Wizard balance suggestions

[MadDemiurg]

I use confusion on the 2nd level, it's not as good as 4th level one, but still nice. Blindness is not bad either. Infuse with vital essence is a great defensive buff.

[pi2repsion]

As I'm still learning this game and currently I think I'm level 5...I am not finding much use for my wizard except for a couple single target off spells.  I do love his fireball, lighting and those spells however I find it more troublesome to get him into position to use them for fear of friendly fire.  Otherwise he just is sitting back there pew pewing.

 

Any advice? I'm sure I'm missing something about how to implement this guy.

The following is how I did with my blaster wizard PC.

 

At level 5-6 I was using my wizard autoattacking and using the arcane assault on trash fights, but in important battles I approached in stealth, positioned my wizard to open the battle, and then let the wizard open the battle from stealth with Rolling Flames angled to go straight through most of the enemy group, preferably angled such that the enemy would also get hit on the rebound. After that it was run a bit back while my two melee guys took up position in front, and assess the situation. A not uncommon followup was to cast DAoM or Fireball (as those were the two level 3 spells I picked first, and they were a very, very, good choice), and then move such that I could flame all or most of the enemies with Fan of Flames with minimal friendly fire - either by moving to the flank and angling the flame in front of my melee line or moving back such that no friendlies were in the green base range but the yellow (int-based) area overlapped both my front rank and the enemy front rank. (Player created wizard with 19 INT - I expect Aloth with his lower INT but an item with overseeing should have no problem doing the same, but I haven't used him much). Enemies hanging back were good follow up targets for more of the Rolling Flames.

 

I also experimented with casting more than one Rolling Flames to open up battle, though this took more tricky positioning; Basically have your front liners be the one scouting out the enemy, have your wizard hang back rather than right in front, and arrange for a firing range. It puts more limitations on your ability to angle the ball of flaming death perfectly for rebounds but is a safer position for the wizard. Except with very slow enemies, you'll need your frontliners to engage after the second Rolling Flames has passed them. (Also, remember that the ball of flame requires a quite broad opening to not singe your front liners)

 

There is one more annoying thing and that is that in some positions with some angles, the wizard will simply fail to cast Rolling Flames when attempted out of combat for no reason I could fathom, requiring repositioning and trying again, but at least it doesn't break stealth and doesn't cost spell slots so it is only an annoyance.

 

But again, this was with the player character being a blaster wizard, so I have pretty much built my party around letting the wizard do the heavy lifting in encounters (Eder and Durance as tanks, Pallegina as offtank/2H dps, Kana Rua and Grieving Mother as ranged support) creating a broad front line for enemies to engage, and I find having to choose the right positions to get the most out of the wizard spells a fun part of experience. Admittedly that becomes less important at higher levels due to the abundance of fire-and-forget AOE that can safely be cast from the rear; I still need one combat spell that can be used out of combat to initiate the fight, but after that it is DAoM and then casting a stream of AOE or control spells with the very occasional self defense spell... but mostly AOE.