Brightwizard sure is a class with some history. And still till this day devide the waters wether its "omg overtuned needs to be nerfed" or in the other end of the spectrum of "lol this guy walking up doing annihilate, what a freekill".
Today I'd like to talk about some of the Brighty issues and would like to hear some other ideas about the class and some of the overlap to it's soft-mirror Sorc on the general areas of this class mechanic and ability arsenal.
First of all, the Singletarget timestamp.
This is the build for doing smallscale and scenarios, no doubt about it!
But there is also no alternative, so even for people who dont enjoy this backloaded playstyle you cant really go and make a "Cast speed reduction" build and do consistant damage pressure with either hard casting spells or channeling spells.
T1 gameplay is pretty much evidence of this, you dont have any of the class defining tools to make the singletarget build so you are in this akward situation of hard building Combustion by standing and casting. In contrast to Endgame where you can reach full class mechanic before or even while setting up your timestamp and poof the ungaurded choppa is no more as you snap your fingers like in the Cinematic *Snap*
Archtype defining abilitity
At level 10 most classes get a really class defining ability which helps them unlock their playstyle.
Rogues gets stealth, tanks gets guard, healers get ressurect, melee dps gets charge. And we get... Aoe root
As long as aoe root is deemed a free immunity or a "panic" button the mage classes just feel leftout of this graduation ceramony at level ten.
An option could be that root would be an only defensive option, and would debuff the user after applying it for X seconds, or drop the class mechanic to 0 when used or something something. But right now root breaks too fast after its applied and the value of the immunity in smallerscale is too big of a price to pay to really make root be the main defensive ability for kiting someone chasing you.
Closecombat caster
One of the few builds that got nerfed on Live, and on RoR, and still have many different variations and tactic slots being used. But wait a second, for the close quaters mage playstyle, the tactic named "Close Quaters" is not actually used. That seems.. odd..
The old Live CQ tactic was a playstyle defining tactic, if you wanted to be up close you would deal less damage to enemies far away. Seemed fine but the raw damage portion was too much so it got restricted into lowering casttime and now this tactic is Best in Slot for PVE but not used in PVP.
Instead slotting alot of Proc tactics and relying on applying fast hitting aoe attacks such as Annihilate channel up front while standing still as a toilet paper protected caster is the way.
What if CQ gave double armor while being in melee range after landing an annihilate or fieryblast, or if it made us be able to channel on the move like all the melee dps classes who are not reliant on breaching sevral stacks of Hold the Line, while all of our armor can be stripped away by a singletarget armordebuff.
Just spitballing some thoughts here, but it does seem like the Mythic nerf to CQ could be an obvious way of making this into a pvp tactic one again.
That one button build
Alright so where the Singletarget build is struggling to do consistant damage from afar and instead needs to be spikey, aoe can actually be applied consistantly with fairly easy counterplay. By holding down Rain of Fire. Granted only one BW at a time can do this as RoF doesnt stack and a silence, taunt or walking up and beating on the caster will do the trick. So here is an example of when consistant damage works, maybe the channeling abilities in singletarget needs to be more than just the first tick and then interrupt it. What if the singletarget abilities were ramping up over time to offer an alternative to the Timestamping, that would make these casters immobile when outputting and offer gameplay in pushing on them or interrupting to stop the damage.
Just a couple of suggestions for changes to Brightwizard:
- Firecage aoe root cant be broken for 1.5sec and debuffs the casters damage for 10sec
- Close Quaters tactic is looked at being pvp used again in one way or an other
- Flamebreath as an aoe filler ability deals DD instead of DoT on first tick
- Alternative singletarget damage is available outside of Timestamping
- Mage career pbaoe channels can be used on the move?
Now does BW need any buffs? Probably not. But all of the careers should be up for debate right, and with the ability rework on its way and balancing once again on the menu why not talk about it?
Or should the class just remain as Timestamper, Closequater bomber but without CQ tactic, or rain of fire internal fighting which one gets to do damage on the spot
(and you won't as the WL will explode the moment he pounces up to a 3 RDPs comp). I don't know why you claim that we have no clue while stating your opinion (which is completely fine to do so). But this post is about adressing the issue of BW. You can't play the same IB (nor any other order tank) 3 RDPS 2 healer comp with having exactly the same utility as a BG 3 RDPS setup would have (end of the discussion here from my side). I am open to take this "personal" - "you have no clue" statement gladly to proving my point in a 6 vs 6 match 
