Is Wizard still garbage?

[Zherot]

I want to try this game again since now they implemented the AI and see if thats good enough to not need to micromanage every single damn thing and i was thinking in starting over and making a Wizard since i love magic classes, the thing is from some info i got from Youtube and other from steam, it seems like Wizards arent still good... also before i remember i put a lot of int and migh and dex now a video i saw its suggesting to put perception instead of dexterity, which i really dont understand since dexterity means faster casting...

 

So... is Wizard any good or i just do a Cipher if i want to be a "caster" type, thing is i actually want to do damage, it dosent work for me a class that has "fireball" and does crappy damage with it (as i heard in a  youtube video which im going to link below), i really want MY NUKES or else whay would i pick a wizard that isnt a wizard at all...

 

This is the video i saw: 

 

Its really disappointing to hear that they do more damage in melee with a stupid weapon (weapons they conjure) than with nukes.... i picked adamn Wizard not a damn fighter, Jesus.

[rheingold]

Huh, wizard has always been good, really good.

[Shevek]

I wouldnt play without a wizard.

[Heijoushin]

Wow, as a wizard lover, the title of this thread somehow pisses me off...

 

Ciphers were great in the beginning, but have since been nerfed. Additionally, the new level 7 spells for the cipher are really sad...

 

You wanna play a spellcaster? Play a wizard.

 

Oh yeah, their summoned weapons are great, but thats like icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Heijoushin

[AndreaColombo]

^ Though honestly Ciphers are still plenty good, imho.

[rheingold]

Wow, as a wizard lover, the title of this thread somehow pisses me off...

 

Ciphers were great in the beginning, but have since been nerfed. Additionally, the new level 7 spells for the cipher are really sad...

 

You wanna play a spellcaster? Play a wizard.

 

Oh yeah, their summoned weapons are great, but thats like icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

Wow, as a wizard lover, the title of this thread somehow pisses me off...

 

Ciphers were great in the beginning, but have since been nerfed. Additionally, the new level 7 spells for the cipher are really sad...

 

You wanna play a spellcaster? Play a wizard.

 

Oh yeah, their summoned weapons are great, but thats like icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

 

Well, I don't like wizards or ciphers for that matter, I way prefer Druids! Nothing to do with the classes just a personal preference that goes back, way back. But there's nothing wrong with wizards or ciphers in pillars, they are definitely both near the top of the heap, even with the nerf cipher got they are pretty darn potent. So not sure where the op got the idea from.

[Tomice]

Aloth is the backbone of my party even before level 9 (per encounter spells!), a wizard as main could perform even better.

Wizards are definitively one of the best classes in 2.01 (though ciphers are still good, as are priests).

I have all three in my party, and I believe I could make do more easily without my minmaxed cipher mainchar then without Aloth!

Edited September 13, 2015 by Tomice

[rheingold]

Also the seventh level spells that were added in WM are pretty ordinary for all casters, not just Ciphers. The real change is 4th level spells/encounter which really pulls the other casters ahead of a cipher. Having said that it's really late game, so it doesn't make that much of a difference. Regarding seventh level spells, I think Obs were worried about breaking the game, hence they are all pretty ordinary. Not entirely necessary to worry about because by the time you get them the game is pretty much over.

[lameover]

For wizards in 2.0 update there are a few new spells (these can only be learnt through Concelhaut ironclasped grimoire and Ninagauth's black pages). Thought I'd mention them in case you didn't know about them:

 

L2 Concelhaut's Draining Missiles - corrode damage, drains health (description says they should do raw damage - they'll be even better if that get's fixed).

L4: Ninagauth's Death Ray - raw damage, FOE only ray spell (this one is very good). Note the black pages are currently buggged and this one may not always show up)

L4: Ninagauth's Shadowflame - cold based fireball that paralyses everything in the AOE (this one is extremely good and really helps fix the issue that some of the Wiz L4 spells are a bit lackluster)

L7: Concelhaut's Crushing Doom - This spell is hilarious, basically PoE's version of Bigby's Crushing Hand. It's better than all the other L7 wiz spells - single target but can deal hundreds of crush damage and prones the target for the duration. Really hope we see some buffs to the other Wiz L7 spells though.

[AndreaColombo]

L2 Concelhaut's Draining Missiles - corrode damage, drains health (description says they should do raw damage - they'll be even better if that get's fixed).

 

Was this reported in the bug forums?

 

I'd do it myself but I'm on 2.0 and this spell was added in 2.01.

[Tamerlane]

Wizards were always good. Wizards are still good. If you want a damage-centric caster class, the druid will probably be more to your liking.

[pi2repsion]

Wizard... garbage? The class was great in 1.0, and it remains great in 2.0.

 

It is the highest damaging class by far if you choose to focus on its AOE aspects, because it can burn through highly damaging spells faster than anybody else and then settle down to throwing Minor Blights (an AOE ranged attack that is affected by the Blast, Penetrating Blast, and Dangerous Implements talents... and the elemental talents too, just for good measure).  Don't get me wrong - Druids have great AOE spells too, but they can't cast them anywhere near as fast, giving the enemies a lot more time alive to act against your team, and when they run out of spells, that's it. They don't have the option, like wizards do, of using a single spell to turn them into melee or ranged AOE monsters for more than a minute. Druids strengths are that they get healing, control, and shapeshifting together with their strong AOE, and that they have access to all their spells in combat, but they just don't measure up to wizards in the damage department (or control department, for that matter).

 

It is the best crowd controller if you concentrate on that.

 

It is also has higher dps on single targets than rogues for as long as you have spells if you focus on that aspect, due to the ability to spam spells under Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. But when the Wizard runs out of spells, rogues will just keep going like clockwork while the wizard's single target damageoutput plummets in comparison. This is mostly only relevant in the early game and on bosses, and only on the higher difficulty levels, but it is a concern and why this is seldom a good way to specialize your wizard's grimoire. Rogues, fighters, barbarians, and others who think that bashing enemies with tools is a great idea still have a role to play.

 

Of course, the wizard won't be all these things at once due to the limited space for spells in your grimoires, and you'll want to include a few self-buffing defense spells as well, but that is all to the good. If a wizard had access to all his spells at all times like priests and druids, then the wizard spells would need to be hit with a serious nerfhammer. As it is, you can choose to a spell selection that leaves him great in one area, decent to good in another, and still have some good self buffs, and that's more than enough regardless of whether you want to make a CC or damagedealing monster.

 

 

If anything, it became even more absurdly powerful in 2.0 due to the introduction of new spells like the 4th level Shadowflame frost fireball spell that does more damage than the 3rd level fireball, paralyzes, and retain the things that makes fireball great: good range, good AOE radius, and being FAST. Once you gain access to 4th level spells at level 7, you can pretty much burn down any POTD encounter that doesn't include some sort of boss by your wizard casting Deleterious Alacrity of Motion, Merciless Gaze, and then chaining the fire and frost balls while everybody else tries to get off their first 2 or 3 actions.

 

If you want to rest after the encounter, that is. If you want to rest less, you might settle for throwing a few good spells and bombarding with Blights while the rest of the group gets to act too.

 

------

 

In 1.0 I played a wizard on hard, and it was pretty easy.

In 2.0 I am now playing a wizard on POTD, and while it is certainly a greater challenge, it is hard to shake the feeling that the wizard trivializes most of the content, and that the time when I ran two wizards (main + Aloth) until I picked up the Devil of Caroc was equivalent to bumping down the difficulty level one notch to hard.

 

My current POTD playthrough has just finished White March (excluding Crägholdt), act 2, the first set of four bounty quests, and 10 levels of the Endless Paths; Entering Hearthsong, the damage breakdown is as following:

 

21994 dmg. Durance the priest (95.5 highest) -- 1h+sh. Picked him up at level 2.

27274 dmg. Pallegina the paladin (61.1 highest) -- 1h+sh. Picked her up at level 4.

49865 dmg. Kana the chanter (48.7 highest) -- bow. Picked him up at level 2.

72867 dmg. Eder the fighter (81.6 highest) -- 2H. Picked him up at level 2.

76584 dmg. Devil of Caroc the rogue (215.5 highest) -- 2H. Picked her up at level 7. (Used Aloth until then, picked up at level 2. He did 26094 damage).

220084 dmg. Elflaed the wizard (165.8 highest) -  SPELLS. BLIGHTS. CARNAGE AND CONTROL. And a rod for when fighting something trivial where I can't be arsed to cast spells but let the others chop up stuff.

 

So my wizard - who's an optimized blasting wizard - has done 220084/(21994+27274+49865+72867+76584+26094+220084) ~ 44.5% of total party damage so far. Of course, if I had focused on maximizing ability use by the other characters rather than my wizard, or had made my wizard more of a control wizard, setting up the situations such that the other characters would do more damage against immobilized (and later petrified) opponents, the wizard's proportion of damageoutput would have been smaller, but I built this playthrough around the blaster wizard with the companions in supporting roles to make up for the wizard's shortcomings, and it certainly worked exceedingly well so far.

 

Pale Elf +1 dex, +1 per (for the 10 Fire/Frost DR; Wood Elf for Distant Advantage is all round better due to the increased accuracy on and deflection from distant attacks, but I played a Wood Elf the first time around and there is more than enough fire and frost damage from enemies to make the Pale Elf's protection worthwhile)

 

Old Valia for +1 Int.

 

18 Might

3 Constitution

19 Dexterity

16 Perception

19 Intelligence

3 Resolve.

 

Armour: Berathian Priest Robes (5% recovery penalty)

Edited September 13, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Heijoushin]

Today, I killed a certain high-level optional wizard boss in WM and got a really awesome spell

 

That felt wonderful! No late game treats for ciphers!

 

(Not saying the other classes are bad, just defending wizards from this slander!)

Edited September 13, 2015 by Heijoushin

[KDubya]

If the Wizard is not at the top of the PoE classes I don't know what is.

 

I think that if all spell casters did not get per encounter level one, two and three that they would still be at the top of the PoE world compared to non-casters. I can't understand why the devs felt that they needed to throw balance out the window and give per encounter spells. Getting level one and two were bad enough, now you get level three as per encounter. What happens with White March part 2 when you get level four per encounter spells? How does a Cipher compare to that with their one cast and then need to get more focus?

 

How can anything possibly be balanced when you can cast at least sixteen spells per encounter plus have the higher level spells available per rest if needed.

 

I mean you could already cast every spell per encounter if you wanted to abuse the rest mechanic, now you don't even need to do that.

 

Wizards would still be appealing to play without making them into god-mode.

[Zherot]

Thanks for the post, im interested in the blaster Wizard you are describing pi2repsion what talents should i pick?, also i dont know why but it seems that the video i linked is not showing up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46aelfrCo-0&list=PL4UqltmSKaEeCbgMY7nx2U0kngJ77wwhX&index=12

 

If it still dosent show up just put this on youtube:

 

Pillars of Eternity: White March - Wizards Guide

 

The guy in that video says that Wizard damaging spells is terrible and that you should focus on the weapons they can conjure, a thing that i didnt liked one bit.

 

I want to play wizard and i like magic overall in games since i like AoEs in games, so thats what i would like to focus in BIG AoEs that do damage thats also why i would like to go for the "blaster" that pi2repsion mentiones because it sounds fun.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Zherot

[rheingold]

Not sure who did the video but sounds like he has no clue. Wizards are pretty potent. You might also consider a Druid, they also make great nukers, with the advantage of having a bit more variety - ie they can heal a bit.

[NerdCommando]

People should stop reading the title only.

 

What OP means to say is that the wizard is garbage because his nuking abilities (which, in OPs opinion, is the thing that defines wizard for him) are weaker than his weapon summoning abilities. Is that the stick-beating or want-shooting wizard is not very interesting for him to play. And, on my part, there's not much consolation I can give to the OP as the wizard's best 3rd level spell are Kalakoth's Minor Blights (Alacrity of Motion is a strong contender here, though), best 5th level spell is the Spirit Lance and 6th level spell is Citzal's Martial Power (it was the Adragan, but that was pre-nerf). It's just that they, especially when combined, give much more damage output than everything else he has.

[Tigranes]

1) Wizards have always been rather powerful. 

 

2) If you want strictly a 'nuke' wizard and no weapon waving, you can still create a powerful wizard. Fan of flames alone has people complain about the wizard's AOE damage. Will your total theorycrafted optimal DPS value be, I don't know, 70 as opposed to the 80 you could get with a melee wizard? Maybe. But who cares? Your wizard will still be a powerful nuker. 

 

Just play what you want to play and pick the spells that sound cool to you, especially on anything below POTD you'll be fine and he won't be useless.

[pi2repsion]

Thanks for the post, im interested in the blaster Wizard you are describing pi2repsion what talents should i pick?, also i dont know why but it seems that the video i linked is not showing up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46aelfrCo-0&list=PL4UqltmSKaEeCbgMY7nx2U0kngJ77wwhX&index=12

I went with:

 

2: Blast

4: Penetrating Blast

6: Scion of Flame

8: Dangerous Implements

10: Interrupting Blows

12: Secrets of Rime

14: not reached yet, but I'm probably going to pick Apprentice's Sneak Attack. I should arguably have picked this already at level 12.

 

The reason for these talents is fairly simple. Since my wizard is rather frail with con 3, he is supposed to stay safely at range as much as possible, so I don't want him fighting in melee using Citzal's Spirit Lance when he's low on spell but bombarding them with Kalikoth's Minor Blights.

 

Kalikoth's Minor Blights is one of the more outrageous spells in the game due to how it interacts with talents; It allows you to throw ranged blight attacks that do AOE damage of one of the four elements... and it is considered a wizard implement. So if you've got the Blast talent, it will trigger for every enemy hit. While the initial blight elemental damage is pretty high in itself, the blunt Blast damage from multiple overlapping Blasts' triggered can get pretty ridiculous if lots of enemies with low DR are clumped together. And when they aren't? Well, then there's still the already respectable blight damage. The Minor Blight spell is available at spell level 3, which is character level 5, one of the most potent wizard spell levels as it is shared with Deletrious Alacrity of Motion, Fireball, and Llengrath's Displaced Image. (And other goodies, but if you are going with a blaster wizard, picking these four for your regular grimoire is a really good idea).

 

So obviously getting all three talents that apply to implements quickly is high priority, and, as a bonus, they also help while hitting stuff with your normal wand during the early levels where you don't have that many spells to play with.

 

Note that the Minor Blights (or the Spirit Lance, the AOE melee equivalent) don't result in a higher damage per second than spamming spells - for dps purposes spamming AOE spells is better - but the Minor Blights spell has a 60 second duration. With my current 21 Int, that means casting it gives me a superb AOE weapon to use for 93 seconds which don't prevent me from casting other spells, e.g. control spells, while it is active. So it has a much, much, higher total damage potential over time - superb for when you wish to conserve spells for whatever reason or just don't have all that many spells yet.

 

I nevertheless delayed the Dangerous Implements to level 8 because hitpoints aren't all that high at level 6 (though of course Infuse with Vital Essence helps a great deal there), Fireball has just become available and is, together with Fan of Flames, go-to spells when things need to be done in the early and mid-levels, and the 1 in 4 Minor Blight that are fire aspected also benefit from Scion of Flames anyway. Ah, well, it can be argued either way, but apart from the three Implement talents I'd definitely get the Fire talent as one of the first four talents. It is just so useful.

 

So those are the obvious first four talents; Grimoire Slam is a ridiculous suggestion for this wizard - any enemy that is close is either handled by one of the bodyguards (the rest of the party) or blasted by AOE or control spells placed so it overlaps the bodyguard and as many others as possible. Likewise, Arcane Veil is very high deflection short duration buff, and while it is certainly very good at what it does, there are fast cast spells that improve protection and survivability and while not as strong, they have much longer duration. And furthermore, I'd much rather improve my blasting talents.

 

So for levels 10-14, the elemental damage talents are obvious choices, but they are not the only ones.

 

This character is really good at interrupting stuff as damaging spells cause an interrupt check and perception starts at 16 (+18 interrupt), and the wizard is going to impose a lot of interrupt checks on enemies. You can pretty much shut down most ranged characters that stay at range shooting or casting spells by casting Wall of Fire on them, each tick of flames causing an interrupt check. Nevertheless, why not improve on a good thing? Hence the Interrupting Blows for another +15. (And my character wears a +3 perception cloak, just to make things more obnoxious for the enemies). When I cast a single fireball on a horde of POTD enemies, many of them are interrupted, and when I cast several, most are. (And if I keep it up most die, but that's another issue). And by the time I reach level 10, I have got a lot of blasting spells to play with and use at abandon if I'm willing to rest after the fight. Why give enemies the change to act if I can avoid it? So that's my level 10.

 

For level 12 and the as yet unreached 14, it was a question of picking up even more elemental damage or getting the rogue cross-class talent. The rogue baby sneak attack would be useful for this build from around level 7 or so, when I first started throwing around paralyzing shadowflames, but I had higher priorities and not everything is always prone, paralyzed, or otherwise debuffed (though I certainly try). By level 12, most enemies are afflicted by one or more afflictions as I get going, whether it is hitting them with shadowflames, slumber, slicken, or just burning a 6th level slot on hexing the lot.

 

Of the remaining elemental, Frost is the most useful due to there being good frost AOEs at level 4, 5, and 6.  I picked it up at 12, but it was a tossup between that and the baby rogue sneak attack. (I don't use the level 5 frost spell so often because it requires my wizard to stand exposed just like with Fan of Flames, but it is very powerful. Moreover, the level 4 and 6 frost spells are pure gold).

 

The following key spells are almost always in my grimoire. I've marked extra non-essential slots that I cycle spell through as appropriate in [x]. Mostly these extra spells have other damage types or debuffs. I have marked with [F] those that are fast cast.

 

1: [0] Fan of Flames, Ghost Blades, Slicken, Spirit Shield[F] or Eldritch Aim[F]* depending on circumstances.

2: [2] Infuse With Vital Essence[F], Merciless Gaze[F]**

3: [0] Deleterious Alacrity of Motion[F], Fireball[F], Kalikoth's Minor Blights, Llengrath's Displaced Image[F].

4: [2] Ninagauth's Shadowflame[F]***, Wall of Fire

5: [1] Call to Slumber, Llengrath's Safeguard[F], Malignant Cloud

6: [1] Arkemyr's Capricious Hex, Gaze of the Adragan, Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar.

7: [2] Delayed Fireball[F], Substantial Phantom****

 

* Spirit Shield as the 4th due to concentration bonus, Eldritch Aim as 4th when fighting Dragons or other really nasty stuff. Eldritch Aim has such a short duration, but as it stacks with the Priest and Paladin accuracy buffs, when you really, desperately, want to hit, it is great to cast this first.

** My Priest can cast Dire Blessing, but as I usually want him to cast Devotions of the Faithful first, my wizard can go through a lot of spells before the priest is done casting both those two spells. And sometimes there are other types of protection that are more important too. So better open up with a Fast cast Merciless Gaze; If it is overridden later on by Dire Blessing, no problem.

*** Requires you to do a simple quest in White March. Until you get this, you'll probably want Minoletta's Concussive Missiles as a 4th level spell. Afterwards, eh. Shadowflame is so fun.

**** I had the 4th level Essential Phantom always in the grimoire until I got access to the 7th level Substantial Phantom.

You may wonder at the absence of Citzal's Martial Power as a 6th level spell. It is a truly awesome spell, that makes it even funnier to throw Blights. But as it also disables spellcasting for its duration (46.5s for me), I find I heavily dislike using it in practice.

 

 

EDIT: It goes without saying, that in every single fight where I am willing to use spells once I have hit level 5, the very first spell I cast is Deleterious Alacrity of Motion. Almost always followed by casting Infuse With Vital Essence and Merciless Gaze as #2 and #3, before following it up with whatever seems appropriate.

 

EDIT2: Bah, I should probably take this together with my original post, tighten the writing, and put it with the other class guides.

Edited September 13, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Zherot]

Thanks for the really informative posts pi2repsion i cant thank you enough for all that information.

 

If i take the talents that improve the damage of corrode, lighting and ice would be good to improve some of my spell damage or they are not worth it?

 

I remember when i first played this game that when i saw the talens a lot of people were picking the ones that gives you more spells per rest and i saw those talents that give you more damage with your elements and thought it was weird no one was taking those.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Zherot

[pi2repsion]

All the elemental damage talents are worth it, but there are four of them, and you only get 7 talents total in 14 levels, so if you take them all you are left with a mere 3 talents for everything else. In my old 1.0 build, which I posted in these forums back then, I think I recommended picking up 3-4 of them out of the 6 talents to level 12, but times have changed due to my shift from RES to PER, the higher levelcap, and the new talents.

 

As you can see, in my build I managed to find room for only two of them (the best two for the build, fire and frost), because I considered getting all three Implement boosting talents, the Interruption talent, and the baby sneak attack talent more important than getting the full set.

 

(The baby sneak attack's +15% beating any +20% to one element when I am so late in the game that most enemies are almost always affected by something enabling it, but not really worth picking up earlier.)

 

It would be pretty to have the full set... but while that would be useful and the talents on their own worth having, I just can't see it as being as useful, given the alternatives alternatives available.

Edited September 13, 2015 by pi2repsion

[Tomice]

Amazing guide, pi2repsion!

[Benedictous]

The Wizard is a living breathing sentient cannon of destruction for the entire game.  If played properly he should always be in the top 2-3 damage dealers of a 6 man group, he has the best CC spells in the game, and near the endgame every second of battle you will be casting a spell with him.

[Zherot]

All the elemental damage talents are worth it, but there are four of them, and you only get 7 talents total in 14 levels, so if you take them all you are left with a mere 3 talents for everything else. In my old 1.0 build, which I posted in these forums back then, I think I recommended picking up 3-4 of them out of the 6 talents to level 12, but times have changed due to my shift from RES to PER, the higher levelcap, and the new talents.

 

As you can see, in my build I managed to find room for only two of them (the best two for the build, fire and frost), because I considered getting all three Implement boosting talents, the Interruption talent, and the baby sneak attack talent more important than getting the full set.

 

(The baby sneak attack's +15% beating any +20% to one element when I am so late in the game that most enemies are almost always affected by something enabling it, but not really worth picking up earlier.)

 

It would be pretty to have the full set... but while that would be useful and the talents on their own worth having, I just can't see it as being as useful, given the alternatives alternatives available.

 

Well at least you gave me an idea on what to look for, im gonna think about that sneak attack and the dangerous implements, if i really need them or i can replace them with the lighting and corrode talents, im not really a fan of bosting too much pasive auto-attacks and the dangerous implements sounds really dangerous lol considering that i will wave a really low con to begin with.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Zherot

[Failion]

wizard is so versatile in that they have a answer for everything its silly to call them garbage. Obsidian went overboard on this to the point I think cipher, and druids, priests could use more power in either their spell selection or core class powers.

Edited September 13, 2015 by Failion