Build request: evoker archmage

[Havok.cry]

Ok I had my main as a 20 pale master and it was fun, its TRed and moved on. I feel the need to have another wizard though, and this one just for fun. I'm thinking evoker. I have some Ideas for what I would like, but I'm curious how you guys would build one. First lifer, twink gear access, relevant to as much content as possible, evocation primary, with possibly conjuration secondary for CC. Going to pretend instakill doesn't exist for this guy. Anything else goes.

While I would like to here your guys take on that, this is what I'm thinking:
Warforged
Acid/force specced, with splashes in cold/electric/repair for dots
18wizard
2 artificer for umd/trap skills, shield proficiency (prerequisite for shield mastery), repeaters for ranged debuffing, alternate torc slot
take the arti levels at 1 for skills and 17 for master crafted tovens
5 peice Abishai

[Polarkin]

Ok I had my main as a 20 pale master and it was fun, its TRed and moved on. I feel the need to have another wizard though, and this one just for fun. I'm thinking evoker. I have some Ideas for what I would like, but I'm curious how you guys would build one. First lifer, twink gear access, relevant to as much content as possible, evocation primary, with possibly conjuration or secondary for CC. Going to pretend instakill doesn't exist for this guy. Anything else goes.

While I would like to here your guys take on that, this is what I'm thinking:
Warforged
Acid/force specced, with splashes in cold/electric/repair for dots
18wizard
2 artificer for umd/trap skills, shield proficiency (prerequisite for shield mastery), repeaters for ranged debuffing, alternate torc slot
take the arti levels at 1 for skills and 17 for master crafted tovens
5 peice Abishai

If you are going for evocation AM I'd definitely go a different route with your element choices.

7/1/1 in Electric
7/1/1 in Force
as much as you can in Ice.
nothing in Acid (and I'm a fan of acid but if you are heavily invested in evocation then go with the elements that support that focus)
1pt in Repair

Secondary focus in Conjuration for Web SLA (seriously this is the greatest thing since sliced bread... LOVED it on my AM)

[Havok.cry]

If you are going for evocation AM I'd definitely go a different route with your element choices.

7/1/1 in Electric
7/1/1 in Force
as much as you can in Ice.
nothing in Acid (and I'm a fan of acid but if you are heavily invested in evocation then go with the elements that support that focus)
1pt in Repair

Secondary focus in Conjuration for Web SLA (seriously this is the greatest thing since sliced bread... LOVED it on my AM)

See I was having this crazy thought that 90% of the time, I would be just spamming my SLA's to conserve sp, they're all force. Force also enhances both Ice storm, and Meteor swarm. For single target nukage, you have disintegrate, polar ray, and black dragon bolt, disintegrate is enhanced by force and BDB/polar ray do simular amounts of damage, but BDB will cover things that polar ray wont. Acid also enhances burning blood, another multi type spell, a decent addition to the dots. As far as evocation CC you have prismatic spray enhanced by anything, greater shout which does trivial damage even enhanced, sunburst (kinda) which isn't enhanced by any type wizards get, and electric loop which does poor damage and only dazes. Acid also includes numerous spells with no save allowing for greater damage for less sp (due to not needing to heighten your damage spells) in content that you might otherwise struggle in (due to mobs saving against your damage for 1/2-0 damage).

Those are my thoughts anyway. Please go into detail about why to only focus on electric cold and force?

[Polarkin]

You are going evocation archmage. So lets say you are at 40 Int buffed up and ready to go (could get higher but I'd say 40 is a pretty reasonable expectation overall). Your evocation DC's should be something like:

10 base
09 spell level
15 Int modifier
02 feats
02 AM enhancements
02 item
====
40 DC

That is a pretty healthy evocation DC and it's going to hit for full even on a great deal of mobs that have evasion.

As an evocation AM your SLA's have two damage types: Force (MM, Chain Missle) and Electric (Gust of Wind and Cyclonic Blast)... I'm not sure how far you are dipping into the SLA pool so I took both into account.

Crowd control at it's most basic level is simply the ability to reduce the damage and likelyhood of death of the party at the hands of the mobs they are fighting. Gust of Wind can either knock mobs prone (small) or slow them 50% (medium) (doesn't do either for mobs classified as Large) as well as blowing out most AE effects. Cyclonic Blast does the exact same damage as Cone of Cold with the same save but also throws in the ability to knock mobs prone and blow out most AE effects.

Size wise most of the stuff we fight in quests and raids are considered small and medium sized although yes there are a good amount of large sized mobs in the game as well. So with Evocation primary and Conjuration secondary you have the ability to knock over small (gust) and medium (cyclonic) mobs, slow medium mobs, and capture anything that is not a spider/ooze/incorp/fire based in a web and are capable of blowing out just about every harmful AE effect at will for greatly reduced sp costs. That sounds like a good deal of crowd control even if it's not the traditional dance/hold moster route.

Element selection wise there is nothing wrong with Acid, but it is simply not as strong as either electric or cold overall. Acid rain is a bucket of awesomeness and outclasses Ice Storm in duration based AE damage with the caveat that you have to group all your mobs before casting Acid Rain because the duration is so short. Acid Blast is ok but pales in comparison to Ottukes and Chain Lighting in damage dice. Melfs is a very solid performing damage over time spell and Burning Blood, while decent during leveling, loses it's appeal starting around the Vale onward. BDB is nice but Polar Ray is better (against mobs that are neither acid or cold resistant) but BDB suffers from the fact that it takes 6 seconds to do it's damage. Acids main deficiency is boss DPS due mostly to the fact that Ice and Electric have those stackable DoT's.

**more to come**

[Havok.cry]

FYI, Gust of wind does 0 damage, cyclonic blast does untyped damage and is enhanced by the force line not electric/sonic line.

[Polarkin]

FYI, Gust of wind does 0 damage, cyclonic blast does untyped damage and is enhanced by the force line not electric/sonic line.

Gust of Wind does 0 damage, hence the discussion on that spell being solely around its crowd control features.

according to the DDOWiki Cyclonic Blast does NOT do untyped damage and IS enhanced by the Electric/Sonic line :

http://ddowiki.com/page/Elemental_Savant_spells

When I just finished testing it in game my CB hit for 340, 346, 333, 329, 346, 326, 357 (I threw out crits).

For damage modification I have:

Storm Manipulation VII (50%)
Superior Potency VI (50%)
Maximize (100%)

CB is 15d3 +45 or 75 * 1.5 * 1.5 * 2.0 = 337.5 which pretty much aligns with my results above.

I have 0 enhancement points spent in Force which, if it did affect CB, would have made my average cast closer to 225.

Anyway... you seem fairly set in your opinion/preference so you don't need mine. Enjoy your build !

[Havok.cry]

Gust of Wind does 0 damage, hence the discussion on that spell being solely around its crowd control features.

according to the DDOWiki Cyclonic Blast does NOT do untyped damage and IS enhanced by the Electric/Sonic line :

http://ddowiki.com/page/Elemental_Savant_spells

When I just finished testing it in game my CB hit for 340, 346, 333, 329, 346, 326, 357 (I threw out crits).

For damage modification I have:

Storm Manipulation VII (50%)
Superior Potency VI (50%)
Maximize (100%)

CB is 15d3 +45 or 75 * 1.5 * 1.5 * 2.0 = 337.5 which pretty much aligns with my results above.

I have 0 enhancement points spent in Force which, if it did affect CB, would have made my average cast closer to 225.

Anyway... you seem fairly set in your opinion/preference so you don't need mine. Enjoy your build !

Actually you mostly have me convinced, and I'm enjoying the discussion. I hadn't known they changed cyclonic blast to the elctric line, used to be force. Good to know.

[Kinerd]

Can't say what line works on it, but Cyclonic Blast is absolutely untyped damage. The Harbinger of Madness chain will demonstrate this over... and over... and over... and over... and over... Also, the last official notes I can find are update 9, which state force line.
When I just finished testing it in game my CB hit for 340, 346, 333, 329, 346, 326, 357 (I threw out crits).

For damage modification I have:

Storm Manipulation VII (50%)
Superior Potency VI (50%)
Maximize (100%)

CB is 15d3 +45 or 75 * 1.5 * 1.5 * 2.0 = 337.5 which pretty much aligns with my results above.

I have 0 enhancement points spent in Force which, if it did affect CB, would have made my average cast closer to 225.These are some interesting results. Potency and Manipulation should stack additively for a total value of (1 + .5 + .5) = 2 rather than 1.5 * 1.5 = 2.25. 15d3 should have a standard deviation of sqrt(15 * (9 - 1) / 12) = 3.16, or when multiplied through 13ish, but you have two values that are more than 2 standard deviations from your mean, which is very surprising in a set of 7. Are you sure you weren't hitting a helpless target? I'll give it a whirl later on with my wizard, maybe something interesting is going on.

[Havok.cry]

Oooh the plot thickens, I await the results eagerly.

[Kinerd]

So I spent the weekend leveling with my guildies, figuring I could squeeze in an hour of testing today when they weren't on.

Wamp wamp.

I do anticipate having results as soon(!) as the servers get up, I'm just posting this now to ensure I remember.

[Kinerd]

Right, that's better. So I have some very odd results:

First odd bit, the tooltip description of Cyclonic Blast says "1d3 + 3 per level" and a max of "20d3 + 45" or "80-120". The dice description obviously can't be right, it has to be either 20d3 + 60 or 15d3 + 45. If the damage range is right, it's the former.

Next odd bit, I saw fully 4 damage ranges when using the spell: centered around 29 (2 counts), 60.3 (19 counts), 118.9 (27 counts), 216 (1 count). My wizard had no relevant item and enhancements as follows: rank 7 Storm Manip (50%), rank 1 Force Manip (20%), ranks 1 in Elec and Force crit chance and multiplier (4%, 1.75 multiplier). If we take 20d3 + 60, we get an average of 100. 20% bonus on that gives 120, Reflex save for half gives 60, 1.75 crit gives 210, so far so good. What the heck is the 30? Save for quarter? Halfhearted Evasion? I remembered another thread (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=297554) where this was noted, but no firm answers were discovered. In any event, it's pretty clear that the Force Manip is what's working. For the Storm Manip to be it, it would have to be 15d3 + 45 (3 typos instead of 1) and I still would have had to come in mysteriously low on the average.

Next I hit a Superior Spark 6 clicky, and there were no changes in the numbers. That's not odd, at least, Cyclonic Blast doesn't do electrical damage.

Next I turned on Maximize, and even more wonkiness ensued. I again saw 4 damage ranges, only this time I didn't get any crits. I saw 28 (1 count), 60 (4 counts), 112 (1 count), 240 (7 counts). The 240 is right: 120 * (1 + 1 maximize), done. The 112 is close enough to 120, save for half. The 60 is consistent at least with the unMaximized, save for quarter(??). What the heck is the 30??? Save for eighth? 3/4hearted Evasion?

.

Now that we know Force is the one that's working, we can go back to Polarkin's numbers:
100 * (1 + .5 + 0) * (1 + 1) = 300
But mysteriously his or her average is 340, and no reference to saves at all. So... what? I don't know.

.

It so happens that I have another wizard, so I will see if I can find him a Cyclonic Blast scroll to get more data. I also noticed that very rarely I could get Cyclonic Blast to hit multiple targets in a cone-like fashion, although the cone was exceedingly narrow. It's conceivable (if really annoying) that Cyclonic Blast has a very slight penumbra that does half damage, and that can be saved against for half of that half damage, leading to the quarter damage numbers. It's a bit less conceivable that this penumbra cannot be Maximized(?), leading to the apparent eighth damage numbers. More results as I obtain them.

[Kinerd]

So I went out on my CL 15 Wizard and saw an average of 90.3 on the big hits, 44.7 on the half hits, and 21.8 on the quarter hits. Didn't turn on Maximize at all. I also kept track of whether the target was knocked down or not, and have something interesting:
Of the 12 knockdown hits, none were for 1/4 damage.
Of the 13 not knockdown hits, 4 were for 1/4 damage and 2 were for full damage.

Hard to call it conclusive, but it is certainly very suspicious. My guess would be that the Str check to avoid knockdown is having no effect on damage and the Dex check to avoid knockdown is giving half damage on save. I will see if I can rope some guildies into more controlled testing, but dev investigation would be really swell.

[Polarkin]

That is some wierdness...

My wizard has 0 enhancements in the force dmg, crit, crit dmg lines. He is 7/1/1 in Storm and Ice both with 1 point in repair, fire, and acid.

I did my testing on rats, dogs, and spiders in the Vale near the entrance to Meridia.

Based on my testing and playing I can't even call Cyclonic Blast a "cone" type spell as that would imply that it functions similar to Cone of Cold. The cone of impact is very very small in diameter compared to CoC but the depth/length is very long compared to CoC. This spell is more like a Ray spell with Improved Precise Shot turned on than it is a cone.

The other issue with this spell is the targeting is horribly difficult, at least for me. I play in third person view with my zoom camera pulled all the way back above and behind my characters head. In this view if I do not have a mob targeted my Cyclonic Blast hits the floor in front of my feet and misses all mobs directly ahead of me. I can be in a narrow hallway using mouselook to target and "shoot" my Cyclonic Blast over the head of every mob following me. This spell is like a first person shooter... if you aren't aiming directly at/thru the target you hit nothing.

It is annoying enough for me that when I was an evocation AM I only took the first 3 SLA's.

I do maintain that if you are focusing on evocation and have the supporting DC's that Storm & Ice are the way to go for damage end game. You don't really need anything to be effective with Acid as it works well even for low DC WF sorcs, but it's lacking in raid/end game boss dealing damage which is where the DoT's make Storm/Ice shine.