Wizard set suggestion for patch 2.7

Wizard
21

While being true it’s also very wrong. Wizard sets are, with a partly exception of Vyr, more or less sub par and very awkward to play. Even the latest one, Typhon, is so-so mechanically at best, and very underpowered.

That being said they need to do both. Rework the sets and look into non set options for LoD/LoN builds.

Regarding your Manald Heal effect… I have an issue with this kind of damage dealing effect in general because it won’t scale well. They are very strong for low to mid tier content but eventually cap out somewhere. I’d rather see something like this:

Manald Heal:
+15-20 % to lightning damage
Empty Socket (1)
+3 random magic properties
Legendary:
Increases the stun duration of Paralysis by 1 second and the chance to apply the effect to 50%. Enemies hit by Paralysis take 200-300% increased lightning damage from you for 5 seconds.

2 Likes
22

Oh, that is much better.

Although I would say that enemies hit by Paralysis should only take increased damage from your attacks, but not from other allies, because that would make it too OP for group play and every group-meta DD build would use Lightning, at least the trash killers.

Alternative Manald Heal could also cause Lightning Damage to have a chance to emanate Charged Bolts and/or Chain Lightnings:

Manald Heal
Increase Lighting Damage by xx% and give your Lightning Skills a 15% chance to trigger Charged Bolts or a Chain Lightning

^^ not effected by the proc coefficient and has no internal cooldown, but a Charged Bolt or Chain Lightning can’t proc anything else.

23

Well… I already did that since I wrote “…more lightning damage from you”, so yes, it would (and should) not be applied to allies. That’s why the boost is so strong in the first place, and my general idea for that thing is to create a strong competitor for the ring slot - if you go for a lightning build :wink:

24

oh, yeah, sorry, I missed that for some reason.

It might be a bit hard to balance with enemies CC Resistance in mind, because it will absolutely shred everything in medium to eventually medium-high levels, but in higher levels levels the effect could eventually not prov often enough, which is why I suggested to make the damage bonus static and add a nice Charged Bols / Chain Lightning proc effects.

25

Oh, those would not pose a threat… kindly look at my wording. It’s not “affected by” but “hit by” Paralysis, with Paralysis having a 50% chance to fire on casting a lightning skill. That should be reliable enough… might even be too reliable :smiley:

1 Like
26

Posts like this suggest to me you’ve never played with Manald Heal. It is unaffected by CC DR.

1 Like
27

I never played the Lightning Hydra Manald Heal build and although there is a LoD Lightning sorc build with Chain Lightning, Stormcrow, Mirrow Ball, Schaefer’s Hammer and Thunderfury that I really like to play from time to time, I did not put Manald on it, because it would just deal damage too unreliably and it din’t feel good.

So I did not spend too much attention to the mechanics of that ring, but I always thought that Manald only triggers when things get stunned by Paralysis and a stun effects enemies CC Resistance.

28

It’s logical to assume that (most of us did initially), but it’s not the case. It would be really bad if it suffered from CC resistance, so I think it was an active decision by the devs to have it not be affected.

It’s pretty easy to confirm, Manald Heal still triggers on Juggernaut elites.

1 Like
29

That is interesting…

Yeah, indeed, I just assumed that, not gonna lie.

30

ok, for suggestions.

after playing some DH for Season21 and comparing to previous wizard experience (over 1300 hours since deep into vanilla days), well, lets just say, there is no comparison in any way.

all DH sets are nicely tweaked, themed and follow specific tuning. They are COMFORTABLE to play. Thats the main thing. Maybe Natalya little less as it needs some specific iterations, but it’s a minor inconvenience, compared to Firebirds, DMO and Tals.

It’s like the persons designed DH sets were actually understanding the game and how to make gameplay better. Definetly not the case with Wizard sets. The are all finicky and conditional and limiting gameplay. And if you compare DH sets, they are actually not neccessarily all “all damage increased by X”, but actually quite narrowly limited to specific skills, but somehow that has worked better.

So, i’d propose more “themed” sets:
Firebirds - well, fire ofc
DMO - Melee wiz
Tals - Elemental/Explosions and maybe keep as “all-round” set
Typhon - obviously hydra
Vyrs - Archon.

And well, devs have to tune these like they are.
So somewhere:
FB
2p: enemies take 100% increased damage from fire skills
4p: igniting an enemy reduces your damage by 50% for 5 seconds and prevent fire damage taken. Meteor revive once in 60 sec.
6p: ignited enemies take 4000% increased damage from fire skills

no stacking any more, no finicky 3 skill obligation, just go and set them all on fire. And FB is fire wizard after all, why it should take damage from fire after all. FB is the worst set in the game by a fair margin and the worst part of the game that it actually does not work on low difficulties. It’s useless against trash and elites die too quick. And without stacks FB is super squishy.

DMO:
2p: Slow time follows you and casting Slow Time resets cooldown of Teleport. casting a damage dealing skill reduces cooldown of slow time by 3 sec.
4p: You take 70% reduced damage while you have a Slow Time active.
6p: Enemies affected by Slow time take xxxx increased damage from signature spells, Wave of Force, Arcane Orb, Explosive Blast and Black Hole.

and then tune damage ranges and complimentary legendary items.

The idea is DMO wiz should NEVER walk outside the bubble, it’s teleport - bubble - teleport etc and smash things within that bubble to do damage and reset ST/teleport CD. melee wiz after all and it needs to be tough.

Tals:
2p: meteor fall. [it’s not a big bonus, but it looks cool at least]
4p: 15% overall DR and 15% movement speed per stack for 8 seconds. [tals is the squishiest of all sets anyway and this skill juggling is bit annyoing anyway, so at least give it returns]
6p: 2000% per element stack is fine

tal set itself needs QoL tuning, not actually damage imho. tals have always been “do-it-all” set, so make it one. Not necessarily for pushing, so give it speed and more damage reduction instead.

vyrs:
2p: archon gains every rune. that’s a decent bonus.
4p: as it is
6p: as it is or if anything, buffs to archon casting skills + casting Archon beam or combustion reduces Archon cooldown by 2 second.

so, idea is to be perma archon. for real. no more swami bandaid. that’s just silly and so annying to just sitting ducks and channel until you can get back. and that swami just takes away cube slot, as it’s a mandatory item. Archon was snowballing set long since vanilla and make it so. we have perma wotb, perma vengeance, perma simulacrum, perma epiphany, etc. why cant we have permaarchon?!?
rant:
what offends me fair bit, is Archon + Chantodo. Clearly “post-RoS” Chanto designer wasn’t playing diablo3 much. Chanto was always a CMwiz set and it was literally opposing archon gameplay. there were 2 “schools” at vanilla: CM and Archon. It was a competition. And then some punk just took a cookie cutter cmwiz set and made it for archon.
Change for Chanto setup is very much welcome. If anything, archon needs it’s own sticks and stones.

FFS: if anything bring back cmwiz and give them back their sticks. i would even go that far that completely redesing chanto so that this set will land onto DMO wiz hands. bubble/melee teleporting DMO wiz with Halo of Arlyse is closest thing to cmwiz gameplay.

i haven’t played typhon, so wont say about that.

i don’t think set damage bonuses should change that much neccessarily. it’ll conflict with LoD. Items have to be tuned so they’ll work with all options.

31

DMO Orbs automatically explode on elites and guarantee an area damage proc. The damage bonus is quadrupled if you land the orb at max range.

Perfect aim and timing should be rewarded, not be a prerequisite to doing meager damage.

32

The main issue with archon is in order to maximize damage you need:
-double archon stacks
-4 hits from CoE (this is based off chance… not able to line up the timing every time like other classes can)
-first 10 seconds of Black Hole Absolute Zero
-You only have 15 seconds of archon (up to 5 seconds are spent channeling to reduce the cooldown)
-Oculus Ring (follower or support build, optional)

so if one of those factors drops off, the archon damage drops off significantly. All those factors have to line up just for only 4 hits of big damage… then it goes down from there. The Archon builds desperately need a buff in various areas to really help a group now. Because as it stands… Necro Poison Scythe and Witch Doctor Mundu builds are better for ads… and other classes are better for Boss DPS.

There are too many variables for an archon to have (slightly big damage in a short window) compared to other builds/classes.

The Wave of Destruction (chantodo) needs more damage. You roughly get around 15 seconds of archon time (you could take anywhere from 3-5 seconds channelling to get the cooldown from Obsidian ring) So those 15 seconds are critical for DPS.

The initial explosion when you transform into archon needs a big radius and damage boost. Making it viable for (high risk, high reward) if you are in the middle of a pack of enemies.

The laser itself is just used to build archon stacks (slowly) if you’re in an oculus ring and you let the ring boost your Wave of Destruction damage and you’re far away from a target. The laser needs some other use… maybe more attacks per second. As most Archon players know to use the Slam attack to build archon stacks faster at close range.

The Slow Time Bubble around archon could benefit more if it gained all of the Slow Time Runes (without having to wear that Legendary helmet)

33

In my honest opinion, the archon skills themselves need to do far more damage than what they’re currently doing. I can’t imagine many ways of doing this without nerfing Chantodo’s waves of destructions. Which is why I instead suggest the following:

This way buffs can be made to either the archon skills or chantodo without having to worry about making the other too strong.

34

Why do u want to have this effect. I would like to see the wave of destruction to be nerfed, but the damage from the archon skill increased.

Perhaps, in the 2 piece effect add archon skill deal 300% increased damage

35

I explained it in more detail in the linked thread. But it’s mostly so we can get the archon skills buffed so they themselves could deal substantial damage without needing to actually nerf the Chantodo set. This also ensures that while Chantodo is no longer a mandatory set for Vyr Archon, it would still be a viable alternative to go for when playing Vyr Archon. As such, Vyr archon could then have two distinctive playstyle, one that utilizes the archon skills for damage, and the other utilizes Chantodo’s waves of destructions instead.

36

your suggested changes don’t do that, though. You’d still only use Chantodo’s, until there’s a viable alternative. You haven’t suggested one that I saw. In fact, I don’t think you could reasonable suggest a single item - you’d have to design a new two-piece set.

Edit: you could do a legendary with something like: If you enter Archon with no Chantodo’s stacks, deal an extra 1000% damage. But then you’ve designed a legendary that specifically references another.

1 Like
37

If Vyr is also buffed with a change similar to this along with my chantodo proposition:

Vyr’s Amazing Arcana :

  • 2 piece bonus:
    • For every 10 archon stacks gained, reduce the remaining cooldown of Archon by 10%. 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.

Then you wouldn’t just use Chantodo unless for maybe speed builds or if you wanted the wave of destructions. Otherwise if you wanted the Archon skills to do damage, then you wouldn’t use the chantodo set.

Also, not every build needs a 2-piece weapon set, you could instead have a legendary weapon or source instead.

38

What you’ve done is simply mandated another legendary for the Archon build. They aren’t exclusive enough. The build would simply use it in the free weapon slot - I think. You did shift damage away from Chantodo into Archon (Vyr) - which is good; but Chant’s is still being used in the build.

39

If the available options aren’t spread apart by a large gap in damage, then that’s fine; as it would mean that the set doesn’t actually have a specific or mandatory weapon set that you would need. Of course, with the amazing theorycrafters we have in this game, someone’s bound to find a combination that’ll work wonders; but as long as it’s still not miles ahead of the other options, I would still take that as a win.

As I said, the goal of my proposition isn’t to get rid of Chantodo or even to heavily nerf it (not anymore anyway). It’s to create an opportunity where players can actually choose between the archon skills or the chantodo’s waves of destructions for damage and still benefit equally from either (or at least as equally as possible).

Sure, there’s also the option of nerfing chantodo and buffing archon, so they would be about 50/50 in terms of damage output; but with how powerful chantodo is, I don’t see that happening (at least not in one major balancing patch). At most, I may see blizzard making it so the damage output of the archon skills and chantodo is 20/80, or even 30/70; but that would still make chantodo mandatory to vyr archon.

40

Nerf the Wave even more? What?? We need damage and stats UP not down.