Thread: Dakkota's Wizard DPS Guide (SF - may contain slightly dated information)

This is my attempt and stab at a wizard guide from my perspective. There is always more than one way to skin a cat and other wizards/guides may have better approaches for other people. Some parts that were hard to expand on were the buffs part, whereas other guides have done a good job at covering all the buffs there are to be had. If I miss any that I intended to include I will get them included. Open to any criticism too or being pointed out if I am flat out wrong about any of the information I provide. I try. I will also work possibly to get more images where they could be helpful.


Most and Many parts of this will be mentioned under the assumption of a raiding wizard. If you only do PUG's on your wizard the same will basically apply. Our Role is the same in either situation and this guide is to assist that role so if anything this will contain bonus/extra information for non-raiders.



Chapter I - Spells (short and sweet)

This is a picture of my hotbar that has all I need to DPS and function in raids. This is extremely basic and mostly given. This is also a quick visual way to make sure your packing the essential buttons. Hotbar order has no baring on DPS, it is 100% preference. If you wan't a visual check of all spells or any other set of useful items, you can find them here.

Chapter II. AA specs.

A lot of stuff from your AA's will be referenced throughout so I choose to do this part second.

Character traits - pick +4int, +2.5% hp, and +physical mitigation when the choices are available. Our best master 2 choice for level 85 is frigid gift.



Sorcerer Tree - I would recommend maxing Freehand despite my choices shown. As you can see the important AA's in this tree are Mental Recovery (56% recovery speed) and Mental Acuity (+24% crit bonus to freehand's temp buff). You want rank 2 Blast of Devastation.



Wizard Tree - If you want manaburn, talk to a wizard who uses it. I don't support it. Max out your cold side. With no desire for manaburn I also max out my heat side. When do spells like Solar Flare and Incinerate get used to even make AA in them worth being spent? The answer is fights where you have to stand max range (35m+) and typically lose usage of Magma Chamber/blast of devastation/fusion/firestorm. The better your gear gets the more cast speed you tend to lose in SF - when the time comes I like those spells to be on their A game so I don't see the AA as wasted. SF line on the bottom is very powerful. Priority in which you spec them is up to you, all that matters is the end-game picture, when you have 250 AA, they will all be speced as shown. Get Fiery Blast.



Shadows Tree - General row = your preference. If you are an extreme min/maxer get the points in the deity spell buff as it will add some INT to your summoned Deity pet if you have one that uses INT.

Mage line - Master Strike is not important enough to get attention. Solar flare should be a given choice as it give base damage and crit bonus, you don't hit it much but this goes back to my "spells on their A game" theory so when I do hit it, it gives all it can. My other preference is survivability but with the other choices having non DPS barring outcomes, its truly up to you. Get bewilderment and remember it is not interruptible.

Sorcerer - Ignore my points spent in magi shield, those should go in freehand. Spec the 3 I have points in for max DPS. Get thunderclap and remember like bewilderment, it cannot be interrupted.

Wizard - I give full support to my 4 choices here. While 3 are given I know my choice of immolation causes debate. It now debuffs elemental (opposed to heat only pre SF) so it debuffs the same as what ice spears does. Our main debuff drops ~2300 elemental mit. Immolation AA maxed causes it to debuff ~1040 elemental mit. Debuffs are never overrated. Debuffs expire and people forget to redebuff, they get dispelled, people die and their debuffs drop. You can never have enough personal means of debuff if you ask me because that is one of the main catalysts that gives us high hits. You can't time other peoples debuffs but you can coordinate your own, always. Just because a debuff it self doesn't display physical damage over the mobs head when you drop it, have faith that the damage you are reaping while its on, is greater than lack-of. Get Hailstorm and Heat Mastery.

Some final notes on AA specs or granted spells you may not understand the function of at first glance:

Fiery Blast - This ability takes 35% of the front end damage you put out for the 10s its on the mob and returns that damage as a DD nuke. Damage that is not accounted for is double attacks, all gear/spell procs (not fully tested with every one but fairly certain), and DoT ticks. So use your biggest front end damage spells for typically best results. Fusion/IC/BoF/Rays/Hailstorm etc.

Icicle Lash AA - this adds a green text portion to our spell that procs ice lash off any combat hit (CA or melee). The greater the rank the better the melee proc damage is.

Heat Mastery - using fireshape will not cause cold spells to gain the bonus of Heat Mastery...it knows better.

Warm Blooded - The heat debuff granted to Immolation scales with level. Right now at 90 rank 5 gives 1044 elemental debuff

Ambidextrous Casting - This is indeed a combat art. With consolidated crits remember that this CA will crit for us too now. Also it will proc any melee proc temp buffs active. You can hit a mob with this CA mid cast of a spell so it is free DPS, but be aware it will put you into auto attack mode as to not screw yourself if your trying to aim our frontal spells. On the same token if you are in a messy pile trying to frontal a mob, this is perfect to put you facing the right direction.

Chapter III: self-available utility.

If you go back to the hotbar image you will see the 2 top hotbars are loaded with other stuff. Here is some stuff I recommend you have on your hotbar and I'll give brief rhyme and reason to it if its not a given to everyone why.

Trauma/elemental/noxious/arcane cures - Goes without saying that you should always have the last resort capability of curing yourself. When my group gets smashed by an AoE me only me and the troub and left living...I cure that AoE off before it ticks again so I can keep living. If an AoE you know has to be cured hits and for some dumb reason it looks like your healer is going to fail, cure yourself. If you die to a tick of an AoE, while its possibly your healers fault, you were not helpless. Also, even arcane should be used. Though rarely used, when they are used, you'd feel stupid if you were cocky enough to not have an arcane pot.


Quel'Ule Cocktail -



Use this early on incoming of grouped mobs. It will provide a nicely debuffed mob for our AoE's and the other mages in raid should spike nicely as well. We all know more raid dps helps our own so be a team player, trust me. Second good application of this I have found is I achieved one of my highest Fiery Blasts (691k) while actually using this. If you cast this debuff then go immediately into a Fiery Blast, you have better odds at a nice fiery blast and again, dropping a 5k debuff to all magical damage types is healthy for your whole raid.


Quel'ule Arcane Destruction -



I do not use this temp. It is a 15m duration (~1 hour base recast it appears) temp that has a 3.0x pm dmg proc that hits for 325dmg (x2). Cannot be modified so no crits. The cocktail crits and on huge mobs can do semi respectable damage on top of the massive debuff. These 2 items share the same reuse. Considering time spent between mobs at moments, wiping and having to re-pull or anything that disrupts a steady flow, I see too much dead time generally going to this temp except during a smooth labs/UD trash session. Whereas the other one is almost always used during an explosive high DPS situation. It's truly a preference and play style, I've given why I use the cocktail over this one and what this one has to offer - they are just icings on the cake.

Screwloose Bomb -



Yes, the Unrest item. They are commonly found on the broker or you can always parade into Unrest and kill Screwloose. This is another handy debuff and though its values are nothing to write home about, the fact this can come down to a .5s casting spell, it is nice to use when you want an extra guarantee of heavy damage for 36s. Consider that just this and ice spears would debuff your mob nearly 5k. Also, the way it works is sort of different than most spells. It blue AoE's from the mob you are targeting. Think of hailstorm expiring on a mob, the blue AoE does not come from you but from the mob. So although it appears as a blue AoE you do need a target and that target is where the damage will explode from (including hitting the target itself).


Exceptional Freedom of Mind and Freedom of Action - Freedom of mind breaks many stun/stifle effects. Freedom of Action breaks many root/slow effects. Use them. Point and case.

Our Power regens - They crit and are very useful. Vital Transfer is the best one. Mana Intromission is an ally feed or with a quick tap of the F1 key, a secondary self feed. Harvest Mana I would just put somewhere else unless you have the red adorn for it. The red adornment though will conflict this guide so I'll go ahead and say just keep harvest mana for regen in between pulling if you must. Dispel Magic has a small power return. Don't forget about it.

Arcane Cure - I like to keep 1 regular vanilla arcane cure to whoever my target is, and one with a macro to myself (or [important healer in raid].) The self target one is nice to have around so when you do cure arcane yourself, its just one less fumble of targeting you have to deal with.

Run/Walk button - when you get feared for Gods sake don't go running astray at 100mph. Keep this button around, you'll find use for it.

Bottled Breath - everyone got one for free a year ago in LoN, It's nice to have there. Sometimes you just need to clutch the situation.

/act end macro - we are wizards and parsing is a huge part of most of our interest of the class. If you don't know this then it will help. Make a macro that does "/act end". This will immediately cause the parser to stop/begin new parse of encounter. Hit this the second a mob dies for a more accurate parse of your performance. If not it is easy to have ACT's default settings tick a few second after everything is dead and lowering your parse. This is also how people do things like begin their parse when HM spawns take place. (activate HM script > /act end > begin parse fresh at beginning of HM fight). One of many uses for it.

The three green pots -
Specialist's Elixir of Intellect - increases intelligence by 92.1
Specialist's Elixir of Constitution - increases health by 525
Expert's Elixir of Second Sight - increases crit chance by 4%

These all share the same effect slot so only 1 is usable at a time. Use the Health one if you need that extra chunk of survivability. The ideal one is the intelligence pot. Use the crit chance option as needed. Whave several external resources outside of gear to reach 100% crit, this is just another among many.

Weapon temporary adorns -
Quel'ule Scroll of Power - Increases crit bonus by 1%
Quel'ule Scroll of Combat - Increases crit chance by 4%

Another case where you ideally will use the crit bonus but use the crit chance if you need the resource.


Useful alternative gear - This is gear you can find in some random parts of the game that have very worthy effects. These items mostly turn out to be symbols since we can swap them mid combat if we wish. Here are a few worth mentioning if you are the type who doesn't mean going to some odd ends and places to improve your toon.

Trakanons Gaze - drop from Trakanon's zone located deep in Veeshans Peak. This clicky is a 24 target hate decrease. Bewilderment often isn't enough, this item will help any wizard.

Edict of the Whispered Word - drop from end boss in Chel'sith. This item carries a 1.6x min damage spell proc that prevents AoE for 6s at a time. This proc is very useful and can provide great survivability when learning AoE heavy fights. The raw DPS gains are almost non-existent (it has +20 ability mod) but the utility of it is nice to have around. I have seen this item worn on myself and others on everything from Avatars, to 4 rune theer, to UD wing 3. Unless you have a Construct symbol you are probably not too uber to not have this item.

Pantrila's Honor - This is a symbol dropped from the x4 contested mob Pantrila in the back of the Temple of the Scale, located in Tenebrous Tangle. He is 74 so mentor if you wish to kill him. His symbol is a simple instant cast power regen clicky. Nothing amazing but with swappable symbols this may appeal to some people.


City Signets - These are the most commonly known available self utility items in game. Instead of listing them all here, visit your home city and check out your local City Merchant. They offer everything from 12 - 24 target raid revives, control effect immunity, AoE immunity, self power/hp heals and more. Buy them according to what you see yourself needing in situations. For example, nobody is above having a Redemption of Failure, a 1 time rez for 12 - 24 raid members depending on which tier you buy.

Tinkering - This skill will allow you to create many utility items for yourself as well. And again, instead of listing every item, what needs to be known is it is an avenue for more self utility and if you are interested in spending the time to get a skill like this on your toon, you should visit the tradeskill forums or find a guide on Tinkering or check it out on Eq2i, there is information out there about Tinkering, this is just throwing a heads up.

Float fall from mounts - Disc and Carpet mounts provide safe-fall. There are also obtainable mounts in game with helpful combat stats in raid and heroic zones but these are available through city merchants to anyone with a proper level guild.

Brock's Thermal Shocker - This is obtained from a Quest in Bonemire. You can search Eq2i for the item and relating quest if interested. This item is somewhat special because you can cast it under most stifle effects and maybe a few other control effects. It also has a 10 meter range and thus it lights up if you are within 10m of the mob and goes inactive if you are beyond 10 meters. It is a nice indicator of your range when dealing with close range sensitive fights, situations and abilities.

Food & Drink - There is an optimal choice in this small area as well. You want as much INT as you can gather, here are the top stats you can find from this area.



Iced Pomegranate Ambrosia - this drink gives you 21.5 INT. The most any drink offers possibly excluding a recipe made drink found in Emerald Halls. This is not a very realistic choice though as Emerald Halls just isn't the hot farm spot anymore. These often are very pricey if available on your brokers at all.

Bamboo Remoulade Topped Octopus - this food provides 20.8 INT. There are other choices that provide 20.8 INT but iirc this one also has the longest duration.

Chapter IV: Gear Related Information

Stats:

Stat Caps - first and foremost before breaking into stats here is a quick run-down of caps or lack of.

INT - curve, but with our mythical working the way it does, we get unique benefit from INT so the curve is not much concern to us anyway.

crit - You will be fine against yellow mobs with 100%, if there is a disparity in 100% vs an overcon mob, at yellow it is quite negligible. Without delving deep into a discussion most times you will not be sitting bulls-eye on 100% crit, so aim to simply push the stat over 100%. If you are sitting right on 100%, don't bend over backwards and sacrifice too much for more crit chance. Look at your parses after you raid, if you were not critting during times when you didn't have non crit debuffs...well then you need more crit chance and there is your answer.

Potency/Crit bonus - no cap. Keep them coming.

Casting speed - 100%

Reuse speed - 100%

Hate Reduction - 50%

Ability mod - 50% of a spells base damage. No realistic concern to the Wizard class though, ignore the thought of the cap.

Recovery Speed - 100%

Crit Chance - One of the foremost important stats to have. I will not go into great detail about what to do about crit chance as you are leveling up and reaching 100, but once you reach level 90 do your best to try to get your crit chance to 100 while paying attention to potency/crit bonus as well. Use white adornments, use our crit dmg boost familiar pet, use 4% crit chance pots, use whatever you have to foremost to get your crit chance to a near 100% rate. This is not a difficult stat to come by and once you begin gearing up in heroic gear you will find an abundance of it if you keep your eyes open.

INT - We can never underestimate important of INT. Our spells have the greatest damage spreads and we get some of the greatest benefit among mages for INT beyond ~1200 INT iirc. Our mythical damage proc also calculates a spell damage bonus based on 30% of our INT stat. So...Stack it up cause you arn't going to get too much.

Casting Speed - 100% casting speed is the cap which equates to half of the base casting speed of a spell. To make example, Ice Comet has a base cast speed of 4s, it cannot be casted faster than 2s. Spell Casting speed does not work on abilitys but ability casting speed works on spells.

Reuse speed - 100% reuse is the cap which equates to half of a spells reuse. Ice Comets base reuse is 45s it cannot be re-casted faster than 22.5s. Same applies as above for stats that grant Ability reuse or Spell reuse.

Recovery Speed - Boosts to this stat reduct the time in between your spell casts. Most spells have a recovery time of .5s. 100% recovery speed will reduce that to .25s. This makes for smoother and quicker chain casting.

Potency - increases base damage of spells. This stat is king.

Crit Bonus - Increases the crit multiplier of spells. Simple term its like base damage you cant see till after the nuke hits, it is viewed almost equally in power as potency.

Ability mod - Add X amount of damage to the front end of your spell. Ie. a Dot that hits for 100 then ticks for 100 3 times that has 50 spell damage added, it would hit for 150, then tick for 100 3 times, not tick for 150 each tick. Spell damage is not granted to spell double attacks either.

Critical Mitigation - found on armor. Helps you not take AoE's like the wet paper bags we are, or so it at least helps. Ie. if you are raiding you should be wearing a robe with 20% crit mit even if something legendary or from battlegrounds looks more appealing, that stuff will get you killed in raids. If you are not raiding, crit mit isn't necessary.

Qualifying Pet Buffs - no, they don't work on protoferno or anything we have.

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Chapter IV (b):

How useful are these stats and how do they rank up against one another in power?

I am not going to attempt to create a system that says "this much int is worth this much ability mod is worth this much potency" etc. I will give a few pointers in picking between stat options.

Crit bonus vs. Potency:

Do not try to decide between potency and crit bonus...in most cases you will not be facing a perfect scenario of; Do I want 3 crit bonus or 3 potency? In most gear cases there will be another proc or any number of other stats mixed in making the choice more complex than whether you want the one with more crit bonus or more potency. As a general rule of thumb (not ultimate truth) potency and crit bonus are far more worth equipping than the other stats, and focusing on these 2 stats will not leave you void of the others because gear will offer a variety. What I do is add my potency and crit bonus into an imaginary sum of a stat that you can call whatever you want. You often will not go wrong by choosing the item with the greatest sum of crit bonus and potency. In the case of nearly identical gear or adornments, choose potency of crit bonus when you can. Don't choose 2 potency over 4 crit bonus though is what I mean by this. But Choose a white adorn for 2% potency over 2% crit bonus, hope that makes sense.

Why is potency and crit bonus better than spell damage if spell damage seems to be doing just as good benefits to my spells?

There are probably more mathematical reasons why but it's really pretty simple. In a raid situation you have often more spell DA chance, a boatload more of procs that are critting (pom, potm, ice lash, curse of darkness, elemental toxicity etc) and if they are critting they are probably receiving your potency/crit bonus stat benefits too. If you buff 2 wizards with tandem and one had 30% more potency than the other, the one with 30% potency will get bigger tandem procs. So while spell damage will only effect your front end damage your spell is doing, the crit bonus or potency will effect the front end damage, subsequent DoT ticks, double attacks, and the slew of procs that fire off when you land that spell. Potency and Crit Bonus just carry far more weight in the numbers they pump up accross the board compared to the narrow benefit spell damage gives in comparison.

Spell damage information:

Spell damage has a cap but it is no concern to us. You could get the best piece of gear for every slot and still the cap is meaningless to us, so nevermind it. Keep in mind for items/effects that increase spell damage by static amounts, like 10%, some spells will receive extra benefit due to the cap and how it works though. The spell damage cap is roughly 50% the damage of a spell. Fundamentally, a spell that does 500 dmg can't receive more than 250 spell damage.

The cap for a DoT is different because it is calculated by taking 50% of the damage accumulated from the entire DoT. So if a spell hits for 500, then ticks for 250 twice, that spell should cap out at 500 spell damage. This effect is exaggerated in some of our powerful DoTs like Hailstorm and Storming Tempest. Just a tidbit worth knowing.

Also the mechanics for spell damage work differently for AoE spells. AoE/AE spells receive 1/3 the spell damage granted but this is actually more than made up for if you hit more than 3 targets. This was done so that AoE's don't get excessive power out of spell mod considering they hit more than 1 mob. While causing it to divide by 3 may sound bad, if you think about it, if you hit 8 mobs with firestorm you are almost getting 3x the amount of spell damage granted. This is also the way reactive spells like Ice Shield work. This mechanic shouldn't have much barring on what we actually do for DPS but, every bit of knowledge is useful at times.

Chapter IV (c) Procs:

Damage procs: They do not crit. This is what the "cannot be modified except by direct means" equates to. If that tag is in the same column as the procs "on any combat or spell hit blah blah" area that means its proc rate is locked at 1.8x or 2.0x whatever its default value is. Most SF proc rates are modifiable, so rest assure.

Stacking similar damage procs: this is OK to do. As far as the ones you will find multiple of in SF like Torrent, Pestilential Rain, Mystic Havoc, Toxic Tempest can all proc individually. If you have 2 items that proc Mystic Havoc III you can get 2 mystic Havoc III procs from one spell, they work independently. Don't avoid doubling/trippling up on damage procs if that is where gear selection is leading you.

Effect procs: These are passive temp effects like procs that grant potency, crit bonus and spell damage. These procs are not worth stacking as the most powerful one takes precedence. If you have 2 critical vigor procs that give 5% crit bonus, you cannot get 10% crit bonus out of them, you just have a greater chance of having 5% crit bonus active. A Kings Legacy proc that grants 5% base damage will be over-ruled by an active Kings Legacy III proc that gives 9% base damage. It will not drop the effect but only the best one takes effect, and with abundance of group granted procs like Kings Legacy, if you have 2 pieces with it, try to find an alternative because most Kings Legacy items are intended to hold most their power within the proc itself, so you could probably find a better choice for one or the other.

Different procs that do not stack. There are some cases, few, but cases of effects that don't stack because SoE felt like making it that way. Here are 3 effects that do not stack for example; Dark orb of the mind's plasma amplification (furthermore wand of crystallized plasma), the T8 TSO Avatar base damage symbol, and SF shoulders or any item containing Vicious Focus (base damage). These are the 3 big hitters I know of that conflict one another and my personal recommendation would be to not wear any of these items with one another...there is probably a better choice than 2 powerful procs causing conflict. Here is a simpler view of stuff I wouldn't wear together and I surrounded the item I would choose of the 3 in *'s.

1) Dark orb of the mind / Symbol of Arcane Mastery / *SF proc shoulders*
2) Ykeshan Hoop of Pestilance / *Earring of Deep Caverns* (this I realize is fairly debatable, but this is still my choice I go with, to not wear them together)

If I should discover more or have forgotten some, I will add them here.


Final Thought:

Do not try to balance your stats/effects out, as long as the piece you are putting on will create a bigger boom than the previous, it is good to go. My cast speed slows down with each gear upgrade while my personal training dummy parses go up. I'm casting slower but the increase in the boom is making up for it. More damage is more damage.

Chapter V, Buffs:

part A: Buffs/Utility the Wizard provides

Ro's Blade - base 5.0x min melee proc.
Converge - 4% hate transfer (if fighter) and power regen dmg shield proc for recipient.
Ice Lash - (with aa) 22s duration spell and melee damage proc.


Ro's Blade - I have a certain priority I always buff my group with. Bards first and foremost get Ro's Blade from me, you have to show love to your bards. next candidate if present would be Rogues/predators/Crusaders, these classes have been known to end up in mage groups. If there is nobody beyond the bard to buff I would then give it to the Enchanters as they are the best at melee among the mages. If you're feeling frisky or no hard feelings will be given, you can always buff yourself with Ro's blade and throw down a chunk of extra DPS for yourself if you get in and melee.

Converge - put this on a tank that will be taking damage. If the 4% hate xfer is really make or break, you are probably riding 90+ on the aggro meter anyway. Buff the tank who will get hit the most as the greater value of this buff IMO is the power regen. Or vice versa buff a tank with it who perhaps has the worst power management of your raids tanks. If you are unclear how the power regen works, 10% chance when the recipient takes damage that you & them will both receive a slight power increase.

Ice Lash - explained earlier and fairly obvious what it does and how to use it. As much as you can.



Part B: Buffs you get from other classes.

I am choosing to sort this class by class and I will write to the best of my knowledge what benefits a wizard would seek from them in their group or raid. Every class tends to give *something* so I am not going to show classes that despite being a general clash with the wizard and possibly giving something greater than a literal 0 benefit, are still not something you would ever choose in a group setup concerning yourself. Example, Moderate is a dehate, and dehate is nice...but I'm not going to remotely suggest you should put a guardian in your group for dehate. I'm gonna keep it down to those classes you really shouldn't mind in your group. I will try to make mention though if a class has at minimum a beneficial raid-wide buff.

Note, some of these values may be at the values they are due to AA bonuses, red adornments, mastered spells or alot of other various buffs. I will try to provide to highest version of the buff within reason and if you come across one but scaled down verses whats listed here, the benefit is probably just as desirable so it shouldn't effect the bottom line.


Fighters:

Beserker - 5% raid-wide reuse (ability name pending)

Guardians - no

Brusier - no

Monk - have them in raid. Calm Tranquility is beneficial for us as it provides a raidwide 10% cast speed.

Paladin - Fearless Morale - 8% potency.
Amends - massive hate transfer. If you are an amends target you are pretty safe.
Heretics Destruction - 15% base/crit bonus for raid for 10s.

Shadowknight -
Raidwide:
Unholy Strength (5.16% spell damage + 1.3% potency)

Groupwide:
Unholy Hunger (10% reuse speed, 10% cast speed, 1.8ppm lifetap proc that crits & modifiable)
Fearless Morale (8% potency)
Battle Leadership (~40 to all skills)
Aura of Leadership (~750 recurring physical ward)

Tempbuffs:
Death March (63% cast speed, 181 Int, CC immune)
Essence Siphon (always up, 66 INT, 120 ability mod)

Scouts:

Assassin - no

Ranger - no

Swashbuckler - no

Brigand - no

Bard: Whether its dirge or troub they will give you these. This is mostly to show a dirge is not *terrible* for us but definitely doesn't replace a troub by any means. Double bard is cool but, the most you will get out of a dirge beyond these buffs is nothing amazing for our dps.
Don't Kill the Messenger - 8% crit chance (12% is troub AA)
Allegro - 8% casting speed
RO/VC - powerful temp dmg proc, damage amount is determined similar to how wizards power a Fiery Blast
Dextrous Sonata - 10% crit bonus

Specific to the Troub:
Alin's Serene Serenade: 34% dehate
Aria of magic: passive group-wide damage proc chance with a very high proc rate
Precism of the Maestro (potm) - a 100% temp damage proc with every spell. Troubador flavored Ice Lash.
Resonance - Range increase by 5
Harmonization - passive buff that increases the duration of beneficial temp procs by 10% (ie. your fiery blast will now have 11s damage window). and Reduces DoT durations which makes them do their damage in a quicker time.
Song of Magic - increases casting skills (disruption/subjugation/ordination etc)
Jester's Cap - 30s temp buff given to a single target at a time that gives 40% reuse speed. For many raid buffed players this will mean capped reuse on every spell.
Ubeat Tempo - Troub version of TC. 15% cast speed, 10% reuse, 25% (?) recovery speed, and adds an extra tick to DoTs. The DoT benefit is why other classes usually get TC over the wizard. If you have no TC though this buff rocks.


Healers:

Mystic-
Ancestry - buff that increases trigger chance of your procs, including gear.
Ritual of Alacrity - 30s single ally temp buff that increases casting, recast and recovery speed of all spells by 33%. Defilers also have this and I believe it is the only thing they have for our DPS worth mentioning so I will leave defiler spot empty.
Ancestral Avatar - single ally passive buff that increases all stats (importantly INT) by 114.



Defiller - Not much DPS buffage is provided by a defiller aside from RoA if they spec it.

Templar - Though you typically wont get a templar for a DPS group, they do have nice buffs.
Blessings - proc increase passive group-wide buff
Divine Recovery - 24s temp buff that increases casting speed by 50%, recovery speed by 33% and if spec'ed for it will have 10% potency
Sanctuary - Immunity to all control effects. Temp group-wide buff that lasts 40s.

Inquisitor -
Act of War - Small damage proc that triggers off any combat or spell hit (depending on AA) that varies from 1.0 - 2.0x a min rates.
Chilling Invigoration - A 10 trigger reactive heal/dmg spell. The damage portion is high and if you are taking steady damage from AoEs, you will proc it. If you are taking brutality hopefully your Inq throws this on you.
Fanatical Devotion - a temp buff triggered by the Inquisitor damaging the mob (15% chance to activate the temp), once its up it lasts for 10s at a time and provides a 100% damage proc for a small amount of damage. If your inq is doing lots of DPS this will do some decent numbers for your parse.
Fanatacism - Stats you need to worry about are the +123 int and 9.6% ability reuse this buff passive buff provides.
Inquest - If your Inquisitor happens to use the red adornment (not a popular choice) their Inquest buff will grant 2% spell DA as an added benefit.


Fury -
Tortoise Shell - Aoe immunity
Lucidity - +163 int/+1563 hp
Fae fire - temporary group-wide buff giving each person 3 dmg proc triggers that trigger off any damage spell you hit the mob with.
Primal Fury - Though typically given to melee the mage benefits are extreme too. +121 to INT (and other main stats) and a proc with a chance to trigger a 10s buff which grants +10% potency, +10% reuse, +12.8% casting. The other stats are melee related and of no concern.
Energy Vortex - a temp fury buff that wil give you +10% cb for 30s.

Warden - you don't really want one.

Mages: *note: mage INT group buffs do not stack with each other*

Wizard - See if you can time your ice lash for nearly full time Ice Lash temps.

Warlock -
Curse of Darkness (group) - AE damage proc that lasts 12s
Propagations - Increases proc chance of spells. This does not work on gear. I know it works on Ro's Blade but am not sure if it works on anything else meaningful...even warlocks don't like it that much.
Dark Pact - Provides a boost to casting skills like disruption/subjugation etc. Having this buff or lack of does not seem to make a difference.

Conjuror -
Elemental Toxicity (group) - AE damage proc lasting 20s
Fire From within (raidwide) - 3% potency, (3% hp?).

Necromancer -
Elemental Toxicity (group) AE damage proc lasting 20s
Beyond the Grave (raid wide) - 3% max power, 3% potency, 5% resistability reduction

Coercer -
Enraging Demeanor - This is a hate gain but if the coercer has the right red adorn (?) it will also give 10% potency.
Peaceful Link - Dehate worthy & with a common red adorn (?) grants 5% crit bonus.
POM - spell/melee damage proc both enchanters get.
Channeled Focus - Unsure if this speced ability is common but it offers a short duration of massive power reduction, cast speed, attack speed and trigger chance increase.

Illusionist -
Time Compression - 20% cast speed, 10% reuse, 40% recovery and 5% spell DA (spell DA is an AA)
Tandem - High chance damage proc and with red adorn 5% crit bonus
POM - Spell/melee damage proc both enchanters get.
Time Warp - A buff that has a 5 second warning icon (shows up in maintained window) followed immediatly by 5s of 100% spell DA chance.
Destructive Rampage - 10% base damage
Channeled Focus - Unsure if this speced ability is common but it offers a short duration of massive power reduction, cast speed, attack speed and trigger chance increase.

Chapter VI: Adornments

Adornments are more beneficial than they have ever been come this expansion. It's very worth while to adorn all your gear that you don't plan on upgrading in the immediate future with fabled/top level adornments. With a maximum DPS mindset, I will list the best adornments to use per slot, beginning with white adornments. Though not all slots even offer DPS oriented adornments, I will also list regardless which choice I see as the most optimum adornment for our class. Certain slots where I have both 4.6% casting speed & 4.6% crit chance, it is simple when choosing which to use. If you are not over 100% crit in raids (or solo if you like to be certain) without a crit adornment, then you should use the crit adornment until you can sacrifice the crit for casting speed.

White:
Cloak - Ethereal Adornment of Swift Casting (superior) - 4.6% casting speed
Ethereal Adornment of Critical Chance (superior) - 4.6% crit chance

Head - Ethereal Adornment of Intelligence (greater) - +27 INT

Chest - Ethereal Adornment of Heightened Power (superior) - +51 ability mod

Shoulders - Ethereal Adornment of Heightened Power (superior) - +51 ability mod

Forearms - Ethereal Adornment of Swift Casting (superior) - 4.6% casting speed
Ethereal Adornment of Critical Chance (superior) - 4.6% crit chance

Hands - Ethereal Adornment of Endurance (superior) - +295 HP

Legs - Ethereal Adornment of Swift Casting (superior) - 4.6% casting speed
Ethereal Adornment of Critical Chance (superior) - 4.6% crit chance

Boots - Ethereal Adornment of Recovery (superior) - 1.5% spell reuse

Belt - Ethereal Adornment of Intelligence (greater) - +27 INT

1h/2h - Ethereal Adornment of Raw Power (superior) - 2% potency

Secondary/Ranged - Ethereal Adornment of Raw Power (superior) - 2% potency

Ears - Ethereal Adornment of Heightened Power (superior) - +51 ability mod

Rings - Ethereal Adornment of Heightened Power (superior) - +51 ability mod

Wrists - Ethereal Adornment of Swift Casting (superior) - 4.6% casting speed

Neck - Ethereal Adornment of Intelligence (greater) - +27 INT



Red Adornments: Some wizards choose to adorn themselves for more survivability with the Magi Shielding red adorn. Though it is not used in a maximum DPS arrangement of red adorns in parenthesis I will include the red adornment you would use alternatively if you would rather the extra chunk of HP. The unique adornments I am just assigning to the slots mine are on but in reality, you can put them anywhere on the peices, there is significance to why I use hailstorm on the gloves instead of boots etc.


Head - Focus: Ice Comet IV (damage) - +15% base damage to Ice Comet IV.
(Magi Shielding adornment)

Shoulders - Focus: Spell Double Attack - 2% spell DA chance

Chest - Focus: Potency - 2% potency

Forearms - Focus: Potency - 2% potency

Hands - Focus: Hailstorm - Increases base damage of hailstorm by 10%

Legs - Focus: Crit Bonus
(Focus: Ice Comet IV (damage) - +15% base damage to Ice Comet IV.)

Feet - Focus: Ball of Fire VI - Increases base damage of Ball of Fire by 15%




Chapter VII: Deitys

This is a a common question always wondered by wizards which deity is the best. There are 3 arguable ones that would all not be bad choices to use. I will list the 3 I see as the top worthy choices and what blessing and miracle are the stakeholders make it a worthy deity to choose. Check the alignment, which i'll provide, against your toon to make sure you are eligible. You can choose any deity if you are exiled.


Anashti Sul. She is an evil deity.

Pet buff: half int/str

Best Blessing: Hand of Death - 100% dmg proc for 10 min or
Power from beyond - 10% spell/ca damage 10 min.

Best Miracle: Undying Fury - [our only concern] +33% spell double attack for 25s


Application - I listed 2 blessings because I have not personally used them and am not sure which is the best. I would learn towards Power from Beyond unless you are doing an AoE heavy 10 min. I see Anashti as the weakest choice because none of these I see being combined for ultra effects. Undying Fury has a high chance to be awesome but with a max of 17 - 19% spell DA chance raid buffed that still means our 1 chance at hoping we double a fusion or blast of devastation, has almost 50% chance to not double. If the increased odds are on your side, its powerful, but with almost 12 - 17%+ personal buffed and TW up every 1 minute I see greater benefit from the other deitys offered buffs.



Bertoxxulous - Evil deity.

pet buff: full INT

Best Blessing: Grim Aura - Increases all melee and spell damage by 12.5% for 10 min.


Best Miracle: Bertoxxulous' Curse - Increases all spell damage by 50% for 1 min.


Application: Another deity I have not used but the results are not hard to imagine. Total this will give you a minute where you have +62.5% damage to all your spells. Also the Grim Aura appears superior to Sol Ro and Anashti's similar blessings. Nothing tricky to this, hit them both at the same time and enjoy the next 10 minutes, and make sure the first one you are nuking something you can go all out on.


Sol Ro - Neutral deity.

pet buff: full INT

Best Blessing: Inferno's Glory - increases heat based spells by 10% (and 10% reduced power cost for heat spells)

Wrath of the Burning Prince - Your next heat based spells will inflict massive heat damage.


Application: This one causes most question. Here is how Wrath of the Burning Prince works. When you hit the spell, all of your heat based spells (incinerate, immolation, solar flare, ball of fire, Rays etc) if hovered over will have an attached green text that shows the spell has having an additional nuke. The nuke attached is relative to the damage of the spell itself because the spell with the highest damage attachment is Rays of Disintegration, our most powerful heat spell. Firestorm receives this buff but it does not hit every AoE target for massive damage, just one, so don't use it with firestorm. This attached damage component is modified when the spell is as well. That means pre-buff your Rays with Freehand Sorcery and Catalyst when using this. You are free to use it as you choose but here is the best way to make use of it.

First, always try to have inferno's glory buffed if you are going to use WotBP, after all it increases Heat damage. With the way Fiery Blast works taking a percentage of our inflicted damage in 10s and returning that damage on the target, this is a convenient combination we can make huge use of. The massive nuke WotBP inflicts is calculated in our Fiery Blast. So make sure you drop this miracle during a FB combo and the spike damage the miracle makes us capable of allows us to hit Fiery Blasts for some breaking into the 500 and 600k ranges. 700k could very well happen before Velious comes out. Simple result is, this combination creates one of the biggest spikes in damage capable for us.

Final thought: Though Anashti is not a terrible choice I would personally place it well behind Bertox and Sol Ro. Between those two I still prefer the idea of being able to induce an extremely high spike in damage as that is one of our classes known specialties. Bertoxx will without doubt result as powerful too, but it will come down to what you would rather use with your playstyle. For fights that you want to spike that will last less than 1 min, you are probably losing efficiency with the Bertox option.

Chapter VIII: Spell casting / DPS'ing.


Things to be aware of: Maintained window, Detriment window, console text, aggro meter.

Maintained Window: You see lots of important buffs here, while some show up that are not worth disruption your rhythm for there are a few that are nice to keep eye of. Biggest reason to keep an eye there is for our debuff spell. All our debuffs show up here.

Detriment window: This helps you in many ways. If you have a crippling sort of curse, it helps to know right when it is going to expire. If you are in an encounter that requires the knowledge of a curse on you, it will also show up in your detriment. I will not go into detail of every occasion this is helpful but allowing you to see curses/negative effects on you + seeing their expiration is all you need to know that it provides.

Console text: Often time red messages that pop-up on your screen, or curses that hit you and rather important elements in general often also provide a line of text in your console. In reality, you do not need GC or ACT triggers to be safe in fights. I have never used an ACT trigger to help me in a fight nor do I know what GC even looks like. My first trigger was used on the Yael Encounter. For Healers and other classes this may not all apply but for wizards, you really don't need these tools to operate to full potential in your raid.

Aggro Meter: This is not to say you shouldn't try to pull aggro on meaningless stuff that your in melee range of anyway. I don't believe much in holding back and if you are constantly pulling aggro then your raid either needs more efficient setups or better tanks. But it crosses the line if you pulling aggro causes a named or something to AoE on the raid. If your aggro is resulting in the deaths of more than just you, it is probably a good idea to be more mindful. If you are in it to reach your top performance, holding back or being forced to hinders that. Push what you are capable of and if you are still over performing the capability of your guild, you might find more enjoyment in your character if you are in a setting where you go all out and still get beat. That is where you will improve naturally. This is of course just one viewpoint, but it is also rather factual if you are interested in pushing your wizard to the top.




I will give a newb-worthy run down of all our spells in grouped categories that I perceive them in.


Elemental Debuffs/minimal damage spells:
Icy Spears
Furnace of Ro

Aoe/AE related spells:
Furnace of Ro - Fire that deals damage/debuffs all enemies in it
Fusion - max 3 target high damage frontal
Blast of Devastation - AA obtained, 8 target max, frontal cone AoE.
Firestorm - DD AoE spell, max 8 targets.
Glacial Wind - Encounter Based DoT spell.
Storm of Lightning - Slightly weaker Encounter based DoT spell.
Numbing Cold - Short range (5m) snare AoE. Only on non-epics.

Direct Damage single target nukes:
Solar Flare
Flames of the Velious (4s snare attached)
Magma Chamber (3s stun on non-epics)
Ball of Fire
Ice Comet
Bewilderment (AA obtained, 1 position deaggro)
Thunderclap (AA obtained)
Master Strike (quest obtained)

Damage over time single target spells:
Incinerate
Icy Spears
Immolation
Storming Tempest (each tick has 1.5s stun to non-epics)
Hailstorm (AA obtained)

Temp. damage procs: (read AA selection about fireshape and ice shape)
Frigid Gift - procs off non-heat spells.
Inferno Surge - procs off heat spells only

Reactive Damage:
Glacial Shield - 3 trigger damage reactive triggered when recipient recieves melee damage.

Dumbfire Pets - These can be killed in combat by AoE spells from enemy mobs.
Furnace of Ro
Protoferno

Special Abilities -
Fiery Blast (AA obtained, info. in AA area.)



Spell casting or Spell orders:

I saved this section for the end on purpose. There honestly is no such thing as a spell order and in my opinion assuming there is one will only hold you back. The reason there is no spell order is because I could go to each named and trash in SF and give you a list of IF's that on the fly change my mind state of what I am going to cast next or what I will do in the fight. The answer to what the spell cast order is lies within knowing what each of your spells strong points are. There is no way I can peg every small detail that I factor into spell cast choices but I will list some to give some example.

- AoE's all interrupt spells. We have 2 spells (bewilderment & thunderclap) that are non interruptable. You can use this to your advantage if you know an AoE or KB is coming if you want to joust in to use Fusion/Blast of Dev.

- Fights without any linked encounters and tons of single targets. How many firestorms can you fit into a ball of lava? When you exceed that number in mobs around to AoE, chain cast this spell instead of ball of fire constantly. If you have Fiery Blast up...hit one of the mobs with it and follow it with a Fusion, Blast of Dev, Ice Comet and Firestorm - you just did massive AoE damage and high damage to a FB target. Don't forget to hit hailstorm on huge AoE fights because its termination effect is an AoE. Theres no answer or order to execute stuff like this but, you get better by repetition and familiarity and will get a feel for whats smooth and parsing well or what seems staggering and lacking results. Always go over your ACT just for familiarity of your spells too.

- Tip to take advantage of Time Warp - If you have noticed if you begin casting a spell with TW up and it expires before your spell casts, you do not get a double. You also might have noticed if you begin casting before TW hits and your spell finishes when TW is at least active, you get a double. TW has an incoming icon in your maintained and active icon. Pre-cast your longest spell to land as close as you can to the second TW hits. See, if you pre-cast Fusion you get a double fusion the second TW hits, then you have almost the entire 5s to cast spells still. The more you take advantage of the pre-cast can be the difference between 4 - 5 spells TW'd or 1 - 3. This simply comes down to spell familiarity, knowing which ones are the faster casting ones and what you can most seamlessly fit in at any given moment when random spells may be down and unavailable. There is no TW cast order, because you won't often have every spell up nor will you always have perfect conditions...ie. the first dash I wrote.


None of this stuff is really a big secret it just comes with pure familiarity of how things work and your spells capabilities, strengths, weaknesses and what benefits them the most. This is why I will never agree to there being anything like a "cast order". The only place I have ever had almost set cast orders is with, yes, training dummies. But my cast order would differ variably if I were to fight 5 versions of the same single target dummy, each with 50% extra HP to knock down. Another's perfect condition cast order won't be yours since duration will play a role. A 30s fight contains a different order than a 1 min fight. As does powerful temp buffs worth tanking advantage of (VC, TW), and your own rhythm based on your casting speed and reuse and what flows most seamlessly. Meaning how often you are able to hit more powerful spells than lesser spells. Best you can do is anticipate the type of buffs you'll get, how long the fight will last and how to fit as many of your biggest spells into the parse as possible...I still am not sure if I got it perfect yet, I still try different things pretty frequently. You either parse better or you parse worse, if you are familiar with your own parses you should know if something helped or lessened your performance.

Gesar's has almost every buff you need, could add more to it if people think they are important to know more. I almost took the buff part entirely out.

And I know the Ice Shield thing >< I didn't know where to limit how many in and outs I list though...

Pretty much same answers people would get if they asked me in tells anyway.

Why not taking Range AA? the 5 additional points that are needed can be substracted from incinerate. Small bonus to survivability too.