Test results for the Wizard subclass PL bonus with weapon-sourced spells and Substantial Phantom

[tackthumb]

I've been theorycrafting a Conjurer build that makes use of the +2 PL bonus with Conjuration spells in a way that's more substantive than the conventional wisdom of using summoned weapons with them, as I find that the mere +duration you get with Conjurer summoned weapons isn't a particularly advantageous usage of the power level bonus, especially for the tradeoff of losing two other spell schools for it. I was looking at the damage spells from the Conjuration school to better leverage the subclass bonus when it occurred to me that Voidwheel can cast Necrotic Lance and Engoliero do Espirs can cast Ghost Blades, both of which are Conjuration spells. I wanted to see if the spells cast from these weapons would get the Conjurer PL bonus on top of the weapon quality scaling.

To that end, I tested this by creating two single-classed Wizards, one a Conjurer and the other no-subclass, with identical stats. For a control group, I had them cast Necrotic Lance and Ghost Blades as spells from their spellbooks. As expected, the Conjurer got +0.5 higher penetration and had longer duration in the case of Necrotic Lance's secondary DoT damage effect. However, proccing these spells from the weapons did not get the Conjurer's +2 Conjuration PL bonus. While you do get scaling from the weapon quality, these weapon-triggered spells performed the same in the hands of both the subclass-less Wizard and Conjurer. One interesting thing I noted was that the duration of the secondary DoT from Voidwheel's Necrotic Lance was lower than the duration of the casted spell version. I suspect the weapon just uses base duration (it, however, still gets Intellect scaling as normal since casting Infuse With Vital Essence increased the duration).

While I was at it, I wanted to test if Substantial Phantom got the Conjurer's PL bonus since it does get Necrotic Lance as part of the selection of spells it's able to cast. Unfortunately, the Conjurer's PL bonus does not get carried over to the Substantial Phantom copy when it casts the relevant Conjuration spell. Again, the Substantial Phantom performed identically between the Conjurer and no-subclass Wizard. Interestingly, the version of Necrotic Lance casted by the Substantial Phantom was slightly inferior to the no-subclass Wizard, having less penetration and secondary DoT length. Weapons copied over to the Phantoms also didn't make any difference in terms of the spells procced from them.

Just thought I should share these findings to the board for the sake of posterity and in case anyone else was curious about this interaction. This is on the vanilla version of the game without the community or balance patches, by the way. I'm posting this on my lunchbreak but I'll throw up the hard numbers from the test later when I get back home.

[tackthumb]

Here are the numbers from the testing:

No-subclass Wizard
Necrotic Lance = 11.5 pen, 9.4 sec
Necrotic Lance (Voidwheel) = 13 pen, 6.8 sec
Necrotic Lance (Substantial Phantom) = 11.3 pen, 8.1 sec
Ghost Blades = 11.3 pen
Ghost Blades (Engoliero do Espirs) = 13 pen

Conjurer
Necrotic Lance = 12 pen, 10.1 sec
Necrotic Lance (Voidwheel) = 13 pen, 6.8 sec
Necrotic Lance (Substantial Phantom) = 11.3 pen, 8.1 sec
Ghost Blades = 11.8 pen
Ghost Blades (Engoliero do Espirs) = 13 pen

I only kept track of the penetration and duration differences since those were straightforward factors to see if the PL bonus was applying in the combat log. Both characters had identical attribute spreads of 18, 18, 4, 18, 17, 3 and were both moon godlikes.

I'm really trying to give Conjurer a fair shake as a subclass by finding a decent use case for their PL bonus, but it's hard to see the benefit. Like I said earlier, the Conjuration PL bonus kind of goes to waste on summoned weapons since all it's giving you is more duration and has no bearing on adjusting quality levels or imparting any other kind of benefit. In practical terms, the added duration might save you from having to recast your summoned weapon again in really long fights. But that's the best case scenario for a fairly marginal benefit, when you consider that that spell slot you save for other usage is going to be limited by the fact that you're cut off from two other spell schools. It seems even less meaningful when you factor in the ability to extend duration with Wall of Draining or compare it to a Blood Mage's ability to regain spells.

I've been looking at Minoletta's Piercing Sigil and Cloak of Death as the explicitly Conjuration-keyworded, non-summon high level spells that would profit more from PL, going single-classed and stacking PL via Prestige and Conjure Familiar. My idea so far is a low deflection, high health retaliation tank, with the moon godlike racial for healing. MSP and CoD can both proc off the same retaliation and it would be worthwhile having both spells up since they target different stats of your attackers. However, I foresee MSP's push effect and CoD's effect that turns enemies invisible being a major pain in the ass that can throw off the targeting for the rest of your party. I'm also unsure how viable a single-classed Conjurer without access to defensive Illusions spells will be on the frontlines. As a Conjurer, you still have access to Enchantment school defensive buffs like Citzal's Martial Power and Llengrath's Safeguard which will both stack and won't suffer the Conjurer recovery penalty with non-Conjuration spells since they're zero recovery. The problem is that Citzal's Martial Power cuts off spellcasting while it's up and Llengrath's Safeguard doesn't trigger until you're at half health. Having high deflection from those spells would also be at cross purposes of MSP and CoD which requires enemies to hit you in order to proc. I think it might be better just to cast buffs like Ironskin and Infuse With Vital Essence and gearing with heavy armor and Cadhu Scalth to help mitigate the incoming damage.

I've done some preliminary testing with this build and I can't say I love it. The moon godlike healing isn't substantive enough to rely solely upon, so I'm having to consider some of the life-drain spells from the Transmutation school (with the slower recovery penalty) or maybe summoning Concelhaut's Parasitic Staff just to poke enemies to get some health back. While I do love the idea of being a prickly porcupine that enemies don't want to touch, the fact is your effectiveness with this strategy is going to be limited by how long you can stand up to the damage and how often enemies are going to attack you in melee (summoning an Essential/Substantial Phantom after casting these retaliation spells unfortunately doesn't impart those buffs to your copies so you can't double the odds this way). It's a convoluted way to do damage and crowd control, but I think it's way less effective than many of the other competing power level 8 and 9 spells from other schools.

[Constentin Lévine]

Conjurer and Transmuter is a big subclass dilemma in my concern :

With their familiar, conjurer is a very attractive classe, since you can get all the passives +3 stats and +10% effects, with a generic +1PL (of course only on combat and with Brilliant to cast many times Familiar). This last make your conjurer PL to +3 (without other PL from Prestige or whatever else) and Transmutation KW to +1 too. Multiclassed conjurer as caster is very potent and nice to play as versatile Blue-Black-White magic sorcerer. However I'm agree with you, at higher PL as SC wizard, you loose a lot as conjurer or transmuter. 

Other think about Necrotic Lance from Voidwheel that can help is this spell is a ranged attack, and bounce with Driving Flight ; items and passives that increase ranged attack also impact them. 

[Okkes]

Voidwheel's necrotic lance gets benefit from weapons quality and stufs like deathblows, sneak attack, streetfigters damage bonus. Very powerful if you build around it.

[Shai Hulud]

There are a lot of problems with phantoms and duplicates in general, like some equipped item effects not working correctly on phantoms, different weapon penetration values, etc. I've tested them a lot before but am too lazy to find the post...

Good but unsurprising findings about power level bonuses from weapon-spells...IIRC there are other stats that aren't reflected in item-spells, like accuracy? I think it's anything derived from a player stat, so also this would include duration.

My 2k hours of Deadfire memories are fading rapidly, I'm afraid. Probably start playing again at some point. I think BG3 may have killed these forums at least for a while.

[dgray62]

On 10/8/2023 at 11:38 PM, Shai Hulud said:

I think BG3 may have killed these forums at least for a while.

For PC users at least. We MAC users are still waiting.....

[mjo2138]

On 10/5/2023 at 9:21 PM, tackthumb said:

No-subclass Wizard
Necrotic Lance = 11.5 pen, 9.4 sec
Necrotic Lance (Voidwheel) = 13 pen, 6.8 sec
Necrotic Lance (Substantial Phantom) = 11.3 pen, 8.1 sec
Ghost Blades = 11.3 pen
Ghost Blades (Engoliero do Espirs) = 13 pen

Conjurer
Necrotic Lance = 12 pen, 10.1 sec
Necrotic Lance (Voidwheel) = 13 pen, 6.8 sec
Necrotic Lance (Substantial Phantom) = 11.3 pen, 8.1 sec
Ghost Blades = 11.8 pen
Ghost Blades (Engoliero do Espirs) = 13 pen

On 10/9/2023 at 2:38 AM, Shai Hulud said:

There are a lot of problems with phantoms and duplicates in general, like some equipped item effects not working correctly on phantoms, different weapon penetration values, etc. I've tested them a lot before but am too lazy to find the post...

Good but unsurprising findings about power level bonuses from weapon-spells...IIRC there are other stats that aren't reflected in item-spells, like accuracy? I think it's anything derived from a player stat, so also this would include duration.

My 2k hours of Deadfire memories are fading rapidly, I'm afraid. Probably start playing again at some point. I think BG3 may have killed these forums at least for a while.

On 10/6/2023 at 5:39 AM, Constentin Lévine said:

Conjurer and Transmuter is a big subclass dilemma in my concern :

With their familiar, conjurer is a very attractive classe, since you can get all the passives +3 stats and +10% effects, with a generic +1PL (of course only on combat and with Brilliant to cast many times Familiar). This last make your conjurer PL to +3 (without other PL from Prestige or whatever else) and Transmutation KW to +1 too. Multiclassed conjurer as caster is very potent and nice to play as versatile Blue-Black-White magic sorcerer. However I'm agree with you, at higher PL as SC wizard, you loose a lot as conjurer or transmuter. 

Other think about Necrotic Lance from Voidwheel that can help is this spell is a ranged attack, and bounce with Driving Flight ; items and passives that increase ranged attack also impact them. 

 

So it seems like the only real benefit of Conjurer is Slightly higher spell PEN thanks to the increased power-level. +PL is not too much of a difference overall. Crusted Swordfish's + PEN is usually enough to overcome any elemental AR Thresholds and be able to penetrate or oven penetrate enemies. What i find is that mobs who have weak AR for corrode tend to have it at a rather low number anyways, so it is easy to attack. If they have high corrode AR, it is better to attack diff AR.

So what about building a Concelhaut themed character? I think this has been mentioned....a Conjurer/Fighter? I wonder if that would be fun. Stacking the Concelhaut pet, and the familiar? Might as well go big with the PL stacks. It would be a character that focuses on summoning the right Concelhaut weapon for the mob at hand. Mob Stance would be good here. 

[tackthumb]

I like Wizard summoned weapons, but I don't think Conjurer does anything particularly noteworthy with them to justify going as that subclass for that kind of build. Like I said in the post up the thread, the Conjuration PL bonus only translates into more duration for summoned weapons, which gives you some more seconds of uptime with your weapon and may save you from having to recast it again during longer fights. In practice, this bonus duration might not even be relevant for encounters beaten before your original summoned weapon wears off. If Wizard summoned weapons scaled with PL like Monk fists, I would think it more worthwhile to try to stack PL for them as a Conjurer, but as it is in the game currently, I am simply unexcited by additional duration being my only benefit in this application.

The bigger issue for me is losing Illusion spells as a Conjurer, especially if I'm going as a more melee-focused build with summoned weapons because the Illusion school offers some very welcome defensive buffs. Again, it's not the end of the world for a frontline Conjurer without Illusions spells since you can get defensive buffs from the non-restricted Enchantment spells such as Llengrath's Safeguard or Citzal's Martial Power, plus they won't actually suffer the increased recovery penalty as non-Conjuration spells due to being instant cast anyways. However, these spells have awkward conditionals such as requiring you to drop to half health before triggering or preventing subsequent spellcasting. Meanwhile, Illusion spells like Wizard's Double, Mirrored Image, and Llengrath's Displaced Image provide straightforward and effective defensive buffs while also being available much sooner than the aforementioned Enchantment alternatives. You might not need these defensive bonuses if you instead go for ranged summoned weapons like Minor Blights or Blackbow, but even then you're still only getting bonus duration with these weapons as a Conjurer.

The PL bonus is just not that impressive for Conjuration spells, and I feel like it doesn't nearly make up for the tradeoff of losing Illusion and Evocation spells when you go Conjurer subclass. I feel like you don't even look at the subclass PL bonus when going Conjurer, and just get creative like @Constentin Lévine's suggestion of cycling Conjure Familiar to get as many stat bonuses as possible. There's an opportunity cost of having to cast Conjure Familiar over and over again and needing to apply the Brilliant inspiration on the Conjurer to allow this, but at least it would be a stronger bonus compared to the subclass' innate Conjuration PL bonus.

[thelee]

On 10/6/2023 at 2:39 AM, Constentin Lévine said:

versatile Blue-Black-White magic sorcerer.

love to see MTG concepts here

 

On 10/27/2023 at 5:43 PM, tackthumb said:

Meanwhile, Illusion spells like Wizard's Double, Mirrored Image, and Llengrath's Displaced Image provide straightforward and effective defensive buffs while also being available much sooner than the aforementioned Enchantment alternatives.

you know, originally i had this issue with conjuration, but i think in practice you just play them out differently. summoned weapons all have reach or ranged, so the illusion magic is less critical (and you still get arcane veil for emergencies, though i'd rather just slicken or pull). i like illusion magic for non-reach martial/glass cannon builds.

yeah, the PL bonus is kinda squandered on a lot of conjuration spells, and there is a rough anti-self-synergy where you can't benefit from familiars and also actually use some of your conjuration spells (i wish familiars were "free" summons). IME conjuration school is more about what schools you get overall, with a slight boost from your familiar - you retain access to spells like swift, slicken, walls, combusting wounds, pull of eora. i think the guaranteed at least +1 PL from your familiar across the board gives it an edge over a generic wizard if you have a specific "flavor" or "theme" that's in those schools. 

put another way, transmuter would be better at some really impactful spells, but you end up dropping enchantment, and swift is so good for a martially-oriented caster that i would never. enchantment gets you access to a lot of useful evocation spells, but you drop transmutation, so it's quite a trade-off. it's basically this level of back-and-forth that means i frequently end up liking conjurer anyway for certain caster builds, warts and all.

 

though fassina's character really annoys me because her loremaster setup invests in summons for the first skill point, which--at least without a mod--you can't get rid of. just really excacerbates the anti-synergy of relying on your familiar.

 

 

[Ivanfyodorovich]

On 10/30/2023 at 11:10 AM, thelee said:

yeah, the PL bonus is kinda squandered on a lot of conjuration spells, and there is a rough anti-self-synergy where you can't benefit from familiars and also actually use some of your conjuration spells

The buffs from the familiar persist when the familiar is replaced by casting a new summoning spell (I just reconfirmed this). It functions more like a self-buff this way. In fact, it's best to summon something else, because the familiar disappears, and is therefore no longer at risk of being killed. 

[thelee]

5 hours ago, Ivanfyodorovich said:

The buffs from the familiar persist when the familiar is replaced by casting a new summoning spell (I just reconfirmed this). It functions more like a self-buff this way. In fact, it's best to summon something else, because the familiar disappears, and is therefore no longer at risk of being killed. 

ah neat! i thought it persisted only if you cast another familiar. so that's nice then.

 

edit: was gonna update my guide to this but then i realized that i had already known this at some point and forgotten it -_-. replacing familiar with familiar only important for stacking the stat buffs.

Edited November 4, 2023 by thelee