How do wands work

[Xyteno Sane]

I am new to the game, I am almost level 5 and I am considering when I level up to level five buying a wand of Fireball because Fireball however I am trying to figure out first how wands work. At the moment I am still using the wand I got as a reward for completing the first dungeon in normal difficulty I've been using it as my weapon it says that it cast a spell of Fire and when I click without using another spell it does a little poof of Fire I thought so far that this was the power of the wand but I am not actually sure so I want to ask if I buy a wand of Fireball will my normal left click attack that I can do without spending any MP be Fireball or do I need to add the wand to my hot bar and click it to cast Fireball?

[NavFamG]

You have to equip the wand. Place it on your hotbar and launch the spell from the hotbat.

The animation you're seeing by just clicking the mouse is the same concept as your guy swing a sword etc... If you were in melee range and did it you'd do a bit of damage by wacking them with the wand.

[Doug]

How do wands work? Badly, in short.

But "... if I buy a wand of Fireball will my normal left click attack that I can do without spending any MP be Fireball...." isn't a thing. Your normal left-click attack is an attack with whatever's in your main hand and thus your left-click attack is a casting of the wand you have equipped's spell. This description implies that you have the "Eternal Wand of Finger of Fire" in your main hand. That's not a terrible idea, because that wand has Combustion +30 on it, which will increase the base damage of any fire spells you cast by 30%. But using the wand itself is horrible DPS.. something you want to do only as a last resort when you run out of mana.

In fact, using wands is generally bad DPS, but it starts out only somewhat bad and then gets progressively worse as you level. The problem is that none of the gear and Enhancements that make your spells do more damage as you level affect wand damage. By level 5 when you get Fireball as a spell, you ought to also have Maximize and Empower available, to boost your spells' damage by +150% and +75% (of base damage: together only +225% or slightly over triple your base damage). One of the few ways to increase Wand damage is the Wand and Scroll Mastery Enhancement, and it tops out at +75% of base damage.

NOTE: Watch your SP when using Metamagics like Maximize and Empower. They make your spells cost more.. at low level, a LOT more. If you're soloing, turn them on for major fights and off the rest of the time.

But to answer your usage question, yes, you put the wand on a shortcut bar and click on it to switch from the Eternal Wand of Finger of Fire to the Fireball wand.

But a much better choice would be to go to Borderlands (if you have access to it; it's not a F2P area) and run quests there until you pick up an Arcane Ingot. Then trade that Ingot in town for a Scepter of Combustion, which will increase the damage of the fire spells you cast by +43% (better than the Eternal Wand) and their chance of scoring a critical hit (at least double damage) by +6%, when you have it equipped. Since casters NEVER melee if they can help it, and can't use shields without the chance of their spells failing, many caster run with a 'caster stick' in each hand: one for each of two elements. And the Scepter of Combustion is a typical caster stick, with Spell Power and Spell Lore (critical chance) for the same element on it.

Originally posted by NavFamG:

The animation you're seeing by just clicking the mouse is the same concept as your guy swing a sword etc... If you were in melee range and did it you'd do a bit of damage by wacking them with the wand.

Correction: You NEVER whack people with a wand. You cast the wand's spell if it's in your main hand, whether at melee range or not.

[Xyteno Sane]

Okay so I don't have to add my Wand to my hot bar to cast fireball? Sorry I'm a bit lost in the description.

[Doug]

I wrote this for another discussion on this forum. It's a more thorough treatment of the problem with using wands:

Wands (specifically including Eternal wands) are all but useless. Even using Wand and Scroll Mastery, they do a fraction of the damage (or healing) of a cast spell.

Consider:
1) The wand has a Caster Level. It will always cast its spell at that level regardless of yours. Cacophonic Verge has a CL of 8. When you're L12, it will still be casting a L8 Sonic Blast (8d6+8 vs 12d6+12 or 16 to 56 vs 48 to 84). That's base damage.

2) Wand and Scroll Mastery will increase damage by 75%. That makes the wand damage go from 16-56 to 28-98 damage (pretty equivalent to the L12 caster, right?.. Nope.)

3) When you cast a spell, you get the benefits of any Metamagics you may have. The two every DPS caster takes that affect damage are Maximize and Empower. The first adds +150% base damage, the second +75%, for a total of +225%. If (at L8 for fair comparison), instead of using the (Wand and Scroll Mastery-affected) wand, you cast the spell, the damage comparison would become 28-98 for the wand vs 36-126. Metamagics don't affect spells cast from items like wands. At the same caster level, you're doing considerably more damage (and as you level up, your damage goes up with your Caster Level, while the wand's stays the same.

4) And that ignores Spell Power. Whatever Sonic Spell Power you have will ALSO multiply the base damage of the spell. Suppose at L8 you had 125 Sonic Spell power. Instead of multiplying the base damage of your Sonic Blast by 225%, you'd multiply it 3.5x (225% + 125% = 350% or 3.5x). That 16-56 becomes 56-196, as compared to the wand's 28-98. That cast Sonic Blast will do approximately double the damage as the wand AT THE SAME CASTER LEVEL. At higher levels, the comparison only gets worse as your Spell Power (which also doesn't affect spells cast from items) increases. (And I've ignored Spell Crits entirely for this comparison.)

So the best the wand (even with wand and scroll mastery at a cost of 3AP) manages is half the damage of the same spell cast at the same level. And as the player's level increases, that fraction only gets worse.

This is why most players ignore wands (and Wand and Scroll Mastery) entirely. Sure, get one for a backup in case you run out of SP.. but, really, avoid running out of SP. Use SLAs (Spell-Like Abilities - spells you get access to from Enhancement Trees and the like) to avoid having to rely on wands. SLAs can have Metamagics affect them without increasing their Spell Point cost. (To set that up, drag the SLA from the Enhancements tab of your Character Sheet to a shortcut bar. Then right-click on that shortcut and turn all your metamagics to "Always on". Then the SLA will benefit from the Metamagics whether you turn them on or off globally, which makes life easier in combat.)

[Doug]

Originally posted by xavier2005:

Okay so I don't have to add my Wand to my hot bar to cast fireball? Sorry I'm a bit lost in the description.

I did answer that.

Originally posted by Doug:

But to answer your usage question, yes, you put the wand on a shortcut bar and click on it to switch from the Eternal Wand of Finger of Fire to the Fireball wand.

You have to have the wand equipped in your main hand to cast the spell it contains. You equip something by either opening your Inventory and dragging it to your main hand, or by putting it on a shortcut bar and clicking on it.

[NavFamG]

Originally posted by Doug:

Originally posted by NavFamG:

The animation you're seeing by just clicking the mouse is the same concept as your guy swing a sword etc... If you were in melee range and did it you'd do a bit of damage by wacking them with the wand.

Correction: You NEVER whack people with a wand. You cast the wand's spell if it's in your main hand, whether at melee range or not.

My mistake, I was thinking of Rods, like a Rod of Healing as those do bludgeon damage.

[Doug]

Originally posted by NavFamG:

Originally posted by Doug:

Correction: You NEVER whack people with a wand. You cast the wand's spell if it's in your main hand, whether at melee range or not.

My mistake, I was thinking of Rods, like a Rod of Healing as those do bludgeon damage.

Ooo.. never actually used a Rod for anything in-game. But then how do you activate a rod if it's not like a wand where you wield it and just left-click to cast the spell?

[NavFamG]

Originally posted by Doug:

Originally posted by NavFamG:

My mistake, I was thinking of Rods, like a Rod of Healing as those do bludgeon damage.

Ooo.. never actually used a Rod for anything in-game. But then how do you activate a rod if it's not like a wand where you wield it and just left-click to cast the spell?

I've only used them from the hotbar after equipping one.

I took my lvl 12 over to Korthos to wack things with a light heal rod I found in my inventory. As they weren't damaging me, all I noticed was the bludgeon damage.

I'll go back over and let them beat me down some and give it another try to see if it'll fire off heals while beating the others with it.

**** Just went in game and checked and NO spells were used off the Rod (started with 50 charges and still have 50 charges) so I guess Rods only fire off from the hotbar.

[Doug]

Originally posted by NavFamG:

Originally posted by Doug:

Ooo.. never actually used a Rod for anything in-game. But then how do you activate a rod if it's not like a wand where you wield it and just left-click to cast the spell?

I've only used them from the hotbar after equipping one.

I took my lvl 12 over to Korthos to wack things with a light heal rod I found in my inventory. As they weren't damaging me, all I noticed was the bludgeon damage.

I'll go back over and let them beat me down some and give it another try to see if it'll fire off heals while beating the others with it.

**** Just went in game and checked and NO spells were used off the Rod (started with 50 charges and still have 50 charges) so I guess Rods only fire off from the hotbar.

Fascinating. I did not know that.

[Toramino]

Maybe because "Rod of ..." is Clubs, not Wands?
Heal-on-strike is something with Vampirism.