Maxing Wizard DPS - Questions/Discussion

[Daffie]

So my wizard is around T9 and I just got her Archaic. (I'm going to be working on her Murk/Refuge/Runic 1 soon, and at some point I'll finish camping Taraztu for the root...)

Anyway, I'm looking for tips to max DPS in a few different situations:

1. Not maxed evocation - I'm having an impossible time finding/getting gear with evocation on it at my tier. I believe each mod point is .2% damage increase so at 25 mod you get a 5% damage increase. I'm working to aug my seed with evocation and that will put me at 12... Does anyone swap in the Tmap ranged Emblem of the Evoker, after a spell cast or two, in order to get the damage increase on raids? I'm going to start doing it to see if it helps DPS, but I think it might be worth the loss of resists, HP, other mods...

2. Fire resistant mobs - My assumption is that chain casting Archaic is the DPS method of choice here.

3. Ice resistant mobs - I'm kind of wondering if chaining RRR is better than Relic fire nuke due to the cast time being so much faster. Anyone use any other approaches?

4. AE - I've been using the 2 Jyll's spells (cold and fire) because the cast and recast is just so much better than other pbae spells. Sometimes I use impact of thunder if I need the stun. I pretty much gave up using rains due to the neg crit adjust, and 9/10 times if I use meteor swarm (which is super fun) I end up hitting myself. Does anyone use a better cycle?

5. Reflect mobs - PBAEs. Do lures work?

6. High resist mobs - Lure of the Void is my go to. Anyone found Lure of the Elements to be better?

7. Duration fights - Even with 7.5k mana, Mind Hunger, Mod Rods, and both Harvests I can run out of mana by the end of a bunch of fights (if I just chain cast the stuff in the numbers above.) Archane Echo takes so long, I never wait for it to wear off while raiding. I've been switching to Frost Howl after I run out of mana, but it is pretty much garbage. I do keep ancient ice nuke up for when I'm low mana because it is so efficient. What do you other dudes do to keep DPS up on longer fights?

8. Clicky items - The only thing I have been using is the Blazing Veil. What other clicky items are other there that can get used during spell cool down?

Thanks!

 

[Silosobi]

1)It IS worth swapping in extra evocation after you have lowered your max mana, and this can be done during spellgem cooldown at no dps loss. Resist/hp issues is just a tradeoff you have to consider on a fight by fight basis. A good rule of thumb as a wizard, is basically looking for the group's lowest common denominator. If you can swap gear for more dps, and still have more hp/resist than another player in the group, its a good idea. If you will become the lowest hp/resist player in the group its probably a bad idea because you will die first and/or force the healer to group heal sooner than they would otherwise have to.

2)Archaic is almost always your best dps spell, on everything that isnt high cold resist.

3)Relic Fire is going to be much more mana efficient dps than RRR, but RRR is higher DPS. Basically, the question to ask here (and all fights really) is: Can I spend all my mana on this boss using more efficient spells (Relic Fire / Archaic Cold)? If you can, then you are better off doing that. If, however, a fight is fast enough (or has other mechanics) that you cannot use all your mana with Relic Fire or Archaic, then it is worth using RRR for some/all of the time, so that you go OOM right as the boss dies. Another consideration here is burn phases. Some bosses have certain times in the fight where it is much more important to do tons of dps than others. This is where wizards really shine, and its our true niche in the game right now. In cases like this, if, say, the last 10% of a fight is super intense and people die and you have to kill the boss ASAP, it probably makes sense to save enough mana so that you can spam RRR (or Runic: Flash Flame) through the whole phase, doing maximum dps.

4)This is the correct cycle for AEing. Abstraction is a nice addition, but its got a timer (pretty self explanatory). 3 mobs may be worth using the tarteded AE, but 4+ is always worth using PBAE and 2 or less is better off with single target nukes.

5)These depend, because most mobs are not 100% reflect, they merely reflect *some* spells. Clickies and PBAEs will not be reflected. Generally, if a mob is reflecting more than 50% of your spells, you want to switch to PBAE/clickies. Some fights, you can try to wait for a reflect on someone elses spell (or trigger it with a low mana/damage spell) and then nuke immediately after before it does it again. DO NOT Lure. Tons of mana, and will hurt you bad because you cant resist it like other stuff.

6)This one annoys me. Generally Lure of the Void is best, but when you have enough elemental damage bonus, elements starts to do more damage *and* it costs less mana. Void comes out ahead in most cases because high resist mobs can still resist some (or all) of elements, and they cant resist void at all. I personally think unresistable damage and/or Void needs a buff, because it makes no sense for the random dropped spell to be better than our relic, but that's how it is, and an issue for another thread (which I made, without much of any response).

7)You are doing this wrong (like many others). On any fight where you will use all of your mana there are essentially two different ways a wizard should be dpsing. They are either in sustained dps mode or burn mode. Burn mode is obvious, you spam RRR/FF, or Vah Back Moon Comets, or if its a longer/slower burn, you just spam moon comets. Anyone with Intensify weaves that in the mix too of course. For the most efficient sustained damage you need to account for Arcane Echo, which gives wizards who utilize it well mana regen on the same level as necromancers. Most 50+ nukes trigger this effect, which gives back 20% mana over 6 tics. The trick here is that 5 mana nukes DONT trigger this, so in general you want to have the Arcane Echo from a high mana nuke up all the time, and weave 5 mana nukes inbetween. For me, the standard, most efficient, rotation is Intensify, Moon Comet, Frost Howl, Frost Howl, Frost Howl, repeat. I follow Intensify immediately with Moon Comet to get its higher Arcane Echo running, and then do my 5 mana nukes while benefiting from the Moon Comet's Arcane Echo. I'm pretty sure that for people without intensify, it would make sense to use 4 Frost Howls between each Moon Comet. When you get Intensify though, you want to be casting it every 30 seconds to maximize its power, and the rotation I use is ideal for that.

In general, Moon Comet is SO much more efficient than RRR/FF that you are better off burning by just spamming it. 90% of fights consist of me spamming Moon Comet during whatever part of the fight we need more dps (usually AEs are happening, using up more healer mana, or the boss starts hitting really hard risking killing our tank, or adds spawn, or w/e), and using the Int/MC/FH/FH/FH Combo during whatever portion of the fight I need to conserve mana. Some fights are short enough you never have to conserve mana, but most are not. As far as RRR/FF, they do more DPS than Moon Comet, but its not as much more as you might guess (because of spellgem cooldown), and they burn through mana MUCH faster. They are worth using on super short fights, or if mana is a non issue for other reasons (lots of easy adds making Forbidden Harvest feed you lots of free mana), and on fights where all that matters is that you super burn ASAP during one specific phase, and you could sit on your thumbs the rest of the fight and be fine, but usually you want to just be casting MC enough to spend all your mana that way, because that will result in far more total damage dealt.

8)There are a lot of good clicky items for wizards, I will list some of the important ones:
Vah Back: The final Vah back is by far the most imporant clicky for a wizard. It also benefits a wizard more than any other class. The increase to both spell damage AND cast time, allows us to spam out quick Moon Comets, and pretty much doubles our dps for the duration. It also stacks really well with curses, allowing you to get two or three MCs during curses, and a Taesh Ear inbetween, all doing 30% extra damage. A Vah'd wizard, with curses cast, is going to do maybe 3000-6000 dps over that 24-30 sec duration.
Tear of Elael: This one is simple, free mana means extra spells to cast and extra damage.
Taesh Ear: A short cast 4k damage nuke? Yes please! The 4 hour recast makes it a once-per-raid item, but its super nice during curses, between other spells, for a free 10k+ damage
MindFire: The Caster thaz reward has a prohibitively long recast similar to Taesh Ear, but is nice when you use it, granting a ~1k heal and 3 tics of reduced mana cost. It stacks well with Vah since you are casting extra spells then anyway.
Damage Bonus Clickies: There are 3 of these, adding 8-30% damage to all elements for a short time. Don't stack with vah, but they are nice to have.
Tmap Rings: Two of these, one adds 2% cold damage and the other 2% fire. Its minor, but worth casting before engage if you have a buffslot.
Those are all the core/essential clickies for a wizard in my opinion. There are others (DD/PBAE Hats, Halloween Clickies, DOT Arms, DOT Gloves, Charm Arms, DB, Runspeed, CC Heal Pants, Destroy Pants, Abyss Mana Steal), but what I listed above are the most important ones, that I use pretty much every time I raid.

That may be more information than you wanted... but I have spent a lot of time playing a wizard and know their ins and outs pretty well. Feel free to ask any other questions.

 

[Daffie]

Thanks for the thorough response!

Damage Bonus Clickies: There are 3 of these, adding 8-30% damage to all elements for a short time. Don't stack with vah, but they are nice to have.

Are you referring to Mantel of Arcane Apoplexy? Are the other items on different cool downs?

 

[Silosobi]

Dreamstone Trinket, Gloves of Seething Chaos, and Emblem of the Elders. Mantle of Arcane Apoplexy shares a cooldown with the gloves, but the other two are separate cooldowns, and all three can be used back to back if you want.

 

[Daffie]

Dreamstone Trinket, Gloves of Seething Chaos, and Emblem of the Elders. Mantle of Arcane Apoplexy shares a cooldown with the gloves, but the other two are separate cooldowns, and all three can be used back to back if you want.

Man, now I have to go back and farm CoD

 

[Silosobi]

Its definitely a helpful item, but I'd suggest starting on the vah back and putting free time into that instead. Its obviously way more involved, but the reward is so much better. Its a really class defining item on wizards. Our niche is already burn dps to begin with, and vah back takes us from 150% the burn of other classes to 200-400% the burn of other classes. Its obviously worth getting COD ear too somewhere along the way, but I strongly suggest any wizard out there that is serious about building a strong raid character to start working on vah. Its amazingly daunting at first, but most of the quest can be done on your own or with just 1-2 friends bit by bit. If you start checking things off the list and getting little bits done one by one, before you know it you will only have 5-10 of the harder things left, and can crank those out as you get opportunities. I did almost the entire quest in ~1 month while working ~30 hours a week. I was pretty hardcore about it, but even someone playing just 5-10 hours a week could complete the quest, it would just take them a year instead of the month it took me.

 

[taosanterior]

I don't pretend to know that much about wizards, but I heard that Arcane Acuity was recently fixed, so it helps you avoid counterspells and reflects for a bit. No idea if its worth the mana or not still someone else would have to comment on that.

Another clicky I can think of that is very nice is the concuss ring from Tansa in Valor B. Free -aggro is always welcome

 

[Daffie]

I don't pretend to know that much about wizards, but I heard that Arcane Acuity was recently fixed, so it helps you avoid counterspells and reflects for a bit. No idea if its worth the mana or not still someone else would have to comment on that.

Another clicky I can think of that is very nice is the concuss ring from Tansa in Valor B. Free -aggro is always welcome

That is a killer ring, I use the hell out of mine.

 

[Silosobi]

Arcane Acuity is virtually useless. High reflect/counterspell mobs is the only real potential use for the spell, but its recast means its only going to allow one spell to get through, at a huge additional mana cost. There are some theoretical uses to it I guess, like a high MR mob that needs to be rooted at the start of a fight, but in practice I have never seen or heard of any content in the game where this spell is actually desirable. I never even bothered to get it because of this, and as you can probably tell, I do everything I can to make my character more powerful, but I'm not going to go through that quest line for some text on my fomelo.

I wish they would just make it something new, there are a lot of cool options. A BIG, long cooldown nuke. New Harvest. Better PBAE or AE/Rain. Make it a self buff that adds 30-60 seconds of guaranteed hits (this would keep its purpose, but make it actually useful on some content). The way things are now though, 600 mana to get a single spell past resists/counterspells just isn't worth having on your spellbar even on the extremely limited situations you might want that mechanic.

 

[Nwaij]

I never even bothered to get it because of this, and as you can probably tell, I do everything I can to make my character more powerful, but I'm not going to go through that quest line for some text on my fomelo.

Sadly, it doesn't even give you that.

 

[Daffie]

Arcane Acuity is virtually useless. High reflect/counterspell mobs is the only real potential use for the spell, but its recast means its only going to allow one spell to get through, at a huge additional mana cost. There are some theoretical uses to it I guess, like a high MR mob that needs to be rooted at the start of a fight, but in practice I have never seen or heard of any content in the game where this spell is actually desirable. I never even bothered to get it because of this, and as you can probably tell, I do everything I can to make my character more powerful, but I'm not going to go through that quest line for some text on my fomelo.

I wish they would just make it something new, there are a lot of cool options. A BIG, long cooldown nuke. New Harvest. Better PBAE or AE/Rain. Make it a self buff that adds 30-60 seconds of guaranteed hits (this would keep its purpose, but make it actually useful on some content). The way things are now though, 600 mana to get a single spell past resists/counterspells just isn't worth having on your spellbar even on the extremely limited situations you might want that mechanic.

I'm just going to do it in the hope that it gets changed one day.

 

[huey]

I brought up a concuss for target kinda thing awhile back, but I think like one person thought that was a cool idea at all. I thought to use it on the fight that you need to drain your mana down low since it costs so much, but the recast time made it not even useful for that, lol...

 

[Silosobi]

There are tons of cool alternatives, and wizards aren't super powerful at this point in the game, so giving us something new and useful wouldn't be unreasonable. What if we kept the way it currently works, only the spell that followed it gained +100% damage +100% crit chance. Basically a guaranteed 4x damage. That might seem OP to people who don't actually play wizards, but wizard players know that we already rely on getting numerous ultimate blasts in any given fight to parse competitively with other top dps. It would need +125% damage or +100% crit and +50% damage just to break even on average damage per mana spent, and as the reward for a long quest line, with a 2 minute recast, I feel like gaining 50% damage on that single spell cast it justified. The resistance and counterspell mitigation would really just be the icing on the cake, since its already pretty obvious that those effects are only of marginal usefulness, since there are other ways to mitigate them.

 

[taosanterior]

I had heard arcane acuity now lasts 6 ticks instead of just 1 spell or 2 ticks or whatever it used to be. Don't know if that changes anything - again I don't really play a wizard. But feedback from my wizardly friends had been positive