Hello everyone, my name is Rayleïgh, founder of the guild La Congrégation De l'Ombre (LCDO) on the SWTOR Battle Meditation server. Our guild has been around for almost 4 years with a creation on World Of Warcraft and has been around since the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic.
I play a DPS wizard in flash specialization and I am also part of the 8 Hm roster of my guild, who play from a pro-casu perspective (no obligation of performance and pure competitiveness, but we give ourselves the means to succeed depending on our playing time).
Why the lightning wizard will you tell me? Well it's always simple, I play a caster (distance DPS, said magic) and I find myself very well in the lightning wizard. It must also be said that the function of Tesla Coil amuses me a lot: p. Even if the gameplay remains very static due to the fact that all of our spells are incantation or channeled, its major appeal lies, for me, in its function of survivability and versatility (support care if necessary and very good DPS burst) .
All of this information is based on my in-game experience and feedback from various Lightning Wizards from my server whom I especially want to thank for their time and help. I wanted to share on swtor-guide this guide, initially written for my guild.
The objective of this guide is to pool our knowledge to arrive at exposing all the essential information, with a view to purely PVE oriented DPS. The main post is regularly updated: feel free to comment on the subject to ask your questions!
Templates & Gameplay
Even if several templates can be valid and viable from a PVE perspective, a base emerges from the lot. The idea is to expose this base here and then show the different possible options.
Introduction to gameplay
Even if two DPS templates are offered, one of these templates is more viable in PVE, it is the "flash" specialization. The second specialization, more focused on dowries and mobility, is quite viable in PVE, but I will not discuss it in this guide. The madness specialization will be the subject of a separate guide.
The basis of the template
Currently, the flash specialization provides a slightly higher dps than the Madness spec in PVE, due to its greater burst possibility:
The DPS cycle
Presentation of the talents used
In PVE, we will be using the following spells for our DPS cycle:
- Lightning Strike: This is the wizard's basic attack. It also allows you to quickly attack the boss and increase his stack of subervation (3 stack). This is an attack to launch between each cooldown cooldown wait time.
- Force Lightning: channeled spell. It is to be launched only after the triggering of the barrage of lightning.
- Thundering Blast: it's a bit of a must have for the flash specialization. This attack is to be launched as soon as possible and imperatively when your affliction is present on the boss. This will ensure that the lightning explosion is critical every time you throw it and will allow maximum damage.
- Chain Lightning: This is again an attack to be launched only after the lightning storm has unleashed. Indeed this triggering, which also makes it possible to make the successive flash instantaneous, also makes it possible to have a chance of duplicating this attack.
- Affliction: this is a dowry to keep active on the boss at all times. Required to trigger several spells.
Regarding these attacks, you can very well link them to easily accessible keyboard shortcuts because they will be the most used spells during a fight.
- Crushing Darkness (under certain conditions due to its long casting time): in addition to its very slow casting time (approximately 2 seconds) it is a dowry that does damage over time and therefore very practical. The hardest part about this spell is finding the right time to cast it. I therefore recommend launching it only under the effect of an alacrity boost such as the change in polarity, which allows you to divide your casting time by 2.
Two spells to use when moving
- Shock: only on the move
- Electrocute: These are two instant direct damage spells. Useful in case of necessary movement in combat but it has a fairly long cooldown.
Two burst spells
- Recklessness: this is a spell to be cast during burst phases and throughout combat: this spell adds 2 recklessness charges which increase the critical chances of our direct force attacks by 60% . Each critical attack consumes a charge.
- Polarity Shift: spell to cast in burst phase, it increases alacrity by 20% for 10 seconds.
Presentation of the classic DPS cycle
Unlike other MMOs, there is no real cycle in SWTOR. Generally speaking, this is more of an order of priority for the spells, depending on its buffs, debuffs on the boss, as well as its concentration. Here is the priority on the flash specialization:
- Lightning Strike (if Subversion is not 3/3)
- Force Lightning (if Lightning Barrage is active)
- Affliction
- Lightning explosion
- Overwhelming shadow
- Lightning Strike (to keep Subversion at 3/3 and make Lightning Storm active)
Statistics
As DPS, we will focus on the following stats:
Will> = power> influx> critical> alacrity
Regarding the prioritization between willpower and power, I would say it's kifkif, but for my part, willpower remains slightly higher in terms of gain since it increases all Force statistics.
Overview
The main statistic, the will as well as power, are not subject to any diminishing returns, so the more you have, the better!
THEinflux increases the value of critical hits. The decreasing return begins to be felt around 70%, the hard cap is around 75%.
Le critical allows to increase the% of criticism, the decreasing return begins to be felt towards 30%, the hard cap is around 35%.
THEalacrity allows to increase the speed of casting spells as well as to decrease the times of channeling. The decreasing return begins to be felt around 8% and the hard cap is at 10%, beyond that it becomes hard to climb this statistic.
La precision allows two things: first up to 100%, it increases its chance to hit and after 100%, it decreases the target's defense. Defense allows the opponent to dodge. For example an opponent with 5% defense, dodge 5% of the hits. For the lightning wizard, there is no point in going beyond 100% because none of the bosses can dodge a Force attack.
So to sum up concerning the course to be reached:
- Activation speed: 10%
- Critical: 35%
- Crit multiplier: 75%
How to set up your statistics
Unlike other MMOs, there is no notion of course per se. It's more of the slices in which we have to have each statistic. The statistics are mounted in parallel, in stages:
- Tier 1: equivalent to the Zionist level stuff
- Influx: 60%
- Critical 25%
- Tier 2: equivalent to columi level stuff
- Influx: between 65 and 70%,
- Critical 30%
- Alacrité 8%
- Tier 3: equivalent to Rakata level stuff
- Influx between 70 and 75%
- Critical 35%
- Alacrité 10%
Optimization
In order to be successful in PVE with the Lightning Wizard, we need to optimize our equipment. To do this, the equipment bringing a constant evolution on the statistics, we will still have to make some changes in order to reach our ideal statistics.
The first change concerning the sophistication, in order to reach our 10% in alacrity we will therefore have to opt for Advanced Quick Savant Enhancement 24. Then with the 1.3 and the possible increase of each of our pieces of equipment, I advise to put the increase in willpower: Advanced Resolve Augment 22.
