Is arcane veil worth it? Hardened arcane veil?

[dusklight]

I'm trying to decide if I want to take arcane veil or more spell slot talent. should i pick arcane veil and hardened arcane veil over bonus level 1 and 2 spells?

 

For a wizard, right now I am thinking of getting the scion of flame talent, are any of the other elemental talents a must have? 

Please help me decide what I should do for my POTD playthrough!

[Crucis]

For POTD, I don't know.  But for regular modes, IMO, Arcane Veil and the Hardened version are absolutely worth it.  There's always going to be times when some enemy slips by your front line somehow and your wizzy has to defend himself in melee.  And throwing up an Arcane Veil ASAP has always seemed to make a huge difference in their survivability.   Plus, it's a per-Encounter ability rather than a per-rest one, so you don't need to expend a spell to use it, and can use it once for every battle without resting between.  Definitely worth it.

[Luckmann]

As a Wizard, I wouldn't take Arcane Veil/Hardened Veil, but I also wouldn't take the Bonus Level 1 and 2 Spells. There's a lot of good Talents to take, and none of those are actually that good. Your wizard just shouldn't get into the thick of it often enough for benefit from Arcane Veil that much. Even Grimoire Slam is better, if the objective is to run away, should you get tied up in melee.

Scion of Flame is an excellent Talent, and there are plenty of really good Burn-based damage-dealing spells to be had. I don't think any of the other Elemental Talents can really compete, at least not for a wizard - unfortunately. That's not to say that the others are bad, it's just that just from memory, I think that Burn damage is represented on every (or near-every) Spell Rank, whereas the others have a handful total, even if some of those can be really good (Noxious Burst comes to mind, Blast of Frost, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar, Chain Lightning, etc).

 

Scion of Flame is doubly better from the fact that a lot of enemies use fire against you, whereas the rest is not as common (or at least not as severe when present), and the Elemental Talents gives +5 DR.

[View619]

Arcane Veil is an "oh ****" button and its usefulness will depend on how confident you are in keeping your Wizard out of the line of fire. If you're on POTD though, it couldn't hurt. Grimoire Slam is a nice option too, but since it's vs deflection you may miss and waste it.

 

If you're interested in playing somewhat closer to the front for things like Fan Of Flame, Rolling Flame, etc then it would definitely be worth it imo. Not sure I would go Hardened Veil though, since you can always throw up something like Wizard's Double instead.

 

@Crucis

Arcane Veil is a per-rest ability. Per-encounter would be pretty ridiculous.

[Nobear]

Yeah, I'd take it if it were Per Encounter but it's not. You know, the conjured Spirit Lance (a pike) is the highest DPS weapon in the game and Concelhaut's Quarterstaff does high DPS too, so you could build your wizard as a second-line DPSer, in which case those talents would be worth it (unless you're ok with dying and reloading a lot).

 

However, for a more traditional wizard who is ranged DPS/CC, I wouldn't bother personally. Minor Blights is another good conjured weapon (a wand) and, while its single target DPS isn't quite as high as the melee weapons, it is AOE and you can safely use it from ranged. In that case, you'd want to build with wand talents like Blast, Penetrating Blast, Dangerous Implement, Marksman, and WF: Adventurer. That still allows you to get your Scion of Flame, which will also boost your Minor Blights when it randomly switches to fire.

 

Overall, there are many ways to build a wizard, but I'd only consider taking Arcane Veil and Hardened Veil if I were building a second-row DPSer who will use Spirit Lance endgame.

Edited June 28, 2015 by Nobear