Halp pl0x Wizard dilemma

[Darkon]

Re-posting as its own thread since where I posted it before didn’t get a solution.

Since everyone here is posting builds… I have a predicament.

I’m torn between a few variations on point allocations between Sure Spell and Reflect Shield. Now… things may change, but, my experience prior was that Sure Spell wasn’t that great except potentially for PvP. Reflect Shield generally sucks but actually does offer a slight damage mitigation. Since they removed the Sure Spell effect from Reflect Shield I was forced to mess around a bit and found I didn’t quite like Sure Spell. I know for PvP I should probably spec into it a bit more though. My R7+ are up in the air so I may, or may not, have any large casting times at all. That is likely dependent on how Mimic plays out and if I feel that would be my R7 and onward or if I force myself into different elections.

So my initial build includes:

Sure Spell- LV10 (25s Duration, 15s Cool Down)
Reflect Shield- LV7 (55s Dur 41 CD, 5 hits)

But… should I change it up?

Sure Spell- LV 8 (21s Dur 15s CD)
Reflect Shield- LV9 (65s Dur 41 CD, 6 hits)

Or

Sure Spell- LV 6 (17s Dur 15s CD)
Reflect Shield- LV11 (75s Dur 41 CD, 7 hits)

With Sure Spell at only lv6 you are guaranteed 100% uptime if needed (including animation/cast time), but as it is most benefited in PvP you may not be in a position to cast at that moment and the padding may be useful. Poison ticks also messed with casting back then, idk about now. At Lv10 the additional 10s to re-cast is a nice buffer for continuous uptime. But that’s all the additional points invested earn you, just a little more uptime, no other traits or effects. Although in the other setups Reflect Shield will gain additional hits for more damage reduction. Assuming of course that even in open world PvP I’d be carrying Daino it would make even a little extra padding from Reflect Shield help.

My problem is both skills are situational and benefit the caster only if they are being hit. But in PvE you’re often hit just running through a zone so Reflect Shield would likely get more use from the additional points. Sure Spell only prevents interruption (if I recall you can be interrupted as early as the second you start to move a casting circle, not only for spells with a high channel) while being hit and Reflect Shield only reduces damage a little bit and returning paltry damage back at the attacker.

Wut do? It really is just down to picking which would be more effective even though neither are too important.

Still leaning toward the Sure Spell LV10 route even though I could have 100% uptime with just LV6 (some would argue with LV5 but that doesn’t include animations) for the value it could bring to certain PvP instances. Is the extra padding worth it or too situational versus a steady +2 hits on my shield that would likely see more use overall? Oh and I won’t have massive amounts of SPR or anything so the extra points into shield vs sure spell is just for damage mitigation (I think it was ~10% ish or something) and not as a viable damage source.

[zhouyu47]

I would just max sure spell. On my wiz3 I tried having it at a lower level, but having to recast it more often was a pain and actually lowered my DPS some.

Aren’t you going like wiz3 thaum though? This answer kinda depends on what you’re going to be casting. I was an elementalist, so I needed sure spell for most of my skills. For other classes, you may only need it sometimes rather than all the time though.

[Darkon]

Yeah, going into Thaum from there. For Ele I can def see how the cast times would benefit from the padding on Sure Spell, as a Thaum most of the spells are insta-cast aside from targetting a Reversi.

I’m trying to keep re-speccing to a minimum (in case it costs $$$ or in case it is a very rare allowance) so I’m pretending that I may or may not have additional cast times. Although it does make a big difference on how effective Sure Spell would be, but, just as a generality, because like you I noticed that the re-casts on Sure Spell to keep it up wasn’t a good thing (at the time I had Necro as my “final” tier so between the targetting circle for positioning Flesh Cannon, and the cast-time, so it did become a burden to waste either buff’s duration between Sure Spell and Quick Cast). Depending on how Mimic pans out I may or may not end up throwing Rune Caster in there (synergy with the C3 Wiz and Thaum playstyles) or Featherfoot (plays into self-tanking and healing via Transpose).

But, yeah, speaking more as a “generality” of Sure Spell VS Reflect Shield with R7+ being an unknown in the build xD Reflect Shield sucks but 2 extra hits on it may be more useful than the padding on Sure Spell, especially if I don’t even have any spells that may benefit much from it. But Reflect Shield is also utter trash that normally just wastes a buff slot, so for party play without Daino it wouldn’t likely even be used (aka wasted points) where as Sure Spell would still have a home.