"Too many " wizard spells in the game ?

[IamNOOB]

 Ok, so I have been thinking about it for a long time. I see that the wizards have a lot of cool spells but each individual wizard has a build using few of those, I mean why do I get 998 buttons with spells when ALOTH is using 5-6 and the rest are just there like "museum pieces" Actually I think there are two main builds with wizards:

- crowd control

- pure damage

So the first type does not use most of the damaging spells and the second one does not use so much dazzling lights / unconsciousness / paralyze /etc.
Do you think I am right or not ? BTW I got the same feeling for ciphers, I need exactly FIVE spells from all we got available.
Is it not possible to have less icons in the UI so that it can be simpler to play ? Do you rely on automatic hero control where you can click to auto cast DMG abilites or crowd control?? I never tried it cause I thought it might waste spells in easy encounters, so I microcontrol all chars all the time.
Any thoughts??

[Heijoushin]

Hello NOOB, (its kind of fun to say that)

 

I hope you're just raising a UI concern, and not seriously suggesting that we decrease the number of spells, because that would make me very sad. If anything, I want many, many more spells in PoE2. If there are any some spells that are clearly superior (for the cipher, I think that may be the case), then its a question of balancing them. You seem to be underestimating status effects though. While they're rubbish in many PRGs, Paralyze/Petrified/Prone are very powerful in PoE.

 

If you want a hero that is simple to play, just make a party with many close combat types (fighter, paladin etc.) They're tough, you don't have to rest a lot, and the best part: not too many buttons

 

I personally never use AI or auto-casting because I don't want a game that plays itself.

 

PS I got 998 buttons, but a b**ch ain't one!

[Livegood118]

Some spells are naturally going to be better than other spells, but it's important to remember how resources are managed in the background, as well as the fact that new abilities have to be presented to characters to meet new challenges and finally the need for enemies to have Wizard Abilities.

 

Let's take one example - Bewildering Spectacle (Level 2) and Confusion (Level 4). Confusion is superior to bewildering spectacle in every way so given the choice between using one of the two you'll naturally want to use Confusion. However, at lower levels, you don't have the option to choose confusion, so Bewildering Spectacle is all you've got. Naturally, you'll probably want to spec Bewildering Spectacle out of your grimoire as the game progresses – or maybe you don't want to use a 4th level slot for confusion, so keep Bewildering Spectacle.

 

It's only natural really that as the game progresses the player wants to get new swanky abilities - there's only so many different kinds of effects in the game so naturally there's going to be a bit of overlap here. 

 

Finally, because there are enemy wizards in the game, it's necessary to give them abilities. Most of them, I suspect, were not intended to make it in to the player's grimoire - or if they were - the player would have to be a pretty good to us them (I'm thinking about stuff like dazzling lights here etc ...)

[jsaving]

While I wouldn't want to see PoE2 decrease the number of wizard spells in the game, I do think there are issues worth taking seriously as development of PoE2 proceeds.  One that hasn't been mentioned so far is that you can seriously gimp your PoE character if you end up memorizing the "wrong" spells, because some spells are far more useful in combat than others of the same level.  Worse, players who try to use their D&D knowledge to take the spells they "know" are best, like magic missile and fireball, end up faring so poorly that they mistakenly conclude wizards must not be as strong as people say.  Compounding this problem is the lack of wizard scroll shops and the inability to respec your spell book, which leaves some players needing to level up in order to get new spells but unable to progress in the game because of spell selection that retrospectively turns out to be poor.

Edited March 5, 2017 by jsaving

[IamNOOB]

I dont want to decrease the number available -- this would be stupid. I just wanted to get an easier UI,

[QuiteGoneJin]

I like to pick one or two elements and stick to them with my mages, or go buffed up offence or defense, things like that usually lessen the amount of spells I'd use.  Big fan of corrosion ice mages. 

[Heijoushin]

One that hasn't been mentioned so far is that you can seriously gimp your PoE character if you end up memorizing the "wrong" spells, because some spells are far more useful in combat than others of the same level.  Worse, players who try to use their D&D knowledge to take the spells they "know" are best, like magic missile and fireball, end up faring so poorly that they mistakenly conclude wizards must not be as strong as people say.  Compounding this problem is the lack of wizard scroll shops and the inability to respec your spell book, which leaves some players needing to level up in order to get new spells but unable to progress in the game because of spell selection that retrospectively turns out to be poor.

 

I don't think it's really possible to gimp your wizard that way. Even if you make a few bad choices at character level up, you just need to find one enemy mage and copy their spell book. 

 

That being said, I would love a shop for wizards!

[JFutral]

... Compounding this problem is the lack of wizard scroll shops and the inability to respec your spell book, which leaves some players needing to level up in order to get new spells but unable to progress in the game because of spell selection that retrospectively turns out to be poor.

 

I don't understand this at all. Why would you need to respec your spell book? Are you bumping into limits in the amount or type of spells you can have in the spell book? Can you not change your memorized spells? Leveling up is not the only way to get new spells. You grab spell books of other wizards and add them to your spell book. Just click that little "plus" sign on the spells you don't already have.

 

I've never played in a way to swap spell books, though. I have been tempted to have specialized spells grouped together—a book of fire spells, corrosive spells, etc— to try to have an easy way to have the appropriate spells available depending on the defenses of enemies. I still haven't done that. Too lazy. I just try to have a good assortment of spells across several levels.

 

So I obviously am not understanding what you are describing. Can you clarify? Or maybe I'm just too dumb to get it.

 

I love that all I need to write scrolls is the right ingredients and at the right level. I mean, ingredients are everywhere. I haven't purchased a scroll, or traps, for that matter, ever. And only a few potions, like war paint.

 

Puzzled,

Joe

Edited March 6, 2017 by JFutral

[Heijoushin]

 

Puzzled,

Joe

 

I enjoyed the personal sign-off. It makes it sound like you're writing to an agony aunt in the local newspaper :D

[jsaving]

You find enemy spell books in PoE at irregular intervals and they don't, especially in the first part of the game, contain a very broad cross-section of spells.  Because of this, it is easy for people to get a few hours into the game and mistakenly conclude that wizards are too weak, unless they happened to pick a good initial spell selection (which is unlikely if they've played D&D as they'll go for something like magic missile which is notably weak compared to say, chill fog in PoE).  The problem goes away for players who have the patience to continue (and as spellbooks pile up in their inventory), but it's still a problem in the early game, which is all some people are motivated to reach before they reroll as a different class.

Edited March 6, 2017 by jsaving

[MountainTiger]

Honestly, I feel like an experienced RPG player is more likely to grab things like Slicken or Chill Fog over pure damage spells due to understanding how powerful debuffs and disables can be (certainly the Baldur's Gate games in particular taught me this lesson). Damage is fine, but my first instinct is always to prefer CC to damage when picking up a new game.

 

My main complaint about Wizards is that I never really feel compelled to hotswap grimoires: 4 spells per level are enough to more or less cover my bases. I've thought about having a few more specialized grimoires on hand to hit different defenses, but I never feel like there are enough relevant spells to make it worthwhile. It isn't clear how much this is a game balance issue and how much it is me settling into a set of favored spells, though.