Vorad

There is a nice chokepoint there right at the entrance, use 2 tanks(fighter + chanter) to block it. The rest should be spellcasters on your backline droping aoe crowd control spells at the vamps. For example, you have a wizard, druid, priest and cypher all these have aoe cc. As soon as combat starts use all your aoe cc abilities after that you can nuke them. If for any "wierd" reason your party doesn't have casters/nukers/cc then I would sugest you need to balance your party composition first unless you are creating a party fully for roleplaying in that case not much can be done. The main idea is that you need to cc the vamps as soon as possible then nuke them, so you need to include in your party some of the clases that can achieve that.

First playthrough at PotD. Due to party compo it was a bit boring.

Both are viable as many people claimed already. I would say that maybe wizard has a bit "better" cc early game. At 1st level you get both Chill Fog(aoe damage + blindess + snare) and Slicken (aoe prone) as a Wizard. Druid has an aoe damage + blindness as well and an aoe hobble but I'd say fog is better due to duration then on 2nd level again you get Miasma(great aoe debuff) + aoe Blind spell with long duration 20+ sec with wizard while with druid you get some nuke spells. So overall druid has slightly better nuke potential early game while wizard got slightly better cc. At lategame they start to even up. HOWEVER at lategame you will be spamming 1st and 2nd level spells with your spellcasters and since in my personal opinion ( this is purely subjective) wizard early spells are a bit better especially when in a group I would lean towards wizard more. In my own party I had both wizard and druid so I didn't really had to pick sides

There is also a generic buckler with exactly the same ability but available to all classes ( I got it somwhere in Endless Paths). Furthermore those two stack so with a paladin(tank) and a chanter(tank) it was quite a nice duo. EDIT: just checked the name of buckler: "Little Savior",

With 2 wizards leveling up in the party simultaneously you don't even need to exploit, between them and the lots of grimoires you find you reach full spells by the end game.

Depends on playstyle and specc, I was playing nuker/cc ranged constantly and never had a problem with keeping distance from start to end. In the begining when you are solo before you reach gilded vale maybe there's a range issue but nothing that a proactive fog from stealth can't solve followed by slicken + Fan. As for teleporting shades, they won't bother you any more if for the 5 seconds you let your tanks get their agroo. I had 2 tanks so it was easy to keep range with my 4 casters(all squishy in clothes), for a solo triple crown it's a different story there maybe orlan or even pale elf melee specc could be an alternative.(possibly the only wizard alternative) Anyway to the original poster, talents for wizard are a bit lackluster generally speaking they provide a limiting bonus, situational in many cases but that's understandable considering that you got a spell for everything you need. Pick your role in the party and then pick those talents which help you achieve it best. Also what works for one player doesn't necessary work for another playtesting will be required.

I have tested marksman and it doesn't work on spells. As for racials regarding wizards, Wood Elf, Orlan and Death Goodlike all fit in for nuking BUT since you only have a limited ammount of trials until you apply your cc, I would say that it's more important to make sure your spell lands on target asap especially if it's cc(and mostly it will be) therefore I would say the Wood Elf racial when it comes to nuker/cc wizards can't be rivaled. Orlan is ok maybe for a spellsword type of wizard though. Death Goodlike might be an alternative for purely roleplaying purpose without gimping your wizard too much. Finished PoD with a party of 2 wizards both Wood Elf nuker,cc (rest was fighter, chanter, druid, priest). My specc on both wizards was all elemental talents and they did actually work on damaging elemental spells, + deep pockets for extra scrolls/items ( if you actually think of it you get 2 more scroll slots that's like 10 extra spells per encounter way more superior to the lackluster extra spell talent), as final pick I choose Bloody Slaughter since there is no better alternative for amplifying damage at this point and since minions have more endurance in PoD this talent does help a bit in order to finish them off. However Bloody Slaughter is still lackluster and it's used only as a filler in my case, because as a ranged wizard you will most of the time apply cc on the opponents while the rest of the team will do the killing and a prone, paralyzed opponent won't trouble you much anyway so that extra "execute" from Bloody Slaughter hardly comes into play even in PoD. To sum up all of the elemental talents are really useful, add in there deep pockets for extra utility, the final talent I'm not sure though since the remaining are at best mediocre (maybe now with 1.05 arcane veil can be of some use... not sure)

You get to experiment with other builds and classes now appart from the cookie cutter speccs. The patch is great!

I switched my support/offtank to defensive chanter from paladin and never looked back, my main tank is full defensive fighter the res 2x wizards nuke/cc, priest skaen support/dps and druid nuke/cc. Deffensive chanter can reach high survivability as well while at the same time chants + invocations bring to the table way more stuff than paladin's abilities.

Is that official? As I read the explanatory text it mentions "ranged weapons", otherwise it would be a really good talent. Thanks for the posts guys. EDIT: I have confirmed it on a test a bit earlier, marksman applies only to ranged weapons sadly.

Thank you very much for the replies. It seems the wizard talents were made underwhelming on purpose given that the spells are quite strong. Even though a wizards most important trait are the spells he uses, it still wouldn't hurt to seek an optimal build. The only reason why I considered picking Bloody Slaughter is boss fights, where a boss in low endurance is still a considerable threat. But since there is a kill spell maybe the talent is not that great after all... For trash clearing the blast and penetrating blast seem ok. Otherwise I could get +1slot but this won't be of great use at high levels. I do like to spam fog as well but mostly for the cc so I think I will pick Scion of Flame instead since the benefit in damage is higher when considering Fan of Flames. I went for godlike instead of Aumaua due to preference on intellect vs might in that case however from godlike racials I picked Death due to the rest seem less beneficial for a cc/nuker. Nature seems interesting but there are two ways of being <50% endurance either get hit (which I don't really like) or using dangerous implement but that means even with 3 Cos I need to autoattack about 15 times, it doesn't seem optimal. The moon seems as an ok choice overall the aoe "heal" seems a bit better than self DR from fire in this case. So all in all the Death godlike to me appears to be the most consistent option for a cc/nuker.

I am considering Bloody Slaughter and maybe Scion of Flame next. Not sure though if these do stack with Death Goodlike racial. Still haven't managed to figure out a proper talent build for wizard cc & nuker.

It doesn't appear to be a matter of syntax. For example, the following is not working: removetalent player tln_bloody_slaughter_talent Does this actually work for you? Yes I sadly had to remove some trash talent and switched it for Bloody Slaughter. Just make sure to find your actual in-game name # example main char Vorad > FindCharacter Vorad # should show Player_Game(Clone)_0 for your main char and something similar for npc > RemoveTalent Player_Game(Clone)_0 tln_Arcane_Veil > AddTalent Player_Game(Clone)_0 tln_Bloody_Slaughter_talent Try to capitalize the words as above, it worked in my case. The way I see it is that class talents do not require the "_talent" in the end while general-type talents they do require it.

just do RemoveTalent <character here> tln_Hold_the_Line or RemoveTalent <character here> tln_Hold_the_Line_talent Try both!

No need for the IE mod, you need to pay attention to the syntax as well. Some of those talents also end with "_talent" eg. removetalent <character> tln_bloody_slaughter_talent

Hey everyone, I recently started PoE. I have been playing dnd in the past of course and have really enjoyed all previous pc games like Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. I have come up with a party and my main is a wizard however I find myself in trouble when picking the proper talents for the Wizard. The wizard so far: Vorador 7 lvl Death Goodlike Stats Before Items Mig 18 Con 3 Dex 17 Per 10 Int 20 Res 10 Blast Penetrating Blast Spirit of Decay As for spells I have gathered several grimoires so far so I have almost all possible spells up until lvl 4. I focus mostly on cc through slicken(OP) and the rest but if neccessary I can switch to my nuke spells especially when fighting ethereals. As I mentioned earlier my only problem is in picking the "proper" talents for the wizard, I am not really happy about my choices so far these picks seem mediocre and so I was looking for advice, especially since as I will progress in levels I am not really sure on what talents to pick next. Thanks in advance.