Question About Sorcerer vs Pure Wizard.

[Rbera]

Hi,

 Just a quick question when these two classes are compared to each other, which is the generally agreed stronger class.

[thelee]

They accomplish very different things. But if you just care about clicking enemy = dead, then a single class wizard gets extremely powerful late game spells at ability tiers 8 and 9.

[Chaospread]

About wizard when you multiclass you lose many high damage high level spells, with druid you gain some healing abilities and not so much, maybe it could be interesting a spiritshift druid with self buff from wizard.

I think the comparison should be between pure wizard and Thaumaturge instead.

[Boeroer]

Druid with Cat Form + Wizard with Wall of Draining is a nice speedy casting setup. Blood Mage aside you gain great casting speed - and a lot of spell uses (4/encounter per 7 tiers = 28 casts vs. 2/encounter per 9 tiers = 18 casts) and a nice spell collection. Here's a cool Livegiver/Blood Mage combo (with video from a fight at Splintered Reef):
 

The downsides: later access to some great spells and zero access to great PL8+9 spells such as Missile Salvo and Great Maelstrom.

I think both are great. I don't think there's a definitive answer to the question "which is [considered] stronger?".

[yorname]

Sorcerer vs Wizard is quantity vs quality. Pure wizard is better as offensive caster, sorcerer is better only if you actually want their healing power, e.g. to save a party slot.

Skald/Wizard is more of a pure offensive caster than sorcerer, with a easier action economy and burst damage a multiclass wizard tends to lack.

[thelee]

1 hour ago, yorname said:

sorcerer is better only if you actually want their healing power, e.g. to save a party slot.

tbf when i did a sorcerer the healing was not really a factor. it was rather more about firebrand and/or spiritshift (the latter of which can be extended with wall of draining) in combination with wizard buffs and such.

either way imo sorcerer is a whole different animal/playstyle than pure wizard and it doesn't make for an easy "which is better" question.

[yorname]

2 hours ago, thelee said:

tbf when i did a sorcerer the healing was not really a factor. it was rather more about firebrand and/or spiritshift (the latter of which can be extended with wall of draining) in combination with wizard buffs and such.

either way imo sorcerer is a whole different animal/playstyle than pure wizard and it doesn't make for an easy "which is better" question.

How good is Firebrand though, I tried it and felt it's like in the "good but do I want to be auto attacking with this?" territory. Maybe viable when out of spells but I didn't find it build-defining like it was in 1.

[Chaospread]

15 hours ago, yorname said:

How good is Firebrand though, I tried it and felt it's like in the "good but do I want to be auto attacking with this?" territory. Maybe viable when out of spells but I didn't find it build-defining like it was in 1.

Maybe not so powerful to make a build around it, but a fire based sorcerer who evoke firebrand and self buffs himself with wizard spells could be a funny and rpg-wise interesting character.
Anyway, it can be implemented better perhaps with a pure wizards and some scrolls.

[Boeroer]

It's nothing worth building around imo (except maybe with a Bleak Walker/Fury or so where you can stack ACC, lash and PEN a lot with it), but it is very nice to have when you meet enemies who are vulnerable to fire (see BoW DLC). I mean +25% burning lash on a weapon that does burn damage itself is very efficient against hte right enemies. You can also give it to the Essential Phantom. 

Edit: the Phantom also profits from Ring of Focused Flame which is nice.

Edited October 3 by Boeroer

[thelee]

16 hours ago, yorname said:

How good is Firebrand though, I tried it and felt it's like in the "good but do I want to be auto attacking with this?" territory. Maybe viable when out of spells but I didn't find it build-defining like it was in 1.

it felt really good to me with ring of focused flame, scion of flame. with those two things added in, it's pretty much an S-tier weapon (better than other summoned weapons imo, with possible exception of woedica's fists), any martial would love to have that weapon. with some wizard buffs (esp deleterious alacrity of motion, and arcane reflection is actually relevant bc you're so constantly close enough you'll actually get targeted by spells) it felt very satisfying to basically zip around, untouchable, and burn everything. it's not an unfair build, but still a strong one.

spiritshift was a nice fallback against fire resistant/immune/absorbing enemies.

edit: wall of draining is always going to be unfair, but when you do get wall of draining you can extend even small duration wizard buffs (eldritch aim) and cat's flurry from druid (+33% action speed).

edit 2: all summoning weapons kind of hit a low-point mid-game because they're not scaling as fast as weapons as you typically find, so depending on when you tried it, it might not have felt as good. but +10 acc and +1 PEN really help firebrand continue to feel very strong even it's stuck at fine or exceptional scaling way too long.

edit 3: this is a kind of build that really benefits from AI scripting. there's just so many fast-cast buffs you end up wanting to cast from wizard that I had an AI script just for this build to go through: deleterious, reflection, ironskin, fireshield, infuse with vital essence, etc. and because they all have no recovery, there's no real action economy issue to just spamming these all at start of fight. arcane dampener from bad guys suck a lot but deleterious (or fleet feet early on) + fast runner (normally not available to wizard but you get from druid) + possibly some boots makes you so dang fast you can just run away from most fights until the enemy wizards waste their dampener on someone else.

edit 4: oh yeah, as boeroer mentioned, i completely forgot about the interaction with phantom. honestly i don't think i used that for my build (it's been a while), i just completely forgot about it for my build, was too focused on zipping around with firebrand, but it definitely would amp up the general power and utility of the multiclass. i forget if spiritshift also copies over to phantom.

warning though that i just remembered (and i noted this in my guide) - sorcerer has a really weird bug, where if you switch grimoires while spiritshifted you lose all the spells that come from grimoires. you can get them back after combat if you're not spiritshifted and you switch grimoires again, but it's a pretty nasty bug and if you do go down a sorcerer route you should really make sure to be careful about it.

Edited October 3 by thelee

[Boeroer]

1 hour ago, thelee said:

i forget if spiritshift also copies over to phantom.

It does (armor and weapons) - but those spiritshift "items" don't have any 3D-model, so your phantom looks like your normal character with bare hands. But it is actually holding invisible claw/tusks/whatever and also wears an invisible (decent & scaling) natural armor with 0 recovery penalty.
It may happen that the phantom's attack animation gets a hickup because the game wants to play the attack animation for claws for example - but the phantom's character model doesn't have the corresponding "moves".

1 hour ago, thelee said:

warning though that i just remembered (and i noted this in my guide) - sorcerer has a really weird bug, where if you switch grimoires while spiritshifted you lose all the spells that come from grimoires. you can get them back after combat if you're not spiritshifted and you switch grimoires again, but it's a pretty nasty bug and if you do go down a sorcerer route you should really make sure to be careful about it.

Oha, I didn't know that.  

Edit: a sorcerer can keep the natural weapons from spiritshift as permanent items if he casts Kalakoth's Minor Blights and then spiritshifts. The Blights will cycle to a different element and replace the natural weapon in your hand. You may not be abe to use the Blights because again: clash of attack animations (->jitters). But after spiritshift is over (and Blights' duration, too) you will end up with a claw item in your hands. You can do that as often as you want (and then keep two of those for dual wielding or so). Also works with Fearsome Brute's fists by the way (which are pretty awesome weapons which make a cool metal clang sound on hit).   

 

Edited October 3 by Boeroer