Wizard 2.8+ Suggestions

Wizard
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Wizard is in a really good state right now. I’m going to throw out a personal list of suggestions of under used skills. And everyone is invited to participate. I guess it is, because a lot of players put out so much great ideas and express their feelings what needs a bump or feels to clunky to play.

Primaries:

All of our primaries lack in power and this does not make a good feeling in the gut. They should at least be T16 and GR 120+ viable

The Shame of Delsere:
Your Signature Spells attack 75% faster, deal 200% more damage and restore 9 Arcance Power

Just a convenient choice for Signature Spells overall, just needs a kind of damage buff added to it.

Magic missile

New Weapon, Orb power

  • Magic missile gains the Seeker rune, fires 2 more projectiles and deals 600-800% more damage.

Yes, this Angelic Power should celebrate it’s comeback and stay forever. Instead of more projectiles it could give + 2 pierces to balance out the runes

New Shoulder, Belt

  • Enemies affected by Black Hole and 6 seconds after take 200 % more damage from your Magic Missiles. Every attack with Magic Missile gives you an Untapped Power stack. Every Stack increases Black Hole damage by 150-250%. Casting Black Hole consumes all Stacks. Maximum 10 Stacks.

Shock Pulse

New Weapon/Orb

  • Moving around gives you Lightning stacks up to 100 charging you up. After reaching 100 stacks your Shock Pulse damage is increased by 500-600% for 5 seconds. While moving you discharge electric bolts on the ground damaging everything hit for 50% Shock Pulse damage.

Really did not now how to phrase it. After reaching 100 Stacks it deplets back to zero.

New Weapon/Orb
You gain the Living Lightning rune. Besides one moving forward, now one walks in a circle form. Shock Pulse deals 550-700% more damage.

Spectral Blade

New Belt/Shoulders/Bracers

  • Spectral Blade gains the Barrier Blades Rune attacks 50% faster and deals 250-325% more damage. This damage is trippled against Elites and Bosses.

An Elite hunter focused playstyle, could get overboard and only alow tripple damage if only Elites and Bosses are hit.

Eletrocute

Myken’s Ball of Hate

  • Electrocute can chain to enemies that have already been hit. The first hit Enemy takes 1000% more damage every other enemies takes 50% less damage down to 400% more damage.

Yes, that would solve the single target issue with Electrocute.

Velvet Camaral

  • Doubles the number of enemies your Electrocute jumps to and increases it’s damage by 700-850%

New Weapon/Orb
Electrocute gains the Forked Lighning rune and deals 400-550% more damage to enemies hit by one of your Force skills for 5 seconds.

Question is if this would cause to much lag?

Secondaries

Hergbrash’s Binding

  • Reduces the Arcane Power cost of Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate and Ray of Frost by 50-65%. Also the damage is increased by 10% for every point of extra Arcane Power on your gear.

Yes, it increases the gear requirements. But some power should just come with some drawback.

Ray of Frost

Light of Grace

  • Ray of Frost now Pierces and deals 600-800% more damage.

Really I don’t know if it should have the Sleet Storm rune on it.

New Orb/Weapon

  • Chaneling Ray of Frost now creates randomly placed Crystals. Attacking Crystals let’s your Ray of Frost splinter into smaller rays hitting all enemies in 10 yards around the Crystal and dealing 350-475% more damage. After 5 seconds Crystals explode dealing 2000% damage.

I love the interactions in DI why not copy it and make it a thing in D3. The explosion damage of the Crystal benefits of the Ray of Frost multipliers.

Arcane Orb

Is fine as it is. Maybe just buff the other Runes of it.

Obliteration - Increase the speed of the orb and its damage to 1500% by up to 2250% at 40 yards weapon damage as Arcane, but reduce the area of effect to 8 yards.

Spark - Lob an electrified orb over enemies that zaps them for 850% weapon damage as Lightning and increases the damage of the next Lightning spell you cast by 3% for every enemy hit up to a maximum of 15.

Scorch - Launch a burning orb that deals 444% weapon damage as Fire. At maximum distance it rolls back to you. The orb leaves behind a wall of Fire that deals 734% weapon damage as Fire over 5 seconds.

Wizardspike

  • Performing an attack has a 50% chance to hurl a different Orb. Arcane Orb deals 475-525% increased damage.

It’s a way to incentivize the use of Stone of Jordan.

Arcane Torrent

New Weapon/Orb

  • Enemies affected by your Slow Time take 650-800% more damage from you Arcane Torrent.

New Shoulders/Belt/Head/Bracer/Orb

  • Arcance Torrent gains the Arcane Mine and Cascade rune. Every Arcane Mine increases the damage of your Arcane Torrent by 100-150%.

Disintegrate

Slorak’s Madness

  • While Channeling Disintegrate it drains every second 2% of your maximum shields/life. The draining increases every second by 0,5%. Also you gain the Entropy rune wich increases it’s width by 0.1 and damage by 250% every second. Maximum reached after 10 Seconds. The bonuses reset after 1.25-2.5 seconds not channeling.

Could also instead of draining life increase your arcane costs.

Some other left in the dust skills and items that could need some polish.

Explosive Blast

Wand of Woh

  • The damage of Explosive Blast is increased by 500 - 600% and 3 additional blasts are triggered after casting Explosive Blast.

Orb of Infinite Depth

  • Each time you hit an enemy with Explosive Blast your damage is increased by 10-15% and your damage reduction is increased by 20% for 6 seconds. This effect can stack up to 4 times. The damage increase counts 10x for EB.

Aether Walker

  • Teleport no longer has a cooldown but costs 25 Arcane Power. Explosive Blast is now triggered after teleporting, gains the Chain Reaction rune and deals 500-600% more damage.

After in allmost all Sets Teleport was included. Aether Walker needs another identity. And enabling a EB playstyle isn’t the worst outcome.

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Yes this is needed for a few reasons (and maybe even more projectiles tbh). As good as a state that we’re in right now, we still really don’t have that superior speedy GR build. Tal’s is great for pushing but only decent for speed as you need several meteor hits to reset teleport, meaning if you take Aether Walker (and take away Smoldering Core) you’re at a severe tier disadvantage and can’t keep pace with classes doing 115-120 speeds (like Impale DH).

Firebirds after season will go back to using Spectral Blade with Twister for speeds, and that was fine last patch but now this patch you’ll be missing out on Guardian’s, pretty unacceptable trade since Guardian’s is absolutely perfect for Firebird not relying on CDR or RCR.
Now with your Elite hunter item idea which 100% should be Shoulders as we lack any good ones, that would open up flexibility for another item as you wouldn’t need Aughild’s but could still use Guardians.

Again though Firebirds is another stop to cast (and cast again) to kill set so as long as it has that mechanic it will never be as fast as the auto skill with infinite mobility builds. That’s fine, we just need something that is that.

Love this idea to get those skills back in use! With upgraded Light of Grace you could see some nasty Ray of Frost builds.

Definitely don’t agree with Arcane Orbit, did you forget that one purposefully? It got everything explodes instantly this season and is still ignored, that’s a 4x damage increase vs maybe a 60-75% with the other runes (since you don’t instantly have all 4 orb powers up) yet it’s still not enough for players to want to use it. It needs A LOT of attention. Not only should they keep the seasonal power but they need to double it’s damage and with your suggested changes perhaps even more…

However I do like your rune ideas, especially Obliteration :+1: Spark is not enough, that silly capped nerf needs to just be reverted finally.

Amazing buffs to Explosive Blast, 5 :star:s for you - this again will fix my biggest issue with Wizard right now being that skills that require no stop and fire are severally behind in power. This fixes basically all of that.

No it’s in fact the best outcome. When you think Aether Walker you think speeds, problem is you’re sacrificing all damage for that speed (btw we’re still the only class that has to do this) so why not have a skill that doesn’t interrupt casting that’s intended for speed be associated with it so it’s not an absolutely power cost?

Either that or implement TinneOnnMuin’s idea of having Primus bubble work with the 2pc DMO teleport mechanic. That way you wouldn’t need Aether Walker but you’d still need your other EB changes if you wanted anywhere near Speed 115-120 capability.

If anything just implementing those changes to Explosive Blast would put us in a really good speed farming spot

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Players have to always pay attention to the release of Blizzards. It’s not easy. Please increase the reward of Winter Flurry from 125~150% to 225~300%, which is about 3 tiers buff.There is no doubt that the The Typhon’s Veil is the worst motility set now.Request Blizzard to add the cooldown reduction of Teleport bounus to The Typhon’s Veil set.E.g:When you kill a elite,your teleport 0 cooldown at 10 seconds in Typhon’s veil 4p bounus
Please let me evaluate the level of Typhon’s veil in all the Wizzard Build:
Damage:B Tier.(Tal Rasha S Tier,Magic Missile E tier)
Toughness:C Tier.(Fire Bird S tier)
Motility:D Tier.(Fire Bird S tier)
Comclusion:Typhon’s Veil need some
improvement urgently.
In additon,Magic Missile of DMO needs buff at least 20 tiers.

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Even as a passionate Wizard, I couldn’t/wouldn’t give you even HALF of this.

  • The Wand of Woh idea is solid and long overdue.
  • Your Arcane Torrent idea should be on Gesture of Orpheus, which is now basically useless.
  • I really like your obliteration rune.
  • Shame of Delsere definitely needs to have a primary damage multiplier buff.
  • Totally agree some of the Sanctified Powers should be implemented in game.
  • Light of Grace/Jang’s, to my knowledge, have NEVER been useful for any build.

Some of the rest of your ideas are just bad, impractical or unfun. Good examples of questionable ideas are your suggested changes to Aetherwalker and Orb of infinite Depths.

If you really want to make OoID better, have it simply increase the damage of EB/DR after using EB. Stack it four times for 50% more EB damage and 20% DR after using Explosive. A single WoW-backed EB would fully stack it to 4. No need to make powers so clunky. Make them FUN instead!

I’d love to see Storm Crow get the Sanctified Storm Armor power next patch.

My top two requested changes are still adding a “Fire” rune to Frost Nova (So Cold It Burns) and making adjusting Teleport runes to like having a Cold rune (Fracture) and “Reversal” as a Lightning rune, and actually pull enemies to YOU. All that would be required is Teleport does a small amount of baseline weapon % damage, like Frost Nova does.

Personally, Slorak’s Will is a slap in the face, it needs to buffed by like 30x.

Aetherwalker, since we’re basically forced to use teleport EVERY build (hence why it’s so high on my list of requested changes) should just buff damage by 200% for 5 seconds after using teleport or something. It’s an outright buff to Vyr/Archon, not that anyone actually plays it.

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Better yet, Have winter Flurry trigger off “Frost Nova” instead of Blizzard, so Winter’s Flurry procs itself. No need to cast/have the clunky Blizzard spell at all.

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Yeah that’s probably the easier / better change, then just buff EB items like you have accordingly.

Also perhaps not a huge need for new items, like Ventaliter mentioned Jang’s has never been useful, so just put that Blackhole buff idea on it instead of making a new item. We’d been asking for that for years.

Again my #1 thing right now and seemingly all requesting changes which is good we’re on the same page with that; is our speeds and mobility (lack of). Firebirds requires too many hoops to be truly a speed set, Tal’s is great for pushing and you can make speed items around it just so long as they have the damage with them which Aether Walker lacks.

The priority needs to be on Teleport mobility without damage cost, then we can worry about buffing under utilized damage skills like Blizzard, Black Hole, Channeling ect. Their solution at the time was just forcing us to use those skills to do damage via something else, but it’s probably time some of those skills get the spotlight for actually doing damage themselves…once our speed issue is fixed.

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well said… there’s not much I could add there.

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You could easily play a Firebird’s speed build if a Wand of Woh-backed EB triggered the Firebird set bonus for every Wand of Woh cast. I believe it triggers it…once (?) right now. Imagine if Firebird triggered for every EB blast from Wand of Woh and Chain Reaction.

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To be fair pretty much every class has one set that is very slow, but it’s usually so powerful you can add mobility skills and passives and it will be fine. Can’t say the same for Typhon’s …you’re just giving up extra mobility to do mediocre damage. The entire set besides it’s DR needs some extra love.

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Yeah damn procs don’t proc procs rule - I remember dreaming about that lol. Yeah it only triggers it once. At the time it was deemed to OP but now? No reason why it shouldn’t.

Keep in mind doing that would make it better than everything else unless you kept the MM power of 10+ missles.

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Regarding Firebirds… well, I could imagine something like this:

Disintegrate marks enemies hit. Your Explosive Blast gains the Chain Reaction and Short Fuse rune effects and detonates on marked targets for XXX% increased damage, consuming the mark.

And obviously Wand of Woh should trigger the set with every blast.

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It’s just to highlight what skills are underperforming and should be addressed further down the road. And I agree with MasterJay some high mobility build would be awesome and that’s there Wizards are lacking.

And we all know that the devs will make their own vision come true for every skill, etc they are going to buff. And that’s okay. But they can be inspired.

So let your ideas flowing and point out what Wizard is missing right now.

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Even if just Chain Reaction proc’d firebirds for every explosion (with no interaction of Wand of Woh) it would be four activations instead of the current (I believe) one. Lexa/Cratic is probably up on that mechanic, I can’t remember how exactly it works.

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My suggestion/hope for 2.8:

Vyr’s Amazing Arcana:

  • 2 piece bonus:
    • For every 10 archon stacks gained, reduce the remaining cooldown of Archon by 5 seconds. Archon gains effects of all Runes.
  • 4 piece bonus:
    • Archon kill stacks also increase Attack Speed, Armor and Resistances by 1% per stack.
  • 6 piece bonus:
    • Gain one Archon stack per hit or per tick of damage of any Archon ability. Archon stacks also reduce damage taken by 0.15% each and their damage bonus increases to 100% per stack. Increase the damage of all Archon abilities by 25% per Archon Stack.

Chantodo’s Resolve :

Note: Firstly, the nerf should be reverted. Secondly the amount of stacks needed should be reduced from 20 to 10, and followed by upping the chantodo damage from 4000% to 8000%.

  • 2 piece bonus:
    • Every second while in Archon form you expel a Wave of Destruction, dealing 8000% weapon damage to enemies within 30 yards. This damage scales with attack speed.
    • Every time you hit with an attack while not in Archon form, 8000% weapon damage is added to the Wave of Destruction, stacking up to 10 times. For each stack, reduce the damage of your attacks (except for the Wave of Destruction) by 7.5% while in Archon form.

Likely won’t happen, but meh.

Edit: Threw in some older ideas

Hergbrash’s Binding:

  • Gain the Unwavering Will passive and increase the damage increase to 35-50%. The effect is applied instantly whenever you channel, and your channeling skills gain quadruple the damage bonus. Reduces the Arcane Power cost of Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, and Ray of Frost by 65%.

Deathwish:

  • Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost, and Disintegrate now deal their maximum damage. Arcane Torrent, Ray of Frost, Disintegrate, and Disintegration Wave all deal xxx-xxx% more damage.

Halo of Arlyse:

  • Your Ice Armor now reduces damage by 50-60% and automatically casts Frost Nova whenever you take 10% of your Life in damage. Whenever you cast a frost nova, you gain a diamond armor, this effect has a 15 second cooldown.

Blackhand Key:

  • Arcane Torrent deals 200% more damage and gains the Death Blossom and Arcane Mines Runes. Hitting enemies with your signature or arcane spenders (besides Arcane Torrent) marks them. Nearby marked enemies causes Arcane Torrents to prioritizes them, and upon reaching them, explode instantly dealing 50% more damage.

Slorak’s Madness:

  • While channeling Disintegrate, you are drained 0.25% of your maximum life per second. Increase Disintegrate’s damage by 75-100% for every 1% of health you lose while channeling. This effect stacks up to 10 times.
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I am not sure that is the case, I do believe all casts can trigger it. The trouble is that EB has a chance to miss. (The proc rate is lower than 1.)

That is why it doesn’t feel so devastating at times.

I have to admit that I am not 100% sure so I would appreciate if someone could deny or verify it.

Edit
I saw the replies too late. If it indeed only hit on the first explosion given the proc hit rate EB has then a rework is long over due given the nerf FB got.

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Funny how every (almost) wizard thread involves mobility and how clunky teleport feels.

It would be my dream come true if one patch we got teleport to be as smooth as the monk dash.

Wizards aren’t the worst class when it comes to mobility but neither is it the best and more importantly the spell are all static. EB is the exception not very helpful as it is melee ranged. That the spells are static means that we have to cast then move which means that we loose ground and would benefit if teleport wasn’t that clunky.

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Venaliter covered me as well, good too see some ideas flowing though.

Your idea for Sloraks triggered my memory of a thread concerning Deathwish a while ago.
It might be good idea to try something like that for DW, that the longer you channel the more damage you do but you drain life. If not carefully you die.

Anyway some love and some new fun ideas getting implemented are always welcome.

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See? That’s not a great idea, for at least two reasons. 1) it overlaps with how Necromancers function. And 2) it’s a very un-fun interaction. A better suggestion is to increase the arcane power cost AND damage for every X seconds you channel, which gives you natural synergy with at least three multipliers; Taeguk, Unwavering will, and Hergbrash’s Binding (which would make the AP consumption sustainable) PLUS the skill Disintegrate itself.

The overlapping layers of synergy and existing items is what your aiming for. And nobody wants to kill themselves attacking. That’s why the monster affix Reflect Damage was changed!

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From what I read I believe we agree on a channeling boost if something gets changed. If DW gets a rework toward only channelling spells then Sloraks could work as an alternative weapon for cubing.
Now as for the life drain. Yes I do believe it could be a way to stop the nonstop channeling, if it became dangerous after say 30 seconds then it can be useful. Especially if you reach a ceiling of damage at 15 seconds.

Now it is not something I going to argue for I think it might have been “fun”.

Teleport on the other hand, that is something that still pains me. Good to see that I am not alone in that.

Btw about EB, what do you guys think about if it got allowed to expand it’s radius by five yards for every explosion up to max 20 - 30 yards. That it ought to get it’s proc hit raised to always hit is a given request.

Take care all, hope to read more ideas. :slight_smile:

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There’s absolutely nothing wrong with non-stop channeling. There is something wrong when it becomes trivial to maintain. If someone wants to build a LON set (non firebirds) with Deathwish, Slorak’s, Hergbrash’s and Mantle of Channeling, they should be able too.

My vision is something like Slorak’s increasing the damage of Disintegrate by 500% but increasing the arcane power cost by 100%, which would be reduced by Hergbresh’s Binding to a sustainable level.

My only concern is a build that stands there and channels is a little too boring.

But I know, personally, it would be outrageously fun to stand there and laser down hordes of enemies. Adding Black Hole to Disintegrate was how we used to do it, and I’d like to see it return. Maybe we need Jang’s Envelopment that casts, specifically, black hole while we channel Disintegrate, RoF, and AT.

If they won’t give us that, I’d love if it Familiar makes an appearance. Something like "While you channel disintegrate, your Familiar also channels your disintegrate. " Then you’d combine Familiar + Arcanot to maintain AP while channeling my hypothetical Slorak’s tweak.

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