I've put in 547 hours as the Wizard getting to 60, even taking a break for the last few weeks here, as well as getting a druid to level 50. I've got BIS gear for almost 99% of my gear, including extremely rare Skull of Malen'Kai which adds +22% spell haste. I have leveled with both groups and solo (both before the rework and after). I have measured damage output before rework and after. I have measured it against both the old flames of eth and fires of eth spells (the rare 60 drop spell). I have played through every iteration of the wizard since week 1 of the beta. I even strategically left off getting the last few levels until the rework went through so I could test the changes on the same mobs from the same levels. Im saying all this so you guys understand I have put in the time and work to know what I am talking about to Wizard. I know some of the people posting here have either A) not played a wizard or B) not played a wizard to late game and also might not have played pre and post rework. So thats my credibility right there. And here's my feedback on the matter:
Over the course of a 10 min time frame our DPS sits below the pack. When you look at partial resist rates being close to 15-16% of the time, full resist rates being also around the 15-16% range. When you look at crit rating being near 1.5% crit chance and fizzle rates being slightly above that. You look at cast times, spell fumbles (on glyphs people hit the wrong keys). You start trying to parse through the capability of a Wizards output. You look at their spell costs related to other spell casters and their damage numbers. Lets break some of that down a bit and unpack it.
I'm not going to dive into the way everything scales from 1-60. Thats an even longer conversation and analysis for a different time. But at 60, a wizard will nuke for around 2700, a durid will nuke for about 2300. The druid is the next closest nuker to our damage now that Ele has been reworked. An ele needs to nuke 3 times and each nuke has 2 resists and their overall nuke package to achieve what they once had (wiz level nukes) is now 100 mana for those 3 casts and 6 resist checks, Ele nukes have been nerfed. The next closest caster class to our nukes is going to be the Druid.
The Druids nuke costs 330 mana as does the Wizard. The druid gets 10 mana regen per tick, the wizard gets 10 mana regen per tick. Both of which are only 2 points down from max lvl ench enlightenment of 12 per tick. Neither the druid nor wiz mana regen stacks with the ench enlightenment. As far as mana efficiency on nukes go, at max level there is very little difference between the DPM of say Volley (which is our most efficient damage source over long periods of time) and Greater Fireball (which is our biggest nuke). The surge sits between those two. But overall you're talking about 8.92 DPM versus 8.19 DPM. Its not drastically different.
The beauty of the DPM being close together like that means that a wizard can choose to spam volley or choose to land big nukes and sit down. Its an aspect I enjoy. When I want to have a higher APM playstyle and be super active then I can choose to use glyphs and volley and when I want the lowest APM I can just mem the direct spells on the bar and nuke and sit knowing my damage per mana over a sustained period isn't affect that much.
But our sustained damage over a 10 min period does fall lower than most classes, especially the Archer. Which I would say is fair for the Archer in its current state. The Archer with BIS gear will do somewhere in the realm of 150-200 DPS, wizards will do somewhere around 100-115 DPS over a 10 min period. The Archer has a lot more sustained damage but they have a lot less utility so I would say thats fair. I'm not going to break down the comparison of DPS versus every class but we do sit rather low on the totem pole for sustained. Which is unfortunate because that is the current meta of the game. The current gameplay meta 1-60 journey is a marathon and we are Gimli on the road with Legolas. We're natural sprinters, wasted on the long journey but very dangerous in short sprints lol.
Now if we're looking at unloading our maximum amount of damage against a raid target or high HP mob and bursting down. We can achieve a really high burst potential of 180-240 DPS depending on the mob and resists etc. Which is great, but thats a 3 min fight. And we're spent, while the archer can reasonably still hit that 150-200 and keep going for the long haul. Same with many other melee classes. The druid can hit almost the same amount of DPS, like I said they have about 400 less damage than Wizards but they have a wealth of buffs+heals+utility.
Wiz have root, druid has root. Wiz has aoe snare, druids have aoe snare, pbaoe snare, aoe root, and their single target snare lasts for about 5 minutes our aoe snare lasts for around half that amount of time. When it comes to CC many classes have root and CC capabilities, we have knockback and root. Its not the best but its not the worst. We can do some CC, but that will severely cut into our DPS at that point. Taking time to CC mobs, escape from mobs, blink away, knock back, dispel, purge etc. are all things that lower our DPS compared to other classes. It also affects our ability to sit and med.
Reclaim is a 30 second cooldown and it requires us to spend 60 mana to gain 125 mana. A net 60 mana over a 30 second period is not nothing, but its not enough. I think its also really annoying gameplay to put 5 stacks on, reclaim 5 stacks, put 5 stacks on. So in reality we spent 60 mana, reclaimed to get 125 mana back, THEN spent 60 mana again to put the 5 stacks back on. Which means we got 5 mana net from that engagement and we got our group spell haste buff and the spell dmg buff back on the mobs. I hate the fact that the spell haste buff requires engagement on a mob first to get. I hate that I cannot trade it or buff people outside my group. I hate that I cant prepare ahead of the fight by being fully buffed. But whatever.
Reclaim doesn't really net us any mana on a 30 second period. The act of putting 5 stacks on and reclaiming those 5 stacks and then putting 5 stacks on again is just tedious gameplay and only thing it does is give us our 10 min buff, which is only REALLY useful in a more caster aligned group.
I don't care about how things were in EQ. This isn't EQ. I don't care about what other games were like. I care about this game. The devs have stated they're making their own game. So lets stop talking about how things were in EQ. I understand the crowd/audience, but the crowd/audience needs to stop trying to compare this class to the Wiz class in EQ because they're actively trying to make their own game and not create an EQ clone.
So overall yes our DPS on the sustained side is less. Our DPS on the burst side is NOT that much higher than some of the other classes and is really in a more niche area. The game would do better to have mechanics that rely on burst, such as enraged enemies that hit REALLY hard sub 30% life or something. Having mechanics that require the need for burst potential would give burst class like wizard a better fit in the meta. That isn't the current meta and probably won't see a shift like that anytime in the future. So my hope is that during the rebalance tweaks they start to look at the damage profile of the wizard to align it with the needs of the meta because thats the life we Wizards are living in. The reality is we can do some CC, but that detracts from our DPS. We do have ports, but thats the same argument as saying Clerics should less because they have res. Don't limit the abilities of a class to perform in its role because it has some sort of utility when everyone starts dying. A wizard can evac, and a druid can evac, but they do almost the same DPS, and the druid doesn't have any less powerful healing capabilities because of its utility. A wizard can evac and a cleric can rez, but that shouldn't mean the wizard loses DPS because it can port and it should not mean the cleric loses healing power because it can bring someone back to life when the battle has gone south.
Like it or hate it thats my opinion. I would love to hear from some other people who have played wizard extensively, not people who have played with wizards, there is a difference when you're playing the class versus watching someone else play the class.
