Blog of Nuke

I took my seldom used Rank 8 Bright Wizard out for a walk last night.

If you’ve got too much pride to turn and run away from most enemies, then this very squishy character class isn’t for you.  :-)   I spent most of the time running away from things which can definitely slow the rate of character advancement.

And there were record amounts of spam last night too!  I received no less than 26 spam tells during my session but SpamMeNot blocked and reported them all.

If you haven’t downloaded the SpamMeNot add-on, do it now!

The flame spewing Bright Wizard is a fun class to play provided you can find people who’ll back you up.

It was tough going for the first while last night.  I spent most of my casting and then fleeing, and that’s when I could find Order players on Bretonnia to back up in a fight.

Open RvR was pretty abysmal for Order that night as they were facing some organized Rank 11 Destruction players.  Frequently getting ganked by 11’s is no fun so doing Scenario RvR was pretty much my only option.

I didn’t to do badly in Scenario RvR and managed to rank at least in the top five in terms of damage dealt and/or enemies killed.

In one game I did particularly well:

Bright Wizards can really lay down the damage but their light armour and almost non-existant melee skills means that they can be very easy targets so  tactical positioning is essential.

You want to keep targets at maximum range if possible and always have an avenue of escape.  This means maintaining a good situational awareness at all times.  The last thing you want to do is flee from one enemy, right into the hands of another.

One thing that I haven’t perfected was the ‘run-whirl-cast-run” move where you run from an opponent who has given chase,  whirl around to get the target into the cone-of-fire and fire off the spell and then immediately turn around and resume running.

Observations through Play

For me personally, I found that optimum targeting and fast target switching was key.

My first inclination was to fix on a specific target and heap on the damage until it was dead.  But in the midst of battle, I found that spreading the damage around was probably more productive for the team overall.

I found that I tended to approach the enemy from the flanks and cast DoT (damage-over-time) spells which did not draw attention too much attention to myself.

Unlike pyrokinetic spells like Fireball, or spells with a lot of “show and flash” like Sear, damage-over-time spells like  Ignite and Boiling Blood can be cast on a distracted opponent and they may not immediately notice they had been cast upon.

This was particularly effective on casters who may be concentrating on healing their group members or doing targeting of their own.  The APs (action points) used on healing themselves was APs not used on supporting their group.

Using Cover and Terrain

I found that hiding in a bush, behind a rock or other cover and popping out just long enough to get a target within my firing arc and fire off a spell was fairly effective, especially with DoTS.

The longer you remain unseen, the more time you have to spam DoTS on every enemy you can see before having to run.  DoTS still enable you to do damage to the opposing team but without being within LOS (line of sight) for the opposing ranged character classes to target you.

Tanks, But No Tanks

I didn’t fixate on tank classes (character types designed to take a lot of damage) like Marauders and Chosens as much as I thought I would.

I did cast DoTS on tanks whenever i got the chance, but I didn’t spend too much time on them unless they were at around 50% health or less, or were attacking retreating/weaker teammates.

I figured the best way to deal with a tank is to deal with the caster who is healing it.

I tended to stay away from using Fireball except to finish off retreating enemy players.  I was more judicious in its use because of its long cast time (3 seconds) and the fact that a Fireball “points both ways” if you know what I mean.

Witch Elves

I found that I had a tendency to target Witch Elves more often because their favoured target is casters like me.

Witch Elves can cloak so a favourite tactic is for them is to sneak in and go straight for our casters.  If I could get DoTS on them before they cloaked, then they’d still be receiving damage, cloaked or not.

Witch Elf players also tend to suffer from target fixation so I was more inclined to use Fireball on them if they were concentrating on a teammate.

It’s All About Positioning

Approaching from the flanks, staying out of LOS and running away whenever possible helped me stay alive long enough to dish out a good deal of damage over time.

Although I wasn’t taking down one player after another, I was able to sufficiently weaken and harass enemy players long enough for either my teammates to finish the job, or for my DoTS to do it for them.

Conclusion

So far, I find that the Bright Wizard is a little easier to play than a Witch Hunter because of its ranged attack and DoTS capabilities.

Although it doesn’t require as much tactical movement as a Witch Hunter, the fact that it’s lightly armoured and has no healing abilities means one has to still be very, very careful.

If you’re the impatient type for getting player kills, Bright Wizard may not be for you because most of the time, you’ll be trying to sneak around or turning tail and running for your life unless you have a good team to back you up— and even then, sometimes you’ll be running for your life anyway.

Be prepared to die… a lot.

If you’re not a lone wolf and love the team support role, it can be a very satisfying class to play since you can have a significant impact on the opposing team.

Discuss this post in the forum - (1) PostsTags: boiling blood, bright wizard, chosen, damage over time, dots, ignite, marauder, searing, tanks, witch elves

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 7:35 am and is filed under Warhammer Age of Reckoning, gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.