Been a while since there has been a Brightwizard post (apart from being the comparison in the sorc thread)
So if we look at the class from a few different views:
- How did the class perform on Live servers
- How does the class perform on RoR from launch till now
On Live Brightwizard was arguebly the most overtuned class from launch till end of Era rr80 and started loosing some steam as high tier gearsets was released, Defensive Realm abilities were introduced and later on a slight rework of the class mechanic on a few skills plus changes to some tactics (Scorched earth mainly)
Brightwizard on beta + launch had crazy stuff like:
- Nova with a Stun.
- Ruin and Destruction Morale2 had a stun effect.
- Rain of fire actually stacked (no it never stacked on RoR)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYzFg40b7Uw
- Close quaters tactic made the BW deal 25%more damage within 45feet and less damage beyond this range. (untill VII bombed some war-devs in an IC instance and it got nerfed)
A few of the things that made Brightwizard stay somewhat relevant late-game with Sove gear, was how the items on Live were slightly more caster favored when lategame melee advantages such as higher stat-value on high tier sets, you get more str+weaponskill+sendondary offensive stats like haste/crit/strikethrough/flat pen, on top of higher weapon dps etc. And on casters you can get int softcapped, stack magicpower, crit and strikethrough but never penetration to magic.
So on Live with Sov bonuses consisting of magicpower procs, acces to land of the dead magicpower bugged timed talismen(put in bank when they expire and exploit the duration to be perma)
Casters could get enough magicpower to compete with the psyical damagedealers gettting several mainstats + weapon dps. Where as on RoR casters get early softcapped mainstats (1050 int) and from there on you are very limmited on pushing your bonus damage much higher apart from a few out-of-line pieces with high magicpower/critdamage, but all of them are early armor/staffs so your armorvalue will suffer big time.
RoR brightwizard has the same overtuned classmechanic it has always had, but with the nerf to closequaters patch plus scorched earth. This makes for a brilliant early-game pugstomping monstr that is solely getting carried by the class mechanic from Tier2 untill pre-city gear-level. Sure if you outgear players you will still perform will, but the class falls off at absolute lategame and the melee meta start kicking in, exactly as we saw city meta evolve on Live servers. It started with heavy caster bombbands and ended up being closer to a 50/50 or even heavy melee meta.
So from RoR's early Tier2-3-4 days and up untill City launch in jan/feb this year BW has been a proper powerhouse of a class, still cable of pugstomping, timestamping 100-0 if you outgear or the enemy is sleeping, but the glory days are over.
I will not be the judge if the casters need a slight bit of love with the next sets of pve gear, a caster-main could hope the royal weapons will not follow the trend of Invader weapons having zero magicpower and being nothing more than an appearence item, and maybe Huntervale/lostvale/Tomb of the vulture lord/colluses will help the casters fight the lategame issues of weapondps+WS outmatching int softcap. Time will tell.
With all of this being said, Mez confirmed to me that the reported issue of Slowboil not scaling has been fixed so now singletarget BW has one more useful ability to add on the timestamp so that is something.
I personally love the class, but knew for a long time it would end up slowly being overtaken by the melee meta for the reasons mentioned above. It is still a strong class in both Singletarget pugstomping scs/roaming, aoe funnels/roaming and to some extend for the ranged dps-champ in stage3 city.
The next pve sets of gear and weapons/jewels might bring the class back in meta play, but for 6v6 and competitive cities i think the days are over for most of the fireclowns.