Wizard buff spells - what's the point?

[Morkatog]

Like the title says. What's the point of buff spells? I'm lvl 6 now playing hard mode and I use the AoE party buffs of a priest, but I can't get myself to use any of the wizard ones, and why?

 

- my warrior catches pretty much everyone's attention anyway

- I am not going to waste the time to cast 2 or 3 buffs on wizards that don't get attacked while the enemy meanwhile gets that time to attack my party.

 

In my opinion there should be 2 fixes to solve this issue:

 

1. fix the AI to more creatively have enemies attack your wizards

2. make buffs reserve the specific spell slot and last for an X amount of hours rather then +- 50-60 sec.

[RevBlue]

Dont worry, pretty soon EVERYONE is gonna target you wizard and then you'll miss the day he was safe

[Epsilon Rose]

Like the title says. What's the point of buff spells? I'm lvl 6 now playing hard mode and I use the AoE party buffs of a priest, but I can't get myself to use any of the wizard ones, and why?

 

- my warrior catches pretty much everyone's attention anyway

- I am not going to waste the time to cast 2 or 3 buffs on wizards that don't get attacked while the enemy meanwhile gets that time to attack my party.

 

In my opinion there should be 2 fixes to solve this issue:

 

1. fix the AI to more creatively have enemies attack your wizards

2. make buffs reserve the specific spell slot and last for an X amount of hours rather then +- 50-60 sec.

I like the way Legend handles buffs. They use a per scene (or in this case, pre rest) resource and most last for the whole scene (period between rests).

[Zarkhes]

I must agree to topic.There are so many wizard buff spells that target only caster.Spirit shield, ironskin etc...

if we could buff target, not just caster, wizard would have amazing sellection of buffs.So why force almost all buff spells to be just caster target?There is no way we can build melee wizard.Forget spellsword, not happening in PoE.

My point is that game mechanics is about front line of tanks holding mobs, and second row casting/ranged dps.If mob reaches you dps, you doing something wrond.Yes, i know.Sometimes its inevitable, but that what mirror immage is for or arcane assault.

Btw, anyone else think that mirror immage should be free disengage card?

[Epsilon Rose]

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

[Ondb]

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

 

The lead designer of PoE does not like Wizards. They represent everything wrong about class design (according to his opinion).

Right now even my fighter/tank is using more abilities per combat then my PC Wizard on auto-attack...Its really ironic...

[Epsilon Rose]

 

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

 

The lead designer of PoE does not like Wizards. They represent everything wrong about class design (according to his opinion).

Right now even my fighter/tank is using more abilities per combat then my PC Wizard on auto-attack...Its really ironic...

 

To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design... Actually, that's true of most of the classes in the core book. It's too bad he did litterally nothing to fix those problems and just exacerbated them.

[Parsong]

Yeah, The defensive and melee ones suck though.  They are counter-intuitive.

 

-You can't really build for melee since they are per-rest and low hp wiz, so why did they bother putting in all these melee abilities? (Touch/Staff/Defenses)

 

-As caster, your party Tanks are too good, you never get hit anyways.

 

 

If a mob somehow makes it to your casters, like a teleporter, then you just use CC and move.  Casting a +20 deflect is suicide.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Parsong

[CheryChocie]

Some buffs are just bad, things like Fireshield and Ironskins, unless you're playing a Tank Wizard (Which is viable) you just don't want. Some of them have moderate value, Llengrath's Safeguard and the Arcane Reflection spells have seen some use for me, for example the Skeletal Wizards in Od Nua love to chuck the odd spell at my Wizard and this just bounces them right back and considering in the level 4 spell repotoire there's only three spells that are worth it, it's ok to take this as the fourth. 

 

Some buff spells however are wonderful, starting with the very humble and powerful Eldritch Aim. Probably one of the strongest Wizard spells, accuracy is everything in this game. It's no good throwing your Fireballs and Confusions and happy zappy damage spells if they're just going to miss, this helps, a lot. In the same vein, if you want your spells to hit, why not have them crit? Merciless Aim is another brilliant spell. These two spells in conjunction ramp up the power of your Wizard considerably. 

 

If anything, I'm a bit tired of everyone claiming Wizards suck, they seriously do not, people are just not using them correctly. I only play Path of the Damned and I am flat out telling you, Wizard spells are ****ing *good*, they're good, some are brilliant, some are downright broken and once you get to levle 9, Wizards are the hardest scaling class in the game.

 

Just to clarify, I'm not accusing the OP of being bad, but there are a lot of threads claiming Wizards suck and they're wrong.

[Valeris]

Yeah, The defensive and melee ones suck though.  They are counter-intuitive.

 

-You can't really build for melee since they are per-rest, so why did they bother putting in all these melee abilities? (Touch/Staff/Defenses)

 

Melee Mage is perfectly viable if pumped to full INT and DEX.

 

Start every encounter with Arcane Assault once your tank has engaged the enemies, then run into melee with the lvl1 summon staff spell. It kicks ass on lowlevel. Later on you´ll need "real" weapons, ofc, but by then you´ll have enough spells to supplement your melee combat.

[G2Revelation]

I find that Wizard buffs are good for "in a pinch" situations for when your Wizard is under fire and can't disengage, which happens. 

 

I think what might help Wizards be more "caster" and less "swing stick at enemy" would be granting them more spells per day. I like the way the grimoire works, but I think the Wizard needs more spells per day to be effective, otherwise he has to rest too much. 

[Hatred]

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

Nope. Can I ask what this 'Legend' you speak of is? 

[Parsong]

 

Yeah, The defensive and melee ones suck though.  They are counter-intuitive.

 

-You can't really build for melee since they are per-rest, so why did they bother putting in all these melee abilities? (Touch/Staff/Defenses)

 

Melee Mage is perfectly viable if pumped to full INT and DEX.

 

Start every encounter with Arcane Assault once your tank has engaged the enemies, then run into melee with the lvl1 summon staff spell. It kicks ass on lowlevel. Later on you´ll need "real" weapons, ofc, but by then you´ll have enough spells to supplement your melee combat.

 

 

I guess it's do-able if you rest A LOT.

 

After the 4th encounter aren't you out of spells to actually do melee decently...with most of the dungeon still left?

Edited April 3, 2015 by Parsong

[Hatred]

Do we have any reason to hope that they might ramp up the AI a little bit at some point ? I find that if I put my tank out there even against more enemies than can get to him at once they either start milling like a bunch of millers or do laps around my tank. Unless I actually walk my casters up to them they just dont even consider walking into my party.

[Althernai]

The vast majority of Wizard buffs are either utterly useless or only useful in very specific situations (that you should probably be avoiding in the first place). There are a few decent ones (Eldritch Aim, Merciless Gaze, Deleterious Alacrity) which may be worthwhile in long, difficult fights (obviously, in short or easy fights, don't waste your time or your spells).

 

A "tank" Wizard is one of those things that is theoretically possible, but there's no reason to do it unless you've made a bet with somebody or something like that. It's a complete mismatch between the nature of the class and what you are trying to do with it and basically winds up a waste of one of your six character slots.

[Ondb]

 

 

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

 

The lead designer of PoE does not like Wizards. They represent everything wrong about class design (according to his opinion).

Right now even my fighter/tank is using more abilities per combat then my PC Wizard on auto-attack...Its really ironic...

 

To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design... Actually, that's true of most of the classes in the core book. It's too bad he did litterally nothing to fix those problems and just exacerbated them.

 

 

True, however going from IE wizards to auto-attacking dude (most of the time) is just too much for me.....

[Parsong]

 

The vast majority of Wizard buffs are either utterly useless or only useful in very specific situations (that you should probably be avoiding in the first place). There are a few decent ones (Eldritch Aim, Merciless Gaze, Deleterious Alacrity) which may be worthwhile in long, difficult fights (obviously, in short or easy fights, don't waste your time or your spells).

 

A "tank" Wizard is one of those things that is theoretically possible, but there's no reason to do it unless you've made a bet with somebody or something like that. It's a complete mismatch between the nature of the class and what you are trying to do with it and basically winds up a waste of one of your six character slots.

 

I think a melee/tank wizard  would be very do-able if all the melee/armor spells were encounter based.  

 

All of those different DR/Deflect things would add up to more than even the most OP Paladin/Fighter build.

 

Sadly it's all tied to the camping mechanic, so no BG/IWD godmode Wizard here

[mazeltov]

Like the title says. What's the point of buff spells?

 

Wiz tanks. My next playthrough will probably be 6 Wiz on Path of the Damned. Two or three Wiz tank/CC and the rest DPS/CC.

 

Starting at level 2 and 3 spells Wiz get some pretty good self buffs to Deflection. Though there are stacking issues with these self buffs and other sources of Deflection (L.'s Displaced Image suppresses Cautious Attack, for example). Another problem is that shields' accuracy penalty hurts Wiz tanks' ability to hit with spells, which is another perk of Wiz tanking, incidentally: the ability to use touch spells and cone spells (Fan of Flames!) right on the front line. Plus it gives it a purpose to the "Drain" line of spells, in theory at least. Though, I think those should damage/drain less and be converted to Fast casting speed, to help with heavy armor recovery issues, lower Dex on the tank, etc..

 

There will be some resting, but that's just an opportunity to engage with PoE's innovative new camping supplies mechanic.       

[Morkatog]

Thanks for the responses everyone. I would like to point out however that some people are detracting from my original point: this topic is not meant as a discussion about whether wizards are strong or weak or whether I'm having a hard time with them (I'm going through the game in hard mode without hickups and use 2 wizards), but merely to state that most of the buffs a wizard can cast are useless.

I agree spells such as eldritch aim are definately useful, but the majority of the buffs I don't use simply cause casting them all will cause previous buffs to expire and secondly it means I won't be doing damage.
 

These spells need to be more like old school d&d buffs that lasted for an hour/minute/10 minutes per level and should be castable before combat begins. Currently I spend 1 round casting proper buffs and getting my tank in position to catch all the bad guys, but from round 2 it's only offensive spells.

For what it's worth, the limited amount of spells per rest are also a heavy contributor to my chosing to cast as few personal buffs as possible.

Either way, the problems mentioned above results in a complete neglecting of parts of gameplay that I hope the people who designed them would like to see people use so they know their effort hasn't been for naught.

Edited April 3, 2015 by Morkatog

[mazeltov]

Why would the devs expect every Wiz spell to be used on every Wiz build? Would they be disappointed that nuker Wizards designed to stay 15m from enemies at all times aren't using the touch spells they designed? That that same ranged nuker rarely if ever has a need for a +25 Deflection self buff?

 

Some of the buffs are offensive, some of them are defensive. Used in the proper context (which includes the unalterable design decisions of short duration buffs/debuffs, and severely limited pre-fight buffs), they perform their jobs well. That's the opposite of useless.

[Volourn]

"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."
 

D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.

[Trauma_Hound]

 

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

 

The lead designer of PoE does not like Wizards. They represent everything wrong about class design (according to his opinion).

Right now even my fighter/tank is using more abilities per combat then my PC Wizard on auto-attack...Its really ironic...

 

 

Well ... is he making the game for himself or for the players? Looks like he needs to get his head on straight.

 

Cant EDIT: tried to keep the intent with less personal language. BTW: I do the same when the post is about any member, dev or lowly schlub like me or you.

[Epsilon Rose]

I find that Wizard buffs are good for "in a pinch" situations for when your Wizard is under fire and can't disengage, which happens. 

 

I think what might help Wizards be more "caster" and less "swing stick at enemy" would be granting them more spells per day. I like the way the grimoire works, but I think the Wizard needs more spells per day to be effective, otherwise he has to rest too much. 

 

You'd probably be better off giving them more per encounter or at will abilities, rather than trying to balance more spells per day, since per day resources can be novaed or hoarded and it's hard to predict which will happen when designing encounters.

 

Out of curiosity, arcane veil seems to be a 2 per rest 10-20 second buff. That seems really weak, espesially for a tallent. Am I missing something?

Nope. Can I ask what this 'Legend' you speak of is? 

 

It's a free PnP rpg that was based on, and designed to fix, most of 3.x's flaws and, in my opinion, did a fairly good job of it. At least, it did a much better job than PoE.

Their main site is here, but you can find the most recent version here.

 

"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."

 

D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.

I'm just going to assume you're trolling.

[basketofseals]

 

 

"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."

 

D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.

I'm just going to assume you're trolling.

 

I don't really see what's wrong with wizards. They're a pretty cool class, and I enjoy seeing the silly hijinks my more creative friends get into.

[Shdy314]

 

 

 

"To be fair. D&D wizards do represent many, many, things wrong with class design."

 

D&D wizards represent the awesomesauce of class design. They are perfect the way they are.

I'm just going to assume you're trolling.

 

I don't really see what's wrong with wizards. They're a pretty cool class, and I enjoy seeing the silly hijinks my more creative friends get into.

 

They are a class whose theme is MAGIC! and MAGIC! is do all the things.

 

Of course that is powerful. But being ridiculously powerful is not great design. Any 13 year old can make an overpoweringly awesome class.