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Wizard Report v1.62 – June 15, 2003

Overview

The theory behind Wizards is that their damage output should make up for their lack of utility. Unfortunately, this is not true. The damage that Wizards get does not make up for the things that they give up. Wizards are able to do the same damage as every other caster, but give up all of the utility spells (stun, mez, nearsight, debuffs, etc) to do only damage. While a Wizard should do the most damage of all the casters in the game, they can’t. Realm Abilities, Spellcrafting, resists, and interrupts are reducing the Wizard’s effectiveness to almost nothing in RvR. This is a major issue.

Concerns

• Damage – While Wizards give up all utility for increased damage, they don’t get it. Their spells do the same damage as everyone else’s. Wizards need some way to increase their own damage output. A new skill could be given to wizards to increase damage, range, casting speed, crit rate, etc.
• Resists – Wizards are designed to be specialized to achieve maximum damage. This hurts the Wizard the most when it comes to resists. And with resists coming from equipment, resist buff spells, and realm abilities, it is often common to see 40%+ resist rates on their spells. This leads to a very severe reduction in damage for the Wizard. The edge that they are supposed to have for giving up all defense, is now taken away. Spellcrafting has only made this situation worse for Wizards. Many more people now have access to 26% resists from equipment.
• Interruptions - Any kind of attack (melee, bows, spells, etc) is counted as an interrupt. There is also a 3 second recast timer for being interrupted. Quickcast is only available every 30 seconds, which basically gives the Wizard 1 freebee spell and that’s it. With so many ways for the enemy to get into melee range (speed 6, determination, purge, IP, resists, etc), the wizard often finds that they are reached and interrupted while only being able to get one spell off.
• AE Drop Off – The damage on AE spells, as it moves from the center target, is reduced away to nothing. Most AE spells only tickle everyone but the target. All of the Wizard AE DD and PBAE spells are affected by this. Only GTAE and AE DoT spells do not suffer from it. The problem is due to AE DD dropoff, the spells do hardly any damage to anyone but the target. Also, due to the way that AE DoTs crit, and the fact that they have no dropoff, it’s often found that DoTs are doing more damage / tick than an AE DD does / cast. DoTs should do more damage over time, but for one tick, they should be below an AE DD. The dropoff for all AE spells should be changed to 100%->50%.

Specline Issues

• Path of Earth / Calefaction - Single Target Damage – Earth Wizards often find it difficult to compete due to the lack of single target damage.
• Path of Ice / Liquification - The major problem with the Liquification spec is that it’s basically a partial version of the Eldritch Vacuumancy spec. Wizards gain a DD / Debuff, but give up disease, AE disease, Str / Con debuff, and AE Str / Con debuff. Because of this, many ice wizards feel that they are incomplete.
• Path of Fire / Pyromancy - Pyromancy’s biggest issue is that despite it’s popularity, it’s a bit lacking. Compared to the Runemaster RC line, the wizard is giving up utility, GTAE, and debuffs to gain a spec DD which is outdamaged by the debuff + base DD that a Runemaster has.

New Issues

• The change to the runemaster spec damage add represents the change that should be carried over to the earth spec damage shield. Right now, the damage shield that wizards must spec for is the same DPS as the base damage shield given to all Hibernia casters.

Other Issues

• GTAE damage isn’t being adjusted for the int, acuity buffs, mastery of the magery or relic bonuses.
• Runemaster Darkness/Suppression AoE DD Cast times
• Spell resists are being based on the spell level instead of the caster level.

Item Problems

• The wizard epic armor is inferior to the random drops that can be obtained in SI.