Any advices for Wizard?

[tumil]

Hi!
I've been playing with my friend for a while and I must say the game is great.
We both have Lone Wolf talents so we could play just with two characters. Now we have lvl 13 and sometimes it gets difficult mainly because my character is really weak. He, as a knight, can sometimes one-hit an enemy, while I really small amount of damage. I was building the Wizard for Pyro and Geo and adding points mainly to INT. And my strongest skills (Fireball and Immolation) at best deal 50% of enemy HP. And I can use those skills very rarely, for most of the time I'm using Flare and other weaker Fire spells and they do almost no damage...
Any advices how to make my Wizard powerful? :D
Thanks for help

[HarkeN]

I'm not as far in the game as you are, so take my advice with a generous pinch of salt. However, if you're running Lone Wolf, the advantage you have in terms of skills is versatility. One or both of you may want to pick up a trade skill (Crafting/Blacksmithing) in the absence of any NPCs you can get to do things for you, because crafted gear at rank 5 can be quite useful especially earlier in the game until you start getting better drops/vendor items (and even then you can still improve them).

However due to your large number of skill points you can afford to diversify in spell schools. You may wish only to take a few spells up to level 4-5 but you can afford to have basic level spells in every school, which as you are pumping Int, will be highly advantageous. (I mean what else do you need? Bodybuilding, Willpower, and spells basically, right?)

I'm playing a Lone Wolf Wizard in a single player game offline, and a Battlemage of sorts (read: 2-handed armoured melee with a few spells) online with a friend. I can say that as a Wizard you will rarely be rivalling the damage output of a melee class. As well you shouldn't: you can cast from very long distances with Far Out Man, and control the battlefield in countless ways. Melee fighters have to get up close and personal, so they should be hitting for the big numbers.

Wizards in this game excel at CC and controlling the battlefield. Enemies all clustered together? Make it rain, and zap the puddle with a wand or Air-elemental Staff of Magus. Now they're all stunned! One particularly powerful enemy causing problems? Charm it with Rapture and put it to work on the opponents! Can't stun or charm them? Drain Willpower! Archers and mages picking you off from a distance? Drop oil on them and ignite it with a spell or wand, as this will obscure their vision with oil smog and cause them to have to run through the burning surface so they can see you.

Alternatively, create a smokescreen and let them come to your fighter who will happily chop them apart. Especially if you use buffing skills like Wildfire, Oath of Desecration and Bless - now your melee guy is an engine of destruction who can't miss, especially if he has Rage and Melee Power Stance. And let's not forget Int both reduces cooldown time as well as makes it harder for enemies to save against CC effects. When you start getting Int > 15 you can have Regeneration up on every turn for example. Bitter Cold is an amazing spell IMO, only 2 AP for a 2-turn freeze at long distances, it's better than touch spells. And then you have Teleport which you can put to all kinds of uses. Headvice is another good one, big damage and Blind will render most enemies useless.

tl;dr I'm only just leaving Cyseal in my playthroughs but Wizard is my favourite "class". Don't be afraid to put at least 1 rank into all elements if you have Lone Wolf. Focus more on CC and disabling enemies and rely on the warrior to do the big damage, and fights will go easier. Just my £0.02.

Edit: One more thing I thought of is if you want to do a little more damage, you can invest 1 point in Man-at-Arms and use Melee Power Stance with a staff, and that will increase all damage by 20% including spells and Staff of Magus. (Can also pick up e.g. Helping Hand but you should be staying back so it may not see much use) Also remember to use the appropriate elements for enemies' resistances, maybe wear some Loremaster gear so you can check them. Water staves and wands for example destroy every Charred-Bone skelly in Cyseal with extreme prejudice.

[Ssenkrad_II]

Taken from my guide:

Note that the game is really broken into three specific times, "Levels 1-7", "Levels 7-15" and "Levels 15-FIN".

LEVELS 1-7

The game is much more difficult here, mostly due to the fact that master level skills will make POST-LEVEL 15 a joke if you have built yourself right, but a couple of other things set the early game apart in huge ways such as having Low AP/HP/FUNDS insta-death enemies/boss moves/traps.

So what Novice abilities/talents/items make the early-mid game easier and/or are the best investments?

1. Midnight Oil + Boulder Bash: Very Low AP Cost, Very Cheap Books, AoE, has "Oiled" CC
2. Rain: Very Low AP Cost, Very Cheap Book, AoE, has "Wet" CC
3. Grenades + Special Arrows: 3-4 AP, Dirt Cheap to Craft, AoE, all sorts of CC
4. Touching Spells: Very Low AP Cost, Cheap Books, Single Targets, all sorts of CC
5. Summon Spider: High AP, Cheap Book, Summon that detects traps and is poison immune
6. Teleport: High AP, Medium Book Cost, Endless Possibilities
7. Regenerate: Medium AP, Cheap Skill Book, heal yourself or hurt certain enemies
8. Walk-in-Shadows + Hover Feet + Fast Track: Low AP cost, Cheap Book, Endless Possiblities
9. Power Stances: No AP cost, Cheap Books, 20% increase in all damage
10. Wildfire + Burn My Eyes: Medium AP cost, Expensive-Medium Book Cost, cures for "Frozen" and "Blind" as well as gives "Haste" and +2 Perception (spotting traps and secrets)
11. Thunder Jump + Battering Ram: Medium AP, Medium Book Cost, Mobility Boost + CC


LEVELS 7-15

What are ADEPT abilities that will best help you transition between PRE-LEVEL 15 and POST-LEVEL 15?

1. Rage +Farseer: Very Low AP cost, Medium book cost, Massive damage and % hit chance boost
2. Drain Willpower: Medium to Low AP cost, Medium book cost, Brutal CC for bosses
3. Destroy Summon: Medium AP, Medium book cost, Insta death for pesky enemy summons
4. Crippling Blow + Daggers Drawn + Barrage: Your three heavy hitting skills- Melee/Dagger/Bow


POST-LEVEL 15

Once you hit level 15 master level spells come into play (note that you have to have at least 4 points in a skill to learn master spells but almost all master spells you can't learn until you are at least lv 15 in EE; this means there is little/no point in putting 4-5 points into any school of magic pre level 15!) and what wins? Three things come into play, 1. Single target vs AoE, 2. How much damage does it do, and 3. CC or not to CC. Abilities like "Hail Storm" and "Rain of Arrows" are the best because they do multiple things very well. AoE will always trump single target, flat damage will always trump damage over time (fire/burning) and imobilizer CC is clearly the best (frozen, shocked, etc).

1. Hail Storm= AoE, great damage, and frozen CC. (Rating- GOOD)
2. Rain of Arrows= AoE, massive raw damage, no CC. (Rating- GOOD)
3. Storm= AoE, decent damage, stunned CC (Rating- UGLY-Hail Storm is better)
4. Meteor Shower= AoE, good damage, burning CC (Rating- UGLY-Hail Storm is better)

These are the four best Master skills in the game- I personally recommend having a total of at least six of these on your party, ie. Rain of Arrows on one champion, Hail Storm on three, Storm on two for a total of six.

*5. Flurry= Single, good damage, no CC (Rating-UGLY- 1 through 4 are better)
*6. Soul Sap= Single, no damage, brutal CC (Rating-UGLY- 1 through 4 are better)

These two master level skills are actually BAD to UGLY vs most mobs in the game but vs certain bosses they will shine- possibly worth getting on two in your party, (ie one 2-handed gets flurry and another person gets Soul Sap) but clearly not worth any more than that.

[Ssenkrad_II]

Creating a mage that has all or most of the abilities listed above will greatly help your mages power... Being able to use grenades and/or special arrows (bow will also open up E. Mark) will help even more...

Also make sure by end game that your wizard has a base Int stat of 12+ and at least 20+ after gear (since you are going Lone Wolf you will have more attr points)...

At some point in the game you will be able to "respec your source hunters", if you feel like you have "built yourself into a courner" don't be afraid to experiment- it is very cheap...

[Entropie]

Originally posted by Ssenkrad_II:

At some point in the game you will be able to "respec your source hunters", if you feel like you have "built yourself into a courner" don't be afraid to experiment- it is very cheap...

Be mindful that you lose all learned skills if you respec.
Thus you always have to deal with the cost of relearning all the skills (finding/buying the skillbooks) even if you did not actually intend to change the skillset that much.

Respeccing a high level wizard will be extremely costly in terms of the value of the skillbooks lost, and easily dwarfes the "respec fee" the game asks of you.

Another noteworthy thing about respecs is that a lone wolf will keep the additional skillpoints even if you respec to non-lonewolf (though the other bonuses will vanish of course).

[Ssenkrad_II]

If you respec an early-mid game Wizard you shouldn't have that many skills to relearn; if you respec a late game wizard you only need to really learn the master levels and a couple others- either way the suggestion was if you "built yourself into a courner", not "on a whim", in that Entropie is dead on...

I've never found the cost to be high (personally), but I do play very selectively in the skills I use/learn vs "having to fill out all schools of magic even though I never actually use the skills"... It is why most of my skill recommendations in my guide are "Skill level 1", haha, I just don't use a lot of skills that are subpar...

[tumil]

Whoa, that's a huge response! Thank you all. Let's make my Wizard powerful :)