Wizard Subclasses

[gkathellar]

In general, the mIts also very sad to realize that the actual power of wizards lies in the use of the grimoires.

 

FWIW, it's actually more in keeping with PoE's lore than the first game was. Wizards explicitly cast from the book, rather than from memory. "Because lore says so," is not an implicitly good thing (if anything, I think it's a pretty bad reason), but it is what it is.

 

The game by design pushes you to try to create a spell less wizard relying on books whose contents you can not really control and requires players to heavily metagame in order to create the best possible wizard out of it, further making specialization undesirable as most grimoires contain spells of opposing schools (best example is Concelhauts grimoire, which does not let you cast all Concelhaut spells as a transmuter (all spells are transmute except for the missiles)

 

Definitely true. It's a great boon to multiclassing, but in general the only reason to sink points into spells is so that you can use the spells you want that don't happen to be in Vaporous Wizardry.

 

ps. Why can we cast most damage spells outside of combat but any sort of prebuffing is disallowed? Makes no sense whatsoever.

An unwillingness to commit to either total gamification ("COMBAT MODE ACTIVATED") or greater simulationism. (Full disclosure: I'd prefer more gamification.)

[knownastherat]

 

Toxic? How can it be toxic in a single player game? 

 

So Josh ... does not "hate" Wizards, he just thinks Wizards from "the beloved Infinity Engine games" were toxic, do I understand it correctly?

 

I'm not really seeing where you're getting the idea that I'm attacking BG2 from - the thing I specifically called toxic wasa D&D 3.5 wizard handbook discussing a build archetype in which a wizard has a tool on their figurative "utility belt" for every situation. I find that broad archetype creates a bad play experience in games, single-player or not, because it renders some character types totally irrelevant or at the very least redundant with others that can also do other things. BG2 didn't really have that problem except at a relatively high degree of skilled play, which is what it is.

 

And to be clear, toxic is my word choice, not his. If you prefer, substitute "bad for the play experience" - I thought my meaning was clear, but apparently it wasn't. I've seen statements he's made to the effect of "wizards should not be able to do absolutely everything because magic," which I agree pretty strongly with. YMMV.

 

The fact that they were very powerful did not prevent BG2 to be regarded as one of the greatest games ever made, so how can they be toxic? That is complete nonsense, respectively reversed euphemism for "I did not like them". 

 

Are you asserting that BG2 was a great game, so all of its design decisions were great and should be replicated? I'm just seeking clarification, I have nothing to say to that.

 

 

And I am not really seeing where you get the idea that a D&D 3.5 wizard handbook is relevant to PoE franchise. PoE is said to be the spiritual successor of "the beloved Infinity Engine" games not the spiritual successor of D&D 3.5. Either way thanks for the clarification. 

 

I am asserting that despite its less than ideal and balanced ruleset it was a great game. This to me directly implies that ruleset, a balance of a ruleset, is not a necessary component in making a great game. 

 

I prefer "bad for my own playing experience" to clearly denote that there is nothing inherently "toxic" about it. 

[WHW]

My biggest problem with Wizard Subclasses is that they offer you a very specific pitch -a promise of a certain experience - and then, often double digits hours into the game, you realize that not only they don't deliver at the start, but that they *won't deliver for the rest of  your playthrough*. My first character was a Conjurer, and I made the mistake of not reading the entire spell list before getting into the game. My experience was painful, annoying and I was really irritated each time I found a piece of itemization that catered towards Evocation Wizard - Peter the Cat, Ninagauth's Teachings, Fire boosting items and pets...

Until about level 17, I've felt like I was playing a poorly designed modded subclass that wasn't in the original game, and thus the game didn't acknowledge it with proper spell selection and itemization. What changed post level 17?

 

I quit and made a generalist Wizard . 

 

So that's my 2 cents here. Wizard Subclasses bait you into expecting something that they never deliver, and that bait can be really frustrating in 60+ hours game. 

[kilay]

I think that with the actual spell lists they should split the schools in two different branches  (minor and major) and apply the penalty just for one major school or for two minor schools. If someone have some advices i can try to make a Mod for that.

So choosing a Major schools you will have two Minor school penalty 

while choosing a Minor schools you will have one Major school penalty

or something like that

Edited July 18, 2018 by kilay

[Bloemkool1]

I think that with the actual spell lists they should split the schools in two different branches  (minor and major) and apply the penalty just for one major school or for two minor schools. If someone have some advices i can try to make a Mod for that.

So choosing a Major schools you will have two Minor school penalty 

while choosing a Minor schools you will have one Major school penalty

or something like that

 

Kind of feels like a quick fix Kilay, and while appreciated i feel we need a more definitive solution modding wise.

 

There are already several mods out there that either give specialist wizards more spells, just remove all penalties, give access to other schools by means of opening up the grimoires. It does not feel very useful to add another option in the sense of sort of sucky specialists next to true sucky specialists (base game) next to all the options we already have available.

 

Another counterpoint would be that these are in fact all Major schools of magic, so arbitrarily dividing them into major / minor based on perceived usefulness in game right now is just us the players writing meta all over the wizard as a class, which is not really desirable.

[MaxQuest]

Two forbidden schools are still too much, and some subclasses get crushed like Conjurer.

Not only that, but also the selection of forbidden schools.

 

I mean it would be great if we could choose which two schools to ban ourselves.

For example I would gladly take Illusionist in my current party, and ban evocation and conjuration schools, because:

- I want a few of those enchanting spells

- am not going to cast evocation stuff because the character has 3-MIG and is specced for cc not damage

Edited July 19, 2018 by MaxQuest

[gkathellar]

 

Two forbidden schools are still too much, and some subclasses get crushed like Conjurer.

Not only that, but also the selection of forbidden schools.

 

I mean it would be great if we could choose which two schools to ban ourselves.

For example I would gladly take Illusionist in my current party, and ban evocation and conjuration schools, because:

- I want a few of those enchanting spells

- am not going to cast evocation stuff because the character has 3-MIG and is specced for cc not damage

I know that's doable from a progression table perspective, and I think it'd play nice with the character creation GUI so long as it was done up the same way as Animal Companion/Spiritshift selection.

[Verde]

How bad is Enchanter? Seems to have the absolute worst bonus ability.

[arkane83]

How bad is Enchanter? Seems to have the absolute worst bonus ability.

Terrible. You give up illusion and transmutation for what amounts to a duration increase on some buffs.

 

Bonus power level is much more geared towards damage spells...

Edited July 20, 2018 by arkane83

[Verde]

Ugh.

[gkathellar]

 

How bad is Enchanter? Seems to have the absolute worst bonus ability.

Terrible. You give up illusion and transmutation for what amounts to a duration increase on some buffs.

 

Bonus power level is much more geared towards damage spells...

 

It's especially bad because Enchantment and Illusion have a lot of cross-dependency in their impressive defensive packages.

 

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons Evoker is usable - it gets both Enchantment and Illusion, and so gets almost all of the wizard's big defensive spells. If it didn't get both, I'm not sure even the greater synergy of PL with damage spells would matter.

[arkane83]

 

 

How bad is Enchanter? Seems to have the absolute worst bonus ability.

Terrible. You give up illusion and transmutation for what amounts to a duration increase on some buffs.

 

Bonus power level is much more geared towards damage spells...

 

It's especially bad because Enchantment and Illusion have a lot of cross-dependency in their impressive defensive packages.

 

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons Evoker is usable - it gets both Enchantment and Illusion, and so gets almost all of the wizard's big defensive spells. If it didn't get both, I'm not sure even the greater synergy of PL with damage spells would matter.

 

 

 

The fact that the most direct damage oriented specialty is also going to retain access to armor and deflection buffs shows how silly the wizard class design is.

 

 

One Idea I had was to give all specialist wizards extra resources that are counted separate from their per level, per encounter casting, and can only be used on their school. It would have to be something like only 1 or 2 extra casts per encounter max. Think of it like a "wildcard" spell-cast type of thing. Not like empowering to gain back resources, but something that is just a little per encounter bonus to make your illusionist feel better at using illusion than an evoker or a generalist. 

 

Honestly, anything is better than the subclasses we have now: Generalist, Evoker, and What Were You Thinking

[thundercleese]

 

 

How bad is Enchanter? Seems to have the absolute worst bonus ability.

Terrible. You give up illusion and transmutation for what amounts to a duration increase on some buffs.

 

Bonus power level is much more geared towards damage spells...

 

It's especially bad because Enchantment and Illusion have a lot of cross-dependency in their impressive defensive packages.

 

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons Evoker is usable - it gets both Enchantment and Illusion, and so gets almost all of the wizard's big defensive spells. If it didn't get both, I'm not sure even the greater synergy of PL with damage spells would matter.

 

While this is certainly a slap in the faces of the other subclasses, in my current evoker playthrough I haven't used nor felt the need to use a single defensive spell. I just send in my tank, cast a couple of low level offensive buffs then obliterate everything before it can touch me. And yes this is on PotD upscaled. It gets even more silly when you get unbending on your tank as you can literally drop nukes on top of him with no real risk lol. On that note wilting wind is just ridiculous - raw damage and insane aoe; two casts will finish pretty much every non boss encounter.

 

The biggest issue is that non-damage/healing spells (and abilities in general) gain very little benefit from higher powerlevel, which is the main "bonus" of taking a wizard subclass. Therefore one way to make the other subclasses more desireable would be to make ALL bonuses scale with PL, not just damage/accuracy/duration/penetration. As a (very) loose example, wizards double could gain +2 deflection per PL. Certain affliction/inspiration spells could upgrade to a higher tier at X PL's above their level, etc.

 

Or make it so spells in your specialist school apply a tier higher affliction, where possible. Or have a hefty accuracy bonus if it's already the max tier. Because as it stands, at the moment the only subclasses that really get any benefit from the bonus PL are evocation and conjuration, as they have the most damage spells (evocation obviously being the superior).

 

I'm not trying to claim that these are ideal fixes by any means, just throwing some more ideas outthere. I ddo think something other than "unlock all schools for all subclasses" needs to be implemented though. PL scaling in general should really be looked at too, as it currently favours damage and healing spells/abilities far too heavily.