Not doing great in combat as a wizard.

[emitfudd]

Every time I am in a camp and multiple enemies and dogs come running at me I feel like I should have stuck to my usual sword and shield build. As an experiment I equipped a legendary sword during one of these situations and even though it isn't upgraded at all I was doing better killing the bad guys.

I have a flame wand that is fully upgraded with all 5 available perks. I feel like I am missing something with the wizard build. There is no way to stay at a distance to fight. The wand has a short range. The staff seems to miss more often than hit. I have most of my skill points into the wizard tree with a couple in the battle mage tree. I am currently at level 11. I also have the hero shield equipped.

I come dangerously close to dying after just a few hits even with my shield up with certain enemies in camps.

I know I can respec all skills and go a different route but I wanted to play as a wizard in this game. How do you fight at a distance?

[sinsorrow1]

You can free aim and shoot with the staff, you don't have to use the auto target function, this will give you more range and accuracy.

Wolves and zombies are weak to fire, however humans are resistant to it so use any other element.

To survive early game as a mage you have to use wands first. Later you'll be able to craft infinite use spells for your staff.

Do not aggro the whole area, try picking them off one by one. Early game can be hard whatever build you might use.

Berries are everywhere in the starting biome and bandages are easy to craft. However if you need more healing early on, take the skills on the border of the red+blue skill tree. The right side of that branch should give 50% chance to spawn a health/stamina/mana orb to spawn on a magic weapon (staff or wand) critical hit. This will increase your survivability by a lot.

[william_es]

For more survivability, you can mix and match armor types. I use mage helm and gloves, for magic damage boosts. But then I wear the heaviest melee armor I can find for chest, legs, and feet. I get more armor, health, and health regeneration. I play a sort of super tanky wizard.

I lose a ton of mana regeneration, but wands don't _use mana_. It's not needed for wands, and doesn't gimp you.

If you're struggling with wands, great gods don't try a staff. It's too slow, too clunky for any kind of survivability if you're being swarmed by melee enemies. It's best used from range. Think of it as a bazooka. Bring it out for big targets, like bosses, and play keep away while you blast them with it. But if your surrounded, you want a wand.

When using a wand, you have a realllllly short range. But use that to your advantage.

You can fire blasts at things out of range, as you move closer. When the enemies see you, and run towards you to attack... they can run face first into a whole SERIES of shots that have been firing off continuously, but hadn't reached them yet. It's like you've queued up the shots to all hit them at once. The enemy running forward into them is the important part, since they'll get hit by projectiles that would have timed out and disappeared, or reached max range and disappeared. Instead they run face first into ALL them. Bam, dead.

It will run down the durability of a wand quicker though, since you'll be spamming attacks while you're out of range in preparation for them to face plant into them.

Unlock the blink teleport skill that's between battlemage skilltree and healer. It has some distinct advantages over the regular one. The animation seems quicker, and people have claimed it moves your a greater distance. Plus, it just looks cooler. There's a second skill that says you will do damage if you blink into enemies. In my experience, it seems to be the opposite. If you blink away from a nearby melee enemy (and I mean kissing close), it hits them with a blast like a mine. I've tried deliberately moving into enemies on purpose, and seen almost no effect. But blinking away from nearby enemies has one shotted some.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Learn the double jump perk. Jump up somewhere and shoot down.

[emitfudd]

Originally posted by william_es:

For more survivability, you can mix and match armor types. I use mage helm and gloves, for magic damage boosts. But then I wear the heaviest melee armor I can find for chest, legs, and feet. I get more armor, health, and health regeneration. I play a sort of super tanky wizard.

I lose a ton of mana regeneration, but wands don't _use mana_. It's not needed for wands, and doesn't gimp you.

If you're struggling with wands, great gods don't try a staff. It's too slow, too clunky for any kind of survivability if you're being swarmed by melee enemies. It's best used from range. Think of it as a bazooka. Bring it out for big targets, like bosses, and play keep away while you blast them with it. But if your surrounded, you want a wand.

When using a wand, you have a realllllly short range. But use that to your advantage.

You can fire blasts at things out of range, as you move closer. When the enemies see you, and run towards you to attack... they can run face first into a whole SERIES of shots that have been firing off continuously, but hadn't reached them yet. It's like you've queued up the shots to all hit them at once. The enemy running forward into them is the important part, since they'll get hit by projectiles that would have timed out and disappeared, or reached max range and disappeared. Instead they run face first into ALL them. Bam, dead.

It will run down the durability of a wand quicker though, since you'll be spamming attacks while you're out of range in preparation for them to face plant into them.

Unlock the blink teleport skill that's between battlemage skilltree and healer. It has some distinct advantages over the regular one. The animation seems quicker, and people have claimed it moves your a greater distance. Plus, it just looks cooler. There's a second skill that says you will do damage if you blink into enemies. In my experience, it seems to be the opposite. If you blink away from a nearby melee enemy (and I mean kissing close), it hits them with a blast like a mine. I've tried deliberately moving into enemies on purpose, and seen almost no effect. But blinking away from nearby enemies has one shotted some.

All good advice. One thing that is confusing is that my wand IS using mana. I have my shield up at the same time so maybe that is why? I am constantly running out of mana during battles. That is the blue bar at the top of the screen right?

I am using blink. That is very helpful to get away from mobs. I also have the skill you mentioned about causing an explosion when you blink into an enemy. Like you said it doesn't seem to work right.

[emitfudd]

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

Learn the double jump perk. Jump up somewhere and shoot down.

I haven't unlocked that one yet. I plan to. Getting up high is good and I also do try to pick off enemies one at a time but sometimes you just end up in a mob before you realize it is coming.

[emitfudd]

Originally posted by sinsorrow1:

You can free aim and shoot with the staff, you don't have to use the auto target function, this will give you more range and accuracy.

Wolves and zombies are weak to fire, however humans are resistant to it so use any other element.

To survive early game as a mage you have to use wands first. Later you'll be able to craft infinite use spells for your staff.

Do not aggro the whole area, try picking them off one by one. Early game can be hard whatever build you might use.

Berries are everywhere in the starting biome and bandages are easy to craft. However if you need more healing early on, take the skills on the border of the red+blue skill tree. The right side of that branch should give 50% chance to spawn a health/stamina/mana orb to spawn on a magic weapon (staff or wand) critical hit. This will increase your survivability by a lot.

I have the healing spell for my staff but I haven't used it yet. It feels like there are too many button presses to get to some actions when you are in the midst of battle. I usually keep quite a few health elixirs (the one in the red bottle) and bandages and then I use cooked game to extend my health bar and strawberries to keep it full.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by emitfudd:

but sometimes you just end up in a mob before you realize it is coming.

That´s exactly why you need this perk so badly. In these situation run away a little and look where you can jump up to. Doublejump allows you to jump on a lot of things you would never reach otherwise so you almost always find something to get yourself in safety.

[emitfudd]

Originally posted by william_es:

For more survivability, you can mix and match armor types. I use mage helm and gloves, for magic damage boosts. But then I wear the heaviest melee armor I can find for chest, legs, and feet. I get more armor, health, and health regeneration. I play a sort of super tanky wizard.

I lose a ton of mana regeneration, but wands don't _use mana_. It's not needed for wands, and doesn't gimp you.

If you're struggling with wands, great gods don't try a staff. It's too slow, too clunky for any kind of survivability if you're being swarmed by melee enemies. It's best used from range. Think of it as a bazooka. Bring it out for big targets, like bosses, and play keep away while you blast them with it. But if your surrounded, you want a wand.

When using a wand, you have a realllllly short range. But use that to your advantage.

You can fire blasts at things out of range, as you move closer. When the enemies see you, and run towards you to attack... they can run face first into a whole SERIES of shots that have been firing off continuously, but hadn't reached them yet. It's like you've queued up the shots to all hit them at once. The enemy running forward into them is the important part, since they'll get hit by projectiles that would have timed out and disappeared, or reached max range and disappeared. Instead they run face first into ALL them. Bam, dead.

It will run down the durability of a wand quicker though, since you'll be spamming attacks while you're out of range in preparation for them to face plant into them.

Unlock the blink teleport skill that's between battlemage skilltree and healer. It has some distinct advantages over the regular one. The animation seems quicker, and people have claimed it moves your a greater distance. Plus, it just looks cooler. There's a second skill that says you will do damage if you blink into enemies. In my experience, it seems to be the opposite. If you blink away from a nearby melee enemy (and I mean kissing close), it hits them with a blast like a mine. I've tried deliberately moving into enemies on purpose, and seen almost no effect. But blinking away from nearby enemies has one shotted some.

I just did some trial and error at my base. My wand is definitely using mana. I am starting a separate post about this. It has to be a bug.

[Fryskar]

Your ice shard has aoe dmg and causes a slowing zone.
If you aim and shoot (m2) you csn freely target (for some reasons it autoaims with it at times).
Mobs shouldn't be come running towards you because they saw you, but because you hit them. And most should be dead in 2-3 hits.

Depending on terrain, you should be able to blast them with aoe at 40-50m.
The higher the spell, the longer it takes. Picking the 50% charge time isn't optional.

If you need more time, get terror from the trickster tree.
Early on, you need to decide what you rather want, dmg, utility/support or CC. In the end, you can and want to pick almost the entire blue tree.

[emitfudd]

So I discovered that having my staff equipped as my ranged weapon causes the mana depletion while using the wand. Makes no sense. There is nothing in the description of the staff that says it uses mana while in my inventory.

I have given up on the wizard build. Too many issues and it takes up so many inventory slots with the wands, staff and all the spells. I switched to a melee build with bow as ranged weapon and it is much better for my play style and freed up a bunch of inventory slots.