Post Cap UCS Wizard

[kutter]

Ok, so getting here was pretty straight forward but now I confess I am not sure what direction to go. I do not ever see him as a bolting wizard, I have one that he hunts with so I guess I see him staying UCS and maybe adding CS based spells? Is that even doable? So here is right now just a little post-cap:

Sabik (at level 100), your current skill bonuses and ranks (including all modifiers) are:
Skill Name | Current Current
| Bonus Ranks
Armor Use..........................| 30 6
Combat Maneuvers...................| 201 101
Brawling...........................| 222 122
Multi Opponent Combat..............| 5 1
Physical Fitness...................| 201 101
Arcane Symbols.....................| 105 25
Magic Item Use.....................| 180 80
Harness Power......................| 202 102
Elemental Mana Control.............| 202 102
Elemental Lore - Air...............| 120 30
Elemental Lore - Earth.............| 170 70
Perception.........................| 204 104
Climbing...........................| 150 50
Swimming...........................| 150 50

Spell Lists
Major Elemental....................| 75

Spell Lists
Minor Elemental....................| 76

Spell Lists
Wizard.............................| 78

I am open to any and all suggestions.

[Orthin]

if you are embracing UAC you could always work on MOC breakpoints for same opponent smacks and for the FOF?

I feel like 917 would be easy enough to pimp out if you aren't going spell aiming.

[Viekn]

I'll second the MOC. I love how brawling works with MOC. Also, question: I've heard from one high level cleric who had brawling, not for combat but for increased DS in case of a disarm, but said the brawling wasn't actually viable high level. In his experience, the UAF being seriously lacking compared to the UDF of higher level critters. But there seem to be a fair amount of higher level UCS wizards which makes me think it's more viable at higher levels on a wizard than a cleric. My question is why? Yes, I know haste is one reason. But can wizards, even with just being able to 1x brawling, able to get their UAF that much higher than clerics to make it viable? Or am I misunderstanding something?

[entropy]

Probably want to see if that works in the test instance first, the wiki says MSTRIKE makes Celerity end and I suspect it happens before resolving the attacks. https://gswiki.play.net/MSTRIKE_(verb)#Multi-Strike_Attack


My warmage is getting close to cap and I figured with all the CM training I could get ~25 ranks in Ambush and be pretty decent at aiming. He swings a 2h sword and is north of 80% accurate, so kicks should be more reliable still. You'd tier up and then kick heads off. I think 30 ranks Air Lore should be enough to shave the extra 1s aiming adds, and if not its very close to the breakpoint.

Edit: I suggest training EMC until you have full Rapid Fire uptime too. You'll be casting at least two spells per minute (506 and 919) which gives 4 extra seconds to play with, minus 1 for maintaining Rapid Fire, or a 5% increase in combat uptime, which will scale with the number of spells you cast. Also heavily reduces the vulnerability of cast RT when you have to refresh your spells in combat.


Viekn: Brawling enhancives let even a 1xer get in range to hit like-level creatures. It's because you get 2 points UAF per point enhanced, and UAF/UDF is done as a ratio rather than additively like AS/DS. You get a big boost from enhancives, and just being in the neighborhood of your target's UDF is enough to hit sometimes and threaten tier ups. Tiering up gives you better MM (and thus endrolls) and all the tiered up moves hit really hard, so you basically start to snowball the fight as you tier up. UCS warmages get past the initial hurdle with volume of fire, then once they're tiered up they throw out devastating kicks on a 1s timer. Just open with a feint or something to buy some time and start dismantling the target.

Same principle is why ranged warmages are also popular- most creatures have pretty weak ranged DS so only being able to 1x in Ranged Weapons is less of a handicap.

[Realk]

i'm just so confused Wizard in the warrior sub forum.

[kutter]

Crap, I posted in the wrong place, sorry about that, but thanks for the feedback

[Realk]

Crap, I posted in the wrong place, sorry about that, but thanks for the feedback

i liked the MOC idea mentioned, I'd think about focus on 500's because 501,502 for disables.. Mage armor 520 maxes out at 95 ...so that's a good reason to focus there.

[Maerit]

First - drop 1 point into TWC for the very cheap +DS bonus for having 2x empty hands.

After this your #1 priority, believe it or not, 200 ranks in EMC so you can maintain 515 at all times.

515 means you have 1s refresh on 506, 909, 919, 902, and all your disable casts are 1s RT. This is far and away the best gain. Way better than MoC.

#2 Finish 3x spells. There's just a lot of reasons. More DS, more CS, more utility.

#3 SMR defense skills - 2x Perception, 1x Dodge. Longest slog of them all, but completely worth it.

Problem with MoC is that using mstrike = stopping 506, so you have refresh 506 after an mstrike, and you're not going to get any value from mstrike over just sticking with 1s RT attacks. All it does is FoF protection, which really shouldn't be a problem since you shouldn't be fighting swarms with UCS. MoC is insanely expensive. You get way more for Dodge than MoC. If you're going to stay full time warmage Dodge = SMR defense + DS + Evasion. You want 1x dodge before MoC. Maybe 10 ranks in MoC, but otherwise it's not worth it for a long time.

[Realk]

515 isnt even in the realm of thoughts for me with this build. considering we've discussed tap an stomp. the ideas are great and bring things to the table just priority and why you are doing it is off for me

[kutter]

Mstrike is certainly a non-starter for me, there are a few things that make this build viable, IMHO, 1st is 506, second is the availability of brawling enhancives and lastly 902. I have a little monk that mstrikes and it is a lot of fun but he has krynch so tierup is not an issue, without rapid attacks to tierup I do not see how it could work.

I think there is validity to Maerit's, plan and I will probably do something like it with one caveat; I will do spells first, and here is why. He only ever hunts with my other capped bolting wizard, so except for the occasional bought of just bad luck and with the exception of invasions, Nelemar and OTF are not too much trouble. I have not moved into any other capped areas yet and it may be that there I would wish that had rapidfire, if so I will adapt accordingly.

[Viekn]

All it does is FoF protection, which really shouldn't be a problem since you shouldn't be fighting swarms with UCS.

Why shouldn't you be fighting swarms with UCS? Do you mean with JUST UCS? Wouldn't a wizard with UCS be relying on spells to help with swarms? Or couldn't anyone with ewave or similar disabler use that combined with UCS to handle swarms? I'm not arguing for the MOC, because that obviously isn't the way to go here based on what you outlined. But being a fan of UCS (and only having a lvl 28 Bard right now), I'm curious to know more. I have no experience beyond a level 40 wizard that I no longer even have, so there's probably a lot of things I'm just not aware of and the reasoning behind them.

[kutter]

Why shouldn't you be fighting swarms with UCS? Do you mean with JUST UCS? Wouldn't a wizard with UCS be relying on spells to help with swarms? Or couldn't anyone with ewave or similar disabler use that combined with UCS to handle swarms? I'm not arguing for the MOC, because that obviously isn't the way to go here based on what you outlined. But being a fan of UCS (and only having a lvl 28 Bard right now), I'm curious to know more. I have no experience beyond a level 40 wizard that I no longer even have, so there's probably a lot of things I'm just not aware of and the reasoning behind them.

I guess you would have to define swarm, I hunted him solo until about 90 when I paired him with my other wizard who had already capped. When he solo hunted if there were 3 or so critters it was not much of an issue, my macro to start ;combo has stomp in front of it so most everything starts out on the ground. If things get really exciting his core tap is set up with I think tremors then earthen fury, then maybe several chromatic circle, and I might have thrown in an elemental blast in there somewhere but it generally does its job in the room but uses up a large chunk of his mana, which is clearly preferable to being dead. So a swarm is doable, but mana intensive when solo.

[LOL BRIELUS]

This thread has been reported for finger wagglers in the heroic and honorable warrior section

[Maerit]

MoC isn't useful for a UCS warmage (as a priority) because you're not going to use mstrike in a swarm. You AE disable, then either single target UCS kill, or use 950 / 518. Spell aim isn't as high a priority as EMC, but could be a priority over SMR defense if you want the option to use bolts.

[kutter]

This thread has been reported for finger wagglers in the heroic and honorable warrior section

If it is any consolation, I have a little warrior too....


MoC isn't useful for a UCS warmage (as a priority) because you're not going to use mstrike in a swarm. You AE disable, then either single target UCS kill, or use 950 / 518. Spell aim isn't as high a priority as EMC, but could be a priority over SMR defense if you want the option to use bolts.

If he ever trains in spell aim it will be a way past cap like a 2 or 3 times goal. He has always been UCS and will remain so, mostly I guess I would like to improve his setup spells and enchanting bonus so it seems like spells first is the way to go and slowly work on EMC.

[Methais]

Probably want to see if that works in the test instance first, the wiki says MSTRIKE makes Celerity end and I suspect it happens before resolving the attacks.

Unless something changed, Celerity goes away after resolving the attacks, so you still get the reduced RT for that MSTRIKE. But you can just recast it after.

[Maerit]

If it is any consolation, I have a little warrior too....



If he ever trains in spell aim it will be a way past cap like a 2 or 3 times goal. He has always been UCS and will remain so, mostly I guess I would like to improve his setup spells and enchanting bonus so it seems like spells first is the way to go and slowly work on EMC.

Just shuffle your spell mix to have more MjE. Sleep is an amazing opener for UCS because EBP reduction will increase your MM. So sleep, dirtkick and 909 all help your MM a lot. 101 MjE is enough to ward most capped content for setup spells. 515 will make your setup spells 1s and increase your hunt efficiency. I'd do EMC, spells, perception, dodge, MIU/AS, spell aim.