Wizard seem underperform compared to Cipher?

[Wolken3156]

Personally I wouldn't say Wizard is underpowered but rather Ciphers are overpowered, they make Druids look bad too.

 

That said, Wizards are just late bloomers. Starting at 9th-level you'll be able to cast 1st-level spells every encounter, which means you can spam Slicken. Its hilarious how effective it is. The 5th and 6th levels spells are absurdly powerful. AoE Petrify? Yes please.

[SilchasRuin]

 

Wizards are the best at AOE crowd control. Slicken is by far one of the best abilities at keeping your guys alive in bigger fights. Call to Slumber is just as awesome. They also get plenty of debuffing abilities that help the rest of your party kick butt. Confusion is good, Chill Fog, Blackened Sight, Miasma, you just get solid debuffing abilities all around. And their utility spells are fine too. Essential Phantom, Spirit Shield, and such.

 

Now, the issue as I find it is that their damage dealing potential is not exactly the greatest. Most of their attack spells just seem, well, useless. Rolling Flame is awful, Corrosive Siphon is bad, Necrotic Lance is okayish, the missile spells range underwhelming to bad, and anything that jumps from one target to another just doesn't seem to work. The only attack spells that I use on a regular basis are Fireball and Ray of Fire, and even then I'm not entirely sure about their effectiveness.

Ya, it seems like his spells cap out at 50ish damage (Aloth at level 9), but in AoE, so he's basically a AoE control, damage turret. A couple of his best spells require plenty of positioning though, and he doesn't get as many foe only spells as the priest or druid. Since the cipher is kind of bugged I haven't played with Mother very much (some item that keeps her from gaining focus in combat).

 

The higher level wizard spells are pretty good CC, like Stargazer said Call to Slumber is a battle ender, 14+ seconds prone? And that's on Aloth with his poor stats.

 

If you're not using Fan of Flames as a blaster wizard, you're doing it wrong. Fan of Flames, a level 1 spell, deals a massive amount of damage in a sizable aoe. The only weakness of it is it's finicky with positioning but otherwise it destroys. Fireball is solid damage with easy reqs, though not as strong as Fan. In fact I'd say Wizard (fan of flames) might even be a tad overpowered if used properly. My Wizard currently is my #1 damage dealt character, and second highest single target damage. This is in a party with dps Barb Rogue and Cipher on PotD with a full custom party.

Edited March 31, 2015 by SilchasRuin

[Viperswhip]

 

 

Wizards are the best at AOE crowd control. Slicken is by far one of the best abilities at keeping your guys alive in bigger fights. Call to Slumber is just as awesome. They also get plenty of debuffing abilities that help the rest of your party kick butt. Confusion is good, Chill Fog, Blackened Sight, Miasma, you just get solid debuffing abilities all around. And their utility spells are fine too. Essential Phantom, Spirit Shield, and such.

 

Now, the issue as I find it is that their damage dealing potential is not exactly the greatest. Most of their attack spells just seem, well, useless. Rolling Flame is awful, Corrosive Siphon is bad, Necrotic Lance is okayish, the missile spells range underwhelming to bad, and anything that jumps from one target to another just doesn't seem to work. The only attack spells that I use on a regular basis are Fireball and Ray of Fire, and even then I'm not entirely sure about their effectiveness.

Ya, it seems like his spells cap out at 50ish damage (Aloth at level 9), but in AoE, so he's basically a AoE control, damage turret. A couple of his best spells require plenty of positioning though, and he doesn't get as many foe only spells as the priest or druid. Since the cipher is kind of bugged I haven't played with Mother very much (some item that keeps her from gaining focus in combat).

 

The higher level wizard spells are pretty good CC, like Stargazer said Call to Slumber is a battle ender, 14+ seconds prone? And that's on Aloth with his poor stats.

 

If you're not using Fan of Flames as a blaster wizard, you're doing it wrong. Fan of Flames, a level 1 spell, deals a massive amount of damage in a sizable aoe. The only weakness of it is it's finicky with positioning but otherwise it destroys. Fireball is solid damage with easy reqs, though not as strong as Fan. In fact I'd say Wizard (fan of flames) might even be a tad overpowered if used properly. My Wizard currently is my #1 damage dealt character, and second highest single target damage. This is in a party with dps Barb Rogue and Cipher. 

 

Well, I'd like a bit more variety and I think Aloth works better as a shut down debuffer.

[SilchasRuin]

Aloth just has really poor stats for damage dealing. Although compared to some of the other characters Aloth is practically min-maxed (looking at you Sagani/Grieving Mother).

[Cattlehunter]

Aloth sucks, but wizards themselves don't suck. Get a max might&int one and spam those CC and aoe damage spells. For easier fights, just throw out a spell or two then use the per-encounter book ability (whatever it's called), and for harder fights spam every spell they have access to as rapidly as possible.

 

After I finished the game on hard, my wizard had done more than twice as much damage as anybody else in my party, along with providing great CC, though my party didn't have any druids so I don't know if one would've done more damage if I had brought one along.

[Urthor]

The DPS/utility gap between Wizard and Cipher when Wizard is going hard and emptying the spellbook is non-existant.  Wizards aren't significantly underpowered by any stretch of the imagination, in fact arguably between the 3 aggressive caster classes, Wizard/Cipher/Druid, Cipher is probably the weakest by a stretch in the bounties and boss fights.  

 

 

Like yes on hard difficulty, Wizard feels significantly crimped because of a lack of camping supplies compared to Cipher.  

But there's one major thing you are missing.

 

It's hard.  

 

Not easy, not normal.  Hard.

 

You're supposed to be feeling the pain and getting overwhelmed a little on hard.  And yes as people have pointed out, what you're supposed to be doing is using slicken and fan of flames.  When the access to spells is drying up, the point isn't to complain on the internet forum that the game isn't easy, the point is too start using fan of flames positioning and slicken to get that much more mileage out of your Wizard. 

 

And yea Aloth sucks.  Aloth REALLY sucks.  Time to start thinking about using a well built adventurer from the inn instead of a companion on the higher difficulties.  If you're going to use a 12 might companion and not play like a master, be prepared to get punished for it.  

Edited March 31, 2015 by Urthor

[Blave]

Haven't played around with custom companions yet, but can't you just create a 1st level Wizard with the spells you want (i.e. Slicken) and give his Grimoire to Aloth?

[Wolken3156]

Haven't played around with custom companions yet, but can't you just create a 1st level Wizard with the spells you want (i.e. Slicken) and give his Grimoire to Aloth?

You can fix his spell selection but you can never fix his attributes. His horrible Might stat, really drags him back.

[Blave]

But at least I can fix his spells to make him a better controler. He does have enough Int for that. Also, he does have 12 Might. It's not extremely good, but it's something. An "optimized" Wizard has like 18% more damage. Significant? Yes. But I still think the difference isn't too bad. Might be enough to give Wizards a bad reputation, though.

[Varana]

The only weakness of it is it's finicky with positioning but otherwise it destroys.

It may be the only weakness, but it's a major one. Combat pathfinding is horrible in general, and micromanaging the wizard's positioning on top of it becomes a major PITA. I sometimes go into fights considering whether I need to use certain wizard spells, or can win without them. And after the Fan of Flames experience, I usually refrain from taking cone spells altogether. Not that it would be too hard, it's just tedious to move the wizard around. Apart from the fact that just spamming three other spells in the same time often does the job, as well.

Other than that, wizards are decent.

[Whipstitch]

But at least I can fix his spells to make him a better controler. He does have enough Int for that. Also, he does have 12 Might. It's not extremely good, but it's something. An "optimized" Wizard has like 18% more damage. Significant? Yes. But I still think the difference isn't too bad. Might be enough to give Wizards a bad reputation, though.

 

No, trust me, it's bad. Real bad. High intellect is very nice for Slicken and a few other powerful but short duration spells, but thanks to the Blast line of talents Wizards are nice enough auto attackers that Dexterity is also a rather solid choice--even with base 10 Intellect Chilling Fog still persists for a healthy 15 seconds. Meanwhile, Constitution is percentage based so dumping it by a point or two doesn't cost you much given that wizards have such low base endurance to begin with. My current PC Wizard is enjoying leads of 21% and 24% in damage and attack speed compared to poor Aloth and believe me, it adds up real fast.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Whipstitch

[DCParry]

 

they are because the spells are very few, per rest. and their per-encounter abilities are a bit lacking.

 

Playing on hard and higher difficulty without per encounter abilities and restricted camping supplies, wizard seems more like very underwhelming and it's a burden to the party. You will have to rest to refresh the abilities otherwise the wizard in battle is just totally useless to me. 

 

 

This is not the case for me. Aloth is very helpful on Hard, and he does the heavy lifting on large encounters (expose vulnerabilities is da bomb, or, really, it is the pre-da bomb which allows da bomb to be sufficiently da bomb-ific). 

 

I use my PC Cipher as a hunter-killer while Aloth keeps the majority of the mobs busy so the rest of the party can kill them. 

[Heijoushin]

My main character is a rogue and Aloth is actually very useful for casting status spells to support the rogue's sneak attack. Chill fog and slicken are great for that.

 

In fact, the strange thing is that all the good spells are lvl 1! Lvl 2 spells are decidedly underwhelming.

[Schyzm]

wizard is probably the strongest late game char just because the game is about hard fights and a wizard w/ 10+ spells is one of the best chars at winning hard fights.

[tamurm]

Cipher is utterly useless in Path of the Damned major fights. They make easy fights easier. That's their niche. The hard fights? The wizard is the one doing all the work. 2 rests is plenty. Don't judge wizard based on Aloth's starting spells and stats. He's a terrible wizard.

Edited April 1, 2015 by tamurm

[Incendax]

Cipher is sustain. They can output comfortable damage and keep going for a very long time.
Wizards are burst. They can output mindblowing damage and crowd control, and then run on fumes.

This means that Easy/Normal favors the Cipher and Hard/PotD favors the Wizard.
Mopping up basic dungeon fights favors the Cipher and boss fights favor the Wizard.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Incendax

[Dongom]

Cipher is sustain. They can output comfortable damage and keep going for a very long time.

Wizards are burst. They can output mindblowing damage and crowd control, and then run on fumes.

 

This means that Easy/Normal favors the Cipher and Hard/PotD favors the Wizard.

Mopping up basic dungeon fights favors the Cipher and boss fights favor the Wizard.

 

 

While that is all true, I just wish they gave Wizard more/better per encounter attacks (or maybe some spells encounter based?) so that you aren't auto-attacking for meaningless damage for a majority of the game.

Edited April 1, 2015 by Dongom

[limaxophobiacq]

Honestly as long as you have enough dps in your party to not need any from Aloth he's pretty good just running CC, 16 isn't really noticably bad, if your Main character is a DPS wizard you can split the work and he'll do his part just fine.

 

I don't really get the complaints about running out of spells, even on hard and short on camping supplies you can still almost always just travel back home and rest, it only costs time.

[Fimconte]

I don't really get the complaints about running out of spells, even on hard and short on camping supplies you can still almost always just travel back home and rest, it only costs time.

I think this is the crux of it.  

Wizard isn't really limited in terms of spells, if you run out and don't have camp supplies,

you can waste IRL time on something that could have just been resolved by having more per encounter spells.  

 

Not a fan of tedious things that waste IRL time. 

Edited April 1, 2015 by Fimconte

[PrimeJunta]

Wizards are good. Some of the spells need some tuning (Slicken is howling to be nerfed, Fireball needs a boost), but the spell selection is very good overall. It requires some thought to use intelligently though -- spamming Fireball on high-Reflex enemies won't do much.

 

How Do I Wizard 101

 

(1) Figure out what your enemy's weakest defense is.

(2) Pick a spell that attacks that defense.

-> Is the spell a damage-dealer?

Y--> Problem solved

N--> It's a debuff: attack the debuffed defense with another spell or another character. --> Problem solved.

 

I find myself using only Arcane Assault and auto-attack for the filler encounters, one or two spells for the somewhat harder ones, and everything I've got in the boss battles. It's fun.

 

(ATM druids are even more fun though. Wizard spell power should be bumped a bit to match the druid's IMO.)

[Mungri]

What's all this fan of flames nonsense???

 

SLICKEN & CHILL FOG FOREVER.

[Wompoo]

Running a Aumaua with stats 21,5,17,10,16,10 danage out put is extremely good and she survives quite well, she is a burst build. Good controller and excellent dps... no real down side, just use per encounter abilities to fill the gaps on trash mobs and per rest abilities on emergencies, hard encounters or bosses, its all about pacing yourself ( although I so miss my BG2 Wizard, god bless time stop, maze and finger of death etc :D )