How to use Bright Wizard/Best Equips?

[Woseph]

Hi there,

Been playing a while, normally play on nightmare and have played the Bright Wizard from the start as it was the class noone else wanted in my group/seemed to one of the lesser played characters.

I used to use a conflag staff but with the update Conflag Charge now hurts teammates. Unless I'm missing something it also feels that the Bright Wizard now feels somewhat underpowered/left out with DLC etc?

Therefore post the new update what is the best setup for playing on nightmare or cata and can the Bright Wizard be as powerful as the Dwarf etc? I'm currently using a flaming legendary longsword with Berserker 11%, Health return 6% and 40% no block charge coupled with a Bolt Staff, 2 projectiles 5% to deal with specials due to conflag and beam nerfs. That said, kills on legendaries seem to be taken by Dwarf Shotgun blasts or Elf True Bow.

Thanks

[Myrmidon]

I've always seen her as more 'anti-personnel' rather than 'anti-armour' if that makes sense. She can do area saturation damage but isn't actually that powerful. I haven't played with her a great deal because she's really a supporting member rather than a front line fighter. One of her primary advantages is that she for all intensive purposes has unlimited 'ammo' relative to her cooldown periods.

[Alistair MacBain]

Sienna was and still is a pretty powerful character.
Yes everything doing friendly fire hurt her a bid. But FF was also reduced quite a bid. And specially conflag is rather easy to avoid FF. Just needs some practice.

Meele wise her best option still is and always was the normal sword. The dot on the flaming one is neglectable in dmg and the charged attack on the normal one damages two instead of just one target (which should be your main use for the swords).
For ranged it totally depends.
I know a lot of ppl still like the bolt staff. Not my preferred oen though.
Beam was and still is fine but is imo outclassed by the other two options.
Fireball is great at clearing out hordes and deals well enough with most specials (except ogre).
My favourite is the conflag. Easy to avoid FF. Can deal well with every special (knockback on secondary is just great to knock around anything (except ogre). Good hordeclear. Just overall a well rounded weapon.

[Kyrial]

Hi,

First you should know that it exists 4 values for the conflag staff, each of them are linked to the radius and the load time.

The 3 first values are : center, middle, far. Those values are linked to the radius of the conflag. When your target is between 0 and 25% of the radius you deal your max damages, Then between 25 and 75%, you deal average damage, and beyond 75% you only apply knockback + DoT (no direct damages exept for ogre/pm but they are very low.

When i talk in % of the radius, its because, regardless the time you take for load, the game will check the position of your target(s) in your AoE, so spamming little AoE against little pack of rats or during an ambush can be more useful than a big one (depending the situation :p)

Secondly, Once you fully charged your AoE, the game will applies a fire patch (listed as aoe_conflag in script) for the whole area, but only add a DoT damages (kinda equals to a fire bomb), there's NO direct damages from a fire patch.

Last thing about the conflag and the FF, you only deal FF when your friend is in the first area lvl (0 -> 25% of your current AoE) so when they are beyond this (25 -> 100%) you DONT deal FF (So basically its more simple to manage little/medium AoE than a big one), but if you load until the fire patch, you will deliver FF (like i said, the patch applies his own dot for the whole area)

Now, for the stuff, and for map (I'll not say a word about stand since 95% of players dont give a duck) :

-> Beam staff : regrowth / Mastercraft / knockback or stability or Hawk eye (i prefer knockback)
-> Conflag staff : regrowth / stability / hod
-> Bolt : bloodlust / hod / inspi shot

I dont list the FB on purpose since i dont like at all this staff

For the sword : regular one with : bloodlust / dev blow / vent charge or normal (depending your play style)

Here's a spreadsheet for ranged exotic weapon[docs.google.com]

[doom_hamster]

Originally posted by Kyrial:

-> Beam staff : regrowth / Mastercraft / knockback or stability or Hawk eye (i prefer knockback)
-> Conflag staff : regrowth / stability / hod

How mastercrafted works on beam staff? It speeds up only shotgun blast? Or beam ray too?
On conflagation staff HoD only works for primary attack, right?

[Kyrial]

Originally posted by war_hamster:

Originally posted by Kyrial:

-> Beam staff : regrowth / Mastercraft / knockback or stability or Hawk eye (i prefer knockback)
-> Conflag staff : regrowth / stability / hod

How mastercrafted works on beam staff? It speeds up only shotgun blast? Or beam ray too?
On conflagation staff HoD only works for primary attack, right?

Only increase the lmb (blast) speed attack.
Only procs on the lmb (fireball) attack.

[Wutyrith]

To me the last patch killed the Bolt Staff. While the Bolt staff used to compete with Trueflight, now they can't compare. While you can still one shot Gutter Runner and sometimes two shot specials with Trueflight, Bolt staff takes 3 and 4 charged shots; which used to take 2 shots at most. Charge shots with Bolt staff dont even tickle Packmaster coming to you, unless they are a good distance away so you can hit them with 3-4 charge shots.

[Woseph]

You can kill any special, bar ogre, with the bolt but you have to charge it up for 1.5-2 secs. You also have to be a certain distance away and it also burns though your magic. Compared to other characters you are alot slower at killing them and other characters can save ammo for special encounters, I guess you technically have unlimited ammo but the Bright Wizard still seems to be lacking.

[Lunethex]

Originally posted by LardyFatLips:

Hi there,

Been playing a while, normally play on nightmare and have played the Bright Wizard from the start as it was the class noone else wanted in my group/seemed to one of the lesser played characters.

I used to use a conflag staff but with the update Conflag Charge now hurts teammates. Unless I'm missing something it also feels that the Bright Wizard now feels somewhat underpowered/left out with DLC etc?

Therefore post the new update what is the best setup for playing on nightmare or cata and can the Bright Wizard be as powerful as the Dwarf etc? I'm currently using a flaming legendary longsword with Berserker 11%, Health return 6% and 40% no block charge coupled with a Bolt Staff, 2 projectiles 5% to deal with specials due to conflag and beam nerfs. That said, kills on legendaries seem to be taken by Dwarf Shotgun blasts or Elf True Bow.

Thanks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz_ppSPuaOU&index=10&list=PL9cR63PgdMh0jwkNROPtZIXvK0wTwcnWu

Our playlist containts overviews of all weapons. It will surely answer your question.

[ArchAnge1LT]

Originally posted by Alistair MacBain:

Meele wise her best option still is and always was the normal sword. The dot on the flaming one is neglectable in dmg and the charged attack on the normal one damages two instead of just one target (which should be your main use for the swords).
.

Flaming sword dot is not for damage, but for CC, when rats are in your face. I find flaming much better despite what naysayers try to imply.

[Gorwe]

The best melee weapon for her, personally, is the sceptre. It finely rounds her up by adding anti-SV and ant-RO functionalities where they're usually void(Conflag staff, Fireball staff). I wouldn't take it with a Bolt staff though, too much of an overlap. It's fine with a beam.

Swords are literally like two pipes of a radiator. Pointless choice. Flashfire should have some other functionality as opposed to a minor DoT with a CC.

But, then again, I'd like to see Sienna's melee weaponry and her Overheat mechanic somehow combined. Because a Wizard shouldn't just swing a weapon at an enemy. A Wizard should act as a proper Battlemage and enchant the weapon first.

[Kyrial]

Originally posted by Gorwe:

The best melee weapon for her, personally, is the sceptre. It finely rounds her up by adding anti-SV and ant-RO functionalities where they're usually void(Conflag staff, Fireball staff). I wouldn't take it with a Bolt staff though, too much of an overlap. It's fine with a beam.

Swords are literally like two pipes of a radiator. Pointless choice. Flashfire should have some other functionality as opposed to a minor DoT with a CC.

But, then again, I'd like to see Sienna's melee weaponry and her Overheat mechanic somehow combined. Because a Wizard shouldn't just swing a weapon at an enemy. A Wizard should act as a proper Battlemage and enchant the weapon first.

Kek. The regular sword is the best choice for Sienna for map.

[Jakal, Lady kisser]

Originally posted by Kyrial:

Originally posted by Gorwe:

The best melee weapon for her, personally, is the sceptre. It finely rounds her up by adding anti-SV and ant-RO functionalities where they're usually void(Conflag staff, Fireball staff). I wouldn't take it with a Bolt staff though, too much of an overlap. It's fine with a beam.

Swords are literally like two pipes of a radiator. Pointless choice. Flashfire should have some other functionality as opposed to a minor DoT with a CC.

But, then again, I'd like to see Sienna's melee weaponry and her Overheat mechanic somehow combined. Because a Wizard shouldn't just swing a weapon at an enemy. A Wizard should act as a proper Battlemage and enchant the weapon first.

Kek. The regular sword is the best choice for Sienna for map.

ironically, the 1.5 balance patch made the secpte nearly unusable in spite of improving the usability of nearly every other weapon in the game

[Gorwe]

Originally posted by "i'm not in PETA" Jakal:

Originally posted by Kyrial:

Kek. The regular sword is the best choice for Sienna for map.

ironically, the 1.5 balance patch made the secpte nearly unusable in spite of improving the usability of nearly every other weapon in the game

Explain. It is so far from unusable...

[Torbaal]

Regular sword works like a 2h hammer : you hit infinite targets on charge attack, even if you deal damages to only a few. It means thant your channelling rune on charged attack procs a lot during swarm : you can cool down very fast, and spam your magic a lot.

As I said previsouly on other post, beam staff is a shotgun and a handgun, and beam explosion (rmb + lmb) is very effective. On specials and stormies, aim for the head. Insta kill on PM and Ratlings by example.

Conflag is very nice, FB is deadly too.

All this staff benefits from your normal sword with channelling rune (charged, dev blow and bloodlunst (as you can proc bloodlust on your melee from the rats killed by the DoT of your staff).

Put regrowth on your staff and you heal super fast. Train a bit, and you can handle lots of situations, even a swarm (beam is better for that : quick and versatile, even if rats spam on you).

Btw, fireball staff does A LOT of damages to the oger... See Kyrial's spread sheet. Oh, and you can kill the whole patrol in cata without strong pot too...

[#1 Slime NA]

Originally posted by Gorwe:

Originally posted by "i'm not in PETA" Jakal:

ironically, the 1.5 balance patch made the secpte nearly unusable in spite of improving the usability of nearly every other weapon in the game

Explain. It is so far from unusable...

Sword has two fast swings that hit 4 targets for reasonable damage, a charged swing that hits infinite targets and damages a couple, and it gets great headshot damage allowing it to oneshot slaves and 2shot cata clanrats if you're precise. The overhead in the final light swing can be neglected by canceling, it doesn't ♥♥♥♥ up your combo right at the start like the mace.

Scepter has one overhead at the start that hits a single target, usually forcing you to shove at the start of your combo, then the uppercut that hits 4 rats but only damages 1 (at least it's enough to kill a slave), then two swings that hit 3 targets for the same damage as the sword (which hits 4) and has no headshot multiplier meaning it can't 2-shot clanrats. The uppercut + a swing to the head will kill one clanrat, but still only lightly damage 2 more. All this on top of it swinging more slowly. Slower swings, fewer targets = worse venting. The combo isn't smooth because of the starting overhead. The one thing Mace has going for it is the charged attack's ability to oneshot cata clanrats and deal decent damage to ogres and storms, but it's fairly minor since all of Sienna's staves are more formidable against these targets.

IMO the best selling point of the sword since it got buffed is you can take venting normal, shoot a spell with your staff, quickly switch to melee for 2 swings to get some damage and vent, then repeat. Mace can't do that.

I'm actually going to reroll my mace and go for the bloodlust + berserk combo with no vent and see how that works. Two really good traits that are usually mutually exclusive could save it, since the mace wants to use charged attacks almost as much as light attacks so any particular venting trait is wasted half the time (and its normal venting isn't even that good to begin with). But I don't have high hopes, again because it just has poor killing speed and CC against your average run of the mill rat swarm which at the end of the day is what causes wipes.