201 replies to this topic

[Nirrado]

Pretty anxious to give this a try, I've been wondering about it for awhile now but didn't want to invest in it just for kicks and giggles. Now that I see a few 50s have gotten good results from it I may go ahead and swap over when I get home tonight. If I can get some more damage out of this I am all for it, don't like being a few steps behind rangers and the such =/

[Nirrado]

Also I find my profile picture to be strangely relevant with this discussion.......

[Xafir]

Did you also include the loss of Seal Explosion? (Can be used twice in a 4 minute fight)

Or did I just miss reading it?

I did not include Seal Explosion in the calculations because you do not lose it, you trade a 20% MATK boost for a 15% haste boost. Also this was meant to be a barebones comparison that did not take cooldowns into effect.

I have a feeling that posting the gear stats you used in the calcs might make it easier for people to follow along.

I've already built my Wizard with max Fire Arms for the DoT, but this is making me wonder if I should reset him at 50, or perhaps earlier, to get Wind Arms. Even without the calcs provided above, I think I can see how increasing your Haste that much to fit in extra Fire Bolts more than makes up for the loss of the Fire Arms DoT. Making up for the MATK bonus is a little harder for me to see, though I admit that I don't know a whole lot about all that goes into MATK during different points of the game.

The stats were provided in the calculations at the top. the first set of calculations were assumed that you had 2000 base MATK and 25% crit rate. The second set of calculations assumed a base MATK of 3000 and a crit rate of 35%. The actual stats on your gear that you need to get these values are beyond the scope of the calculations as all we need to calculate damage are the attack and crit values.

I also remade my lvl 34 wizard after making these calculations, although I took it a step further and dropped Fire Bolt and Fireball for Cold Bolt and Lightning Bolt which results in an even higher damage boost than any of the previous calculations.

[SorcerousPhantom]

I did not include Seal Explosion in the calculations because you do not lose it, you trade a 20% MATK boost for a 15% haste boost. Also this was meant to be a barebones comparison that did not take cooldowns into effect.



The stats were provided in the calculations at the top. the first set of calculations were assumed that you had 2000 base MATK and 25% crit rate. The second set of calculations assumed a base MATK of 3000 and a crit rate of 35%. The actual stats on your gear that you need to get these values are beyond the scope of the calculations as all we need to calculate damage are the attack and crit values.

I also remade my lvl 34 wizard after making these calculations, although I took it a step further and dropped Fire Bolt and Fireball for Cold Bolt and Lightning Bolt which results in an even higher damage boost than any of the previous calculations.

Now that's a little off-handed, if you ask me...
...Although I can see it exploiting Wind Seal's full benefits.

[Nirrado]

Yeah I'm not sure how cold bolt and lightning bolt would play out with Firestarter ticking away as well. Given it would be extremely mobile, would the damage really be comparable to fire bolt spam? Also does haste increase animation speed any, or just the cast bar? That could be the deciding factor between cold/lightning bolt + fire bolt/fireball builds.

[SorcerousPhantom]

Yeah I'm not sure how cold bolt and lightning bolt would play out with Firestarter ticking away as well. Given it would be extremely mobile, would the damage really be comparable to fire bolt spam? Also does haste increase animation speed any, or just the cast bar? That could be the deciding factor between cold/lightning bolt + fire bolt/fireball builds.

Only the cast bar is affected by the haste rate, however, Wind Emblem does provide an extra buff for Lightning Spells which toggles every so often, and would essentially replace Fire Ball.
Firestarter would be as hindered by this as it would if the Wind Emblem build followed Fire Bolt and Fire Ball, thus, there's no difference in that regard.

The only factor that would matter would by Pyromaniac, since it only applies for Fire Spells.

Edited by SorcerousPhantom, 04 June 2013 - 03:24 PM.

[Xafir]

Haste speeds up the casting bar the animation speed does not really matter for a skill that has sub 1 second cast time as no matter what ability you use there is a 1 second global cooldown time. That being said I did test the animation times and Fire Bolt has a slower animation than Cold Bolt and Lightning Bolt has the fastest animation of the 3 (at least according to the stop watch on my phone).

I honestly was not expecting much from the tests myself but I was surprised by the results. I have updated the original post with the results of the Cold Bolt calculations.

Edited by Xafir, 04 June 2013 - 03:27 PM.

[SorcerousPhantom]

Haste speeds up the casting bar the animation speed does not really matter for a skill that has sub 1 second cast time as no matter what ability you use there is a 1 second global cooldown time. That being said I did test the animation times and Fire Bolt has a slower animation than Cold Bolt and Lightning Bolt has the fastest animation of the 3 (at least according to the stop watch on my phone).

I honestly was not expecting much from the tests myself but I was surprised by the results. I have updated the original post with the results of the Cold Bolt calculations.

If you don't mind me asking; exactly what methods are you using to perform and record these tests?

[Xafir]

The tests are purely math based off static values of MATK, crit rating and haste. For instance if you have 40% haste 3000 MATK and 35% crit rate in a 4min fight you would cast 800 Cold Bolts since they would have a 0.3 second cast time at that point. We can then determine that since every Cold Bolt is 38% of your MATK value that each Cold Bolt will hit for 1140 (on average) at said MATK value. With the given crit rate we can also determine that 280 of those 800 Cold Bolts will crit and that they will on average do 2280 dmg (since crit dmg for all non Swordman classes is dmg * 2).

Edited by Xafir, 04 June 2013 - 03:33 PM.

[Nirrado]

My only concern is that animation or "global" isn't taken into account for the cold bolt test. With that much haste you can really only get 2 cold bolts off in the 1 second(maybe barely over a second) because of the animation after the bar finishes, and before you can begin recasting.

[SorcerousPhantom]

My only concern is that animation or "global" isn't taken into account for the cold bolt test. With that much haste you can really only get 2 cold bolts off in the 1 second(maybe barely over a second) because of the animation after the bar finishes, and before you can begin recasting.

The haste rate you'd get applied onto Cold Bolt is not unlike what Sorcerers get; use that as your reassurance.

[Xafir]

The global is not taken into account in either test (with the exception of the Lightning Bolt part as I had to either do timing on that myself or leave it out of the calculation entirely) and so the numbers are not real world accurate. However the global cooldown does not start until the cast bar ends so no matter what you will always get off twice as many Cold Bolts as you do Fire Bolts.

For instance when I did the manual timing test for Lightning Bolt I could get 2 Lightning Bolts off in 1 second with 0% haste and no Wind Arms, however 2 Cold Bolts took 2 Seconds (1 second GCD + .5 seconds per Cold Bolt * 2) and likewise it took 3 seconds to cast 2 Fire Bolts back to back.

Edited by Xafir, 04 June 2013 - 03:53 PM.

[Funen1]

Potential for a better build than pure fire tree? Now that would really shake up the Wizard community if it proved more viable. I currently don't have the means to extensively test it out myself, but I'm getting more and more curious about it.

[Nirrado]

So my group runs hard modes every afternoon, I may invest $6-$12 and see how the cold/lightning bolt thing works. Is this what everyone is thinking of to?

http://ro2base.com/b...1.1.1/0.0.0.0.0

not 100% sure I should with those last 3 points. Ice Wall? =/

[Xafir]

That is basically what I was aiming for and I am not sure if I should dump the remaining points into Ice Wall or Ice Nova so that I could AOE freeze adds for sorcs to nuke down more often.

[Nirrado]

I won't lie I'm definitely interested in the Wind Arms+Fire Bolt build, but I am still skeptical on the Cold/Lightning Bolt build. Not sure what this does for a wizard when compared to a sorc with the same thing besides int buff for slightly more magic power and Firestarter DOT. It just seems somewhat underwhelming in my head without Jupital and Vaetyr.

[Xafir]

In terms of raw dmg a Wizard never had a chance at beating a pure DPS sorc to begin with even with a fire build. However what a Wizard does have over a sorc is more hit on their gear, Fire flower, Blast Arms, Teleport, Frost Nova, Ice Wall and most importantly the fact that no one expects you to heal or rez anyone.

[Nirrado]

Also does the double damage lightning proc work on bosses? Cause the wording makes it seem you only get double damage if the target is frozen, and since bosses can't be frozen ;_;

Although on a side note I bet the lightning/cold bolt build would wreck in coloseum. I already get half my kills chasing people with lightning bolt spam

[SorcerousPhantom]

Also does the double damage lightning proc work on bosses? Cause the wording makes it seem you only get double damage if the target is frozen, and since bosses can't be frozen ;_;

Although on a side note I bet the lightning/cold bolt build would wreck in coloseum. I already get half my kills chasing people with lightning bolt spam

The reason of why in the hypothetical Cold Bolt/Lightning Bolt Wizard scenario I would not train Frost Diver is because it's as good as useless on bosses. Wind Emblem's Lightning buff does, however, work on bosses.

[Xafir]

The tooltip on that skill is VERY badly translated. It actually puts a buff on you and you can mouse over it and the buff says "The next lightning attack will do X2 damage" and it gives 2 stacks of this buff per proc so 2 double damage lightning casts each time it procs.

[Funen1]

I won't lie I'm definitely interested in the Wind Arms+Fire Bolt build, but I am still skeptical on the Cold/Lightning Bolt build. Not sure what this does for a wizard when compared to a sorc with the same thing besides int buff for slightly more magic power and Firestarter DOT. It just seems somewhat underwhelming in my head without Jupital and Vaetyr.

I'm not sure if that's a perfect comparison between Wizards and Sorcs. Sorcs have damage combos that span across 1st and 2nd classes (the aforementioned Jupitel Thunder and Varetyr Spear benefit from Cold Bolt+JT Mastery and Frost Driver, respectively), whereas the only equivalent with Wizards is Pyromaniac giving you a bit more Haste when you use Fire Bolt/Ball. Basically they aren't as dependent on cross-class combos as Sorcs, so they seem more capable of getting away with different builds in the Magician stage.

Edited by Funen1, 04 June 2013 - 04:32 PM.

[Nirrado]

Yeah I know Firestarter would still work just fine, and the AOE would still be very strong from Inferno+Meteor Storm. I guess it seems like a, "Too good to be true," scenario lol. I don't have any raid gear yet, and still working toward colosseum gear so my magic power is only at roughly 1640~ without Fire Emblem. I am definitely intrigued by the build though, just wrestling myself over whether it might be worth the $6, or if it would end up costing me $12 ya know?

I definitely like the mobility over Fire Bolt though, anytime I have to move I feel really gimped as fire, although I bet you eat through SP like a fat kid eats cake with 5/5 Cold and Lightning Bolt lol.

[SorcerousPhantom]

Yeah I know Firestarter would still work just fine, and the AOE would still be very strong from Inferno+Meteor Storm. I guess it seems like a, "Too good to be true," scenario lol. I don't have any raid gear yet, and still working toward colosseum gear so my magic power is only at roughly 1640~ without Fire Emblem. I am definitely intrigued by the build though, just wrestling myself over whether it might be worth the $6, or if it would end up costing me $12 ya know?

I definitely like the mobility over Fire Bolt though, anytime I have to move I feel really gimped as fire, although I bet you eat through SP like a fat kid eats cake with 5/5 Cold and Lightning Bolt lol.

Before making any last decisions, I personally would like to see further confirmation about the lines of difference between Cold Bolt versus Fire Bolt, both under the event that Wind Emblem is present.
That said, I probably have enough time, as I'll have to gather the 556+ Zeny required for a Skill Reset scroll.

[Xafir]

Before making any last decisions, I personally would like to see further confirmation about the lines of difference between Cold Bolt versus Fire Bolt, both under the event that Wind Emblem is present.
That said, I probably have enough time, as I'll have to gather the 556+ Zeny required for a Skill Reset scroll.

I think I forgot to mention but I added calculations for the damage of a Cold Bolt build to the bottom of the original post. They were made with the same 2 test cases as the original Fire Bolt tests I did so you should be able to directly compare the 2 results.

Edited by Xafir, 04 June 2013 - 04:45 PM.

[Nirrado]

Also because Cold Bolt doesn't benefit as much from haste as Fire Bolt, I'm thinking in a normal rotation even maybe pop Fire Emblem for Seal Explosion then switch back to Wind Emblem so you get 20% more Magic Power? Then again I guess Cold Bolt would be .1sec with Wind Seal Explosion and Guardian up. Ugh the more I look at it the more my wallet burns, I'm far too lazy to farm the zeny, but I do have some extra kafra points right now.