Wizardry Devblog | Archetype Changes
Wizardry Skill Tree
Active Skills
Erupt
As the base damage from Erupt was not very appealing (dealing less than Fireball), we decided to increase the base damage of the skill but also reduce the Deep Burning damage so it would remain on par with other Tier 2 skills.
Base damage increased from 15% Spell Power to 80% Spell Power.
Deep Burning stacks damage per tick decreased from 15% Spell Power to 10% Spell Power.
(New) Erupt: Deals (80% Spell Power) skill damage and applies 3 Deep Burning stacks on target, each one dealing (10% Spell Power) skill damage every 3s for 6s . Deep Burning reduces healing received by 20%. Applies 1 additional Deep Burning stack per 10 Aether consumed.
Pyroblast
Pyroblast has been significantly out performing many other bread and butter skills with significant DPS but also very high rate of availability. It’s cooldown reduction per Aether consumed has been slightly reduced to help balance this ability better without losing it’s impact.
Cooldown decreased per Aether consumed reduced from 3 to 2 seconds per 10 Aether consumed.
(New) Pyroblast: Deals (300% Spell Power) skill damage to the target. Cast time is reduced by 0.7s and cooldown is reduced by 2s per 10 Aether.
Flame Tornado
Flame Tornado by itself already deals a ton of damage, so we felt like Fireball stacks as a baseline for the ability was just an overkill. We decided to move this feature to a new Ravencard instead to further enhance Flame Tornado.
Flame Tornado doesn’t apply Fireball stacks to targets hit by it anymore.
Coldblast
Coldblast now is better designed to set up other abilities.
Coldblast does not consume Aether anymore. Coldblast generates 20 Aether instead.
This ability no longer slows targets, but instead snares targets in place for 3 seconds.
(New) Coldblast: Deals (50% Spell Power) skill damage to targets within a medium area around you and snares them for 3s.
Frost Lance
One of the problems we felt Frost Wizardry was missing was a burst skill. Because of that we decided to improve Frost Lance to fit this role better. We didn’t want to simply make Frost Lance feel like “a blue Pyroblast”, so we instead designed Frost Lance to have several unique interactions with other Frost skills through Ravencards. Stay tuned for that, for now enjoy these changes!
Ability doesn’t generate Aether anymore, it consumes it instead.
Frost Lance will deal 40% Spell Power additional damage per 10 Aether consumed.
Base damage reduced from 100% Spell Power to 60% Spell Power.
Frost Lance doesn’t snare the target anymore.
(New) Frost Lance: Deals (60% Spell Power) skill damage. Increase by (40% Spell Power) skill damage per 10 Aether spent.
Teleport
Teleport felt clunky to use due to it’s Global Cooldown. We have decided to remove the Global Cooldown on Teleport so you will now be able to reposition yourself while attacking, setting up offensive or defensive plays around it’s use.
This skill is not affected by the Global Cooldown anymore.
Ice Storm
Ice Storm felt underwhelming compared to Meteor Strike, so we’ve applied a small change on its DPS and utility.
Slow per 10 Aether consumed Increased from 5% to 6%.
Damage per 10 Aether consumed increased from 5% to 6%.
(New) Icestorm: Deals (25% Spell Power) spell damage in a medium area, slowing all targets hit by 20% for 3s and applying one frost stack at them. Increases slow and damage by 6% per 10 Aether consumed.
Passive Skills
Frost Armor
We felt the consistent slow from Frost Armor was simply too impactful in ranged vs melee PvP and lead to too many long term balance concerns so we changed the slow to a haste debuff.
(New) Frost Armor: Anytime you are hit by a melee weapon, reduce their haste by 10% for 4 seconds.
Amplification
Amplification was always an odd one to use, usually you have to stack wisdom for it to see some use, but even so, in mana hungry builds, like Fire Wizardry for example, you would go below 70% all the time, and then the passive would be useless after 2 or 3 skills, so we decided to change it. By making your skills cost more mana, we are giving you a choice to cast explosive skills, at the cost of you casting less skills in general.
(New) Amplification: Your spells cost 25% more mana and deal an extra (15% Spell Power) spell damage.
Pyromancer → Havoc
We want Wizardry to really feel like the heavy ranged damage Archetype, so we created Havoc to replace Pyromancer to give you increased base damage for critical hit based builds.
(New) Havoc: Your critical strikes have a 10% chance to increase your Spell Power by 30% of your Spell Power for 8s. This effect can stack up to 3 times. Every subsequent stack will refresh the duration.
Echo → Hot Headed
Echo felt too luck dependant on how combat would play out, sometimes being incredibly powerful, and other times completely irrelevant, it almost felt like Presto’s hat in a way. We decided to add Hot Headed to add depth to Critical Builds for Wizardry.
(New) Hot Headed: When you deal damage with a spell and it does not crit, gain 2% critical chance (additive) until you have a critical hit. This effect can occur once every 1.5 seconds. You lose all stacks after 30s without dealing damage with any spell.
Icy Blood → Fire Shield
Icy Blood doesn’t fit our passive design for Archetypes anymore, so we are moving it to a Ravencard instead. To fill the gap that Icy Blood would do on the Wizardry passives, we designed Fire Shield. Fire Shield is to add a small damage over time on enemies that get too close and decide to trade blows with you.
(New) Fire Shield: Any adjacent attack made against you causes the attacker to take (10% Spell Power) spell damage. This effect can occur once every 4s.
Arcane Mastery → Flow of Magic
Arcane Mastery was an Aether generation passive with a really low chance to proc, as we mentioned some times through Wizardry Patch notes, we wanted this Archetype to feel like a damage oriented one, not a support battery that supplements skills for other Archetypes. Taking a look back at other Archetypes we really didn’t see any critical damage oriented passive, and since Wizardry is all about that glass cannon, we decided to put Flow of Magic at it, the more mana you consume between critical strikes, more damage you will deal.
(New) Flow of Magic: Every 1% mana spent, gives you a Flow of Magic stack for 10s. Each Flow of Magic stack increases the critical damage of your next critical hit by 1% up to a maximum of 50 stacks. Each new Flow of Magic stack will refresh the duration of your stacks.
We hope you enjoy the changes coming to Wizardry. We still have 5 more Archetype Dev Blogs to be released before the Closed Beta!
The Ravendawn Team