New player (Wizard) needs help/advice

[Eghlain]

Hello, I recently started playing Neverwinter at the launch of Mod16. I played the game before a couple of years ago on the playstation as a paladin tank, so I don't have any experience with ranged/caster classes, let alone with the few bits of information there is on Mod 16 builds.
I'm currently lvl 52 and I chose to be a Thaumaturge (not sure if that's good, but I thought it would be), I feel really underpowered and mob 4/5 levels in packs can really give me problems. (I don't mind that bit, since It reminds me of Vanilla wow, and just rethink strategies or whichever mob to take out first).

I bought a Chultan Tiger companion and I have a Lord's Armored Polar Bear. But I have no clue about companion gear/runestones.

Also I have no idea if I picked the right spec (thaumaturge) or which spells to use / boons or which artifact(s) I should use or how to get them. Any help would be grealy appreciated!

Also I don't mind the increase in difficulty, I died to a few solo instance bosses, but that's just adjusting strategy.

[Adinos]

Sorry to hear you bought the Chultan Tiger, but I guess that cannot be helped. As for companion gear, you can just buy any +4 companion gear on the AH (or just farm the Merchant Prince skirmish for those), and that will work until you reach 70 and can start the Undermountain campaign, where you get much better items.

As for runestones, you need 3 bonding runestones of the highest rank you can afford in the slots on the left. You then put any other runestones in the slots on your companion gear - for now just pick those that boost your lowest stats.

As for boons, feats, powers and so on, I cannot help with the CW...haven't played mine at all after M16 launched.

About stats in general, once you hit 70/80, you will want at least 60K in Armor Penetration and Accuracy, then worry about Critical chance and Power. For defensive stats, get HP and then defense and deflection...awareness helps as well, but crit avaidance is low priority

[Eghlain]

Originally posted by Adinos:

Sorry to hear you bought the Chultan Tiger, but I guess that cannot be helped. As for companion gear, you can just buy any +4 companion gear on the AH (or just farm the Merchant Prince skirmish for those), and that will work until you reach 70 and can start the Undermountain campaign, where you get much better items.

As for runestones, you need 3 bonding runestones of the highest rank you can afford in the slots on the left. You then put any other runestones in the slots on your companion gear - for now just pick those that boost your lowest stats.

As for boons, feats, powers and so on, I cannot help with the CW...haven't played mine at all after M16 launched.

About stats in general, once you hit 70/80, you will want at least 60K in Armor Penetration and Accuracy, then worry about Critical chance and Power. For defensive stats, get HP and then defense and deflection...awareness helps as well, but crit avaidance is low priority

Which companion is good and "rather easy" to get?

[Adinos]

uhm....one that is really good for a defensive slot is Energon, as it gives 24.000 or 32.000 HP. For primary (summoned) companion I like augments - the best is Deepcrow hatchling, but it is somewhat expensive (800 trade bars) -- ioun stones are a bit cheaper.

the rest ... well, which ones to get depends a bit on class and stats

[d3athstroke]

Originally posted by 🐺Gaius･Rose🐺:

Hello, I recently started playing Neverwinter at the launch of Mod16. I played the game before a couple of years ago on the playstation as a paladin tank, so I don't have any experience with ranged/caster classes, let alone with the few bits of information there is on Mod 16 builds.
I'm currently lvl 52 and I chose to be a Thaumaturge (not sure if that's good, but I thought it would be), I feel really underpowered and mob 4/5 levels in packs can really give me problems. (I don't mind that bit, since It reminds me of Vanilla wow, and just rethink strategies or whichever mob to take out first).

I bought a Chultan Tiger companion and I have a Lord's Armored Polar Bear. But I have no clue about companion gear/runestones.

Also I have no idea if I picked the right spec (thaumaturge) or which spells to use / boons or which artifact(s) I should use or how to get them. Any help would be grealy appreciated!

Also I don't mind the increase in difficulty, I died to a few solo instance bosses, but that's just adjusting strategy.

Advice from someone who played wizard for more than 5 years and white knighted for game whole time. Don't play this do not invest your time and money in this steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥.

[Eghlain]

Originally posted by d3athstroke:

Originally posted by 🐺Gaius･Rose🐺:

Hello, I recently started playing Neverwinter at the launch of Mod16. I played the game before a couple of years ago on the playstation as a paladin tank, so I don't have any experience with ranged/caster classes, let alone with the few bits of information there is on Mod 16 builds.
I'm currently lvl 52 and I chose to be a Thaumaturge (not sure if that's good, but I thought it would be), I feel really underpowered and mob 4/5 levels in packs can really give me problems. (I don't mind that bit, since It reminds me of Vanilla wow, and just rethink strategies or whichever mob to take out first).

I bought a Chultan Tiger companion and I have a Lord's Armored Polar Bear. But I have no clue about companion gear/runestones.

Also I have no idea if I picked the right spec (thaumaturge) or which spells to use / boons or which artifact(s) I should use or how to get them. Any help would be grealy appreciated!

Also I don't mind the increase in difficulty, I died to a few solo instance bosses, but that's just adjusting strategy.

Advice from someone who played wizard for more than 5 years and white knighted for game whole time. Don't play this do not invest your time and money in this steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥.

That's really constructive advise for someone who had played the game for 5 years. Afaik the devs said they are listening to the community and will fix things. I mean it can't be that bad?

[SeanBotha]

I play it as a Wizard daily and must say i find it fun. I use Thau for AOE/ mobs. What i do is Try and keep them stunned as much as possible.

As for summoned pet an augment gives you better stats, but unless you want to be bis it is not as important anymore. What you want is the correct 6 powers that you can choose from any companions you currenly have. If you die a lot redemption is a good option in the enchantment/pink power.

For offensive i use the ones that get me to my needed stats.

Next you want to look at your insignia bonuses there are 3 healing Insignia bonuses. that you can get from mounts that will heal you as you fight leaving you to fight and kill the mobs.

As for gear i recommend that you do campaign with gear you get from it and then do the Master expeditions for gear you will have good gear very fast.

Remember that scaling reduce your stats so when doing dungeons your stats drop. I try and have a Scaling build (actually 2, 1 for boss and 1 for aoe) So for scaling you should actually have to much of certain stats. Like arp and crit. Also some stat sources do not get scaled like artifacts. so it is usefull to keep that in mind.

Do not listen to all the negative players. I am not happy with many things but the game is in a healthy position. It is fun to pla and i think in the long run scaling will be good for the game.

[d3athstroke]

Originally posted by 🐺Gaius･Rose🐺:

Originally posted by d3athstroke:

Advice from someone who played wizard for more than 5 years and white knighted for game whole time. Don't play this do not invest your time and money in this steaming pile of ♥♥♥♥.

That's really constructive advise for someone who had played the game for 5 years. Afaik the devs said they are listening to the community and will fix things. I mean it can't be that bad?

It is far worse than than i can ever describe. Bugs are bad yeah and they "will be fixed" eventually (most of the bugs stay in this game for years) but the main problem is the new gameplay which is complete nobrain garbage.

[Adinos]

Well, Mod 16 has issues. I have been playing since day 1 of open beta, and I have seen some good and some bad things. Right now, I am not sure if Mod 16 is the worst or the second worst one - but it competes with Mod 6 for that dubious honor.

To be fair, Mod 16 isn't all bad.

• The graphics guys did a really good job - the areas and new mobs look absolutely great.
  
• The storyline is a bit silly in places (dragon+sword? kuo-toa sandcastle building, really?) but that's OK - it's not over the top like Mod 15, so overall a good job.
  
• The Master Expeditions are good. Feel just right - controllable difficulty, so you can make them easily soloable or proper group content. Unfortunatly they are limited to 3/day, and if the game crashes in the middle of one, it counts as one of your 3 attempts for the day. Right now, they are the only content worth doing, so I log in, do my 3/ MEs (maybe a bit of rune farming) and that's it. Until LoMM gets released, the rest of my playtime will be spent on other games.
  
• Removal of Lifesteal/excessive recovery and buff stacking. Overall, I consider this change good.
  
• Insignia upgrades. Just good, except for the added inventory space required. Would like to see BtC insignia replaced by BtA.
  
• Companion changes. Mostly good (except that regular fighting companions are next to useless and healing companions are not much better). Sure, I'm a bit unhappy that only 2 of my 6 Legendary companions are really usable now, but overall the changes are good, and I love how gear was decoupled from the actual companion. I feel a bit cheated after discovering that the "Bolster" bonus is utterly useless when you are using an augment, though.

Unfortunately there are some really bad things too, and here is what I would like to tell the developers:

• Bugs. Far too many issues were allowed to go live....but you were warned. We told you during the closed playtest we did not feel this was ready for Preview. We told you during Preview this was not ready for Live. You went ahead. When bug reports started flowing in, some things were fixed, but it is quite clear than in many cases the "fixes" were not tested, becuse there were some example of patch notes describing "fixes" that actually did not work. To the players it looks as if you do not have any QC process whatsoever, or at least not a process that actually involves playtesting. I would love to hear how you are going to improve your internal QC processes to prevent future fiascos like this.
  
• Scaling. The real issue with scaling is not the bugs (like the Pirate's Skyhold quest, where you are fighting mobs way above your level). No, the issue is that the very design is flawed. Your current implementation may punish people for progressing (if you level up you may see your stats go down significantly), and it makes progress through gear improvement less relevant - you are basically killing off a major motivation for playing for some people. Also, by scaling people so aggressively down that a lvl 80 in "end-game" gear is weaker than a level 70 in moderate gear, you are again taking away a good part of people's motivation to play. I would love to hear that you have realized your very design of scaling was flawed and you are going to rework it from scratch.
  
• Reward/effort. You are making low-level content much harder to run, both through scaling (badly, as mentioned before), and by removing buff stacking (which is actually a good thing). However, the rewards don't change - so apart from the AD reward from random queues, there is really no reason for high-level players to run low-level content. I would love to hear which steps you are going to make the reward/effort ratio acceptable for all content.
  
• Crafting. You gave us a new crafting system in Mid 15, only to make crafting irrelevant in Mod 16. I would love to hear what you are going to do to make crafting relevant, by fixing the +1 quest issue and adding new recipes.
  
• Boons. Instead of being a major goal to work towards, and a great motivation to finish older campaigns, boons are now much less relevant than they used to be and even the Master boons are of limited use. I would love to hear something about a plan to make boons relevant
  
• Character creation and primary stats. I am really unhappy about removal of stat rolls and how ability bonuses are handled. I would love to hear you admit this was a total fiasco and will be reverted.
  
• Feats. Those are a very mixed bag. They are decent for some classes/builds, but pretty much useless for others - often seem just picked at random, with little thought given to synergy or support for different playstyles. I would love to hear something about a planned overhaul to make them relevant and make the game feel less "dumbed down"
  
• Community relations. You should really look at how some other similar companies handle communication with the community. The one I am most familiar with is CCP (Eve Online). You could learn a few things from them. I would love to hear of any plans to improve interaction with the player community and their involvement.