U68 Preview 1: Wild Mage Sorcerer Archetype
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Thau of Blackmoore
Well-known member
Needs more "oomph" to make it worth the work. Feels like it needs better spells / scaling or a better offset for the lack of nuking
I don't feel like the loss of access to level 9 spells offset the tier4 ability at all.
Being a low level Wild Mage means you suffer from "bad" chaos more which hurt the splash.
I don't feel like the loss of access to level 9 spells offset the tier4 ability at all.
Being a low level Wild Mage means you suffer from "bad" chaos more which hurt the splash.
Terranigma
Well-known member
Right now one of the stronger multi-classes I can think of right now with Wild Mage is something like a 15 Sacred Fist/4 Wild Mage/1 Dark Apostate split.
- 15 levels of Sacred Fist gives you all the fundamental buffs and abilities
- 1 level of Dark Apostate gives access to Divine Might and the Apostate Curse (of which you can either go Handwraps, Vistani Dagger, Quarterstaff, or Longsword with the appropriate feats/enhancements to remain centered).
- 4 Levels of Wild Mage yields 17% Wild Surge on a character that tosses spells with some frequency (Sacred Fist Empowerment, Incinerating Wave, Prayer) while helping to keep the Paladin Spells on a near-full caster level.
- 4 Levels of Wild Mage also gives access to Fire Savant, which you can get to Core 2 for +2 to Fire Spells (which should be +2 to Incinerating Wave and Ki Explosion, making them cast at level 21 as a 20th level character, of which the caster level cap on both are 30 or higher).
- You can toggle the Power in Chaos for the Apostate Imbue for the earlier and mid-heroic levels, when you won't be tossing many in-battle spells.
Warsaga
present day - present time
I don't think splashes are supposed to be all gain and no loss. There has to be downsides to only dipping your toe in the water - those of which are remedied the more levels you invest in the class. I think right now they're being too generous by giving splashes access to the very bad/bad bypass through AP investment alone; they should further restrict it by putting the bypass in mid to high cores imo.
But I would say that this should be considered separately from the overall power level of the tree itself.
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GigaCasterFighterofHell
Member
Bam, holy smokes, quality post from a quality poster.Hi hey Hello
My name is Nerosothe and I'm trying to make a habit of doing in depth testing of large Lamm patches and new content. I was a big fan of the ranged aoe changes and that Lamm cycle, I spent about 20 hours testing builds for said patch then dropped a large post discussing interactions, skill feel, and overall strength with cited numbers, what dungeons I ran, etc. So lets get on with the Wild Mage breakdown, or at least, the first iteration of Wild Mage.
Now my word is not gospel, my suggestions are not the end all way to change things. I wish to simply add commentary for the devs so that they have more playtested opinions/findings.
As per usual: my findings and conclusions were gathered over a roughly 16hr gameplay span working through 7-20 heroics all on r1, and 32 r1s, r4s, and r6's.
In green are intended goals and interactions as per the Wild Magic Surge opening forum post and this Archetype tree opening post by Steelstar.
In yellow are any limiters, bugs, and core mechanics of the game which impede this goal
In purple is my own personal comments and feelings.
In red are my suggestions to fix these issues.
HERE WE GO
Initially I was super excited to test out Wild Mage. But after about 16hrs of testing and several revelations I have come to the conclusion this tree needs a fair amount of work in terms of high heroic and epic scaling, the amount of spells available, and its proposed multiclass caster functionality. The tree itself is super cool, and I have tried 2 pure builds and 4 multiclass options spanning from 7 to 32. Despite my excitement right now for the concept I just want to focus on bugs or critical design flaws.
So today I will be going through some of the notable interactions within the tree, multiclass concepts, and pure Wild mage Sorc interactions. The purpose of this post is to highlight many of the interactions and desired goals from Steel's initial post which as of the 22nd of May, 2024, either straight up do not work, or have many limiters and tradeoffs which result in a large net loss of power for the Wild Magic Sorc.
Multiclassing with this tree allows for you to count your sorcerer caster levels to all other caster levels through the t4 "mixed magics".
-Ideally this would allow for combination of classes and builds like Artificer with a fire savant empowered arti's tactical detonation, or water ele druid's ice flowers empowered by water savant. The cost of the multiclass is the loss of a capstone and lvl 18 cores, as well as at least the loss of most caster's highest level spells (druid, clr, sorc, fvs lvl 9s).
There's a lot to go over here, buckle up.
Most spells have a max caster level of 20, taking mixed magics simply allows for, lets say, a 16arti/4WM to have 20 levels of arti in terms of caster level. There is no benefit to this multiclass then. No MCL increases exist save for t4 from WM, which typically t5s of other caster trees also have at lvl 18. So you have to go at least 12 Wild Mage, losing MANY spells and 2 other cores from your caster class of choice JUST TO BREAK EVEN in terms of Caster levels. IN ADDITION, the other caster you dip into in these scenarios only has access to lvl 3 or 4 spells of its respective class to be upcasted to lvl 20 MCL. So what do you really gain? To put it short, nothing. Theres little in the tree which warrants a multiclass save for wild magic surges themselves and t3's power in chaos. and while 100 sp with some fun randomness is cool, In most builds you are sacrificing caster levels, dcs, level 8 and 9 spells, and alot of EP's just to get to t4 Wild Mage.
There is also the issue of what stat to main in the multiclass. If you go Druid/Wild Mage you should be maxing wisdom so that your spells pass DC checks. However, the SLAs within WM are Cha based DC spells, meaning they are dead content in any non-charisma multiclass. This anti synergy within the tree for non-Cha based casters greatly hampers what you can take while reaching for the 20 points needed for Mixed magics, meaning the design of having this tree be a cool multiclass option for almost all casters is simply not accurate right now.
Furthermore, since Chaos sphere and chaos bolt (and Wild strike) all scale of sorc caster level, so they will be very weak unless you main class Wild Mage. This further hampers the caster multiclass concept as you are still picking one or the other; scaling intrinsic wild mage spells, or you respective caster class' spells. All in all, the SLA's within the tree need to be revisited a touch so that they don't solely have cha and sorc level scaling.
Make Caster levels scale off just character level with Mixed Magics.
So a large issue right now is that when multiclassing a caster and Wild Mage while picking up mixed magics, the character breaks even on caster levels for their wanted multiclass caster but not Wild Mage inversely. This means that it is true to say multiclassing at least 4 Wild mage doesn't effect caster level of your chosen other caster class. However, any levels outside of sorcerer still greatly hamper wild mage own spells/SLA's. A great example of how this hampers potential builds is a chaos/ alignment dmg cleric using chaos domain. Wild Mage's chaos spells need heavy investment in charisma and sorc levels while not counting cleric levels; on the flipside, your Cleric spells use both Sorc and Clr caster levels but scale off Wisdom so you also have to stat wisdom. In short, you cannot make good use of one caster class without neglecting and harming the other even with Wild Mage's Mixed Magics .
The SLA's of Wild Mage should scale with the highest of Cha, Wis, and Int, and should be based on character level for damage purposes.
-as per above, the current version of chaos bolt, chaos ball, and wild strike have no use in any non-charisma based build with a minimum 10 sorc multiclass. If the design is to make Wild Mage a Multiclass friendly tree, its SLA's should reflect that.
Either Savants or WM needs increases to max caster level. The current cost of multiclassing as a caster is a reduced or total loss of spell the variety of powerful endgame spells; in exchange, the spells you do pick up through multiclassing need to be stronger (in true sorc fashion). If a caster is losing t4/5/6 of either WM/savant/respective caster class tree, they are likely losing a unique spell trait, a minimum MCL increase of 1 and their best spells. Gaining 3 or so MCL seems like a fair trade for this steep price, so that their new Sorc empowered tactical det, multivial, horn of thunder, etc are all worth the trade and have viable scaling. Right now you just brick your spellcaster. You have to invest at least 22 points into this tree just to get multiclass casting up to par with caster levels of pure casters. In exchange you lose Cores, Spells, and EP into slight benefits to an dmg type most multiclass wont find use it (chaos). Adding MCL to Wild Mage either in tier 4 and/or its mid tier cores helps fix this. If this is too much power in one tree, maybe put the mcl in tier 2 and 3 cores of the elemental savant trees for their respective elements instead of just the CL increase. Now this does inevitably buff sorc savants if done in their tree, but I'm hoping a similar thing can be done to make a unique, wild mage specific savant trees as per Dragonlord and Ravager.
ALSO: mixed magics currently does nothing rn lmao. I have just been adding caster levels to my dc's through filigrees and been taking in data as if I was running without filigrees and mixed magics was working
The introduction of Wild mage means we have a Chaos based caster!
Chaos spells end at level 4 (chaos hammer), in total you have access to: chaos bolt, chaos sphere, wild strike, and chaos hammer. Of these spells, only chaos hammer has epic scaling's as the others cap off at caster level 10. In addition, the only destiny tree that provides any direct synergy with chaos casting is exalted angel through its light and alignment spell power boost and light spells. The only notable Chaos spell for epics is the Wild Mage capstone, which is a chaos version of Acid well.
Rework Hellball into a level 8 or 9 Sorc only spell. It does guaranteed Chaos dmg and 3 random elements of 3d20 + 15 acid, electric, fire, and sonic damage to enemies in an area. as a note to the devs, Hellball currently only counts your epic caster levels, not heroics, which is why its so weak rn.
Add somewhere deep into the tree (t5 or t4+ core) a multiselector of "Your *element of choice* spells gain an additional 2 points of chaos dmg per caster level, scaling with spell power. This appears already in blightcaster t5 core and would greatly add to the spell depth of WM pures. This allows for Wild mage pures to also dip deep into their respective savant trees so that they gain some spell variety by nature of working with an element in addition to chaos dmg.
Draconic needs chaos support or Magus does. Light and alignment synergy exists in Exalted Angel which is nice for the cleric/fvs multiclass (if multiclassing with Mixed magics gets revamped) but all other multiclass options and even chaos pure WM's really suffer in epics right now from a lack of a good epic attack, mantle, and passive buffs.
Make Shiradi spell proc chance scale with wild magic surge chance.
-Now I know caster Shiradi is a slippery slope, but Wild Mage and Shiradi is a match made in heaven and you limit the interaction to just Wild Mages so its not best in slot for all casters. even if its 1/2 of your Wild Magic Surge chance being added, it captures the essence of chaos and makes Shiradi a viable tree.
Add a "master of Chaos" epic feat which adds 10 MCL to WM chaos spells.
-As per above, the defining spells of this new architype currently loses its spell's viability in epics. a "master of chaos" epic feat would give the class a lot of mileage but I would assume the devs have already foreseen this.
I'm assuming this is planned but like, its gotta be said just in case.
Currently WM is great for heroic leveling due to its SLAs and t3's Power in Chaos, but REALLY falls of in epics with a lack of spell scaling and variety. I feel like the combination of Wild Magic Surges and the Wild Mage tree does create a unique player experience and has its own feel. What is of note here is the listed wild magic surges does SSG a disservice as many of the unlisted effects are straight up cool and good (mass flesh to stone, move speed, goldskin, luck bonus to dc's etc etc). I think many forum readers really don't get to see the surge's true picture and are focusing on a couple of bad apple effects which do deserve a second run through if time permits.
Now admittedly there's A lot more I wanna get into (savant synergy with certain classes being planned or not, non sorc spell books having the correct elemental affinities for savant benefits, the cost of getting to certain enhancement nodes, the 3rd core of WM "riches of randomness". But this is the first look into the tree and architype so I think what is above are the big things that need to be tackled in my own opinion. To the devs: I really like this archetype in essence, but there's a lot of interactions that are terra incognita right now that should be addressed, especially in regards to multiclass caster functionality with MCL, DC scaling's, spell depth, Main stating, and compatibility in epic trees. PLEASE please please double back on things like Mixed magics and lack of MCL and see if they can be tweaked to be more beneficial to their intended playstyle and builds.
That is all for now. Have a lovely day
Only logged back in to comment after a long time lurking.
Safe to say i'd echo what you posted.
Thanks for sharing.
Only hoping SSG takes some of the constructive feedback here.
Neat stuff from the patch so far, this archetype has some great potential.
EvilDragon
Well-known member
I leave my idea for the caster level thing here.
It really doesn't have to be Wild Mage exclusive. Mixing caster levels isn't really meaningful here when WM CL is only given to other classes.
Graceana
Stealer of Souls
KozyBean
Well-known member
Hello beloved cool wedding dice gifts Steelstar!!!! Loved meeting you at PAX East meetup! I know peeps probably already said this, but just thought I'd also add my vote if there is a way to get Chaos Hammer. That would be awesome!!!! OH! and can we change the flight path of the chaos sphere please too!? It sometimes doesn't hit. That would be awesome and much appreciated! <3
Much love, excited about the wild mage and myth drannor! Grats on the hard work to everyone at DDO
Kozy <3
<3Much love, excited about the wild mage and myth drannor! Grats on the hard work to everyone at DDO
Kozy <3
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Erork07
Member
I feel like this doesn't fit well for a core 5 that someone can pick up at level 12. it's very rare to be MRR cap at heroic levels, and definitely for people with few to none past lifes.
I like the effect and idea though, maybe another effect is in order.
Lazuli
Well-known member
Core 5 it's at lv 18 and with 30 points spent on the tree. If you've made it this far, it's an investment for epic levels.
This is how I approach everything in life. Candidate interviews, interview reviews, house work, cooking, pretty much everything. Why bother doing something if you aren't going to do something you can be proud of?
Thau of Blackmoore
Well-known member
Wild Mage in its current form is all LOSS. There is zero gain.
The SLA's are horrible. They can't even kill wilderness mobs in COGs at level 20 [16FvS AoV / 4 WM]
There are zero good build combos from a proposed "strong splash tree."
Isnt that backwards? 16 wm/4fvs? That is a horrible test of the efficacy of WM slas.
Sarlona Raiding
Well-known member
As an individual player you can opt in or out of negative effects on you personally. If you opt in just consider how it will sound when you explain to your party members that your dancing balls went down because you died from your own wild magic.RNG is RNG!
If the theme is wild magic, it has to be implemented as a whole. Nullifying the bads and very bads would kill the wild magic feature. Personally I didn't like it, but if it's just to have good and very good better to change the theme/name to something else.
If I was responsible for the wild magic choice it wouldn't even be on my list of options, but since it's going to be implemented, let it be as faithful as possible.
Edit: If it's going to put wild magic as a stance, clikie, please do the same with Arcane Supremacy that it doesn't make any sense to be passive for Archmage.
It's good there isn't an opt-in for not negatively impacting party members. Aside from the potential for griefers, the negative social impact outweighs any perceived benefit of rng being rng. The devs made the right call by not allowing wild magic to negatively impact party members. I'll probably be happy when a wild mage joins the party as we will get periodic positive buffs.
At the moment almost everyone I know has a bit of rng fatique with rare reaper bonuses, the cursed card system. etc.
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RobShow
Well-known member
1. I already said that I didn't like wild magic and wouldn't put it in the game for players and there's no need to explain why (again).
2. Again! You can leave everything as it is and change the name to anything, it doesn't matter, except wildmagic.
3. Following the logic of removing inherent characteristics that harm the player, we will remove magic points from casters, free spells for everyone. After all, a caster without magic points to perform his spells has a negative impact on the group.
From this forum I learned that if you don't like something, choose something else, preferably the top tier of the moment.
Wild idea for Wild Mage: some type of steady stream of single target dps that cost mana. I'm thinking something that would be used only at boss fights where casters become less useful, and maybe give casters a way to empty their blue bar. If we could shoot for the damage output to be somewhere just below what a ranged dps does, but a steady stream of DPS that could eat a blue bar fairly quickly. And the surge/chaos part of this would be that it also inflicts random debuffs on caster & target (perhaps the same debuffs)...but after a caster has used this ability for some amount of time they'd be loaded down with debuffs..making it a glass cannon type experience.
in my head I see a beam leaving the caster and connecting to the target that stays connected so long as mana is being spent...it'd also make for a fun visual.
if done well, Wild Mages may be encouraged to join raids...though, I'd want to make it exciting for the caster, so the burn rate should be high enough so that the caster must judiciously choose when they should exhaust their mana.
I think this could also be fun for aggro management, b/c if caster went to hard to fast, the whole party would be watching as the boss crosses the distance of the beam from target to caster.
or something like the above...I"m sure it can be improved.
in my head I see a beam leaving the caster and connecting to the target that stays connected so long as mana is being spent...it'd also make for a fun visual.
if done well, Wild Mages may be encouraged to join raids...though, I'd want to make it exciting for the caster, so the burn rate should be high enough so that the caster must judiciously choose when they should exhaust their mana.
I think this could also be fun for aggro management, b/c if caster went to hard to fast, the whole party would be watching as the boss crosses the distance of the beam from target to caster.
or something like the above...I"m sure it can be improved.
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