We are support/dps class. We got fancy AOE dps skills in red trait line and can do rather massive dps with many mobs around. Yellow line is to increase healing, debuff and CC (crowd control = stuns, dazes roots.) Blue traitline boosts effectiveness of the pet, and has also some coordinaton skills in it. Like when i get critically hit, mob sacrifices bit of morale to heal me.
Basics of the class stay somewhat the same with the HD update. We still throw fireballs, command pets and have some debuff skills available in every build. Some of most potent DPS and support skills got bound to the trait trees though.
I've highlighted HD changes in red. Not going too deep to specs now, keeping this as beginner's guide thread. ;)
Flanks
When your pet is attacking an enemy, it might cause flanked-effect on it. You see red arrows on sides of the mob's head, get sound alert and debuff icon on mob looks like open bear maw. When using wizards fire on flanked target, it will heal you and depending on gear and traits maby more fellow members too. Staff sweep heals power-over-time. Each of these 2 skills remove flank effect so you can use only one of these with bonus.
In the beta Staff-Strike was not affected by flank effect anymore. Also we lost the trait to make flank heal shared to air-lore target.
Stun vs. Daze
Yes, these are vitally different. On daze, it says 100% chance to break on damage (after xx seconds). This one doesnt leave immunity of any kind, so you can daze/stun right after it. Stun cannot be broken on damage, but it leaves temporary immunity to stun. You can daze it right after, but save your skills that deal stun for later to keep mobs unable to act as long as you can.
When dazing mobs, be cautios for aoe attacks nearby and DoT effects on the target as they wake it up.
Roots are also broken on damage similar to daze, but some roots have lower than 100% chance to break on damage. You got skills such as herb-lore (yellow line traits now) and Cracked Earth that you can use to root.
Debuffs
Do not underestimate these. Debuffing cuts the damage from enemies short so much this can be noticed by healer if in instance, or makes you last longer in solo. Also range debuff of raven is useful to get ranged enemies move to tank, since most of time the NPC archer gets mad with the great decrease of damage and runs to melee.
Fire- and Frost-Lores are now bound to topmost traits of yellow line. They have no cooldown and hit only 1 target at time, speccing to yellow can give your Wind-lore (incoming damage debuff, change alert) chance to spread the effect to nearby targets. Also yellow traits change these 2 debuffs so that if you do fire, frost or (insert damage type here, will change correct later) type of skill on them they recieve extra effect depeending on damage type. Base debuff doesn't go away if you do this.
Pets
Learn to use different options in pet toolbar to control your pet. Meaning passive, defensive, aggressive, and togling assist on. Attack button and follow are useful as well. Learn what skills each pet has. As you level up you unlock more of the skills, you start with only one pet skill and later will have up to 3.
Blue line will power up pets. It seems rather interesting as it is now in beta, definetely worth trying as you level your character. Traiting blue you can get skill Inner Flame which is channelled skill that heals you and pet over time.
Also ask jeweller make you a brooch, it's class item that goes into ranged slot and can boost pet evade or crit rate. I prefer getting avidance boost and send pet in first to the mob group, attack single target to one of them and have rest of the group attack my pet untill I kill the first one.
