Introduction 

This guide is meant as an introduction and helper to new and veteran wizard players who want to pick up succession and don’t know where to start. It also contains pve and pvp tips. If you have any questions, dont hesitate to write them in the thread below.

Class Mechanics

The main mechanic of succession wizard is that it can greatly speed up up the casting of its abilities  by using the key combinations in quick *succession* (no pun intended). This is granted by the following passives that you need to allocate for this to work: Luminous touch allows you to instantly cast lighting spells, Burning pulse fire spells, Freezing gaze water/cold spells and magnificent steps earth spells. Lastly, you need to allocate the Prime: elemental flow passive.

Once you have these passive allocated, you can avoid long cast times by pressing the right key combinations. For example, you can activate Frigid Fog significantly faster by pressing S+Q after Prime: Voltaic pulse (W+C).

Moreover, you will notice that if you hold F or RMB after casting a spell, then your character will automatically start to cast another spell of the same element, rotating through them as they go off cooldown. For example, if you hold RMB too long after casting Prime: Fireball Explosion, your wizard might end up starting to cast Prime: Meteor shower. However, this is something you really want to avoid as you are forced to have the entire cast time instead of instanty skipping it.

Note about the instant cast mechanic: If you are just getting started with the succession, you might want to practice by buffering (aka inputting the key combination for the next spell) before the current one has finished. If you use the key combo too late, the instant cast passive wont activate.

The second characteristic of succession wizard is that he is allowed to use his teleports separately. This means that, unlike awakening, you can cast teleport, use some skills, and then recast teleport. Effectively, you get two charges of teleport with 7 and 10 seconds cooldown respectively. Moreover, the instant cast passive for wizard (but not for witch!) can be activated right after teleport.

Part 1: Skill selections

Wizard (and witch) successions have the unique characteristic of being able to choose between two versions of the same skills. This is one of the main sources of confusion for new wizard succession players who wonder “which skill should I pick?”. In this section my goal is to explain the difference and tradeoff between each one and when you would want to pick each one.

Prime: Fireball Explosion

Areal	Focus
less damage	more damage
higher area of effect	less area of effect
no protection	Super Armor protection
knockdown CC	no CC

For PVE, you will generally want to take the Focus one for the more damage. In PVP it depends on if you want another KD or the extra damage.

Prime: Meteor Shower

Areal	Focus
less Crit, and so less damage	more crit, and so more damage
higher area of effect	significantly smaller area
slower to cast	a lot faster to cast
stiffness and KD cc	no CC

For PVE you will again take the Focus one for the higher damage. In PVP its up to personal preference whether you want another burst damage tool, or you want the catch utility of the CC

PVP tip! You can raise your  camera height by pressing the UP arrow button, this will allow Meteor to hit at an even higher range!

PVP tip! If you pick Areal, you should know that before the meteor lands there are multiple CC stiffens ticks that can easily catch unaware players.

PVP tip! Regardless which one you pick, try not to start casting them if anyone is close to you as they are a huge “GRAB ME” flashing sign

Prime: Lighting Storm

Combo	High Voltage
more overall damage	has 1 hit, so more bursty damage
stiff CC	FG while charging
no protection	no PVP cc
has two hits, so hold that RMB	REALLY high pvp damage

Unlike preawakening lighting storm, you wont need to precast lighting chain to be able to use lighting storm. You can just quickslot it or use it directly after residual lighting. In general, you would want to pick Combo for PVE for better sustained DPS, and high voltage for PVP for the higher burst.

PVP tip! You can hold the FG of High Voltage as long as you like, up to a few seconds. This is very useful as succession has no S-block

Prime: Residual Lighting

Combo	High Voltage
3 hits, so hold down that RMB	1 hit so higher burst
SA protection	no protection
no CC	bound CC
ridiculously high AOE/range	small conal range

In general you should pick Combo in almost every case for PVP, it is sustained ranged protected DPS that also slows the enemy. For PVE you should almost always pick High Voltage as you want to get that damage out faster. Combo is far too slow for that.

PVP tip! The super-armor of the Combo version ends REALLY early. You should be ready to go into your next spell immediately or risk getting CCed. If you are fighting a wizard this is the easiest time to CC them, just watch for the end of the combo animation.

Prime: Frigid Fog

Disrupt	Control
less damage	more damage
no CC	Freeze CC
aoe in front of you	360 aoe
less CD	higher CD

In PVP you will always take Control. In PVE it depends on whether the monsters you are fighting can be frozen or not. If they can be frozen you really want to take disrupt instead, as they take less damage while frozen.

PVP tip! Prime: Frigid Fog: Control is one of the most potent CC of succ wizard. The reason is that if you instant cast it the CC comes out almost immediately before the animation even finishes. Many players in PVP you might fight in PVP are bad and will EASILY get caught by this. So try to put that S+Q in unexpected places in your skill rotation to get them by surprise. Works especially well vs sorcs and ninjas.

Prime: Blizzard

Domain	Storm
summons an independent blizzard	you control the blizzard
does NOT slow attack/cast speed	huge slow for a few seconds (-50%)
is stationary	you can move it around
	FG while charging

In PVE you will generally prefer the Domain version as its independent dps, you can fire and forget it. In PVP you want to take the Storm version, it is especially useful in group pvp.

PVP tip! The Forward guard mentioned in the tooltip is only before the storm itself starts falling! While the storm is going on you are unprotected and can be easily CCed.

Prime: Earthquake

Evade	Destruction
mobility skill	stationary skill
can be used while on CD	cant be used on CD
less CD (15s)	more CD (20s)

Generally, you take destruction in PVE and Evade in PVP. You can use Destruction earthquake to more easily group up mobs in PVE as well as prebuff with your addons. Both of these are protected stiff CC.

PVP tip! If you rotate your camera, you can use evade earthquake to go behind enemies backs and stiff them behind FG!. This works a lot more often than you think, as most players dont know how our skills work. 

PVP tip! Be careful with the SA at the end of EQ: Evade, just like residual combo, it ends deceptively early and can get you CCed, or you can abuse that gap to CC another wizard :).

Prime: Earth’s response

Flow	Destruction
can be used on cd	cant be used on cd
Float CC	no PVP CC
super armor only while you are moving (not during the cc!)	super armor (one of the best!)
a bit shorter range	a bit higher range

Generally you would want to take Destruction in both PVP and PVE. You might think the Flow might be nicer for repositioning in PVE even on CD, but it does NOT activate the instant cast flow if it is on CD. Also it has some niche uses in PVP by floating people behind their blocks.

PVP tip! If you pick Destruction in PVP, you should know that this is one of the best lingering superarmors that wizard has. This means that if you cast earths response and let you character without any other commands he will go some time before his superarmor ends. This is really good for recovering cooldowns and giving you some breathing space in PVP.

Prime: Voltaic vs Prime: Bolide

The consensus choice here is Prime: Voltaic, due to the extremely potent evasion debuff, and the fact it is protected bound. You will take voltaic in every pvp scenario. Voltaic is even preferable in PVE, but you should keep in mind Bolide is actually more damage there due to the higher crit rate.

PVP tip! Try to estimate the distance of your teleports so you teleport exactly behind people’s back and instant cast voltaic. Catches people a lot more then you think!

Prime: Aqua Jail vs Prime: Equilibrium Break

In most PVP you will take equilibrium break, as it is a reliable FG, that succession wizard lacks, as he has no S-block (block while walking backwards). Even in PVE you will take equilibrium break, as Aqua Jail causes fps issues due to its particles while being cast.  This is not to say that Aqua Jail is useless, as you can have a very comfortable PVE experience with bolide and aqua jail (easier management of CDs), but thats the only use case of those two skills I am aware of.

Skill Point Builds

Entry level PVE https://bdocodex.com/us/skillbuilder/142814 (1630 SP required)

PVP build https://bdocodex.com/us/skillbuilder/142815 (1817 SP required)

Generally, wizard and witch successions require a large amount of SP, so you should instead farm as awakening until 1600 SP or so.

Part 2: Combo rotations

PVE: In pve the sequence of skills you should be using depends on the particular spot you are grinding. For example, in Star’s end you need Burst Damage Combos, while in Sycraia you need Sustained Damage Combos. Here is an example of a combo:

Combo1 (burst): Earthquake->Equilibrium Break->Voltaic->Frigid Fog->Lightning->Residual->Lightning Storm->Fireball->Rabam Fireball->Explosion

Basically, you group up the mobs and buff yourself/debuff them until they are fully grouped up, and then you unleash your main damage which is your lighting and fire chain combos. It is important to debuff most monsters with the evasion debuff from voltaic before using your main fire/lightning damage combos as both of those have very low accuracy. However, your main damage skills of the fire and lightning variety have quite long cooldowns which means you will have to use a lot of filler in places where sustained damage is required. Here is a sustained damage combo you can use:

Combo2 (sustained dps): Earthquake->equilibrium break->Voltaic->Frigid->Lighting->residual->lightning storm->fireball->rabam->fireball explosion->MMA->MMA 2nd hit->equilibrum break->voltaic->frigid fog->meteor/blizzard->MMA->MMA 2nd hit->Lighting->residual->lightning storm->fireball->rabam->fireball explosion->MMA->MMA 2nd hit etc

Notice that this combo is basically your main burst skills (fire and lighting spell and their flows) interspersed with filler abilities like equilibrium break and voltaic. Another ability you should try to use as much as possible is your third rabam “Lightning spear”. It has extremely high PVE damage but very long CD. It is best to use it when the monsters are bunched up together and not waste it on small lone mobs.

PVP: Wizard succession doesnt really have combos in the sense other classes do, as its damaging abilities are also the ones you rotate to keep yourself protected. Here is the PVP combo I like to use in an ideal situation:

Voltaic (bound)->Frigid Fog->fireball->rabam (Knockdown)->fireball explosion->lightning->residual->lightning storm.

Notice that I leave the lighting skills for last. This is because as the enemy player is standing up, I want them to be slowed so they have trouble grabbing me or escaping, so I can keep DPSing them. When you craft combos for PVP the following are important to keep in mind. An enemy in a downed state (bound/KD) cannot be frozen, so you dont have to worry about wasting a CC with Frigid. A frozen enemy MUST be hit with a bound or knockdown if you want to keep them CCed. If you hit them with a stun or stiff then they will NOT get downed after the freeze ends. Always thaw frozen enemies with rabam or voltaic, never lightning or earthquake. Of course this class is not really combo based compared to other classes, but the combos you like to use should dictate the addons you pick.

Part 3: Addons

The third major question new wizard players have (or any player new to a class) is “which addons should I pick?”. The reality here is that addons are specific to each player but there are some baselines you should make sure you cover with your addons. In your PVE addons, you should make sure you always have +% cast speed, +monster damage and +%crit always up. You might need to have these duplicated on multiple skills but its utterly critical to have them always up, as they are the most impactful. Similarly, for PVP you should always have +%cast speed up and you should make sure to have -%evasion, +%accuracy available during your combos.

Here are the PVP addons that I personally use.

Notes about the addons: Notice how there are slow addons on every lightning skill and also +%cast speed on them. This is because it is easy to land those skills at any time, and the slow stacks for a total -47% slow on the enemies. Faster for me, slower for them. Moreover, I put the offensive damage addons on the skills I use during combos, such as frigid fog. You should make sure to put some addons on meteor as it is a T3 skill which means it gives you the strongest form of addons and is a quite useful skill in group pvp.

Here are the PVE addons that I personally use.

Notes about the addons: Notice that I put the utility addons on the “filler” skills that I constantly spam to setup the actual damage skills, which are fireball and lighting combos. Moreover, I think that putting the short duration addons in Earth’s response is a really good idea, as you are supposed to use it often to reposition and back attack monsters as much as possible.

thanks a lot for the helpful guide :)

i just returned after quite a break and this helped me quite a lot to check back and understand better what skills i trained back when i last played :P good guides on succession have been sparse and still are.

totally forgot about the "s-block" alternative and will give this a shot again, tho as far as i can tell it just didn't fit for PvE all that good, still you never know when there is pvp sooo...would be usefull i guess.

2 questions tho:

1) lightning (back+f) - you basically do not list the skill at all and i had this as a filler so the CD's work together better. tho it basically never really felt strong i still used it. should i just skip the skill all together so it is not in the chain or do you just left it out because it is the last to have SP wise? got rid of it for now and will test how it plays.

1) you seem to play wizard and i am witch :( maybe you can still help me.... from the rabam skills there is no lightning spear as a witch and the lightning arrows and mana arrows both seem a lot worse on paper, any tips on which to take and why by any chance?

Hi o/

Glad you found it helpful. As for your questions:

1) I basically tried to list the skills that have two different versions in wizard/witch succession to explain the difference. Even though I do not list it, you should definitely be starting your lightning combos with back+F! Another tip for that skill is to hold F a bit longer so it does its 2nd hit for extra damage!. So your lightning combos should be S+F->hold F->hold RMB-> etc.

2) The main difference between wiz and witch is the fact that witch can use her MMA (Prime: Multiple Magic Arrows even on cooldown!). So if you play witch instead of wiz you should try to press S+RMB after as many skills as you can as its a lot of extra dps in PVE.

As for the witch rabams, I would recommend lightning arrows for PVP and mana arrows for PVE. The reason is that mana arrows is a decent DPS skill for PVE and refills your mana with the last hit, while lightning arrows have a very long range and apply a slow like eveyr lightning skill :)