How to build a wizard?

[Malaficus Shaikan]

So i am trying to improve my game so i can play on core without dieing all the time.
And outside of a few bad roll streaks i am doing well.
But well isnt awesome.

I like to hear how you make wizards that trivilize core(and preferable unfair)

Right now my biggest issu seems to be:
Do i use my spellslot to cast greas and hope the enemy fails a save.
Or buff my ally with a buff that runs out before the enemy dies.

I have tries cc, buffing, debuffing, damage, etc.
And not once did i feel like my spells made a difference.
At most it speed up a battle we where going to win anway or delayed losing by 2 turns.
Greas a spell many swear by seem to be the most reliable way to get my team killed(As they wont stop running into it)
Sleep doesnt seem to work most of the time.
And magic weapon seems to run out long before the enemy is dead.
Summon dog is wasted spellslot and magic missle damage is none existant.

Now here is the thing.
I turned carmila and lann into hunters with horses.
They are slaughtering left, right and center all but the big demon with the tritians.
Mostly because horse double there healthbar and teamwork feat stacking there already high hit chance.

So i am 99% sure i build my wizard wrong.
After all if a mere mortal unable to alter the fabric of reality does more damage then even my lowest spell i must be doing something wrong.

[Yannir]

Arcane Spellcasters are terrible at low levels, that's just how it is. Just give it some time. Personally, I make Grease selective with metamagic so it doesn't affect my party members.

[Aria Athena]

An idea to start with. You go Elemental Specialist, small detail, huge convenience. Opposing schools depend a lot on your party composition. Start with Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus Conjuration. That will buff Grease, Glitterdust, Web and Stinking Cloud (level 1, 2 and 3 spells). Then I like Spell Specialisation feat, with which you pick 1 spell from a school you have focus (you can change it every level), right now Conjuration, and increase its effective level by 2. When you hit level 3 you pick Fireball over anything else, followed by Haste if your party lacks it, and then Stinking Cloud.

When using Grease, make sure to have "Hold Position" on your melee chars and also make sure to drop it a bit further away, like barely touch the enemy's front line. When using Stinking Cloud. cast Delay Poison on your party, Bards, Clerics, Warpriests, someone is bound to have it.

If you want to eventually go for more damage, consider Arcane Trickster. The drawback is that you will fall 1 level behind on spells, because you have to pick 1 level in a class with Sneak Attack and also take Accomplished Sneak attacker. There are also other prerequisites you have to be wary of. If you follow that path you need to take Precise Shot and Point Blank Shot. You also need Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration. I prefer starting with the penetration feats, since Arcane Trickster won't be of much use at that point. You can of course focus more on buffs/debuffs and go full Wizard, or half Wizard half Loremaster.

When you start getting Mythic levels, you want Mythic Spell Focus (Conj), Mythic Penetration, Expanded Arsenal (Evocation) and Ascendant Element for whichever element you picked as an Elemental Expert.

If you want more recommendations about spells and such, ask.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

Snip

Got a good universiality build?
I got compulsive spell collection disorder.
Aka i want all spells no matter how useless.

[Gregorovitch]

I think the key with wizards is to specialise. Choose a school with spells you want to use and stack all the feats that buff that school plus Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration plus never undestimate the power of metamagic. Above all decide if you are going down the DPS ray caster route, which goes up against Touch AC, or the DC route which goes up against spell resistance and fortitude/will/reflex etc. Do not try to do both as you don't have enough feats for that.

For ray casters touch attack bonus is all and for other casters spell DC is everything, but @Yannir is right that early game arcane casters are weak whatever you do. That's why I don't use Nenio until she gets to L7 at least. Later though, from about L7 onwards, they become increasingly and finally overwhelmingly powerful. So long as they are specialised so they can cut through the enemies' resistances. A jack of all trades wizard is always a disappointing wizard.

My Nenio is built for Illusion plus the mythic to give her Evocation at the same level as Illusion for Chain Lightening which is situationally very useful (against swarms for example). She is 100% specialised towards improving her key spells of Phantasmal Putrification, Phantasmal Killer and Weird. From Act 5 on she just destroys everything virtually on her own but she's pretty damn good from Act 3 onward. She is master of the universe.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

Snip

Got a good universiality build?
I got compulsive spell collection disorder.
Aka i want all spells no matter how useless.

Do the same, just as Universalist. The point of Elementalist is changing the damage of all your spells to a specific type and then taking ascendant element for that type, for example cold. That enables you to bypass damage resistances and immunites. Other than that, it's business as usual. Also pick Arcane Object instead of familiar.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

I think the key with wizards is to specialise. Choose a school with spells you want to use and stack all the feats that buff that school plus Spell Penetration and Greater Spell Penetration plus never undestimate the power of metamagic. Above all decide if you are going down the DPS ray caster route, which goes up against Touch AC, or the DC route which goes up against spell resistance and fortitude/will/reflex etc. Do not try to do both as you don't have enough feats for that.

For ray casters touch attack bonus is all and for other casters spell DC is everything, but @Yannir is right that early game arcane casters are weak whatever you do. That's why I don't use Nenio until she gets to L7 at least. Later though, from about L7 onwards, they become increasingly and finally overwhelmingly powerful. So long as they are specialised so they can cut through the enemies' resistances. A jack of all trades wizard is always a disappointing wizard.

My Nenio is built Illusion plus the mythic to give her Evocation at the same level as Illusion for Chain Lightening which is situationally very useful (against swarms for example). She is 100% specialised towards improving her key spells of Phantasmal Putrification, Phantasmal Killer and Weird. From Act 5 on she just destroys everything virtually on her own but she's pretty damn good from Act 3 onward. She is master of the universe.

I was afraid of this.
Limiting myself to one school of magic seems so.... Unwizardly.
Like something lesser casters like sorcerors do.
Divine casters got it easy.
They just get all there spells for free.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Aria Athena:

Do the same, just as Universalist. The point of Elementalist is changing the damage of all your spells to a specific type and then taking ascendant element for that type, for example cold. That enables you to bypass damage resistances and immunites. Other than that, it's business as usual. Also pick Arcane Object instead of familiar.

You seem to know what you are talking about.
I build my builds 90% of the same way and i dont know how to improve.
I get all meta magic feats, All spell penetration feats and i still feel like it isnt good enough.
My current build:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2835465968
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2835465974
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2835465985
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2835465997

The idea was that i make early game easy by having my wizard use melee rather then cantrips.
It seem to have made no difference for the most part.
My team still coudnt hit the broadside of a barn.

Still outside of 1 or 2 bad roll streaks i am slaughtering my enemies.
Just not as fast as i like.

Right now the idea is to get point-blank shot and precion strike for the future range touch attacks.
Then fill every other feat up with a metafeat.

My useall build is similiar to this but instead i just improve inisitave as first feat and every other none wizard feat is used for metamagic.
With the wizard feats used for getting arguement summoning(I thought i would make summons usefull. I was wrong) and spell penetration.

Got any suggestions?

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

I was afraid of this.
Limiting myself to one school of magic seems so.... Unwizardly.
Like something lesser casters like sorcerors do.
Divine casters got it easy.
They just get all there spells for free.

What I'm saying doesn't mean you don't use spells from other schools. You are always going to have stuff like Haste, Grease, Magic Missile etc at your disposal. What it means is that you should decide on a small range of spells of one general type (ray attack damage spells, CC spells, AoE attack spells, Illusion stuff, w/e) and make those spells as strong as you possibly can. They should become your stock in trade.

The reason for this is that on Core (which is an excellent difficulty to play this game on IMHO) the monsters are going to have a lot of spell resistance and other resistances, increasing over the course of the game of course, and you need to be able to reliably cut through it or you will get frustrated and have a bad time with miss after miss.

Another factor is that you only got so many spell slots per level and you don't want to rest too much (corruption etc) so in practice you are going to want to stack a large number of you key spells (the ones that are most effective and synergise best with the rest of your party) so that you can bring out your big guns battle after battle.

[Schlumpsha]

Don't forget the most important thing about Wizards in WotR: wearing a cone-shaped hat! Still takes a couple of acts until you are able to achieve this kind of fashion perfection of wizardness. Also applies to witches.

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

So i am trying to improve my game so i can play on core without dieing all the time.
And outside of a few bad roll streaks i am doing well.
But well isnt awesome.

I like to hear how you make wizards that trivilize core(and preferable unfair)

Right now my biggest issu seems to be:
Do i use my spellslot to cast greas and hope the enemy fails a save.
Or buff my ally with a buff that runs out before the enemy dies.

I have tries cc, buffing, debuffing, damage, etc.
And not once did i feel like my spells made a difference.
At most it speed up a battle we where going to win anway or delayed losing by 2 turns.
Greas a spell many swear by seem to be the most reliable way to get my team killed(As they wont stop running into it)
Sleep doesnt seem to work most of the time.
And magic weapon seems to run out long before the enemy is dead.
Summon dog is wasted spellslot and magic missle damage is none existant.

Now here is the thing.
I turned carmila and lann into hunters with horses.
They are slaughtering left, right and center all but the big demon with the tritians.
Mostly because horse double there healthbar and teamwork feat stacking there already high hit chance.

So i am 99% sure i build my wizard wrong.
After all if a mere mortal unable to alter the fabric of reality does more damage then even my lowest spell i must be doing something wrong.

Building an unfair viable wizard requires understanding of mythic path synergies and also specialization in 1 school: Illusion, Enchantment, Conjuration, Evocation. I would advise against playing Necromancy, it's highly underpowered even if you're playing Lich. The only exception to the 1 school rule would be adding secondary specialization in Conjuration for Enchantment to remain viable in Inevitable Excess due to abundance of mind-affecting immunities that you cannot easily bypass.

The best mythic path for a Wizard is Demon without a shadow of doubt, both for a DC caster and a ray caster (better than Trickster due to no reliance on crits to deal hellfire ray damage which is important in the endgame). Azata makes a very strong DC caster as does Aeon, Trickster makes a strong ray caster that falls off in the endgame due to heavy fortification and crit immunities, Lich gets earlier access to higher level spells, but those higher level spells will be cast at lower spell DCs and success rates compared to Demon, Azata and Aeon. Aeon is extremely strong in the endgame (inevitable excess) due to very powerful AoE dispel (everyone and their dog comes prebuffed in the DLC).

To make things easier for yourself, go on the wiki and look at the list of spells for each school. Choose a school then choose a mythic. Only then can you start shaping your wizard character.

As for the early game there are certain tools that are very effective:
1. Conjuration spells such as Grease (against non-flying enemies), Glitterdust (AoE against fliers), Stinking Cloud (against cultists) and Blindness from the Necromancy school against bosses such the early Vrock and the Succubus (both fly).
2. To get good early chance of success you should start with 20 intelligence.
3. Get Evil Eye on both Camellia and Ember early and use them to debuff enemy saves.
4. If you use mercs, consider: Cleric with Madness domain to debuff saves, Brownfur Transmuter to buff your intelligence via Fox's Cunning with additional early +2 enhancement bonus and Court Poet to get a morale intelligence bonus early (Azata gets it later).

Also, if you choose Enchantment, play a Div-spawn tiefling or a fox. If you choose Illusion, play a gnome. These races get a racial +1 spell DC bonus to Enchantment and Illusion. Of course, you can just play human, but the races I mentioned get higher DCs early in their racial schools.

Originally posted by Yannir:

Arcane Spellcasters are terrible at low levels

That's a horrible misconception. Arcane casters are extremely strong from level 1, you just need to start properly.

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

That's why I don't use Nenio until she gets to L7 at least. Later though, from about L7 onwards, they become increasingly and finally overwhelmingly powerful. So long as they are specialised so they can cut through the enemies' resistances. A jack of all trades wizard is always a disappointing wizard.

My Nenio is built for Illusion plus the mythic to give her Evocation at the same level as Illusion for Chain Lightening which is situationally very useful (against swarms for example). She is 100% specialised towards improving her key spells of Phantasmal Putrification, Phantasmal Killer and Weird. From Act 5 on she just destroys everything virtually on her own but she's pretty damn good from Act 3 onward. She is master of the universe.

Nenio is perfectly fine early as either Conjuration or Enchantment (her racial school) caster. If you give Nenio a single level of Cross-Blooded sorcerer early and pick the Undead + Fey bloodlines, she will be able to bypass the mind-affecting immunities of undead and will receive a +3 spell DC bonus total (2fey + 1racial) to Compulsion spells (virtually all Enchantment spells).

And Illusion is ironically Nenio's weakest school, because she cannot use expanded arsenal with it, Nenio is strongest with a specialization in Enchantment that needs a second expanded arsenal for Conjuration in Inevitable Excess.

[Yannir]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

That's a horrible misconception. Arcane casters are extremely strong from level 1, you just need to start properly.

We probably value different things. I want my characters to be able to take on entire areas without rest. A level 1 caster doesn't even get to the mongrel village without using all of their spells. Which is why I think Arcane Casters are terrible before they reach lvl 3 spells.

[Aria Athena]

Originally posted by Malaficus Shaikan:

snip

Some simple suggestions would be:

If you want to go for Touch attacks, I again recommend also going for Arcane Trickster. Look it up if you don't know what that is.

Don't start with spell penetration, start with spell foci. Conjurations is probably the best choice as many of these spells bypass spell resistance.

You don't need to take many metamagic feats. You should only really take Selective and/or Heightened spell. Maybe also extend for buffs. There is mythic feat which reduces the level increase of a spell when using metamagic. For example if you take mythic metamagic (extend), the level of your extended spells will not increase. For the the rest you will find Rods of Metamagic, which replenish on rest.

There is a mythic feat called extended arsenal. It gives all your spell foci feats and such to another school. So Conjuration is best to start with, but later on Evocation is great not only for damage, but also for CC. So I recommend taking taking all the Spell Focus feats for Conjuration and at some point later taking Expanded Arsenal (Evocation). It's a buggy feat, but if you do it like that you'll be fine.

So my recommendation is Spell Foci Conjuration -> Spell Penetration/Greater -> Point Black + Precise. Again I also like Spell Specialisation which will effectively increase the DC of 1 spell by 2, but perhaps you don't want to delay Precise Shot.

[MjKorz]

Originally posted by Yannir:

Originally posted by MjKorz:

That's a horrible misconception. Arcane casters are extremely strong from level 1, you just need to start properly.

We probably value different things. I want my characters to be able to take on entire areas without rest. A level 1 caster doesn't even get to the mongrel village without using all of their spells. Which is why I think Arcane Casters are terrible before they reach lvl 3 spells.

Arcane casters are strong early, because you can just dumpster an entire encounter with a tactically placed Grease or Glitterdust, then let martials kill the disabled/blind enemies. Ideally, you should be using 1 spell per encounter in encounters with multiple and/or tough enemies. This will stretch your pool of spells pretty well even in the early game.

[Yannir]

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Originally posted by Yannir:

We probably value different things. I want my characters to be able to take on entire areas without rest. A level 1 caster doesn't even get to the mongrel village without using all of their spells. Which is why I think Arcane Casters are terrible before they reach lvl 3 spells.

Arcane casters are strong early, because you can just dumpster an entire encounter with a tactically placed Grease or Glitterdust, then let martials kill the disabled/blind enemies. Ideally, you should be using 1 spell per encounter in encounters with multiple and/or tough enemies. This will stretch your pool of spells pretty well even in the early game.

Oh, so it was more about what can be considered "strong". I just don't feel like dropping a puddle of Grease per fight is "strong". However impactful it may be.

But I didn't say they were useless. Just kinda terrible if you think of the archetype of a spell-slinging worldbeater taking on entire armies on their lonesome.

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Originally posted by Schlumpsha:

Don't forget the most important thing about Wizards in WotR: wearing a cone-shaped hat! Still takes a couple of acts until you are able to achieve this kind of fashion perfection of wizardness. Also applies to witches.

True.
So few games give us the wonderful look of being a superior class(wizard)

Originally posted by MjKorz:

Lich

Wait.
Lich is the weakest mythic path.
But but my endless armies of undead demons.
Man that sucks.

Originally posted by Yannir:

Originally posted by MjKorz:

That's a horrible misconception. Arcane casters are extremely strong from level 1, you just need to start properly.

We probably value different things. I want my characters to be able to take on entire areas without rest.

Anything less shoudnt be called a spellcaster.