Hello everyone, my name is Nerosothe and I like to (to the determent of my sleep schedule) theory craft and test interactions/ builds on Lam by myself or with the assistance of friends to an unhealthy degree with all my free time. Below are my thoughts on the Eladrin, Eladrin’s Iconic counterpart and Wild Mage. (this post will be continuously updated until I am finished testing the stuff I want to test/ am testing, I’m just posting it now so it is not lost in “page x” of the forum between some more "fun" commenters
Roughly I have planned and will be testing across 7 different builds. Each build is tested at 15, 20, and 32 on r1, r1, and r4 respectively in the quests: Ghosts of perdition, Lords of Dust, and grim and Barret, respectively. These builds consisted of:
15 SacFist/ 4 Wild Mage/ 1mnk “caster” sacred fist
18Monk/1 wild mage/1wlk (this build had no identity, just wanted to confirm ki spell interactions.
16 Alch/ 4 Wild Mage negative/ Cold nuker
16 Dark Apostate/ 4 Wild Mage Curse dmg Nuker and debuffer
16 arti/ 4 wild mage Fire and Electric Caster Nuker
20 Stormsinger Chaosmancer (+1 heart used)
Pure 20 sorc Chaosmancer Iconic
12 Dark Ranger/ 8 Druid Eladrin Sneak attack burster
As per my usual formatting in these dissertations to the game I love, I have colour-coated my own findings, conclusions, and comments below for easier readings ?
In GREEN, is the point of conversation and a brief comment on how it currently stands on this lamm iteration
In YELLOW is a breakdown of my findings, how certain interactions work in the topic of conversation, and any notable bugs that aren’t in my “big bugs” section
In RED are any suggestions I may have or things I believe that should be doubled backed on and looked at again.
In PURPLE is any side commentary that can be largely skipped unless you want to hear my more biased ramblings or reasons why I believe things. Mostly this is fluff that just gives background into how I arrived at the conclusions I did ?.
To be clear, I am a singular person with my own wants and desires for this new build content, I am biased and fallible, my opinions and suggestions should be read as just that, subjective words from a person with evidently too much free time; not fact or rulings on how any class, skill, or ability “is”. I hope this helps the devs and any players who may be as deep into the buildcraft rabbit hole as I am.
Without Further ado, on to the first big thing
BUGS
OKAY THIS IS A BIG ONE: Any SLA’s, spells, and racial/class skills that don’t innately have a max caster level are not capped out by “mixed magics” MCL base cap of 20. eg Helf greater dragonmark of storm, t5 Apothecary enhanced curative admixtures, oh ya and pretty much all buff spells durations wise (lmao 1hr 20min duration holy sword)
Now look this has to be addressed but I want to stress caution that just hard capping MCL at 20 might regress mixed magics back almost to its previously very underwhelming state in test 1 as many of these “no innate mcl” abilities are locked behind 12+ levels of a class and 30 EPs so the investment is heavy. My background is not in coding at all I just don’t wanna see things that increase MCL get bricked by this and many of these cool but niche multiclass options get thrown out. But ya obviously stop this from just giving 12 free caster levels at 32 to things like Alch curative admixtures and Helf call lightning storm if that’s not the design intention (if it is HOLY HELL YA BROTHER STEELSTAR, I LOVE BIG NUMBERS ON NICHE THINGS). Also, I have a list of most if not all of these “no mcl” abilities if the devs need ?
"Power in Chaos" is not giving its +2 CL and MCL to all spells when toggled on
Wild magic surges currently do not proc on Ki magic
Wild magic Surges currently do not proc on rune arms (idk if this is intentional)
Chaosmancer Eladrin’s “winter hail” does not strip cold immunity
Idk why this is, all other 3 penetrate elemental immunity and strip immunity after but the cold version does sweet FA
Channel Entropy does no dmg
There's something funky with some but not all chaos spell power sources not actually adding their stat increases
I really can’t hammer this one down, I think with the separation of Alignment spell powers into their own stats any previously alignment spellpower boosters are broken rn but I honestly have no clue
Base Eladrin Tree
Honestly this is a wonderfully done tree which most if not all martial classes would love dipping into, some nice power spikes but nothing new in terms of innate power
I can foresee some people crying foul that the 9 SA dice at 32 from Spring’s “fey step” is crazy power creep but its finite nature and linking to the Eladrin’s dash is a great counterbalance and creates a unique “burst window” build synergy with stuff like dark hunter’s 4th core. Other racial trees have amazing power boosts like Chains, Tiefling Fire strip via scorch, Shifter shift etc so seeing this kinda temporary power in a hyper specific build and moment in time isn’t bad
Chaosmancer Racial tree
At first, I was hesitant with the seasons not being a multi selector but its honestly a good choice in the long run
The ability for each season to do a different elemental strip is all the power this tree really needs to pull people to the iconic, However the winter season fey step is by far the weakest contender of the caster dashes. With spell pen gear found throughout leveling the boost the dash grants is largely useless post lvl 12 while the other season dashes just get stronger the higher they are. You can bypass and SR checks easily throughout 13-32 content thanks to the gear and ED/EP benefits you get that are early tree pickups that you take already (heck "Arcanum" is in this tree too. I would personally like this effect to be changed into another buff for winter so its more on par with the other seasons
overall just a nice tree, love this honestly.
Possibly change winter's fey dash to "Gives you 5 Neg/Pos/Repair Amp and an addition 5 per 5 levels for 10 seconds
Wild Mage Architype
This iteration of the wild mage tree and its magic has a lot more power and cool things going for it while not being over-tuned in my opinion, great work 
Okay lets go over the "big hitters" of the tree
Mixed magics is changed to a +2CL and MCL from its flat 100Sp boost; this essentially means the node gives you a smaller but more dynamic increase to your spells noticeable in the early and late game but less so in mid heroics. Overall, when this ability gets fixed, there will be less "exploits" such as spells that get more than 100% scaling from spell power boost like Dark apostate's 200%sp harm being a tactical negative nuke. Warlock and WM splits are a little sad to see it go but MCL boosts are more unique so I'm here for it overall. My big thing with mixed magics is for the "cool things" I wanna test, they are largely not working as intended rn (see bugs section). Hopefully there's a quick fix or we get a 3rd preview with this fully WAI.
The Chaos SLAs:
With the addition of Master of Chaos as an epic feat these spells largely do their job and are pretty to look at on top. the one thing that sucks here is that Chaos hammer is not included in master of Chaos, I think that it should because taking two "master of" epic feats just to get your chaos spells up to snuff in epics really hurts and chaos dmg focused casters. as a side, The chaos spells being added to the spellbook is great but still having no level 8 or 9 spell means you don't have a true chaos nuke unless you are pure WM.
Have hammer of chaos be included in "master of chaos". Add a potential Arcane tempest like spell with chaos dmg flavoring so there's a lvl 8 or 9 chaos spell
There's still little support for chaos magics in Epic destinies:
As with the previous Lamm, Idk what destiny a chaos caster goes unless you are also a savant. But if you're grabbing Capstone WM instead of your savant form of choice you're intrinsically nerfing yourself cause ele spells still scale better than a single chaos nuke spell with no epic destiny scaling support.
In short, its really hard arguing to go capstone Wild mage if there's no Chaos dmg themed Epic destiny.
Add a Chaos dmg epic strike somewhere into an epic destiny, preferably Shiradi cause of theming
Prismatic mind:
Free damage, its free damage, GOD I LOVE FREE DAMAGE. Good addition 10/10
Cores, Specifically Riches in Randomness
Look, I'm okay with this being in the tree, but not as a core. Having this placed in your core for lvl 6 just hard breaks all power progression in the leveling experience, especially when your other options as a pure sorc while leveling is just a flat increase to the damage of your element of choice. I would really like to see core 3 be switched out with Prismatic Mind from t3. Make Riches and Randomness a t3, 1 point, 3 tier pick in the tree (more charges per point) and have Prismatic Mind just do all its doing from the get go with the cost of being 6 sorc to get that free chaos dmg. You are definitely going at least 5 sorc in any chaos build anywho for the t5 of this tree, and the only other chaos dmg support is from Chaos cleric domain which ends at 14, so 6 WM fits perfectly into there. This makes leveling a pure wild mage more seamless in its power progression, adds something to multiclass build craft as right now you have no reason to go beyond 4 Wild Mage unless you want to go to 12 (that's a steep cost to whatever your multiclassing into).
Pure Wild Mage:
So I think its important to preface my findings here is that I am of the opinion that Wild Mage shouldn't just be the best dps tree. Savant should still hold the place of raw power scaling for its tradeoff in hyper specialization. In fact, A 20 sorc savant specializing in one element and Wildmage is just straight up stronger than current sorc; so any more power to the tree directly and no sorc will even think about base sorc unless its hardcore and they want a little more survivability or they are building a spellblade. To that end I think there's no need to add more power in the tree but instead maybe reshuffle some things as per above; but for the love of god give Chaos dmg casting some more epic scaling.
As alluded to above, the real gripe I have with pure chaos sorc right now is that it does roughly half the damage of a savant of the same level and even worse in epics. While leveling, its better to spec savant when you don't have a lot of points at 1-12, alright to go chaos spec from 12/16, then each level after you get to sharn it is harder and harder to justify casting chaos spells over any elemental ones. I ran a pure 18 sorc into r1 sharn twice, once as a chaos caster with savant support and the second time with an air savant with chaos support. It takes 3 chaos spells to clear what a chain lightning would. You still get surges too so there's literally no trade off for going savant, Chaos dmg sorc is just flat weaker even in heroics.
Now the reason I ran stuff at 18 is because Channel Entropy currently doesn't work, so pitting a savant with ele form against a chaos specced wild mage without its strongest spell is like asking me what I would choose to bench-press between a single ant or a blue whale. 18 Chaos WM vs 18 Air savant is the best "equal footing" contest i could think of and this is supposed to be when chaos dmg is at its strongest. It isn't right now and that's just rough :/
Now lets talk chaos dmg in epics. I'm gunna keep it blunt, its still very weak. Like weaker than blight caster thorn spells in epic cause at least those have force spell increases in 3 destinies. Master of chaos is a nice addition and does allow for the SLAs so scale, but again, chaos hammer isn't in it right now and it really should. The two big things that really and I mean REALLY HURT chaos dmg casting in epics is basically 0 epic destiny support, no epic strike, and the only lvl 8+ spell being a 12 second cd spell locked behind a lvl 20 sorc Capstone (which is also bugged rn). If there's any one thing I really want to see in preview 3 its some sorc of Chaos dmg synergy in an Epic Destiny
Multi Classing viability with Wild Mage
So with all the alterations done to wild mage and the builds I've tested I think I can confidently say this class has reached the intented goal as per Steelstar's test 1 post of having multi class viability. Some notable things wild mage and the iconic tree's can do are: Giving caster arti fire and lightning bypass so that you can use all of its high level spells (tact det, chain lightning with the Fire over Morgrave runearm slap hard for example). AotS now has a fire bypass and great healing through close wounds sla going 12Wlk/6WM/2 fvs. Another thing that is finally possible with the Iconic tree is Cold Warlock finally has cold bypass (praise be)! And I'm particularly happy with a 15SF/4WM/1Mnk Caster/melee hybrid sacred fist that can scale Ki explosion into epics. I think a 10 whatever you want/6fvs/4wm build has the possibility of being a great healer through mixed magics and flame of the favored too. In short, There are now Neat and viable caster multiclass options
All in all, this iteration truly is a "win" in terms of development goals. When the MCL bug gets fixed with mixed magics I think all these builds wont be the defacto op pick for their roles but still a strong and fun option; A pure savant is still gunna be the best caster, and the normal Melee builds will still be the defacto truck hitter for R10s. Essentially Wild Mage delivers in multi class diversity while not also creating some monster build (I mean there could be something I'm missing but it would have to be an exploit rather than by design)
That's all for me in Preview 2 of Lam
Overall I think 95% of all the new content here is amazingly well done. I have some minor gripes and if any dev reads this post (I mean first of hi hey how are ya, drink some water you're looking dehydrated), the one thing I really would wanna see in preview 3 Is epic scaling for chaos dmg now that wild mage and its respective trees are looking pretty much finished. Everything else is great but that's the one thing missing in my personal opinion. Cheers all and I hope this was helpful
any questions are welcome.
-Nerosothe
