How you play mage strongly ?

[Samseng Yik]

Aside from picking up the item related to "when % success" and "use your special"
What else?
Feel like Mage is 1 of the weaker tier even playing at Outskirt

[Platapoop]

I try my best to buff my special as much as possible and that's about it. I do think the wizard is high up there in a lot of equips are just garbage for it. So yeah, I would prioritize % success, I guess special burn equip f it pops up, and other things that buff specials. A lot of the wizard's power is in the defense skill, so you do want to try to use that aggressively.

What my ideal ability upgrades would be.
primary- Sapphire dimi moonburst (gcd shortend from 1.5 to .5, reduced damage)
secondary - Opal Lat moonburst (no longer deals damage, supercharges your special).
special - Ruby Astral Swirl (More damage, higher cd).
defense - Emerasld stral Seal (always +20% damage. Abilities and loot that temp slows you no longer affect you). If my primary slows me, then I'll take this. Otherwise, well, any defensive upgrade is probably at least OK.

[Elmdor]

Don't be afraid to take items that increase your secondaries damage. At base level it's only 50ish less dps than your primary while also retaining full mobility. Whenever you're doing difficult phases learn to hold down the secondary attack to keep up the dps.

Other than that yeah primary and special are your safe bets for damage. Especially considering your secondary only has 1 gem that technically increases it's dps.

Going for longer GCD or increased cooldown items can work out very well. Your special cools down pretty fast so you really don't have time to get in a lot of other attacks before it's ready to be used again.

Wizard definitely benefits from knowing the fights well before hand since it's main dps tools slow it by default. There are ways to negate it, but you aren't always going to get them. I feel you're just slightly more at the mercy of rng for this class.

Your starting defense ability doubles as a dps increase, but don't worry about it too much. Even at max uptime it's only 15% more dps which isn't going to make or break any fight. The static field location version is borderline useless on hard with all the movement you need to do. That being said don't be afraid to use it more often than not. When it cools down you get two uses at once so you can get tricky with it's uptime if you're confident enough.

[OgPZelda]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2132850/discussions/0/4330853251138760843/#c4330853251139472322

Defensive > Secondary > Special > Primary until special resets > Secondary > Special > Defensive after fade, repeat

After several runs you should be able to figure out when its optimal to drop and stand in your defensive, theres quite a few places on different hardmode mechs where you can either invuln one cycle or just stand still. Dunno about lunar.

Nova (Ruby Defensive) is by far the best roll you can get.
Emerald primary if you're struggling with movement. Otherwise I go Garnet.

Originally posted by Elmdor:

The static field location version is borderline useless on hard with all the movement you need to do.

Even on red darkhouse there are spots you can sit in it between mechs, Strongly disagree with this perspective.

[Platapoop]

Originally posted by Elmdor:

Don't be afraid to take items that increase your secondaries damage. At base level it's only 50ish less dps than your primary while also retaining full mobility.
Other than that yeah primary and special are your safe bets for damage. Especially considering your secondary only has 1 gem that technically increases it's dps.

Your starting defense ability doubles as a dps increase, but don't worry about it too much. Even at max uptime it's only 15% more dps which isn't going to make or break any fight.

You can't say that spamming secondary is fine while saying that defense is only a 15% dps increase. At base level, the primary does 33% more dps than the secondary, and that's not including special reset.

Example: 1000 dps to 950 dps. No big deal. 50 dps to 0 dps? Very big deal.

[Elmdor]

I see where you guys are coming from and I was a little unclear so let me try to elaborate more.

I'm not saying the secondary is the best dps for the class, I'm trying to say that people avoid using it because it's less damage. The point I was trying to make is that even though it's less damage you can use it for more than just giving your special a charge and then forgetting about it.

A lot of people stop doing damage during difficult phases to focus or because some skills slow you down which can cause you to take damage. Some people might read this ability as a only use it once for your special skill when in reality during highly mobile parts it can be doing respectable damage instead of zero damage from your primary.

For the defense skill I think you guys are vastly overestimating the uptime you will be sitting in the field vs how long a fight can last. 15% is a perfect 100% scenario which will only happen on outskirt bosses and even then only on hard or below. If you're in a fight for 1 minute and you are in the field for 30 seconds that's only a 7% dps increase. That low amount of damage isn't going to make or break the fight in any meaningful way. I'm being very generous with a 50% uptime. Outside of specific gem and item combo's very few people will be seeing that.

The OP was asking for tips on how to play the wizard well and in my opinion you'd do much better learning fights so you can use your primary more often instead of trying to eek out a double digit dps increase from min maxing the defense skill. I'm not saying don't use the defense skill for dps; you definitely should, but only once you get more experience with the class/bosses.

For the 50 dps part I said at base level. Yes it's about 33% less dps than the primary. It's the same thing. I'll take the hit on this and say my bad. I could have communicated that more clearly. I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

[Samseng Yik]

My opinion before posting the topic.
primary = deal better than nothing damage when you don't need mobility and pray reset special. However there is a run I get the massive reduce GCD and any 1 hit deal at least 250 damage, turn out win the game for me within 30 minutes

2ndary = deal better than nothing damage when you need mobility.

Special = your primary DPS method in most of the case and to be scale by item and % related

Defense = keep yourself perma buff up , especially the CD is running and you left 1 charge anyway.

[OgPZelda]

Originally posted by Elmdor:

I see where you guys are coming from and I was a little unclear so let me try to elaborate more.

I'm not saying the secondary is the best dps for the class, I'm trying to say that people avoid using it because it's less damage. The point I was trying to make is that even though it's less damage you can use it for more than just giving your special a charge and then forgetting about it.

A lot of people stop doing damage during difficult phases to focus or because some skills slow you down which can cause you to take damage. Some people might read this ability as a only use it once for your special skill when in reality during highly mobile parts it can be doing respectable damage instead of zero damage from your primary.

For the defense skill I think you guys are vastly overestimating the uptime you will be sitting in the field vs how long a fight can last. 15% is a perfect 100% scenario which will only happen on outskirt bosses and even then only on hard or below. If you're in a fight for 1 minute and you are in the field for 30 seconds that's only a 7% dps increase. That low amount of damage isn't going to make or break the fight in any meaningful way. I'm being very generous with a 50% uptime. Outside of specific gem and item combo's very few people will be seeing that.

The OP was asking for tips on how to play the wizard well and in my opinion you'd do much better learning fights so you can use your primary more often instead of trying to eek out a double digit dps increase from min maxing the defense skill. I'm not saying don't use the defense skill for dps; you definitely should, but only once you get more experience with the class/bosses.

You're well intended. The defensive, ruby or emerald, is very much a use it or lose it however. The field does not last very long. 8 to 5 seconds i think? Standard 1.5 second gcd, that is a potential for 5 primaries, that means 5 chances at a special proc, a secondary hit, then a special. Even if you're not in it for the primary gcds, you have the potential to drift back in for the secondary + special.

Stopping damage to see mechanics when starting out is completely legitimate. It does not however, help you be a better wizard player. While I'm learning wizard, I'm finding a good general rule of thumb is to reset to center or as center as possible. This will prepare you for field limiters, cleaves, bullet lines, and so forth. once your movement begins you can drop it half way knowing you may need to make a loop around a large bullet or what have you.

This is a short clip, and is still extremely sub optimal, however you see see you can drop the field immediately after knock back pretty much every time on cooldown and still have time to make micro movement around your team without leaving the field. I cleared hardmode on Wizard tonight on stream if you want to watch the replay. I am by no means a good player, but being 40 hours into the game I should know by now what the patterns are and how to react to them. Reacting to your team however, is a different story lol.

https://clips.twitch.tv/WonderfulFantasticDiamondRedCoat-5lXezPaLDowfg5W4