Wizard Patch 2.6.10 Changes

Wizard
1

(Editing post to attach my thoughts on the bottom)
Here are the list of Wizard specific changes. I can post my comprehensive thoughts when I get home.

  • Etched Sigil : While channeling Arcane Torrent, Disintegrate, or Ray of Frost, the damage of your Energy Twister is increased by 200-250%, and you also cast Energy Twister every second.
  • Fragment of Destiny : Your Signature Spells attack 50% faster and deal triple damage. You gain a Spectral buff whenever you land an attack with a Signature Spell. Hydras deal 25-30% increased damage for each Spectral stack. Max 10 stacks.
  • Valthek’s Rebuke : Energy Twister now travels in a straight path and deals 300-400% increased damage.
  • Winter Flurry : Enemies killed by Cold damage have a 25% chance to release a Frost Nova. Your Hydra deals 125-150% increased damage to enemies in a Blizzard.
  • Wizardspike : Performing an attack has a 25% chance to hurl a Frozen Orb. Arcane Orb deals 300-350% increased damage.
  • Delsere’s Magnum Opus : 6 piece bonus increased from 8500% to 12500%.
  • The Typhon’s Veil : 6 piece bonus increased from 1300% to 2000%.

Non-specific change that effects wizard as well

  • Mantle of Channeling: Removed the 1 second start up before the power takes effect.
  • Kanai’s Cube: Additionally, the Kanai’s Cube will have a fourth slot this season. This fourth slot will have the choices of the first 3 slots but will not stack with any of them. The intent is to provide players with creative flexibility to their character builds.
    This allows us to use Vyr Chantodo set with Captain’s set again

Short version:

  1. Huge nerf to channeling builds like Meteor Shower
  2. Twister builds buffed and now require 4 weapon slots.
  3. Frozen Orb build buffed
  4. DMO set buffed
  5. TV set buffed
  6. Hydras buffed and nerfed and now require 4 weapon slots as well. Also now requires Blizzard spell and a signature spell.
  7. Season 22 allows different builds with 4th Kanai slot for RoRG or anything else to cube

.

Edit for additional information

Alright, lets break it down and see what the actual buffs we got (Please verify my maths as I’m tired)

  1. Twister Builds
  • Etched Sigil - TERRIBLE change. Ruins many other builds out there. Buffs damage to Twisters by 40% over previous Etched Sigil effect.
  • Valthek’s Rebuke - Replaces Deathwish. Buffs damage to Twisters by 17% over Deathwish.
  • DMO - Buffs damage to Twisters by 46%.

Overall change to Twister damage in non-season = 2.4x
This accounts to about 6 GRifts increase. Etched Sigil makes this build a channeling while Valthek’s Rebuke is supposed to replace Deathwish to be a non-channel build. Very awkward to require both forms.

  1. Hydra Builds
  • Fragment of Destiny - Replaces Deathwish for a DECREASE of about 7.7% damage.
  • Winter Flurry - Replaces Etched Sigil for a net zero change in damage.
  • Typhon’s Veil - Buffs damage to Hydras by 50%

Overall change to Hydra’s damage in non-season = 1.4x damage
This accounts to about 2 GRifts increase. No longer relying on channeling is a nice bonus. Hydra build now requires Blizzard and a Signature spell which really sucks. This combination does open up F&R rings for potential use.

  1. Arcane Orb (Frozen Orb)
  • Wizardspike - Replaces Orb of Infinite Depth. Increases damage by 220% over OoID.
  • DMO - Buffs damage to Frozen Orb by 46%.

Overall change to Frozen Orb’s damage in non-season = 4.7x
This accounts to about 10 GRifts increase. Loses a lot of damage reduction. Also, speed Frozen Orb build isn’t affected. This doesn’t help speed build at all.

  1. Meteor Shower
  • Etched Sigil - TERRIBLE change!!! Meteor Shower loses a lot of damage here. About 8 GRifts worth of damage.

.

These changes barely do anything for the Wizard other than make items convoluted, confusing and overlapping. There are 2 decent changes. Wizardspike for Frozen Orb, but it still won’t be as good as vyr’s I believe (Especially since it does nothing for speed build) and making Hydra not require channeling. Don’t get excited for these changes

8 Likes
2

I personally liked that they buffed Fragment of Destiny and allowed it to affect all Signature Spells instead of just Spectral Blade. Although, I don’t know why they tied the secondary effect to Hydra, when they could’ve made it either a global buff or a buff pertaining to all arcane spenders.

Etched Sigil becoming an Energy Twister item is disappointing imo. This also does nothing regarding channeling skills doing little damage, unless this mean that Death Wish will be changed to only affect channeling skills and would receive a massive damage boost to offset this lost in power? Even then there should be buffs to the other arcane spender skills (via their legendary specific items) in order to make up for the lost power that will inevitably result from this changed.

Winter Flurry being tied to Hydra makes little sense imo; if anything it could’ve been tied to blizzard and/or every other cold wizard spell.

Mantle of Channeling being reverted is good, especially for other classes.

That said, the buff to DMO is appreciated; and I hope that major changes are on the horizon for Firebird. Also, I look forward to the upcoming seasonal theme as it means I can bring back my old favorite Vyr Rasha build.

3

I thought the patch notes would be bigger in Scale and for all classes. But it seems like a big Wizard focus. Some of the changes resemble suggestions of the community.

2 Likes
4

I thought so too. I’m also confused as to the general changes targeting Hydra. It just seems so convoluted and awkward.

5 Likes
5

That’s a good way to describe it imo.

5 Likes
6

What a horrible change to etched sigil. Energy twister is still channeling build, just without deathwish. Meteor shower/explosive blast are crippled beyond belief, thoroughly destroyed. Oh, and enjoy your Firebird.

Only positive change at least on paper is to frozen orb, almost 10 GR gain with DMO bonus and wizardspike instead of OoID, without the 25% extra FO and higher attack speed due to dagger. Maybe frozen hydra is better, can’t tell by reading.

2 Likes
7

You will still use Deathwish for Twister this season as Twister has 4 weapons to use now

Hydra has the same problem as well.

2 Likes
8

True, but it’s weaker than both twisted sword and valthek so you need to drop it (max two weapons and a source). Unless you mean season 22 then you’re right and with 4 weapon multipliers, twisters (and hydra) are extremely strong. But only for s22.

1 Like
9

If you look at very early hydra build videos (or the firebird flame hydra videos) they all use this convoluted blizzard/blades/hydra/filler combo.

If i had to guess, having no idea how to buff the hydra build themselves they instead looked to what other (out of date) players were doing with hydra builds and focused solely on those abilities that were used (over 4 years ago).

10

Why wouldn’t they fix Deathwish instead of Etched Sigil? ES wasn’t the problem; Deathwish was. Argh. Meteor builds blown up; Tal’s and Firebirds useless; DMO still really damned clunky and I’m not even sure I’d want to use DMO over LoN.

What about Vyrs? What about Wand of Woh? Random, disjointed, incoherent changes.

9 Likes
11

Unfortunately, the only PTR they really considered our feedback was 2.6.1 with Don Vu leading. It will take a miracle to take back etched sigil and not destroy even more builds as they’re currently planning to do.

12

Can only agree. I’m at a loss for words to describe my thoughts right now after reading the patch notes. What the f… did they smoke?

No. Just no.

1 Like
13

If the intent was to simply strengthen Energy Twister, then all that needed to be done was to just buff Valthek’s Rebuke. If the intent was to weaken the deathwish and etched sigil dominance in builds; well there’s been plenty of suggestions on these forums that would’ve done job far better than what we’re currently seeing.

You know, I may be out of line saying this, however, with how disjointed and incoherent some of these changes have been as of late, I’m actually hoping that they don’t touch vyr unless it’s just to buff up chantodo… (can’t believe I said that).

1 Like
14

I’d also prefer it if they buffed manald heal

3 Likes
15

The hydra changes are a mess; I mean requiring a synergy with blizzard? Seems like a truly desperate attempt to make their namesake spell relevant. I commend the other changes though, especially the buff to DMO and Frozen orb (both could still use higher multipliers though) and the 4th cube slot.

16

Blizzard on Winter Flurry is basically a good mechanic (albeit it’s a bit too weak for an offhand slot). The issue I have here is that it’s limited to Hydra. Why was that limitation necessary? It should be all spenders and be a bit stronger, then it could be a solid option.

2 Likes
17

Yep or it can be a general damage multiplier like Entangling Shot buffed by Odyssey’s End.

1 Like
18

Agreed, I honestly don’t know why most of these changes were made skill-specific, especially when the skills chosen are better off than a large number of skills (blizzard, explosive blast, black hole, etc). It would’ve been better to have it grant a global buff or at least a buff to cold skills.

Something similar to this for example:

Cold skills release a blizzard upon impact. Enemies in a blizzard take 100% more damage from you. This bonus is doubled for Cold attacks.

1 Like
19

That’s much better. It would be nice if there was a Shoulder legendary that allowed us to cast Blizzard for free

I THINK IT WOULD BE FAR SUPERIOR IF WINTER FLURRY TRIGGERED FROM FROST NOVA.

on Meteor: With the (effective) removal of Etched Sigil from Meteor builds, is there a relatively simple way we could salvage it that we could propose? I mean, the changes they implemented not ideal, but at least we did receive a proportionally large amount of changes.

We need to make up the 150% damage, and the “Free” meteor Shower cast every 1 second.

20

The main issue isn’t so much the damage. That would hurt, yes, but the real nail to this coffin is the missing autocast feature that deals 95% of the damage. Manually casting Meteor + gaining Deathwish buff is impossible thanks to the Bazooka nerf 1 second delay and I don’t see them going back on that one for Deathwish.

There are some options, none being really good, though.

I can envision Auto Meteors in combination with Tal Rasha - it’s already there, they could cut the set’s internal cooldown on the autocasts to 1 second. But that would not help us with LoN/LoD based builds. Mhhh, not sure I like this.

Then there is Nilfur’s Boast. A bit awkward, but:

For each offensive skill on your bar, you automatically drop a Meteor of the same element whenever you attack with an Arcane Power spender. Meteors deal 600% increased damage. If Meteor hits 5 or less targets, the damage is increased by another 800-1000%.

As for the second Meteor item, Grand Vizier… I don’t like it to include a buff on this item but it’s there, so I’ll mention it just in case. They could up the damage and add some autocast feature or something that repeats manual casts. But it’s a 2H weapon and that would kill our option to use Aether Walker. So, well, yeah… don’t like it.

And finally we have Hergbrash’s Binding. That one could cover the damage loss from Etched Sigil, if anything.

Furthermore we could add a completely new item in this picture that autocasts Meteors or some other skill through some mechaninc. But I don’t think they go for something like this when they killed ES.

The last option would mean to scrap channeling as a base and go for manual casts. But that would be a pain in the rear, at least in my opinion. I won’t suggest something like that. Not to provide them with any more weird ideas.