Making the best High Damage Spellcaster Wizard

[Livegood118]

Hi all,

 

I was thinking today that when I make a Wizard in Pillars what usually happens is that they get "diluted" in a lot of ways. There's always the temptation to try and optimise for Kalakoth's Minor Blights (which you could easily spend 6-7 talents on) or to maybe make yourself semi-gish, or to put everything in to making CC effective.

 

Given that WM1 and WM2 have raised the level cap, and in doing so have increased the max output of the Vancian casters even further, I wanted to see what people's thought were on creating a  "0 compromise" spellcasting Wizard that focuses on doing big damage with spells. Kind of like what playing a Sorcerer was like in BG2.

 

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that this could be a really powerful way to play a Wizard now. Spells with very high base damage profit a huge amount from damage modifiers and these can be stacked aplenty from different sources, so I started to see how reasonably high you can stack them while still retaining high accuracy. Wood-Elf for the +5 accuracy is still the default race of choice of course, and I didn't want to use the +10% spell damage gloves because +5 accuracy gloves give you a better bonus, so I came up with something like the following:

 

+ 27% (Base Might of 19)

+ 12% (Maegfolc Skull)

+ 12% (Abydon's Hammer)

+ 9% (Teir Nowneth, Galawain's Boon, Sacrifice Eder/Maneha)

+ 25% Hater Talent (e.g. Beasts, Vessels, Wilders)

+ 20% Elemental Talent

 

Then, with a Priest and a Cipher (Phantom Foes) in the Party, you can easily add

 

+ 30% (Champion's Boon)

+ 30% vs Flanked (Survival III – Achievable through stacking +survival equipment before resting)

+ 10% vs Flanked (Glanfathan Stalking Boots)

 

This all adds up to +175% Damage under conditions that are pretty easy to set up, which is kind of frightening for a spellcaster. There are obviously other items as well that you can use, like the +20% vs vessels and spirits ring.

 

And then don't forget Critical Hits too – these will give you an additional 0.5 base damage, and with the Doemenel Talent (+0.3) and the Northweald talent (+0.1) your crits will do an additional *0.9 base damage.

 

Just by way of example let's say you rolled a 70 on Blast of Frost with this set up and you crit (very easy with buffed accuracy of around 160 - see below):

 

70 * 2.75 + 70 * 0.9 = 192.5 + 63 = 255 Damage - DR.

 

If you rolled an 80 you'd end up with 291 damage - DR.

 

That's kind of scary considering you can rapid fire these things like it's nobody's business. Even with an "average" roll of 40  out of 35 – 45 base damage on a Shadowflame you'd be able to crit for 146 damage. 

 

Accuracy can be stacked from various sources: 

 

+ 20 (Base), + 5 (Gloves), + 11 (Perception with items), + 45 (Levels), + 16 (Innate Spell Level Bonus), + 15 (Eldritch Aim), + 5 (Distant Advantage), + 10 (Innate Spell Bonus) = 127

 

The Survival bonus to accuracy doesn't worth with AoE spells that don't initially hit a single target, but that doesn't really matter because you can stack an extra + 40 from a priest (Champion's Boon, Devotions for the Faithful, Holy Radiance).

 

These seem like pretty crazy numbers if this all works out in practice, like being able to nuke dragons in 4 spells kind of crazy.

 

And you don't really have to worry about your defences that much at all either. At level 16 with Abydon's hammer you can have 20 (base) + 45 (levels) + 75 (Hardened, Arcane Veil) + 25 (Llengrath's Displaced Image) and maybe -5 Resolve for 160 Deflection. Add another +25 for Crowns for the Faithful and you're more or less unhittable. The reflection spells would handle single target effects and this could more or less be kept up in completely perpetuity through smart use of spell tongue/wall of draining.

 

Anyone here build their Wizards like this?

[Boeroer]

You forgot the gloves which give you +10% spell damage. With the bartender's Ring you can add +20% damage against vessels and spirits.
And a chanter could add a burning lash to a lot of your spells, too.

 

Nope, I never build my wizards like this. Maybe because they are already nuking everything into the ground without optimized spell damage. Or mabye it's because I like the summoned weapons of a wizard too much - so I don't entirely focus on the damaging spells. Funnily though I did exactly this with a solo priest (because he can use champion's boon by himself and so on) - and I have to say it's a lot of fun to see those high damage numbers. So I suppose it will be the same with a wizard.

I really don't know if the hater talents work properly with all spells though. DoT's don't work, but I suppose the spells that do direct damage will.  

[Livegood118]

You forgot the gloves which give you +10% spell damage. With the bartender's Ring you can add +20% damage against vessels and spirits.

And a chanter could add a burning lash to a lot of your spells, too.

 

Nope, I never build my wizards like this. Maybe because they are already nuking everything into the ground without optimized spell damage. Or mabye it's because I like the summoned weapons of a wizard too much - so I don't entirely focus on the damaging spells. Funnily though I did exactly this with a solo priest (because he can use champion's boon by himself and so on) - and I have to say it's a lot of fun to see those high damage numbers. So I suppose it will be the same with a wizard.

 

I really don't know if the hater talents work properly with all spells though. DoT's don't work, but I suppose the spells that do direct damage will.  

 

I did mention the ring and the gloves Though I forgot about the Chanter's lash - that's kinda nuts that you can add an extra 25% on again.

 

I actually looked at the Priest spells as well and thought there might be some potential there too. A lot of there spells are DoT though, which means there isn't quite as much of a wow factor. 

 

When you're doing the kind of damage I've described it looks like the Damage Reduction system nearly completely breaks - like even if you're were casting against enemies with high frost DR, providing they're not outright immune you're always going to be doing more damage than if you went for a raw equivalent or another damage type because of the absurdly high base damage.

 

I too am assuming the hater talents work properly with spells - if they didn't that'd be pretty stupid.

[K Galen B]

The flanking bonuses from stalking boots and survival work with area spells?

[Livegood118]

The flanking bonuses from stalking boots and survival work with area spells?

 

This is what I am assuming – I read a post on the forums a fairly long time ago that confirmed than the boots work, and I'm making the same assumption for the survival one.

[Livegood118]

Just did a little bit of testing there with the Flanked III bonus from Survival and the Glanfathan stalking boots and no other additional damage modifiers (i.e. might 10, no secrets of rime).

 

The results I got indicate to me that the Flanked Bonus works with some spells, but not with others.

 

I tried two spells vs mercenary pyromancers and mercenary warmages in Cragoldt Bluffs:

 

– Ninagauth's Killing Bolt, which is a flat up 75 Raw Damage on a hit

– Blast of Frost, which is 50 – 80 damage on a hit

 

The numbers that I was able to hit on a blast of frost strongly indicate that it works with the flanking bonus. I think the highest unmodified roll I got was around 110 , which seems about right (80 * 1.4 = 112). 

 

However Ninagauth's Killing bolt didn't show any difference in damage whether the target was flanked or not. Weird.

[JerekKruger]

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember raw damage isn't modified by +% damage in the same way as other types of damage (it's either not affected at all, or is affected significantly less).

 

Hopefully someone can confirm or deny this.

[Livegood118]

I may be wrong, but I seem to remember raw damage isn't modified by +% damage in the same way as other types of damage (it's either not affected at all, or is affected significantly less).

 

Hopefully someone can confirm or deny this.

 

That's an interesting bit of information I hadn't realised. 

[JerekKruger]

That's an interesting bit of information I hadn't realised. 

 

If it's true. I'm not certain it is, it's just one of these things that I vaguely remember.

[Boeroer]

Oops - I missed that line with the gloves and ring. 

 

I guess the flanking bonus works with the same spells which also work with Penetrating Shot: direct damaging spells that you target on a single enemy, not AoE spells. But it's only a guess. 

[Kadish]

I think shadowflame/fireball spam wizard has similar priorties. What talents should he pick? E.g: 4 elemental + bonus level spells or conventional set: blast + implements to clean trash mobs?

[Elric Galad]

I don't think wizards have enough uses of Electrical and Corrode talents, even when going full damages.

 

Freeze talent is a must take as it will serve you all the game from Chill Fog to Kalakoth's Freezing Rake.

Minor tip : Freezing Raze sort of bounces on walls. So you can easily have it do twice its (already impressive damages)

 

Fire talents is pretty Ok too.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Elric Galad

[Boeroer]

You can also get burn based spell binding gear like Sun Touched Mail of Hyan Rath (3 Sunbeams per rest), Amulet of Summer Solstice (same), Flames of Fair Rhîan (3 Fireballs per rest), Taluntain's Staff (3 Fireballs per rest) and Curoc's Brand (1 Fireball per rest).

 

This is better than taking bonus spells (which you can still do) because those spells from gear work with Citzal's Martial Power which will give them more oomph. You can even clone Flames of Faîr Rhîan, have 3 additional Fireballs and do a bit of dual wielding with Alacrity.

 

Plenty of good fire spells without wasting even one talent or ability point. Spell bindings work with Scion of Flame etc., too.

 

Citzal's MIG boost will give you +24% damage, the ACC boost will give you crits with +50% damage, even +90% with Merciless Hand and Dungeon Delver, Scion of Flame adds +20%. Lots of damage for a "small" Fireball or Sunbeam.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Boeroer

[Kadish]

Thanks. If one has an appropriate party on potd, I really can't see better ways than:

scion and rime + blast talents + offensive (blast, marksman etc.)

or

scion and rime + defensive (arcane veil + 2h style etc.)

I mean, I can't see special talents combo for this kind of build that would outperform the blast combo or deflection combo. Am I right?

[Boeroer]

You are basically right. However, there are a few other "tricks":

 

The Blast combo is pretty neat if you use Kalakoth's Minor Blights or the Golden Gaze with Interrupting Blows. Since you are generating a lot of hits per shot there will be lots of interrupt rolls and with Interrupting Blows the chance that you interrupt all enemies that get hit by the Blast rises. Golden Gaze causes longer interrupts and can attack faster than Minor Blights.

 

Also Mourning Gloves' interrupt boost stacks with Interrupting Blows.

 

This is not really damaging (as demanded in the thread title), it does nothing for your damage. But it's a nice "soft" CC as sideeffect.

 

Speaking of damage: Minor Blights + Blast is very powerful in combination with Combusting Wounds.

 

The deflection combo can be brought to ridiculous defense values if you use hatchet + shield as well. If you also use Ryngrim's Repulsive Visage you an make it so that your deflection with Weapon & Shield Style + Wizard's Double is so high that enemies can only graze you (which doesn't remove Wizard's Double). Also Arcane Veil and Wizard's Double stack.

This can be very, very good in the early game. Also see here:  https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/94936-an-exercise-in-tankiness-an-untested-class-build-ish-topic/

 

 

 

Also Mourning Gloves stack