Introduction and What To Expect
This guide will be in three main sections: Beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The beginner part will focus on the early levels until around 56. It will go over what gear to use, what skills to get, and what the basics of how to use a wizard. It won’t go over a lot of general beginner tips and will keep it mainly focused on Wizard specific things. The intermediate section will go over what to do after awakening, intermediate gearing tips, skill add-ons, and a few ‘nice to know’ things such as what pre awakening skills can be cast while in awakening without swapping weapons. The advanced section will go over specific builds for specific situations, intricate PVP combos, and some other more difficult tricks.
Beginner Wizarding
Beginner Gearing Tips
When it comes to getting your armor and weapon, there is no such thing as too soon. Buying the correct pieces early and enhancing them when you are able to afford it is usually the best way. For a weapon, Rosar Staff, Elsh Staff, or Krea Staff are usually the best choices. For an offhand, Steel Dagger is a good choice. For armor, the pieces you get from quests early on are good choices. After that, Grunil, Strength of Heve are good choices. For the chest armor, you can use the Magical Armor you get from quests.
There are some other quest pieces that you can use from black spirit quests that will last you until you get high enchanted Grunil or Heve armor, too. Grunil has the best overall set effect for the short as an offensive set, and it has 2 crystal slots. Strength of Heve has 2 crystal slots too, and is a good short-term slightly more defensive set. Make sure to try to get 2 crystal slot armor pieces. The reason 2 crystal slots are nice is because you will want to try to eventually get +5 critical chance and +5 casting speed, and crystals are an easy and practical way to do this. It is still possible with sets like Agerian, but will take a little more work with crystals after you start replacing pieces.
The reason I don’t recommend to buy a Liverto even if you can afford it is because the enhancement cost of just that item is way too expensive to be worth it until much later. In terms of accessories, the best thing to do early on is to get the accessories that drop from zones in level ~40 areas. Later on around level 56, see if you can get full Asula accessories, which drop from various Mediah spots. If you can’t get them, a good alternative to start is 2X Blue Coral Earrings, 2X Blue Coral Ring, PRI Belt of Shultz the Gladiator, and DUO Bares Necklace, or Necklace of Shultz the Gladiator.
What skills to get
The primary skills you will use to kill mobs will be Residual Lightning, Fireball Explosion, and Lightning Storm early on. Healing aura, Healing Lighthouse, Mana Absorption, Teleport, Mind Training, Sage’s Memory, and Speed Spell are the important utility skills to get. You can pick up Meteor Shower or Blizzard if you want, but the cooldowns make them not the most practical way to use skill points. When you get level 49, you want to get Multiple Magic Arrows. It is an amazing single target damage skill, and good for clearing small packs/finishing off mobs. Here is a sample level 40 and build http://bddatabase.net/us/skillcalc/40398 and a sample level 55 build http://bddatabase.net/us/skillcalc/40396
Things to Keep In Mind
– Try to use key combos instead of hotbar for skills when at all possible. Using things from the hotbar unless necessary will increase the mana usage.
– Make sure when enhancing to not let your weapon level get too far ahead of your armor.
Intermediate Wizarding
Intermediate Gearing Tips
Focus on getting your armor and weapons to around +15 if not already done, but prioritize enhancing your awakening weapon. It’s probably a good idea to get the green one, because the blue is not much better, but costs much much more to enhance. When all of your gear is around +15 to PRI, focus on ultimating your armor, mainhand, and offhand, and then getting your items to DUO. Around this time, you can also start going for PRI blue accessories, and then going for TRI green awakening weapon. After that, it’s probably about time to either go for DUO accessories, TRI armor, or your first boss piece.
For crystals, prioritize getting +5 crit and +5 casting speed. For 2 crystal armors, the easiest way is two Magic Crystal of Infinity – Memory in your helmet for speed, and two Magic Crystal of Infinity – Valor in your gloves for crit. The last one can either be made up by an ultimate green staff, or an Ancient Magic Crystal – Addis. Also, keep in mind that when you are going for accessories, buying them already enchanted is often a bit cheaper on average than making them yourself, but it really comes down to personal preference, and if you already have some high stacks sitting around. Keep in mind that for the Earrings and Rings, you will be able to get decent accessories from main story quests (Earrings, and 1 ring), and the ring from reaching level 61. Being able to focus only on belt/necklace and possibly one ring is good. For these items, TRI shultz belt, and TRI shultz or Serap necklace are all very good choices.
What Skills To Get
When you get awakening, you can unlearn the direct attack skills of pre-awakening, but keep the utility ones and learn Ultimate Teleport. If you have extra skillpoints, Multiple Magic Arrows is probably the best one to keep. You want to make sure you learn all of your awakening skills that are available at 56. Here is a level 58 sample build http://bddatabase.net/us/skillcalc/40397 going over what pre-awakening skills to keep, and what awakening skills to get/prioritize. Aqua Jail Explosion, Water Sphere + Water Bomb, and Bolide of Destruction are the strongest skills at level 56/57. At 58, Hellfire becomes strong because of the flow, and at 60 Cataclysm becomes strong.
The skills that lack a flow are useful, but don’t expect them to do the most damage. Also, remember that certain skills from preawakening can be hotkeyed and used without switching weapons. Spellbound heart, Magic Lighthouse, and Healing Aura can all be used in awakening mode also. If you hotkey a skill from preawakening that can’t be used in awakening mode, it will automatically switch your weapons for you. This can be useful also, so you may want to hotkey things such as Healing Lighthouse, Speed Spell, and Magic Shield too.
Tips and Tricks For Intermediate Wizards
Enable use mouse movements, and use auto-align quickslots http://imgur.com/a/MuFR5 here in settings. Auto-align quickslots will allow you to have up to 20 hotbars. Enabling use mouse movements will allow you to direct some skills by pushing ctrl mid cast, and clicking where you want to direct spells https://youtu.be/eXI80sKSuA8 as shown here.
Random Things To Keep In Mind/Random Tips and Tricks
– When you go for your first piece of boss gear, Bheg’s, Kzarka, Dandelion, and Kutum if you are primarily PVE are all top priority options.
– When it comes to PVP, the flows of most of our skills don’t have damage reduced in PVP. This is the reason they get so much stronger in PVP after flows are added, so keep this in mind during PVP encounters. They become progressively less powerful at higher ap as your renown and other bonuses are not applied to the flows, only the flat 80 ap.
– Pushing s+c will allow you to teleport and switch weapon stances simultaneously
Advanced Wizarding
Advanced Gearing Tips
For PVE, if you don’t yet know, you will want to get a Kutum. Kutum gives a large amount of monster damage on top of the AP it already has. For PVP (and at a very high level of gear), an evasion hybrid is a very strong 1v1, small scale, and 1vX set if you want to build defensively, but keep in mind that this will not be able to do much against people with PEN boss armor, or high DR classes. Against these classes and levels of gear, it is often best to just build AP and try to outplay as best you can. Side note: Giath/Griffon helm>Heve Helm for AP builds, Heve Helm>Giath/Griffon for offensive builds.
Do we need accuracy items?
A lot of people think that Wizard doesn’t need accuracy, but this is not true at all. Our preawakening has very poor accuracy, and a lot of our damage comes from that at high end play. It is still commonly believed that we have lower accuracy needs than other classes, but this is simply not the case.
What Rabam Skills Do I Choose?
There is no black and white answer for this (probably no surprise), but I’ll give a bit of information on each.
Rabam fireball (Level 56): A very strong skill for the damage, zoning, and combo potential it has. It can be used from the hotbar to immediately switch to preawakening, and it does a knockdown .. which Wizards can combo very nicely off of. This also activates the 7 second fireball explosion buff, so it can replace fireball for this.
Rabam Healing Lighthouse (Level 56): A long cooldown, but very powerful superarmor heal. It is amazing for an emergency heal, but it can’t be relied on too often. This one is generally better for larger scale PVP.
Rabam Swift Earthquake (Level 57): A 30 second cooldown high damage circular AOE skill that inflicts bound in PVE. This skill does higher damage than lightning quake and casts slightly faster. This can be hotbarred to switch from awakening to preawakening, or can be used as a key combination while in preawakening. The advantage to using it from key combination is that it can cancel certain preawakening skills, so it can be a good thing to use in situations such as if you are being pressured while using healing lighthouse.
Rabam Lightning Earthquake (Level 57): A 30 second cooldown, medium damage AOE skill that inflicts a slow. This skill does lower damage than speed earthquake, and can also be hotbarred or used from skill while in preawakening. This skill casts more slowly and does less damage, but inflicts a 6 second attack, cast, and movement speed debuff.
What Absolute Skills Do I Need?
For PVE: Absolute multiple magic arrows and absolute dagger stab (Extremely high single target burst when used together) are important. Absolute Blizzard is extremely strong in some situations, such as against Hystria mobs that will always attack an aggro orb .. but make sure to note that absolute blizzard is barely stronger than a normal awakening skill rotation because of the time it takes to activate it. Only use this skill when you are sure you will be able to avoid cc. Absolute residual lightning, fireball explosion, absolute lightning storm, and absolute meteor shower when used with sages memory together give extremely high burst, but again, are unprotected.
For PVP: Absolute Blizzard and Absolute Meteor Shower do roughly the same damage as ultimate blizzard/normal meteor shower (due to damage reduced in pvp), so keep this in mind when choosing what ones to use for PVP. Frigid Fog has a reduced cooldown, which is incredibly useful for hit trading/emergency SA/combos, so keep that in mind. Absolute Earthquake is useful for a 20 second cooldown very long superarmor. Absolute Residual Lightning can be useful for long-ranged damage. Absolute Fireball Explosion can be useful for surprise knockdowns at range, and especially useful when used with Rabam Fireball
1V1/Small Scale PVP
There’s no one size fits all strategy for 1v1, so I’ll just go over a lot of things to keep in mind as points. I don’t talk much about specific strategies because I believe everyone’s individual style will be a bit different. Specific combos are also not ideal for Wizard, because the situation won’t always allow specific combos to be used. Our class is more about using the skill appropriate to the situation, and then following up on it if we happen to cc. Trying to force specific combos on a class that is typically a lot slower and harder to engage with than our opponents too often doesn’t produce favorable results.
- There is no BIS set/build. Use whatever is appropriate to the situation.
- Consider trying to play without aim assist for certain matchups and situations. This takes a bit to get used to, but will avoid things such as your skills targeting an opponent’s pet
- Focus on following up on whatever CC you happen to get. Trying too hard to pull off specific combos doesn’t work well in real world situations
- Don’t waste your teleport !! It may be tempting to try to use it offensively and in some cases this is a good use for it, but against some classes or players, wasting your only reliable disengage to try to get a surprise attack in could be a very bad idea
- Use frigid fog as a superarmor hit trader, especially against non grapple classes. Freezes can be great at starting combos
- Use rabam fireball from key combination, not hotkey to cancel preawakening skills with the same timing earth’s response can cancel them. This is helpful for things such as mma–>dagger->rabam after a freeze breaks before they can stand up, or earthquake–>rabam without using earth’s response
- Take advantage of the lingering superarmor on bolide, cataclysm, and aqua jail (but be careful hit trading with aqua jail because of how long the animation is)
- Wizard can be very good at hit trading, but spamming SA skills against a skilled opponent will usually get you killed.
- If you are against a grab class, you can always try to time it such that you’ll be within their grab range at the same time as your skill ends so you can just grab them before they grab you
- Don’t build purely offensive in every situation. Fighting squishier classes that do more damage may be easier in builds where we don’t get one-shot. Take advantage of the fact that we are good at resetting fights.
- S+C to switch + teleport can be very useful. Teleporting to disengage and switch to staff can let you put walking guard up very quickly to defend against them as many people try to pressure a Wizard after teleporting
- Make sure to hotkey freezes, both heals, Sage’s Memory, and any other skills you see necessary. Also hotkey water sphere for fast preawakening to awakening swaps.
- Be careful when using Water Sphere to punish blocks of some classes unless you are staying mobile. Many classes can do a very fast engage or ranged CC that you won’t be able to counter if you are just spamming the skill
- Hellfire is not a good engage. Using it on for example DK or a good Maehwa will likely end up getting you killed. Every class can respond faster to it than we can use it. In some cases though, it’s best used as a kind of second teleport/movement skill
Large Scale PVP
Faceroll as hard as you can 🙂
Combos + Advanced Tricks
Directing teleport with mouse movements: https://youtu.be/1Ulblo36bAI