Wizard & Implements

[LHWong]

Are the Blast / Penetrating Blast / Dangerous Implements talents worth taking? Given how powerful the guns and arbalest are (even after new patch), not sure if it's worth getting those 3 talents.

[ErlKing]

Blast/Penetrating blast is option, because of aoe, slash/crush or pierce/crush, and fast attack (some spells give you blast based weapons), that allow more flexibility in using spells, but pistol more reliable and does not require talents.

I think Penetrating Shot is better pick than Dangerous Implemets, because of how DR calculated and because Pen Shot affect some spells without affecting casting time.

Edited April 7, 2015 by ErlKing

[Heijoushin]

I guess that if you have the right build, it could be useful. But basically, I agree, it's much more fun having a gun-toting wizard!

 

Actually, I'm playing a wizard as my main character at the moment. It's great cause I can also level up Aloth and then copy spells from him.

But I don't really know where to spend my talents either.

[ErlKing]

Elemental talents are good for wizard if you not boosting him as ranged shooting char, usually  Fire > Cold > Lightning > Corrode , but that depends on your spells pick. Personally I gave him marksman, Fire Scion and use pistol that buff party accuracy vs targeted enemy.

[Fardragon]

Having an AOE ranged attack is nice at low levels before wizards have enough spells.

 

I don't see much use for Dangerous Implements, unless to give wounds to monks, which I still haven't tried to see if it works*.

 

 

*Tried it now, it does work!

Edited April 7, 2015 by Fardragon

[LHWong]

Thanks

 

I had figured those Elemental utility talents were much more useful for the Wizard than the Implement talents.

[Mungri]

Yes I've taken Blast / Penetrating Blast / Dangerous Implements / Marksman / Weapon Focus Noble on my Wizard on Potd and it works great.

 

You can toggle Dangerous Implements on and off. Also use it with merciless gaze for lots of crits.

 

And no, the elemental utility talents are nowhere near as useful for a wizard as their spells cover a lot of elements, I'd rather focus on implements or guns / arbalests.

 

I also have a priest that can cast consecrated ground to nulify dangerous implements health drain, and not only that even the holy Radius heals enough mid battle to make it easy to keep dangerous implements in use.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Mungri

[Shdy314]

Yes I've taken Blast / Penetrating Blast / Dangerous Implements / Marksman / Weapon Focus Noble on my Wizard on Potd and it works great.

And no, the elemental utility talents are nowhere near as useful for a wizard as their spells cover a lot of elements, I'd rather focus on implements or guns / arbalests.

Its a wizard. If I wanted to focus solely on ranged combat Id have made/used a rogue or ranger. You end up spending all your resources on boosting their accuracy. What a waste.

Elemental talents are far more useful for buffing their spells and takes less talents than you who admittedly had to spend every single talent on making them not suck at ranged combat. 20% more damage to fan of flames. Saying their less useful because they have a number of spells that are buffed by the talents is literally nonsense. The DR boost is welcome too. Especially freeze DR.

[Shadenuat]

At levels 9&11 all these talents for wands become redundant, although it's probably possible to make a pew pew wizard build if you add Chanter's buffs into the mix (Aefyllath Ues Mith Fyr with wands and talents for 25% extra fire damage? What if both chanter and wizard have talent for extra fire damage? Makes me wonder).

[NerdCommando]

Two Words - Minor Blights. They're awesome and implement talents makes them even more awesome. As well as the elemental talents, though.

[Mungri]

But I dont need those 25% elemental boosts for my spells to still kill stuff.

[Mungri]

Two Words - Minor Blights. They're awesome and implement talents makes them even more awesome. As well as the elemental talents, though.

 

I use that spell a lot, do Implement talents work on it too? If so then Im def not changing my mind. Implements ftw. Also Im sure marksman works on that spell too.

[Mungri]

 

Yes I've taken Blast / Penetrating Blast / Dangerous Implements / Marksman / Weapon Focus Noble on my Wizard on Potd and it works great.

And no, the elemental utility talents are nowhere near as useful for a wizard as their spells cover a lot of elements, I'd rather focus on implements or guns / arbalests.

Its a wizard. If I wanted to focus solely on ranged combat Id have made/used a rogue or ranger. You end up spending all your resources on boosting their accuracy. What a waste.

Elemental talents are far more useful for buffing their spells and takes less talents than you who admittedly had to spend every single talent on making them not suck at ranged combat. 20% more damage to fan of flames. Saying their less useful because they have a number of spells that are buffed by the talents is literally nonsense. The DR boost is welcome too. Especially freeze DR.

 

 

Rogue / Rangers dont have wizard spells lol. Aslo Im use the implement build with a full ranged backline anyway, just without useless rogues / rangers.

 

Zealous Endurance + Zealous Focus arbalest paladins, Wael or Magran Priest, and Wizard. Could throw in a chanter but I like the double Zealous modals. 

Edited April 7, 2015 by Mungri

[Shdy314]

Rogue / Rangers dont have wizard spells lol. Aslo Im use the implement build with a full ranged backline anyway, just without useless rogues / rangers.

Zealous Endurance + Zealous Focus arbalest paladins, Wael or Magran Priest, and Wizard. Could throw in a chanter but I like the double Zealous modals. 

So you spend all your talents on implements because you love wizards for their spells. Makes sense. Rogues and Rangers are hardly useless especially because a ranged spec rogue or ranger is going to put your ranged spec wizard to shame. If your wizard is casting spells they aren't making use of a single one of their talents. Brilliant.

 

Your second sentence has literally nothing to do with anything. Zealous focus is going to benefit a class with higher accuracy over the wizard in the exact same situation. Why do piddly little blast damage when I have AOE spells?

 

 

I use that spell a lot, do Implement talents work on it too? If so then Im def not changing my mind. Implements ftw. Also Im sure marksman works on that spell too.

 

Its easy to go check. I didn't find marksman to work with any spells but its always interesting to find these little quirks. Maybe blights is an exception.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Shdy314

[Mungri]

I spend all my talents on implements because a mere +20% damage boost to spells plus 4 talents needed per element is horse**** when spells like chill fog / firewall hit for sometrhing like 6-10 damage per tick.

 

Wizards do plenty of attacking in between spell casts, and 9 levels before you can cast level 1 spells per encounter is over 2/3 of the game.

 

Even after level 9, you can cast a chill fog or 2 and spam your blast auto attack on enemies inside it., Perfectly viable and strong throughout the game.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Mungri

[MadDemiurg]

Actually wizard with minor blights, his haste spell and elemental talents puts rogue, ranger and pretty much any other class to shame when it comes to sustained ranged dps in a given encounter. Blast is contributing to the build not that much though, but dangerous implements can be useful.

[b0rsuk]

Dangerous Implement is a sweet, sweet talent on a... Monk.

[pi2repsion]

Well, considering that I want my wizard to be primarily casting spells in dangerous encounters rather than using his ranged attack, with the ranged attack something to do in the short breaks when I'm not casting, if any, using a slow-loading ranged weapon just doesn't seem appropriate. A slow heavy damage dealing ranged weapon would help more than a wand/sceptre in the short trash fights where my wizard doesn't use spells (or don't use more than one or two), but the reason I'm not using spells there in the first place is that they are so easy, so optimizing for this situation rather than the more dangerous situation of important fights where I am spellslinging seems a waste.

 

Hence my wizard uses wand or sceptre.

 

The only question is whether it is worth spending any talents on improving his ranged auto-attack damage at all considering how good all the +20%/+5DR talents are if you are playing your wizard as a blaster/CC rather than primarily CC.

 

The fire talent is obligatory due to Fan of Flames, Rolling Flames, and Fireball, and is useful from start, so I see little reason not to make this as the first talent at level 2.

 

Corrode is of use to second, fifth, and sixth level blasting spells.

 

Ice is of use to fifth and sixth level blasting spells.

 

Lightning of use to third and 6th level blasting spells, with the caveat that you are probably not going to be using Cackling Bolt as Fireball is generally superior.

All of them are useful if you want to make your wizard into a ranged blight thrower at third level.

 

 

Since you get six talents in total, you can get all four as well as Blast and either Penetrating Blast or Dangerous Implements, should you so desire. If you want to do that, the proper sequence would be:

 

2 Fire

4 Blast

6 Penetrating Blast or Dangerous Implements (I'd say Penetrating Blast)

8 Ice (5th level spells coming at level 9)

10 Corrode or Lightning (6th level spells coming at level 11)

12 Corrode or Lightning

 

But again, this is for a wizard who is played primarily as a blaster rather than CC. That said, if played primarily as CC, which talents are there that will help the wizard more? Arcane Veil, Grimoire Slam, or increased number of spell slots? Don't make me laugh.

[MadDemiurg]

If you're casting haste spell you will be paying in endurance anyway. And you can use the +50 hp spell to fuel it (it's currently coded in a way it can actually restore health btw). You can also be a moon godlike for a bigger pool. Since you can toggle dangerous implements it's definitely viable choice for the fights where you want to do as much damage as possible. Health is a resource just like your spells. The question is, is it worth a talent slot.

[pi2repsion]

If you're casting haste spell you will be paying in endurance anyway. And you can use the +50 hp spell to fuel it (it's currently coded in a way it can actually restore health btw). You can also be a moon godlike for a bigger pool. Since you can toggle dangerous implements it's definitely viable choice for the fights where you want to do as much damage as possible. Health is a resource just like your spells. The question is, is it worth a talent slot.

The obvious question being, for fights where it is important to do as much damage as possible, why are you using autoattacks rather then casting spells until the enemy lies dead before you? With the ability to rest before any important fight, once you gain access to level 3 spells and above it is really hard to run out of spells in important fights where you want to do as much damage as possible, even when casting DAoM to turbocharge your casting speed.

[MadDemiurg]

You're not using auto attacks though, you're using minor blights, which is one of the better damaging spells. You're not taking it for auto attacks.

[Gs11]

as for me, don't see any additional  dmg output with Dangerous implemet or without for Kalakoht's MInor Blights in 2.01./2.02

Edited October 3, 2015 by Gs11

[MasterCipher]

Mid-late game when your lvl 1-3 spells are encounter based, fights are over before you run out of spells and wiz spells > wand/weapons if you don't mind micro. I.E. lvl 1 flame AoE cone hits for 50-60 non-crit, non-buffed.

[Teioh_White]

The value of Implements to a wizard is going to depend on how you view the resting system. If you basically see no reason not to rest as much as you please, they'll be useless to you. Of course, the game itself will all be very easy at that point, so really, do whatever is the most fun for you if you make that call, and have a Blast. (but not the talent Blast. That'll still be bad.)

 

Implements by themselves aren't really worth much for anyone, wizards included. Blast is the one trick they get over the rest, and while it's nice enough early on, late game it'll still be hitting for single digits. Not the best use of a talent point when Wizard can actually get good use out the Elemental talents.

 

However, as mentioned, you don't take those talents to support Implements, but to support Blights. For a spell slot, Blights will give a massive value of AoE damage, so they're ideal for conserving spell slots.  And the Blights count as an Implement, so all those Talents you spend to help the Implement will pay dividends when you whip the Blight out. Often for a tough fight, a single AoE CC spell followed by a Blight is enough to burn the numbers down to a reasonable amount, depending on how many can get caught in the Blight AoE.

 

It also makes Blast a decent Talent choice now, because a blight isn't like a normal implement shot with a blast, it basically shoots an AoE centered on a target. Each target in that AoE range will then fire a Blast off, so if you're hitting tightly clustered targets, just flinging Blights can out weigh chucking Fireballs and sometimes even Flame cones, at of course a much lesser spell cost. (Fireball base is 30 damage, Flame cone is 36, a Blight is 22+Blast hits).

 

And even though the talents won't help a Wizards other spells, until about 2/3 of the way through the game, a Wizard is going to spend a fair bit of time auto attacking, same as every single other class in the game, so still getting benefits to that is hardly useless. It's not like those fights are just free wins, at the least Health is going to be burning off, and better auto attacks help a bit. Still, most of these talents are to support the unique Wizard ability that is Blight. (Under heavy rest restrictions, it's often my health running out before my spells, leaving me to hide the low health members out of combat, while the wizard ends 2-3 encounters going Nova with remaining spells).

 

There really isn't much offensive opportunity cost to supporting the Blights, as we have 7 talents, and spending 3 of those on elemental talents helps the Blight as well, leaving 4 talents to pump up the Blights, and dinky Implements when not casting anything. Of course, all of this matters less and less as the Wizard gain levels and gets per encounters, which increasingly lets the wizard go Nova on a per encounter basis. Which renders the spell saving of the Blights pretty obsolete, and relegates it to situational AoE. (As with Blast, if it's hitting 5-6 targets, it'll get a lot of bonus damage.)

 

tl;dr

 

Yeah, might as well use Implements for wizard. Early on, they're okay trash AoE. Mid game, they support Blight shennigens. Late game, weapons don't matter, Wizards will blow everything up with per encounters.

[Gs11]

@ Teioh_White

 

thanks a lot ,great explanation