Wizards Get Better?

[Infares]

I'd like to see ranger pets buffed a LOT. 

Having them at 10/10/10/10/10/10 is kinda lame. If you could even distribute their stats yourself that would be great. Also, you should be able to use talents to either buff your pet to be much stronger or tame an extra pet (Since wolves, boars, stags, and the like can be found in the wild).

[Ondb]

Hi,

As I have GOG version of the game, could someone post the improved ranged of the Wizard spells? 

[Magrusaod]

I'd like to see ranger pets buffed a LOT. 

 

Having them at 10/10/10/10/10/10 is kinda lame. If you could even distribute their stats yourself that would be great. Also, you should be able to use talents to either buff your pet to be much stronger or tame an extra pet (Since wolves, boars, stags, and the like can be found in the wild).

Just chiming in to ask wtf this has to do with the op's topic??

[Cattlehunter]

Between fan of flames, rolling flame, fireball, minoletta's concussive missiles, along with all the other aoe damage spells, self-buffs to damage, and arcane assault twice per encounter, I doubt any other class comes close to providing as much damage as a wizard is able to bring, never mind the debuffs.

 

For normal run-of-the-mill packs, you just do a spell or two (if you need to use any at all; he still provides good damage with just his arbalest) on top of a couple of uses of arcane assault, and for harder packs, like bosses, you just chain those fireballs into the horde of enemies and watch everything die.

 

 

I'm playing through path of the damned now, with a min/maxed party (after the travesty that was the story companions through hard), only resting when my team becomes fatigued or they run out of health, and I almost never find myself without wizard spells to cast (unless I've ran out of resting supplies, anyway, and all my people are just hobbling along on their last breath just as much as the wizard is). The wizard is still almost twice as much damage done as anybody else in the party, though he also holds the peculiar prestige of being the person who has gotten knocked out most frequently (at 8 times vs. 2 times for #2 on that ranking).

 

Sure, he does, uh, a little bit of friendly fire now and then. I mean, those rolling fires are hard to aim! But that's what the priest is there for, right?

 

I'm not sure why so many people consider wizards weak (at least until very lategame). Do you guys not use rolling fire early-mid game? 2-3 casts of that spell clears out entire packs by itself early-game. In small rooms, one cast can be enough to kill half the things there (though, granted, sometimes it kills you as well in that situation). Throw in a couple of uses of arcane assault to that and everything is going to be dead.

[Odd Hermit]

Between fan of flames, rolling flame, fireball, minoletta's concussive missiles, along with all the other aoe damage spells, self-buffs to damage, and arcane assault twice per encounter, I doubt any other class comes close to providing as much damage as a wizard is able to bring, never mind the debuffs.

 

For normal run-of-the-mill packs, you just do a spell or two (if you need to use any at all; he still provides good damage with just his arbalest) on top of a couple of uses of arcane assault, and for harder packs, like bosses, you just chain those fireballs into the horde of enemies and watch everything die.

 

 

I'm playing through path of the damned now, with a min/maxed party (after the travesty that was the story companions through hard), only resting when my team becomes fatigued or they run out of health, and I almost never find myself without wizard spells to cast (unless I've ran out of resting supplies, anyway, and all my people are just hobbling along on their last breath just as much as the wizard is). The wizard is still almost twice as much damage done as anybody else in the party, though he also holds the peculiar prestige of being the person who has gotten knocked out most frequently (at 8 times vs. 2 times for #2 on that ranking).

 

Sure, he does, uh, a little bit of friendly fire now and then. I mean, those rolling fires are hard to aim! But that's what the priest is there for, right?

 

I'm not sure why so many people consider wizards weak (at least until very lategame). Do you guys not use rolling fire early-mid game? 2-3 casts of that spell clears out entire packs by itself early-game. In small rooms, one cast can be enough to kill half the things there (though, granted, sometimes it kills you as well in that situation). Throw in a couple of uses of arcane assault to that and everything is going to be dead.

 

I dunno why people think rolling flames is so great. It's all about combusting wounds IMO. It's a more subtle spell but it kills more targets with fewer casts if you use it with spells/ability that have synergy with it.

[fortuntek]

The fact that people are arguing which spells are best at all indicates to me that the balance is closer to where it should be than most of us would like to admit.

[gkathellar]

In most D&D settings, (not 4e) wizards are always frustratingly useless in early levels and always inconcievably overpowered in higher levels. PoE is simply following suit.

 

In this game, Aloth may seem useless at first, but if you just invest time in him, he'll make everyone else redundant.

Neither of these statements are true. Wizards always had save-or-suck from level 1 on in D&D (except 4e), and they're perfectly effective from level 1 in PoE. Their crowd control spells are still usable and quite effective - just not as good as they used to be.

[Dongom]

Between fan of flames, rolling flame, fireball, minoletta's concussive missiles, along with all the other aoe damage spells, self-buffs to damage, and arcane assault twice per encounter, I doubt any other class comes close to providing as much damage as a wizard is able to bring, never mind the debuffs.

 

 

Druid's spells do more dmg and more of them are Foe-AOE.

Edited April 4, 2015 by Dongom

[Stormcrown]

I'd be very interested to see some builds from people who have tested Wizard stuff out!

 

(Mostly spell selections)

[Fimconte]

I'd be very interested to see some builds from people who have tested Wizard stuff out!

 

(Mostly spell selections)

Since you can copy from grimores, spell selection isn't all that important.  

Pick the crucial ones and you'll get all the others sooner or later. 

[BrickleberryPi]

You get more spell levels as you level up, which means you also get more casts. Once you reach a certain level, 1st and 2nd level spells become per encounter instead of per rest. also there's items and talents that can increase the number of casts you have per spell level.

 

While getting to a certain level to switch from "per rest" abilities to "per encounter" is fine, the level threshold isn't fine. Level nine and twelve is too much. In my opinion, the wizard would have a better feel to the class if the threshold was lower, around level six and nine respectively.

[Lasci]

Wizards have a lot of damage at higher levels. Druids tend to have a larger area of effect but sacrifice damage for some sort of debuff. Ciphers have a shorter AoE and typically have special debuffs attached to their spells. The wizard just straight up barrels through with high damage values most times.

[Wolken3156]

I dunno why people think rolling flames is so great. It's all about combusting wounds IMO. It's a more subtle spell but it kills more targets with fewer casts if you use it with spells/ability that have synergy with it.

 

When it rebounds of a wall it also splits into multiple orbs. In small rooms, you can literally cover the entire room with these things. Also they can hit multiple times, so with Scion of Flame, your looking at some really great damage.

 

That said, this is an excellent way to get your own party killed too. I'm not really a fan of using it myself for this reason =/

[Dongom]

Firebug, Swarm, + Both Storms (all foe AOE) > *

[Infares]

 

I'd like to see ranger pets buffed a LOT. 

 

Having them at 10/10/10/10/10/10 is kinda lame. If you could even distribute their stats yourself that would be great. Also, you should be able to use talents to either buff your pet to be much stronger or tame an extra pet (Since wolves, boars, stags, and the like can be found in the wild).

Just chiming in to ask wtf this has to do with the op's topic??

The guy above me was mentioning that he felt Ranger and Barb were the weakest classes currently.

[Dongom]

 

 

I'd like to see ranger pets buffed a LOT. 

 

Having them at 10/10/10/10/10/10 is kinda lame. If you could even distribute their stats yourself that would be great. Also, you should be able to use talents to either buff your pet to be much stronger or tame an extra pet (Since wolves, boars, stags, and the like can be found in the wild).

Just chiming in to ask wtf this has to do with the op's topic??

The guy above me was mentioning that he felt Ranger and Barb were the weakest classes currently.

 

 

Ranger and Monk would be more accurate.  Barb can be built to be quite devastating. 

Edited April 4, 2015 by Dongom

[pi2repsion]

To return to the original question, the point where for me my wizard main character really started to stand out and I no longer spent half the time thinking that I'd have been better off with a druid since I spent most of my time blasting was when I got access to level 3 spells. Other wizard players will know this, but as the OP is asking about whether wizards get better, let me try to explain.

 

I don't really mind my wizard not casting many spells in the frequent short encounters where just autoattacking with everybody does most of the work, and as I'd taken Scion of Burnination as my first talent, I could help flame groups with Fan a bit of positioning and also had fun with the the flaming bowling ball of death* and the occasional bewildering, but still... there's no hiding that for blasting purposes in important fights, a druid would have been better, full stop.

 

* mmm, I can understand people who don't like these due to the danger of friendly fire, but I find that they really are great for a level 2 blasting spell once you've got a a bit of experience in aiming them, well worth the occasional friendly fire incident. And, of course, there's a bit of a sport in angling them right to hit several enemies 2-3 times.

 

 

And then I got level 3 spells and Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, and from then on my Wizard became a ridiculous powerhouse in the important fights, you know, those fights where you show up rested to face powerful enemies, while autoattacking, using arcane assault, and casting the occasional spell in trash fights.

 

My Wizard is a 18 INT/19DEX/19INT build with an additional +2 INT, +1 DEX from gear and wears enchanted Beratian Priest Robes for a -5% recovery speed and 2 DR more than clothes would give. (And as a bonus, those robes look good on a female wizard.)

 

As I were to find out, once DAoM is cast, that means that spells that are listed as merely "fast" are "ridiculously fast" and "average" are "pretty darn fast". So I had to either enable auto-pausing after spell-casts or play on slow speed in combat to be able to hit the pause button to waste as little time as possible between casting spells.

 

That meant that casting the best defensive spells was an option (I particularly like the 2nd level +50 endurance spell - it provides a very useful buffer early on) either pro-actively or reactively, as was casting eldritch aim and merciless gaze before unloading the arcane arsenal of spells. It was even possible to do things like trigger start of battle, cast DoAM, cast two rolling balls of flaming death, and move out of the way before any enemy could manage to close with slow and some normal enemies (but not fast enemies). Or once another level was gained, cast several fireballs in a row mid-combat in a few seconds, which does wonders.

 

We are not talking BG2 Robe of Vecna + Improved Alacrity levels of cheese, but you become able to cast a lot more spells in a given period of time than druids and priests, and you aren't forced to observe breaks between spells due to using a regenerating resource like Ciphers are - you are only limited by how many spells you have to burn, and as you increase in levels you get more than enough.

 

Deleterious Alacrity of Motion - probably the single most powerful spell in the Wizard's arsenal because it addresses the question of "how do I actually find the time to cast all these spells".