhelming, clunky, but it did have the redeeming bonus of having the synergy with Tal Rasha, Thunderdome builds were some of the last fun times I had before my recent return.
Then the damage aspect of slow time was removed… And although mechanically less clunky, I still feel this should be opened up to all spenders and generators. The arbitrary skill selection, in the face of LoN and LoD is just pointless.
Vyr’s is OK, theme-wise and almost mechanics wise (as others mentioned, Archon needs to be able to re-map skills)
In terms of Cratic “summoner” theme, it leaves it being one of the more obvious routes to take, but I fear there’s some technical reason why they’ve shyed away from wizard pets (source of some of the largest exploits and bugs in the game) but I would absolutely 100% love to see familiars be an active skill (as once promised many moons ago.)
Hi Wage, I happen to agree. There is some fantasy missing with Tal Rasha when trying to put together single element builds. I just don’t think creating a set for every element makes sense.
I suppose my video and comment above covered more of the short term changes that could possibly made in regards to Tal Rasha and Firebird’s, to make them more usable in the meantime with as little change as possible.
To recap, a few of the points: unifying elemental%, and removing the requirements of placing different elements, while still allowing multielement if it is desired.
Long term I would definitely love to see more involved elemental mechanics added in with Tal Rasha.
The player could then opt for one (or more?) of these potential elemental mechanics as part of this newly added portion of the Tal Rasha bonus.
This would add more impact and theme to the elemental set and keep us from having to add 3 additional sets for representing the missing elemental types.
In fact, we could get rid of FB after porting over it’s main mechanic, opening up a spot for a different set entirely, possibly offering more involved and interesting gameplay and theme than FB does now.
EDIT:
You might be right on this. My hope is that it would not be as hard to fix with necromancer pets as pre-existing skills to copy from and leverage, at least for MI and Familiar (or any newly introduced pet related skill). Hydra is a different beast altogether.
In general, I’d like to see ALL of the new class sets be at least 7 pieces to allow for some flexibility/customization in open slots. Tals in particular is extra flexible with the inclusion of neck/waist/offhand pieces, and it alone is compatible with Sage’s. In light of the updated crafted sets Aughild’s/Captain Crimson’s, there could be more combinations/diversity if the new class sets were designed with 7 pieces instead of 6.
Aside from DMO, all Wizard sets increase dmg of all skills, which is good and I hope that the next wizard set follows this “all damage done” model. DMO is an unfortunate exception where it only increases a handful of select skills.
I enjoyed the old DMO damage-dealing bubble mechanic but it seems redundant to put that effect on a new set rather than just update DMO.
I may be in the minority here but I wouldn’t mind a group-oriented utility set along the lines of Inna’s that gave significant group bonuses such as pull/heal where a ZWIZ could shine. There have been many requests to promote alternative zdps classes, and fantasy-wise the zdps healer/protector wizard is a strong theme (shielding, force fields, slow time), and could possibly be combined with a Pet/Summoner wizard, for example, “enemies affected by your pets take X% more damage/provide X% DR,” or “hydras lure mobs towards them.” Since wiz already has a lot of shielding abilities and support items, perhaps convert a percentage of that shield to the group, or grant Diamond Skin to the group.
For a pure-summoner dps theme, greatly increasing the damage of hydra, familiar, and spells casted by MI could be fun, though in that case we’d need to be able to target them on a specific mob instead of randomly choosing, similar to necro’s “command” skills. Or have some kind of AoE effect like “your pets now cast arcane orbit.” Or have a Bone-Ringer type mechanic where pets get stronger the longer they attack an enemy.
Perhaps a primary-based set that would increase dmg of primary skills by 20,000%, bringing new life to outdated legendaries such as Mirrorball, Myken’s, Fragment of Destiny, etc.
I do feel that due to the existing disparity of base skill damage and legendary support items, a shakeup to wiz meta dps builds will not be realized with a new set alone. As has been pointed out before, Wizard currently has 4 viable high-tier damage sources - Meteor, Arcane Orb (really just the Frozen Orb rune), Chantodos, and to a lesser extent Manald Heal. Chantodos only recently became viable after a massive 20x dmg increase to its legendary power, and MH now lags behind considerably. The other 2 have support legendaries that provide large multipliers to Frozen Orb (Unstable Scepter at 5.5x and Triumvirate at 13x) and Meteor (Grand Vizier at 5x and Nilfur’s at 10x). To add to that, both FO and Meteor have some of the highest base skill dmg of all Wizard skills AND, with strategic timing, can also benefit from Deathwish (4.25x) and ES (2.5x). For bazooka variants that can also slot archon/Fazula/Swami, add in another 6x-12x multiplier assuming double 50-100+ stack overlap. Plus these both proc significant Area Damage. In light of this, it’s not difficult to see that it will be a real challenge for a new set alone to spawn builds that could compete at the extreme end where LON bazooka Star Pact lives.
Thus, in order to effectively deal damage at a high tier with a new set using currently underused skills (i.e. not just doing Star Pact with the new set instead of LON), we’d also need something along the lines of 2-4 supporting legendaries with big multipliers comparable to meteor, or a really extreme multiplier in a new set bonus but limited to those underused skills. The last thing we want is a new even more powerful way to use Meteor.
I would like to see an Elemental Specialist Wizard Set, so a set that allows you to specialize in a single element, like a reversed Tal Rasha set.
For example:
Then things like a pure Frost Mage, a Lightning Mage, an Arcane Mage or a non-Firebird Fire Mage could become a thing.
xxx% increased Cold Damage and enemies killed by Cold damage have a 20% chance to release a Frost Nova.
============================================
btw, I like your list Lexa.
Mirror Image, Blizzard, Shock Pulse and other previously non-set-boosted skills into the new set (with accompanying brown legendaries that can be RORG or Kania’d).
Personally, I would prefer that the new set doesn’t boost specific skills like how DMO does, instead offers a generic damage buff that’s applied to all skills alongside some added mechanics. Boosting specific skills should be done via skill buffs or legendary powers in my opinion.
Something around the mirror image, the last time I used it was early ros with firebird so they have cast black holes and fire blizzards.
I see where you’re coming from with that sentiment. Every class should have a set that buffs everything and includes a mechanic to make it unique over LoN/LoD (looking and you Inarius and Uliana’s.) Tal Rasha or even Vyr’s should have been the Wizard’s “pick and choose” sets, but the mechanics within them actually are the limiter to what skills you can use. I hope they keep that in mind.
Oh I think more would be needed to fix the issues folks have playing the Wizard sets -
Firebird: No one likes or understands the point of keeping what you are trying to kill alive . . . so that you can even kill and survive in the first place.
Tal Rasha: What’s the point of even having skills that passively apply different elemental damage, if the only skills that count for the set stack have to be manually cast?
DMO: Not enough damage but more importantly, what the heck is up with leaving Electrocute out of the list of skills? Why exclude any skill at this point? It’s the only Wizard set that specifies what it buffs, just have it buff them all!
Vyr’s: . . . Either make it a separate legendary or make it a part of the set- You should be able to use what skills you’ve chosen on your bar when you switch into Archon. Now Archon looks amazing and the Archon skills are kinda interesting but you shouldn’t be forced into using a certain set of skills just to make use of the class transformation skill. Like no other class has this limitation.