Death Godlike Wizard?

[infernalmachine]

I'm dead set on playing a death godlike wizard because I love the lore and appearance, but I'm having some trouble deciding on the stats. My first instinct is to min-max, but I feel like I might be a little too squishy. I'm playing on normal, so I don't know how much it actually matters in the grand scheme of things. The builds here seem to be based on PotD, as well as optimal item combos, which I probably wont see until end game.

Edited October 26, 2016 by infernalmachine

[AeonsLegend]

The game doesn't scale well with character levels. And there is far too much experience in the game when considering enemy levels. Normal mode plays "normal" at the start of the game, but a few levels in the enemy stats fall behind yours. Same goes for PotD for that matter, most of the challenge is gone after level 8.

 

I wouldn't min max on normal mode, but it's not going to hurt you. You will only feel squishy early in the game, but you'll become a lot stronger later in the game in comparison.

 

So Might and Intelligence are important for a Wizard. It doesn't need constitution, but the other stats have some merit.

[JerekKruger]

Whilst I agree that the game becomes rather easy after level 8 or so on hard mode or lower, I'll say that the same only really applies to PotD if the player has a good grasp of the game mechanics. I suspect that a player on their first play through will still find later game content on PotD challenging. Moreover I'd say that the hardest fights this game has remain hard on PotD without a very good grasp of the game mechanics.

 

As for attributes, you certainly can min-max if you want to, especially once you get a party member or two to tank for you, but it's in no way required. With a party, the game is beatable on PotD even with non-optimised characters (in fact once you get a good handle on the mechanics you might want to avoid over optimising as it'll make the game too easy).

 

Anyway, specifics: as AeonsLegend says, Might and Intellect are your primary stats for a Wizard. After that I'd probably rate Perception followed by Dexterity as the next two important: Perception increases Accuracy of spells, which increases the chance that the spell will hit and, more importantly for debuffs, that it will crit; Dexterity will increase the speed at which you cast your spell, and would be more important if it weren't for the fact that at level 5 you get a spell called Deleterious Alacrity of Motion (DAoM for short) which gives you a heft +50% speed boost making Dexterity less important. At the bottom of the pile come Resolve and Constitution. Resolve will increase your Concentration, making it less likely you'll get interrupted, but if you're a ranged caster you should be aiming not to be hit that often, and the first level spell Spirit Shield gives you the equivalent of 10 Resolve points worth of Concentration. Constitution increases your Health/Endurance pool, but since Wizards have a very low Health/Endurance pool and since Constitution acts as a % modifier, the bonus or penalty for raising or lowering it isn't that important.

 

If I were building a Death Godlike Wizard I'd probably go with something like this:

 

Mig 18

Con 8

Dex 10

Per 15

Int 19

Res 8

 

But I'm not a fan of reducing any attribute below 8 for arbitrary role-play reasons. If you want to absolutely min-max then the following will probably result in the highest damage (requires Living Lands background):

 

Mig 19

Con 3

Dex 16

Per 18

Int 19

Res 3

 

But be warned, you will be very squishy.

[JerekKruger]

Oh I forgot to add, if you don't mind minor spoilers, this link: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/73599-looted-grimoire-spell-lists/ is very handy to have when planning which spells to take. I wouldn't plan miles ahead, but knowing which spells are going to be available to learn from dropped Grimoires for the first few levels is handy.