Bright Wizard Class Review

Bright Wizard to Rank 26, RR 10

Bright Wizard is a TON of fun to play, and is definitely overpowered.

As a Bright Wizard I don’t really fear anyone, least of all Melee classes, lowest on the food chain is most definitely Witch Elf’s and Marauders. These guys are a joke, and can basically be ignored to you feel like dealing with them, then utterly destroyed in no time at all.

A witch elf gets at you:

• Shield of Asquishy (or whatever its name is) buys you second to finish your current target.
• Root, walk a few feet.
• Disarm
• Dot
• Dot
• Nova Stun

Fireball
If he is really persistent or you don’t want to fight, detaunt. 3 sets of CC without even trying. And that’s not even the most effective way of killing them, that’s just getting them off you, and still normally enough to kill them.

The only melee that i even ever be slightly concerned about is Chosen, and that’s only if they have dedicated healers. Only because once that chosen (tanked and getting healed) gets on you, you can’t shake him in the 8 seconds it takes to shake anyone else. However generally your own healer will notice and out heal his dps. At which case it just becomes interesting to see how long he will whack you before becoming disinterested and running off to hit the healer.

On a side note, there morale ability really hurts, hitting for 1/4 our health easy, but then, big heals crit at twice that, so I can only imagine how much some of our abilities hurt.

I can kill most targets with Fireball

Fireball Barrage
That’s pretty much it. If there still alive I either DOT DOT or just SEAR. I don’t really see how this fits the TTK at all, and I realize that Fireball Barrage is being looked at.

Since I got FB (fireball barrage) I pretty much just spam
Fireball and FB. They just hit so freaking hard. My
Fireball his for something like (not exact figures) 350 then another 350 over time. That’s 700 a hit without a crit. 2 of these and a
fireball barrage = anyone without a healer. That’s 3 second cast, instant, 3 second cast.

Changing from Barrage to Combustion

I don’t really use Combustion, I don’t really worry about it either. It doesn’t seem that a lot of the important abilities for Bright Wizards have combustion. There is SEAR, but it’s on a timer. Most of the others are AOE effects or skills I don’t use a lot. So it’s just not important at all to me. Not to mention that even without FB at all, I hit so damned hard, and kill so fast. That it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Correct me if I’m wrong, (I’m at work so no in game reference and didn’t play yesterday so memory might be not so good) but the following are the skills I use a lot and whether they have
combustion.

• Fireball – No
• Ignite - No
• Boiling Blood - No
• Fireball Barrage - No
• Sear - Yes
• Nova - No
• Shield of Asquishy - No
• Flame Cage - No
• Disarm (name?) - No

Now I might be wrong about 1-2 of those, but as I stated, I don’t worry about it so much that I never really checked. I ‘think’ some of them might have chances to explode based on your current Combustion, but in truth, that’s never really a worry anyway. Healing is quite heavy now, so going absolutely full power will funnel popping 80 health of you every 1-2 seconds is NOTHING. Let alone the occasional explosion. 1x 3 second heal could fix an explosion and 10 funnels from massive nuking, let alone some dot heal sitting on you.
Combustion might be vital if I didn’t already annihilate people, but at the moment, it doesn’t factor for me at all.

Melee

• I have never lost a 1v1 to a melee.
• I have beaten a few 2v1’s against both melee.
• Just blow the crap out of 1 real quick while CC'ing the other, then finish.

Ranged

The 2 things that I watch for as a Bright Wizard:

• Sorceress'
• Zealots

Sorceress' hurt, and there Shadow Knives and (disastrous cascade ? ) are to be watched carefully. Most of the time I die, its to Sorceress' or Zealots (or just a bucket load of 10x people focus fire). Sorceress' have (from playing against them) a lot of the same issues as Bright Wizards, just in different spells. But having not played 1 this phase (I did last phase) I wouldn’t want to comment further.

Zealots I have only had a few 1v1’s, there the class that’s to be feared the most as a BW. Mostly before you have FB. They have some massive heals, shield spells and they can hurt, not in massive 500+ hits, but definitely hurt. I think its Warp Reality that really stings. Generally they can make the fight last long enough that funnel power combined with their dots really start to take there toll.

Problems

Healing really can throw out a lot of survivability. So you come up with some tricks to deal with it. Smack someone with a fireball. Healer goes to heal him.
Fireball the Healer, Drain AP of healer (morale), dot, Nova stun,
Fireball Barrage, Sear. If he is still standing and pops his big heal + shield, then dot dot and move back to original target,
the healer will right now be crapping himself so much and focused on restoring himself to 100% that you will kill the other target before he gets back to his group job.

A few zealots in there, and it started to become ridiculous. However it just became necessary to get 2-3 Bright Wizards to target the zealots first. 3x Fireballs hitting someone is GG. This is all without using any other little toys like the rank 3 morale, and the anti healer spell (playing with fire??) which I don’t spec.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love this class. And I guess that’s the problem, I know its overpowered, and id be terrified to play against it, especially is melee.

On a side note, RVR is still utterly dominated by range.

Mastery Tree Review

Incineration

This seems still far and away the best spec for a BW if you want to blow things up.
Fireball Barrage is just crazy good, and fun as hell to boot (who can’t love multiple fireballs raining from the sky in quick succession?). I don’t think it in and of itself is overpowered, it’s the matter of the stacking damage add procs. I also like that channeling ceases when the target goes out of LOS/range (which is what we Order all complained about Shadow Knives last phase, and you guys fixed….kudos!). I have noticed that the animation goes kind of wonky if the first hit is disrupted. Instead of getting the six quick graphical hits, you get more like pause, hit, pause, pause, hit, hit.

I think the tactic to make Sear heal for 25% damage 25% of the time should really be made 100% of the time to make it attractive. It might actually be worth using a tactic slot on then, as right now I think every BW pretty much stacks INT tactics, or maybe rarely takes the +AP on crit one (I do usually when Conflag specced).

Immolation

This line feels like it should have more potential than it does. Detonate is a fun spell, though frustrating when it gets disrupted since you can’t try again for 10 seconds. Also, since DoTs have been changed to not tick until 3 seconds after application, is there any chance we can get the 3s recast removed? It’s frustrating when you want to use an ability that requires the target to be hexed, you hit Ignite, and it’s disrupted (and Boiling Blood is on cooldown). Now you have to wait 3 seconds to try and hex again to use another ability that requires it.

Withering Heat feels underpowered compared to
Fireball Barrage. First off it channels 6 hits in 6 seconds instead of 6 hits in 3 seconds, and each hit is much, much less than FbB. The snare is nice, but even chain casting it on a mob, it takes like 4-5 withering heats to kill the mob, and it’s easily in my face after the second or 3rd. Channeling in one spot for 6 seconds is an eternity in RvR though.

Conflagration

Spreading Flames feels like it could use a bit of a damage boost since player HP were raised (not necessarily double, maybe 25-50%). It’s a fun spell, but really no more of an annoyance right now.

Annihilate is oh so much fun if you can pull it off, especially if you’re using it with Funnel Power (though you better have a healer watching you!). The channeling aspect kind of sucks though when you have to be such close range to use it, it’s too easy for people to hit you and (in the future) knock back your channeling. I’ll repeat what I said about spells like this in previous phases though, I hope you can find some way to make them not go through walls. I would hate to see keep sieges devolving into who can bring more AoE/PBAoE to bear on the door through the walls.

Choking Smoke is also nice, though the cast time feels kind of long, and the graphic is much smaller than the effect I believe (which is also a problem with Pit of Shades). This may be intentional to tone down graphic lag, however it’s probably pretty frustrating for people who suddenly find themselves silenced and never saw an effect to show it. Disable effects in general actually aren’t communicated real clearly, I frequently find myself disabled in a fight and have no idea what I was hit with to cause it (and mouse over debuff icons in the heat of battle isn’t really practical).

Marauder Class Review

Monstrosity

Switching from Brutality to Monstrosity, I’m firm in the belief that
Monstrosity is not gimp at all like people think it is. Monstrosity’s strength is threefold:

Survivability, AoE, and Healer Disruption. Arguably Savagery will be the better healer killer with the 75% debuff (would have to test), but the ability for me to AoE knockdown is certainly valuable (you can do the AoE interrupt in Savagery, so both specs/arms have that advantage), but Savagery can’t live up to the survivability power of Monstrosity. With the tactic to boost
toughness, and the monstrosity arm active, I gain a whopping 45 toughness. Combined with the +1 toughness per level
tactic, that’s 65 toughness in all (and brings a template level 20 marauder to 204 toughness). The difference in my survivability when switching these specs is astronomical.

Monstrosity, however, does not live up to it’s AoE name at all, and has a very weak single target game (flail being the main move, my tooltip registers a total 106 damage on flail, I’m 8 points in monstrosity). My AoE combo is Demolition (70 dmg), Concussive Jolt (93), Mouth of Tzeentch (70), Demolition (70)…and then I have to wait 17 seconds for concussive jolt to cooldown before I do it again. Total damage (by tooltip) of this combo is: 203.

In reality I’m sure it hits for more (seems to), but still is rather weak. Usually I can take out only 15-20% of a Bright Wizard’s health with this combo, and less on targets with more toughness. It’s honestly not worth AoEing anything. It could POSSIBLY work with stacking a bunch of AoEers in an organized group (I doubt it…1 AoE heal negates 4-5 dps’ers worth of AoE damage)… but Chosen are much better suited to doing this with Quake + Raze.

My suggestion to Monstrosity is to do 1 of these 4:

• Make Monstrosity into a AoE support line.
• Savagery is already a sort of single target offensive support line,
  Monstrosity could be the same but with AoEs.
• Make Demolition spammable.
• Make Demolition do substantially more damage, and give it a 3s cooldown instead of 5.
• Raise the damage on all our AoE abilities.

Overall

Monstrosity is much more enjoyable then Brutality imo. I have lower DPS, sure, but with some DPS support, we can actually kill a healer with a well timed Concussive Jolt and enough damage.

Problems with Marauder as a Whole

The biggest problem we have is that we’re extremely, as much as Chosen, healer dependent. It’s a requirement to kill anything that isn’t alone. In mass situations (5v5 or more) I still feel like we sit behind the lines way too much because of tab target -> death. Speccing Monstrosity has helped me enormously, but I still can’t contribute without a dedicated healer or 3+ DoKs spamming
AoE heals.

We lack appropriate damage. I’m well out damaged by any RDPS class, even when I’m on top of them (let alone when I’m not!). To me, if I have to brave the front lines, there should be some (huge) benefit to it. Either my damage should be superior, or my CC/control should. Currently RDPS outdo me in both categories, as well as having superior
AoE damage. It’s very frustrating to be rooted, break it, and then be rooted again right afterwards…then a 5s disable after that. I have no way of preventing a group of RDPS from doing these things to me. I’ve said it many times, and with all my heart and head believe it to be the right thing: but CC should be concentrated on defensively specced tanks (Corruption spec for Chosen for example). By putting the CC on tanks, you gain these benefits:

You can always do something about avoiding CC

Stay out of melee range. With the CC focused on the ranged classes as it is, you can’t do this as they CC you from range…or CC you to get out of range. Since healers/RDPS are the best first targets (you won’t kill a SM with a healer), and those 2 archetypes have a thing for standing next to each other, it’s pretty unavoidable that you’re going to have to run into them and be rooted.

Tanks truly become the “protector” types. Still, as they have been for all of the time I’ve been in beta, tanks are still the weakest archetype by far. They don’t contribute anything really meaningful when compared to other classes. Why bring a tank who can debuff things for -30% damage when you can bring a RDPS to root it for -100% damage, or disable it for the same? Their damage also doesn’t compare to RDPS or even melee DPS (to be expected, but I’m listing all the ways they could contribute). The only thing they do well is die well…literally, and most people have figured out they’re no threat, so they ignore them…making that role pretty much obsolete as well.
RDPS become the true squishies they should be (imo the challenge of playing a RDPS should be your own survival…prekiting should be a must), and gain a dependence on having other classes (tanks) around, just like everyone else does atm. This is my biggest gripe about RDPS atm: they depend on no one else in order to be effective, while every other archetype is dependent on another archetype to do their job (all melee need healers atm, and healers generally need DPS, with the exception of the melee healers, but I do know you guys are focusing a lot on adjusting the melee healers so I’ll leave that be). If everyone else is dependent on someone else, it’s only fair to make RDPS depend on something.

Praises to Marauder as a Whole

Ok, praises: first, Wave of Horror. I wish my tanks had this. It’s a (dark) godsend. Second, a renewable snare. Ya, I think it should last much longer (WE snare lasts 15 seconds, mine is 5…which allows for only 2 skills to be used before I have to renew it), but it is SO vital to have such a tool on any melee class. Third: Mutating Release. Consider giving tanks this skill too. Often enough I use it and am just re-rooted, but sometimes that isn’t the case and it allows me to get back in the fight.

I also think the marauder’s look is superb. He still needs tons of polish graphics wise (but that’s the whole game yet), but he looks like a barbaric psycho with a temper…exactly what he should look like! In addition, Convulsive Slashing is my favorite animation so far, and I do like seeing the wave animation of
Demolition spread out over my foes (although it’s bugged yet and doesn’t always fire).

Miscellaneous Improvements that Would be Nice

Some of the animations/sounds I don’t like, they don’t have enough impact. Flail is a good example. It only feels like I’m grazing my target’s skin, not Flailing it off. The same is with animations/sounds for a lot of different skills: they just don’t feel like they have BAM! impact. Take Slam (or any melee stun) in DAoC for example. The sound, the way your target’s body rocks, and the red streaks that circle his feet give a feeling of “BAM! you’ve just been stunned!” (or “BAM! AAAH CRAP!” if you’re the other guy). Eviscerate from WoW rogues produces a similar effect. The explosion of light and telltale sound let you know exactly what just happened. They’re crisp, impactful animations and sounds.

Mouth of Tzeentch, when it interrupts a target, should have some sort of after-effect. I know there’s a tactic that increases your target’s build times by 1s afterwards, but 1s more to spellcasting (and it’s an anti-spellcasting tool) is rather pitiful. It’s better used on melee due to all the instant casts. I rather see, “When
Mouth of Tzeentch interrupts a target, that target can not use skills for X seconds,” with X being approx. 3 seconds.

Monstrosity needs 1 more skill dedicated to it. It only has 4 skills (Flail isn’t listed on the appropriate mastery page btw), while
Savagery and Brutality have 5.

Witch Hunter Review

RvR Method

Obviously things are different with every encounter but I’ll try to describe my general strategy. Most important is to stay out of sight as much as possible. I use houses, trees, rocks, whatever I can find to avoid attention. The goal is to work my way around back of the main enemy group. When I’ve done so I stop behind some piece of cover and use Incognito. Then it’s a straight line to whichever target I have chosen.

My pecking order goes Zealots, Sorceresses, Disciples, everyone else. If I don’t go for the healers first it’s extremely difficult to drop my target. I take Sorceresses before Disciples just because I can typically kill them much faster, and I likely won’t get a chance at a second target. So, I open my attack with Sudden Accusation to build 2 accusations and slow them so I can keep applying damage.

My main damage combo is essentially what I use in PvE - Punish The False, 4x Torment or Fervor, Burn Heretic! The difference is I always have to interrupt the damage chain in order to manage the situation. For example, I have to use Sigil Of Sigmar in every encounter. The very first thing which will happen to me when I begin an attack is that I’ll be snared or rooted. Popping out of that as quickly as possible is vitally important. I’ve also been getting flung rather lengthy distances lately by, I believe, Zealots.
I have no counter for that one and honestly causes me quite a bit of grief. I have to pop a Snap Shot in combo with the Running Is Useless tactic, which I always have active during RvR, and run my way back into combat. Interference aside, as soon as the snare from Sudden Accusation wears off I use Pistol Whip to keep my target in range as well as to take the heat off for a couple seconds. By that point I usually have my 5 accusations and set off my Burn Heretic! All the while I do my best to catch the parries so I can whip out a Confess!

All in all, it’s a suicide mission. I may take one down with me but I won’t escape. This is partly because, I feel, most people don’t play aggressively enough. Sure, we can all complain that when you stick your neck out it gets chopped off, but if everyone is pressing forward, there’s no way the Ranged DPS classes can knock out everyone. Resultingly, I’m abandoned behind enemy lines. I might be okay (maybe) with this fairly high likelihood of demise if I could be more certain of making a kill. Right now I would say I have between a 60 and 75% chance of taking out my target. That may even be a bit generous.
My success or failure seems to hinge on whether the healers in my target’s party realize that I’m on to one of their squishies. I simply don’t have the burst damage to take out a caster with even one healer assisting them. You may say, “But it’s 2 on 1. You ought to lose.,” and that may be mostly right, but the nature of a stealth class makes it so you can almost always depend on being outnumbered.

I average between 20k and 30k damage in Talabec dam. I am totally not satisfied with that. I’ve seen Witch Hunters rack up high 30s but compared to the 50k+ I’ve seen Sorceresses and Bright Wizards score, I am highly disappointed. Heck, I’m competing with Warrior Priests and Disciples for damage scores. I think a large part of that is the fact that I both spend too much time setting up a kill and then spend further time getting back to the fight after being killed. I’m just not in action enough. Beyond that though, I do believe that Ranged DPS is overpowered right now. It seems to me the utility of being able to strike from range is not being properly factored into a class. The only way a Melee DPS class will be comparable to a Ranged DPS class is if the Melee class has a significantly higher damage output. The difficulties and dangers in applying that damage require it. As it stands now Ranged DPS can do more damage with almost no risk.

Unfortunately I’ve missed most of the keep action so far, but I’ve still been able to get some open field RvR in. I think I fare better in these situations. I devote my time to mopping up stragglers and reinforcements. 1v1 I tend to do well against any opponent, and using ambush I can keep it that way. Still, when I’m forced to go after a target within a group, even if I have an equal number of allies doing their little stare down, my results are frustrating.

Tactics

The deal with tactics is that right now only the top two mean anything. If it’s not the best then it never gets used, simply because I have limited slots. This is also why I only select passives for my renown abilities. The tactics are too specific and they require I swap something else for them. The passives are 100% bonus, no trade-off, and always useful.

• Currently, I use Jagged Edge and Brute Force for PvE, and Jagged Edge and Running Is Useless for RvR. Here’s the whole rundown.
• Brute Force - Damage is good. Damage is what I’m all about.
• Flanking - Might be good for boss raids when I have more tactic slots.
• Full Confession - Sounds good but not quite good enough to be used.
• Inquisitor’s Fury - Auto Attack just doesn’t seem to be important enough to use this skill.
• Running Is Useless - Love it. Makes my job possible in RvR.
• Righteous Steel - This isn’t damage. I need damage. I’m currently not certain whether Confess! can be used after you parry or your enemy parries or both. It’s possible this parry increase could translate into damage and disarms but I kinda doubt it.
• Unwavering Faith - Not Damage. I need damage.
• Emperor’s Ward - I tried this out for a bit and I don’t think I ever saw it go off. Either it’s bugged or it sucks. Don’t know.
• Jagged Edge - Adds some damage. Don’t know how much. Maybe I should look into that to see if I should keep using it.
• Trial By Fire - This might be good. Particularly for raid bosses.
  Persistent - Also not damage.

A Note Regarding Dyes: I’ve seen some of the dyes look good on certain classes, but Witch Hunters are not one of them. All the colors are too bright and are sloppily applied to our textures. I’d go around default color if it weren’t for the fact that the quests keep giving me neon green items.

Final Thoughts and Suggestions

Despite some of the difficulties this is still one of the more enjoyable classes. He has a great style and some fun skills. He needs work in two primary areas - damage and ambush. With the kinds of situations that ambush requires we put ourselves in, it’s important that we be able to act fast. If a healer is going to be able to save you from a Witch Hunter it needs to be a very quick healer and not just one who’s awake. We also need ways to be able to get out of those nasty situations. Addressing the first issue will naturally help the second. Also, I’m a little perplexed about the 60s Incognito cooldown. We have no other way to reach our targets alive, and yet I do not think it’s intended that we only make one attack per minute. Either Incognito needs to be more usable, which I think I’d rather not have, or we need other ways to get to grips with our enemies. This is a little tricky since it was Mythic’s lauded position that they would not have stealth in their game, and yet here we are testing out stealth for one class that it sort of makes sense for and one that it makes zero sense for. If they choose to make stealth and openers more important to the Witch Hunter’s play then they will not only have included stealth but created a class very similar to the stealther from that game which shall not be named. I’d much rather emphasize mobility. This would allow us to both get in and get out. Hit and run. Like a proper skirmisher.