The Wizard in Mod 21 By Eldoth

The Wizard - Mod 21

by Eldoth@bifflinculte - Forsaken Rebels

22.10.21

For the latest version of Eldoth's guide pls visit - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JezPmehRjvkrHQKwEJ9tGGesDuekj2mcfKiWxlx56ns/edit?usp=sharing he likes to do updates very often :)

Patch notes (21 Sep 2021)

• Arcane Bolt and Magic Missile now grant a stack of Arcane Mastery with each attack, instead of only on the final attack of the combo. Useful for arcane stacking at the beginning of boss fights

• Chilling Advantage now applies in a way that allows Directed Flames to properly proc. They now work together, with Rimefire Smolder able to proc every 12 seconds. Chilling Advantage is still a useless feat

• Chilling Cloud now adds a stack of Chill to the target with each attack. The final attack adds a stack of Chill to the target and nearby targets. Good change, but higher magnitude would have been more useful

• Fireball now casts more quickly. It’s almost instant! BURN!

• Fireball’s cooldown has been reduced by 33%, and its magnitude has been reduced by 25%.hmmm... bad for pve. In 1v1, tabbed fireball becomes st encounter with highest dps: 55 for (10sec cd with my build). Second is repel with a dps of 54.

• Imprisonment has been changed to Arcane Conduit. It no longer holds the target, but instead deals 200 magnitude damage and increases arcane damage by 15% for 5 seconds.

  • In the Mastery slot, it deals 225 magnitude and increases arcane damage by 20% instead. Always better than imprisonment, need to be tested to see if it’s good in boss fights

• Smolder’s magnitude has been increased by 100%. Still too weak. 3sec-cd is too long.

• Smoldering Recovery now grants 1.5% Action Points when used with Directed Flames. Directed Flames is still crappy feat

• Steal Time now casts more quickly, deals 260 magnitude damage, applies Slow for 4 seconds, and applies Stun for 1 second. Its recharge speed is now 13 seconds. Visual is awesome, looks like the arcanist is sneezing

• Striking Advantage: The tooltip has been updated to reflect that it only works on At-Will, Encounter, and Daily Powers, and that it has a 1-second cooldown. It has been increased to 25% chance and 100 magnitude. Looking good

Here I try to present the wizard class and its paragons. I’ll discuss the mechanics, powers, feats, gameplay and strategies. This guide is not about gear, since the wizard uses the same equipment and artifact as any other damage dealer class.

The Thaumaturge

The thaumaturge specialisation is the evolution of the former master of flame oppressor build. It focuses on cold and fire spells, giving him access to the smolder mechanic. He can also cast a selection of single target arcane spells but has no access to lightning magic.

Its main mechanic is Smolder. When you hit foes with any fire spell, they take dot damage every 3 sec with a 20 magnitude, in other words, the dps is peanuts. It lasts 12 sec unless it’s refreshed by casting another fire spell. If the target is affected by chill (in fact all the time), Smolder becomes Rimefire Smolder which is basically Smolder with a blue icon, I mean it does exactly the same, except it’s refreshed by chill instead of fire damage. The only use of Smolder is to increase your damage by 5 to 10% if you take the Rimefire Weaving feat.

Feats :

1/ Relative Haste grants 10% cooldown reduction on your encounter spells as soon as you add chill to any target (= all the time).

Smoldering Recovery increases AP generation by 8-10% versus a single target. In pve, the more enemies, the more effective it is.

2/ Icy Veins greatly helps to add chill stack very fast on mob packs, increasing control and mostly making Shatter (3rd feat) proc faster. Glowing Flames is a poor choice since Smolder deals very low damage.

3/ Shatter strike is a solid feat. It is the highest source of damage in boss fight situations (control immunized foes get magnitude 150 damage after casting control spell). It is also a good source of dps for aoe (Shatter, frozen foes take 250 magnitude damage after getting frozen). Chilling advantage doesn’t make any sense for thaumaturge.

4/ Frigid Winds will buff your damage for each chill stack on a foe by 1.25% (max 6 = 7.5%). Burning Criticals would be good if smolder had any dps.

5/ Rimefire Weaving : you deal 10-15% damage to foes affected by Rimefire. Directed Flames is useless, it makes Smolder even weaker than it already is.

The choice is obvious. Except Rimefire Weaving, all smolder related feats are terrible. Besides the Fireball spell, the fire aspect of the thaumaturge is very weak.

The cold related feats, in particular Shatter strike, are very versatile, so the thaumaturge doesn’t require any additional loadout.

Last thing, if you take both Chilling advantage and Directed Flames feats, Smolder gets bugged and no longer deals any damage. Moreover, the Smoldering Recovery feat won’t grant any AP. No comment.

Boons:

Tier 1-4: focus on all offensive boons, then movement speed, defence, deflection, crit avoidance, awareness, HP.

Tier 5: Forte bonus 4/4 and cd reduction 4/4

Master boon: Blood Lust 3/3

Spells for trash

Class Features:

• Critical Conflagration: You get 10% critical severity bonus. Moreover, all critical strikes trigger smolder on foes. Best class feature for any situation.

• Combustive Action: a chance to get instantly 20% of your AP when killing a foe (tooltip says 1%). In practice, you gain AP 2-3 times faster than usual in solo pve. Not suitable for boss fights unless it spawns a lot of adds (1st boss in Vos for example).

• Swath of Destruction grants 2% party damage buff for all attacks on foes affected by Smolder. The larger the party, the better it is. The 5% smolder damage buff is useless though.

• Evocation: all aoe powers deal 10% more damage. For pve only.

• Chilling Presence: you deal 0.5% more damage for every chill stack on a foe (max 6 stacks = 3%). If it gets frozen, it is 6%. Consequently the buff is max 3% against control immune targets. Very versatile but there are better options for pve.

Even if smolder deals very low damage, it grants personal dps buff when Rimefire Weaving is up (5/10/15%). Critical Conflagration is hence by far the best class feature and should never leave your power bar.

Recommended encounters spells :

• Chill strike on mastery : cold, becomes aoe with a cap of 5 targets. Main target gets an additional chill stack.

• Repel on mastery is also an option, if you want to get quickly rid of mob packs by learning them to fly or swim, typically in the last phase of the Infernal Citadel.

• Fireball : best aoe damage, always adds smolder. The cast animation is however long and cannot be interrupted.

• Icy terrain : aoe, dot, cold, adds chill stacks quickly. The only aoe spell able to freeze packs, hence giving access to shatter strike.

• Conduct of ice : aoe, dot, cold, adds 1 chill stack to all foes in range. Low magnitude but short cooldown. If the target dies, the spell is lost, so always cast on foe with the most HP. It doesn’t proc Lostmauth’s Revenge.

• Icy Rays on 2 different targets (520 magnitude on each, cold), when mobs are few and distant from each other. Not affected by Evocation.

Fanning the Flame against tough mobs surrounded by zergs. However the magnitude is very low compared to the other aoe encounters. And the cd is awful. Not affected by Evocation.

Fireball is the aoe spell with the best dps. On tab it becomes a single target spell.

Icy terrain is the only dot encounter spell that triggers Lostmauth’s Revenge (3 Tales of Old artifacts set, Lostmauth set) on each critical tick.

Conduct of Ice is best for long fights against a lot of mobs, Icy Rays for quick fights with less targets.

Despite larger animation radius, tabbed COI has the same radius as regular. It also adds a single chill stack.

Dailies :

• Furious Immolation : good and instant damage, large radius, very useful for packing mobs together, making it your party mates’ favourite daily power. It procs Shater Strike once on control immune targets.

• Oppressive Force : same damage against regular mobs but this spell takes a few seconds to deal all the damage. Against control immune foes, it procs Shatter Strike 5 times.

• Ice Knife as finisher spell against tough foes.

At-will :

• Chilling Cloud, best aoe at-will spell available, even if only the 3rd hit is aoe.

• Ray of Frost, the single target at-will power if you have Bilethorn enchantment since it’s the only at-will able to proc critical Bilethorn damage. If the target has 6 chill stacks it will get frozen (unless it’s cc immune).

Gameplay : Cast Icy Terrain early, to add chill stacks fast. Casting encounters spells will also add chill, thanks to Icy Veins Feat. Enemies with 6 chill stacks get frozen by the next hit of Icy Terrain or Ray of Frost. When this happens, they get hit by Shatter (250 magnitude).

With the Rimefire Weaving feat on, the Thaumaturge is able to add personal dr debuff on targets. Normally, chill gives 5% and Smolder 5% and consequently Rimefire Smolder 10%. In practice Rimefire Weaving is bugged and the debuff reaches 15%.

Smolder is now a 3 sec dot and hence no longer deals high damage. However, targets affected by smolder get a reduction of their damage resistance with the Rimefire Weaving feat. Critical Conflagration passive spell adds Smolder on every critical hit automatically, therefore Smolder micro-management isn’t required.

Casting order is not meaningful, but always use your encounter near your enemies if you want Icy Veins to add Chill stacks.

Spells for boss fights

Class Features :

• Critical Conflagration: 10% crit severity bonus, critical hits add smolder

and

• Swath Of Destruction will buff the party damage by 2% all the time (4% if rimefire stacks with smolder). The buff to Smolder is peanuts.

or

• Chilling Presence: grants 3% (= 0.5% x 6 chill stacks) more personal dps

Spell mastery encounter :

• Neither Repel nor Chill Strike (they become aoe with reduced damage)

• Fireball on mastery is now the st encounter with highest dps, cast is now instant. The only drawback: it doesn’t proc shatter strike on cc immune targets (150 mag)

• Icy Rays has highest magnitude on mastery (792), but cd isn’t the shortest.

Encounters :

• Repel, control, short cd, highest dps despite lower magnitude

• Chill strike, control, good magnitude

• Icy Rays, control, high magnitude.

• Entangling force, control, dot. Deals 25% more damage with 5 arcane stacks. The magnitude of the ticks isn’t high enough to trigger gear like Ribcage.

2 spell combinations stand out from the crowd on paper:

Fireball (mastery) - Repel - Chill strike - Icy Rays

Icy Rays (mastery) - Entangling force (with 5 arcane stacks) - Repel - Chill strike

The second set has slightly more dps, but it has 2 drawbacks:

• You have to keep arcane stacks to 5 with Magic Missile

• Entangling Force is dot, and hence won’t trigger gear bonuses like Ribcage armor or Goristro’s helm..

Appart Fireball (tab), all these encounters are control spells and will automatically trigger Shatter Strike on cc immune targets, dealing magnitude 150 extra damage.

Alternatives encounter spells :

• Ray of Enfeeblement : The target’s outgoing damage is reduced by 10%. On mastery, the target moreover gets 10% more magic/ranged damage for 10s (party buff). Using it can greatly help your party, but at the cost of personal dps.

• Fanning the Flame is only effective when a boss is surrounded by many minions (and themselves affected by smolder; mag = 100.n+132). The spell mechanic is great, but the magnitude is peanuts. And the cd is very very long. Dead spell.

Dailies:

• Ice Knife : the only single target daily available. Magnitude = 1800+150 = 1950 with Shatter Strike.

• Oppressive Force is very good against cc immune enemies since its dot will proc Shatter Strike 5 times targets. Magnitude = 325+375+150x5 =1450 with Shater Strike on each cc immune target.

At-wills:

• Chilling Cloud is the at-will spell with higher dps on single targets (7% more than Ray of Frost). However, it generates AP 10% slower.

• Ray of Frost has better dps than any at-will if you have Bilethorn Enchantment.It has the highest AP gain.

• Magic Missile is very useful to improve Entangling force. Usually, it ticks 4 times but if your arcane stacks are at 5, it will trigger a 5th tick, and hence increase the damage by 25%. Arcane stacks only last 8 sec, Repel and Entangling Force have much longer cd, so a full cast of Magic Missile is the only way to keep them maxed. In practice, this strategy is pretty hard to execute.

Use Ray of Frost as main at-will when your encounters are at cooldown. When needed, cast a full rotation of Magic Missile to keep arcane stacks up.

Spell Rotation isn’t meaningful, every spell is able to trigger chill, smolder and rimefire.

Conclusion

The Thaumaturge is a big disappointment. At mod 16 it had great dps because of smolder, mod 17 made it bad. Mod 18 introduced a great party buff, mod 19 removed it. One mod it’s good, the other it gets heavily nerfed. It would be about time devs really focus on thaumaturge, as they did on many other dps paragons.

Thaumaturge needs a deep overhaul, especially for single target fights. The fire aspect is too weak. Smolder is the main paragon mechanics, but has terrible dps and its main role is to set personal damage buff (rimefire weaving feat). Fanning the flame has cool mechanics but terrible magnitude and very long cooldown, so nobody uses it. Fireball has an average magnitude for an aoe encounter, but the radius isn’t great and moreover it’s too long to cast.

The at-will is terrible and needs complete overhaul. The daily, Furious Immolation, is ok.

The fire class features also need a revamp, they are just nerfed versions of pre mod 16.

The ice aspect is much better, but is still too weak. Shatter strike was the best pre mod 16 feature, and still is in mod 19. Both at-wills, Ray of frost and Chilling cloud are good.

The encounters: icy terrain is a good dot, but was better when it was able to deal smolder damage at each tick… Chill strike is good, but its aoe variant on mastery shouldn’t have reduced magnitude on the main target. Icy rays is redundant with chill strike ; its cd is far too long. Conduct of ice is also a dot, but it works as a non-dot spell. Only the 1st tick procs effects unlike icy terrain. It should also be considered as a control spell, like every cold spell. It used to be useful as a single target spell, now it’s pure aoe.

The Ice storm daily is useless, the thauma already has plenty of aoe dailies. And compared to aracanist’s Arcane Empowerment, it’s very weak.

Frost weave is useless. As a cold based specific class feature of last tier, it should make a difference and give cold spells/damage a serious buff.

The rimefire mechanics are useless. It has only 2 purposes: 1) Smolder gets refreshed by chill, and 2) the bonus from the rimefire weaving feat is 10% instead of 5%. Moreover, arcanists can deal rimefire damage, exactly as thaumas do, by adding chill on targets affected by smolder.

Many feats are useless, especially those related to fire aspect. Smoldering Recovery generates far too little AP at each smolder tick. Glowing makes smolder aoe ; it would be good if smolder had any dps. Since mod 19, Chilling advantage makes your cold spells add rimfire instead of adding chill stacks : this feat is in fact a handicap. Burning criticals could also be good if smolder was a good source of dps. And finally Directed Flames reduces the average dps of smolder. What a coincidence, all these bad feats are based on smolder.

The only time thaumaturge paragon was good was in mod 16, actually the only time when smolder dealt excellent damage (every crit hit or chill stack used to trigger a smolder hit). Before mod 16, when it was the master of flame, it was mainly a buffer class, and after a dps class with just low dps or low dps with good buffing skill.

It seems, the key to make a good thaumaturge is to give a serious boost to the fire aspect, especially to Smolder. A spell with 3 sec dot is by definition bad.

The cold aspect also needs a boost : a 100% cold based build is the way to go nowadays, especially in boss fights, but it isn’t enough to reach the dps of other dps classes.

Now the cold aspect is much stronger, since all best feats are cold related. Fire and cold aspects should be balanced : at one hand fire for top dps, at the other hand cold more focused on control and survivability. Moreover, 4 cold and only 2 fire encounter spells are available. 1 cold encounter should be replaced by a fire spell. For example, Icy rays could be replaced by a flame arrow with the analog mechanics.

So there would be 3 cold and 3 fire encounters. From there, a feat could reward the alternation of both kinds of magic (as did Rimefire Weaving in mod 16). Or a cold/fire stacks system, as it exists by the Arbiter Cleric. This could grant buff to elemental damage or to Rimefire Smolder.

Many can be imagined to enhance the Thaumaturge, its powers and mechanics. In mod 20, this paragon is still a lazy upgrade of pre mod 16 Master of Flame.

Take the Master of Flame paragon, remove party buff, nerf the class features, nerf Ftf and Coi, replace Steal Time by Fireball, and you have the Thaumaturge !

The Arcanist

The arcanist specialisation is based on the former spellstorm. It focuses on arcaneand lightning spells with a dose of randomness. He’s the evolution of the former spellstorm renegade. Arcanist has access to all arcane spells, but can only cast a little selection of cold spells and has no access to fire magic. He will rather focus on making his arcane spells very efficient, counting on passive combat advantage and improved arcane stacks. Besides, the lightning and cold spells will complete the arcanist’s dps.

Feats:

1/ Spell Twisting, every AP source is highly welcome

2/ Snap Freeze : huge buff for cold power in pve, but also in boss fights under certain conditions (in other words it’s bugged)

2/ or

Assailing Force, 10% chance that an encounter del double damage, aka 10% average buff on encounters

3/ Chaos Magic : encounter and daily powers have a 10% chance to restore 20% of your AP, to double the encounter cd recovery or to double your damage during 5 sec.

4/ Striking Advantage : extra DPS when you deal damage with combat advantage. Boss fights.

4/ or

4/ Nightmare Wizardry : most of your attacks automatically get combat advantage buff. Huge buff for aoe.

5/ A Step Above Mastery : Up to 10 arcane stacks, arcane damage buffed by 1% for every stack (0.5% without). Mandatory for boss fights, good option in aoe when combined with Arcane Presence. The buff has been nerfed as many wizard powers, it used to be 1.5%.

or

Elemental Reinforcement for fast trash, grants +10% damage bonus if you alternate element-based spells (arcane-cold-lightning). Only for aoe, since single target fights require only arcane encounters.

Boons:

Tier 1-4: focus on all offensive boons, then movement speed, defence, deflection, crit avoidance, awareness, HP.

Tier 5: Forte bonus 4/4 and cd reduction 4/4. AP gain buff isn’t as good, since passive AP sources aren’t affected.

Master boon: Blood Lust 3/3

Spells for trash

Passive spells:

• Storm Spell, still bis despite dozen of overhauls

• Evocation for a 10% buff of aoe spells

• Arcane Presence if you have A Step Above Mastery feat and enough time to stack arcane mastery 10 times.

• Storm Fury (solo runs) : you automatically hurt every mob attacking you. 3s icd for each opponent. If 5 attack you, all 5 get hurt every 3 sec.

We need arcane aoe spells to stack arcane mastery quickly, possibly with dot to generate a maximum of Storm Spell hits.

• Icy terrain (aoe, dot) procs Snap Freeze at each tick and is the best way to trigger Storm Spell.

• Steal time (aoe, dot). If you get interrupted while casting, cd will be reinitialized to 4 sec without dealing damage.

• Arcane Tempest (aoe but small radius), adds 1 arcane stack for each foe hit. The magnitude isn’t insane, but the cd is short. On mastery, centered on you, deals 10% more damage but no extra radius.

• Lightning bolt (aoe, non arcane). Low magnitude, terrible aiming, often doesn’t deal any damage, but still useful against packs of enemies.

• Disintegration. Single target but short cd and good dps, especially if the target is below 20% life (+50% damage). It’s the best finisher encounter available for wizards.

The mastery spell isn’t crucial. I’d pick Steal time (aoe with highest dps, large radius) or Disintegration (best st/finisher encounter).

Combination of Icy Terrain and Snap freeze makes great dps. Both are buffed by arcane presence (1% per arcane stack up to 10%). It procs every time you add chill stacks, as long as targets aren’t frozen (1 to 5 stacks). So, it’s less powerful if 1 of your party mates is a wizard.

Arcane Tempest is a new spell. It has been designed as very versatile, being an aoe spell with very small radius and a 1v1 spell with lowest dps. But its short cd makes it anyway a good spell for any situation :

• In pve situations, cast it on very close packs will deal high damage, knock foe down and generate an arcane stack for every target hit. It is anyway far better than Lightning Bolt.

• In 1v1, it deals much better dps than Ray of Enfeeblement when Arcane Empowerment is up (Ray of Enfeeblement’s dot doesn’t stack).

2 possible builds:

FeatA Step Above MasteryElemental Reinforcement

Passive spells

Arcane Presence Storm Spell

Evocation Storm Spell

Encounters

Arcane Tempest Icy terrain Steal time DisintegrationIcy terrain Lightning bolt Arcane Tempest Steal time (Disintegration)GameplayCast Arcane Tempest or Oppressive Force on a maximum of foes to gather arcane stacksAlternate elements Situation For long fights with a lot of foes. Versatile since the feat is best for boss fights. Better for short fights against few foes

The great advantage of the arcane mastery build is to get rid of Lightning bolt, which is bugged and often doesn’t deal any damage.

Dailies:

• Oppressive Force, good damage, 5 ticks, each is able to proc Storm Spell. Every target hit grants an arcane mastery stack, best for builds based on Arcane Mastery feat.

• Arcane Singularity. Remember arcane singularity? It’s back, in pog form. The aoe daily with the largest radius but also now the highest magnitude (800). But the spell takes ages to deal its damage and only procs Storm Spell once on critical hit.

At-will: Ray of Frost (procs Snap Freeze on not frozen targets), Storm pillar (only aoe at-will power available) or Magic Missile (to gain arcane stacks). Arcane Bolt procs SS at the same rate as Magic Missile, but has almost 20% lower dps (tested on dummies).

Spells for boss fights

This is atm the best wizard build against bosses if you have high AP gain.

Passive spells:

• Storm Spell

• Chilling Presence

Arcane power field is still bugged, the bonus from Arcane Master is multiplied by 1.5 instead of 2 when A Step Above Mastery is on, meaning 5% buff instead of 10%. Chilling Presence grants 3% all the time and thus makes a better choice.

Encounters:

• Ray of Enfeeblement on tab

• Disintegration

• Repel

• Entangling force

Alternative choices:

• Arcane Conduit

• Arcane tempest

Ray of Enfeeblement reduces the damage dealt by the target by 10%. Moreover, on mastery, it increases the magical/ranged damage taken by the target by 10% (10sec, party buff)

Disintegration is the encounter with fastest cooldown and highest DPS.

Repel has the shortest cooldown and good dps as well.

Entangling force normally hits 4 times. But if you have 5 arcane mastery stacks, it will hit a 5th time (= +25% damage). If you have 10 stacks, it will even hit a 6th time (= +50% damage) !

Arcane Conduit has low magnitude (200) but grants a personal 15% buff on all arcane powers.It’s an good alternative to Ray of Enfeeblement when many arcanist wizards are in the party, since the buffs on the latter don’t stack.

Arcane tempest has lower dps but deals small radius oae damage, meaning it’s good if the boss has minions.

Ray of Enfeeblement and Entangling force are dot, giving them a main drawback: the magnitude of each tick is too low to proc gear that grants % stats bonus like Ribcage and Goristro’s Helm

Daily: Arcane Empowerment

At-wills:

• Ray of Frost has best dps for an at-will and procs Bilethorn enchantment damage a lot.

• Storm Pillar is awesome to generate AP, even without near targets. It is much more efficient to completely charge the pillar than the cast unloaded pillars multiple times.

This build mainly relies on the daily Arcane Empowerment. When up, encounters cooldowns are considerably reduced, and deal 10% more damage for 10 sec. So, the goal is to cast as many encounters as possible during this lap of time. Best time to use this sequence is while buffing effects are up (for example mount active powers, artifact powers) and when you’re sure not getting interrupted, stunned or shapeshifted into a chicken…

Since the cd of artifacts and mount powers is 60 sec, it’s ideal to be able to generate 100% of your AP in less than 60 sec.

As long as Arcane Empowerment is active, your powers won’t generate any AP. However, other AP sources like Spell Twisting, Quick Action mount passive and corrupted black ice overloads will.

For artifact active powers, it depends: Sigil of the Devoted will grant AP, but Envenomed Storyteller’s Journal won’t.

Conclusion

The Arcanist paragon is best for boss fights, but only with a full arcane build. Contrary to Thaumaturge, strategy, feats and powers are very different depending on whether you play aoe or single target, and so you’ll need 2 specific Arcanist loadouts if you want to face any situation. Additionally, Arcanist is a poor choice for pvp, since it isn’t focused on control.

Wizard’s bag of tricks

Arcanist

• Never use Arcane Bolt. Magic Missile is faster and has better dps. For any reason, its magnitude has been increased to 40. If you use the Bilethorn enchantment, Ray of Frost is best.

• Oppressive Force and Repel on mastery are the fastest ways to stack arcane mastery in pve since 1 stack is gained for every target hit.

• Storm Spell + dot spells: Storm Pillar, Ray of Frost, Icy Terrain, Steal Time, Oppressive Force. Classic for pve.

• Spell synergy, aoe situations: A Step above Mastery feat + Arcane Presence will buff your cold and lightning damage, including passive spells (Storm Spell and Snap Freeze). Use Arcane Tempest, Oppressive Force and eventually Repel (mastery) to gather arcane stacks fast.

• Entangling force normally hits 4 times. But if you have 5 arcane stacks, it will hit a 5th time (= +25% damage). If you have 10 stacks (with Arcane Mastery feat), it will even hit a 6th time (= +50% damage). Not sure at all this is intended…

• In boss fights, the arcanist’s best asset is the Arcane Empowerment daily. Best use it when artifacts and mounts buffs are up. You should be able to restore 100% of your AP within 60 sec.

• When Arcane Empowerment is up, focus on spamming Disintegration, Repel and Arcane Tempest. The dot from Entangling Force doesn’t stack, same for Ray of Enfeeblement.

Thaumaturge

• Fight close to enemies in pve, you’ll add an extra chill stack by casting encounters (Icy veins feats) and hence freeze them faster (control and proc of Shatter).

• For pve, Chill Strike on mastery is an obvious choice since it becomes aoe (5 targets cap anyway).

• Icy Rays is more efficient when cast on 2 different targets, since each takes 520 magnitude. A single target will take 720.

• Oppressive Force is very powerful against packs of control immune foes, since it procs Shatter Strike 5 times.

• Thaumaturge’s aoe spells don’t have a large radius. Casting Furious Immolation at the start of a fight will pack your enemies together.

• For boss fights: Maximizing arcane stacks to 5 adds a 5th tick to Entangling Force, thus making its damage enhanced by 25%. But Arcane Stacks get reinitialized every 8 sec if no Arcane Spell is cast. Repel and Entangling Force are the only arcane encounters we use, and their cooldowns are over 10 sec. The only way to keep Arcane Stacks up is to cast a single blow of Magic Missile within 8 sec.

• In boss fights, the control encounter spells (Repel, Entangling Force, Icy Rays and Chill Strike) will always proc Shatter Strike on the target (150 mag).

• The thaumaturge mostly relies on encounter spells, hence underwear gear (shirt) that grant randomly 1 sec cd reduction is more useful than those enhancing AP gain.

• The buff from Rimefire Weaving is now personal, but Swath of Destruction is still buffing the whole party. 2% doesn't seem huge, but buffing 10 people by 2% is a far better option than only yourself by 3% with Chilling Presence.

• If you took Directed Flame’s instead of Rimefire Weaving : the 12 sec of Smolder cooldown is easy to bypass (once), by first casting a fire spell (Fireball, triggers smolder) followed a cold spell (Chilling Strike or Conduct of Ice, triggers Rimefire Smolder). This doesn’t work if you have Icy Veins feat and you are close to targets.

Stats

Ability score: put all points in intelligence (more damage) and Charisma (forte bonus, cd reduction).

Offensive Stats:

Power > Combat advantage > Critical strike > Critical severity > Accuracy

For pve defensive stats aren’t relevant for damage dealers, tanks are here for that. However, putting some points in defense and HP isn’t a bad idea.

Enchantments, offense: Assassin and Gigantic enchantments are the best choices, since they have 3 useful stats. But there are many possibilities, depending what stats you’re looking for.

Enchantments, defense: my choice goes to Brutal (HP+Defense)

Enchantments, utility: Dark enchantment is an obvious choice for any class, since it boosts your Forte. For the wizard, investing your Forte will increase your Power, Combat Advantage and Critical avoidance.

GLHF,

Eldoth (@bifflinculte),