Fire Godlike wizard build

[Matt Obedient]

I need help with my fire godlike build. I've decided to go with a wizard. What spells and attributes should I pick in the beginning?

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Tell more! Tell why you've chosen a Fire godlike? How exactly do you want to benefit from the Battle-Forge passive ability?


About wizards in general, they can learn ALL spells eventually, since they can copy spells from grimoires they acquire in shops or when defeating other wizards. Which spells you learn early depends on your personal strategies and tactics.

About attributes in general, carefully read what each attribute is about. Then choose what seems plausible for how you want to play your wizard. As a last resort, you can change it again later in any tavern/inn for a bit of gold.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2745389422

[Matt Obedient]

Publicado originalmente por D'amarr from Darshiva:

Tell more! Tell why you've chosen a Fire godlike? How exactly do you want to benefit from the Battle-Forge passive ability?


About wizards in general, they can learn ALL spells eventually, since they can copy spells from grimoires they acquire in shops or when defeating other wizards. Which spells you learn early depends on your personal strategies and tactics.

About attributes in general, carefully read what each attribute is about. Then choose what seems plausible for how you want to play your wizard. As a last resort, you can change it again later in any tavern/inn for a bit of gold.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2745389422

You're right I should have been more precise. My vision of that character is to be an elemental wizard focusing mainly on fire spells, delaing massive AoE damage and being a literal devil incarnate, a demon whose main purpose is destruction. I don't plan to be on the frontlines but i quess the Battle-Forge passive ability might help me if i get attacked by a melee attacker. And yeah, i want to be int based.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Well, for "massive AoE damage", you want to increase Might. And depending on difficulty mode, you will benefit from increased Perception.

As a wizard, you need to protect against all sorts of attacks. Melee attacks that do Burn damage won't be a primary problem. There are worse attackers like those that teleport nearby. And if you face spirits like Flame Blights in close combat, you better flee as a fire mage, since flame blights are immune to Burn damage.

Anyway, a focus on fire/Burn spells will be rather restrictive and limiting. Other spells are much more interesting. Even a wizard's "Flame Shield" gives +10 Freeze damage resistance instead of Burn DR.

[Gilmoy]

Your vision doesn't really fit PoE1.
You'll have to (massively) adapt it to shoehorn it into PoE1.

Read Wizard's spell list and skills list. It's not all fire. In fact, fire is an afterthought.
https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Wizard#Talents
https://pillarsofeternity.fandom.com/wiki/Wizard_spells

~~~~

PoE1 also has structural mechanisms that will confound your wants.
(It confounds ours, too so we all learn the PoE1 way)

+ Per-rest spells, instead of a blue mana quota

This isn't Diablo I-IV. Thou Shalt Not Spam Per-Rest Spells.
Even if you took all of the fire spells and Scion of Flame talent,
you're hard-capped to 2-4 per-rests per awake-time.

That means, in any 1 fight, you could spend all 4 of your L3 casts on L3 Fireball.
4 Fireballs probably will score 0 kills, total, combined. (Direct damage necessarily sux.)
Then you're out of L3 casts, and you can fight 10-30 more combats with 0.

The only way to recover your per-rests is by resting. (That's what "per-rest" means.)

PoE1 deeply forces every player, and every run, to choose 2 main solutions to that.
1. Pace yourself, win trash combats casting 0 per-rests, save your per-rests for big fights
2. Rest often, spend ~10.0k coppers (total) on Camping Supplies

Even with method #2, you're still limited to only 4 L3s per 1 fight.
And even with full Camping Supplies, you could do that only 3-5 times per 1 sortie.
Then you'd run back to town to buy more Camping Supplies.
So it implies some click-hell and travel-heck, as you walk back and forth.
Method #1 might actually save time overall, just by eliminating that extra travel.

PoE1 is not a blue mana potion game. You can't spam, quaff, spam, quaff, etc.
Your vision seems a better fit for mana potion magic systems.

+ Direct damage is the least efficient way to get kills.

Skipping the newbie levels when you're L01 - L06 or so,
eventually you'll be L08 and fighting Crag Ogres, or kith for bounties.
They'll average 300 - 400 Health each.

Your best Fire spell, with talents boosting damage, might crit for 100 each.
That's 1/4 of one average monster's Health.
You spent a huge spell to remove 1 dot (of 5) off the health bar.
It Simply Does Not Scale Up.

All other direct damage has the same problem. I don't trust any of them.
I tolerate the direct damage that also debuffs Deflection (Priest L2 Divine Mark),
because the debuff helps the party kill that target faster.

+ Direct damage doesn't control crowds.

Note that Wizard has many spells that Confuse, Sleep, and later Petrify, etc.
Those are actually far more important in big fights than direct damage.
Difficulty in PoE1 is implemented by giving the AI side superior numbers.
Hence, party-wipes happen because you get surrounded and swarmed.

- You can't simply kill monsters faster than they swarm you.
Even if you cast your 4 Fireballs or similar, that takes 4 cast-cycles.
A cast takes about the same time as an attack.
Thus, you cast 1, they walk up and swing 1 time each, you cast a 2nd, they swing a 2nd.
In the time it takes you to cast all 4, they already hit you 3-4 times each.
It's too slow to solve the incoming-damage problem.

+ Hence I tend to save all of my Wizard per-rests for (temporary) crowd-stealing spells.
Monsters seem to strongly prefer to attack traitors (friends who flipped sides).
Flipping 2 of 6 can stop all 6 of them for 3-5 attack cycles.
The other 4 will often ignore you to fight their former friends.
That gives you time to shoot them all with your boring ranged weapons.

This mayhem is kind of unique to PoE1, and it solves "impossible" fights all game long.
PoE1 is actually this kind of game. It's a subtly unique niche among cRPGs.

~~~~

I always play using method #1, hoarding my per-rests and casting 0 per routine fight.
I estimate my Wizard (Aloth)'s damage output to go something like this:

90% Wand with Penetrating Blast (all he does is shoot it, he's at least a super-archer)
03% flipped monsters fighting each other (instead of fighting us)
03% damage-over-time effects: Chill Fog, Combusting Wounds from a ring,
Malignant Cloud, even Essential Phantom as a figurine-like decoy

02% Arcane Assault (2 per encounter!)
02% huge Arbalest alpha-shots (1 per encounter! and then switch to his Wand)

00.01% direct damage (it's simply never the most efficient solution)
He did goof off with Scroll of L1 Fan of Flames one time, so this category is non-zero.
I think I've never cast any other DD spell since.

I'd rather cast something like L3 Kalakoth's Minor Blights or L5 Citzal's Spirit Lance,
and then attack 18 times in 72 seconds for +60 damage per attack.
Multiply that out, and it's more total damage than any DD spell in the list.
But actually, I don't cast those, either. I'd rather cast 0 per-rest than settle for those.

"Massive" damage is not really a thing in PoE1 (because you can't, and it doesn't win).
The better concept is infinity:0 damage ratio.
Hence we shall not get swarmed, and move our feet.
Then a boring wand suffices, because you're taking 0 damage all fight long.

You can enchant your wand with Burning Lash and take Scion of Flame.
That works. It may sound boring, but it's efficient.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Yet there are more spells that either do Burn damage or are related to Burn damage than spells that are about Freeze damage. So, strict role-playing for a fire mage is much easier than role-playing an ice mage (or frost mage):

Fire

Fan of Flames
Bullwark Against the Elements
Combusting Wounds
Ray of Fire
Rolling Flame
Fireball
Wall of Flame
Flame Shield
Torrent of Flame
Delayed Fireball
Llengrath's Superior Elemental Bulwark
Wall of Many Colors

Freeze

Chill Fog
Kalakoth's Sunless Grasp
Flame Shield
Blast of Frost
Ninagauth's Bitter Mooring
Ninagauth's Freezing Pillar
Kalakoth's Freezing Rake

The talents Scion of Flame and Secrets of Rime are not specific to wizards, but don't apply to damage over time, which is a bummer.

It also takes a wizard tremendous effort to turn into a battle mage. Regardless of what some dubious "build guides" tell, it is due to wizard class traits (very low Endurance, low Health, very low Deflection, very low Accuracy), that a wizard must cast 2-3 spells to get in shape at beginning of combat - possibly gulping potions like everyone else. There is no pre-combat casting of protection spells. While real warriors can jump into the fray immediately and possibly use a potion or scroll then, a wizard needs more time to boot. And then? There are devastating AoE spells like Torrent of Flame, and they can be fun, but there are also foes with Burn damage immunity and foes that cause the wizard major problems, if there are no companions to save the show.

Conclusively, on the easier difficulty modes and aided by companions, one can role-play a fire mage - even if that means to deliberately ignore the many other more efficient and more helpful spells. I've done it before. What's a pity is that it isn't really fun, since playing a more versatile mage (who learns all spells and switches grimoires, too, as a last resort during combat) is too tempting.

[haroldogiesta]

Fire godlike wizards are look cool, but are not better or worse than any other race as Wizard, also a caster should not be wasting time casting damage spells. Casters are all about control and debuffs , The caster softens the enemy, the warrior eats the enemy.