What’s the Value of the Wizard?

[Beard Master Flex]

I don’t ask this disparagingly; but I can’t help but feel the Wizard is the weakest addition to an adventuring party on the server at high levels.

They offer little in the way of offence (True Flame aside, love having a True Flame).

They have some good buffs, but most can be handled by a cleric with the right domains. Mind Blank, Mass Haste aside, Protection from Spells aside.

Their summons are not unique to them and now that water elemental has been lessened they offer even less.

In my experience the best way to handle content on the server is by buffing the AC and AB of melee characters who can reliably handle the endless hordes of monsters you face, to minimize resting between encounters. A wizard struggles with this compared to infini casters or The healing and durability of a cleric/druid.

Is there more for wizards beyond mass haste and using healkits that I’ve missed?

*This is purely a mechanics question, obviously the Wizard has great RP value and is a cornerstone of the setting.*

[Punished Hans]

At first I thought you meant wizards in comparison to sorcerers, but then you mentioned path of the true flame, which is a path of the sorcerer. So I'll assume you meant arcanists in general.


Aside from a big kit of emergency glue for grinds (that clerics and druids partially share or have their own of) when everything goes south due to a rolled 1 or a turf dispute with another grind party turning hostile?

Mass haste. Mass haste alone increases the efficiency of any melee heavy group (read: any grinding group you'll find) by a large margin. One extra attack per round at full ab plus 4 ac is really big.

In addition, they get a larger number of epic feat abilities, i.e. -yoink, -ward, etc.

All that aside, most enchanters are wizards, so you better take them with you if you want gear.

[Beard Master Flex]

For sure, Mass Haste is an incredibly powerful spell... but their toolkit just seems rather boring to play with outside of RP, the epic spell foci are varied and exciting but also available to clerics and Druids.

And yes to clarify I suppose I mean arcanists in general in this regard, Wizards and Sorcerers.

If you cant dish out an endless source of reliable damage or tank or heal you’re just sort of standing around.

Granted I’d love to have a wizard around for that 1 crazy epic boss fight or pvp encounter, but that has to make up the smallest portion of a wizards playtime in the grand scheme of things.

I’ve always wanted to play one but can’t help but feel like they’d be dull most of the time during the average adventure. Lots of time for flavourful emotes I guess!

Any lifelong wizards want to weigh in?

[Opustus]

I think many would attest that wizard is one of the best classes for both PvM and PvP. Early on, you have your summons, buffs, and spammable offensive spells from Greater spell focus feats. They make levelling a giggle, especially so if you have the conjuration focuses to buff up the summon line. The fey familiar can pick locks and disable traps throughout the great grind. It gets a tonne of feats from wizard bonus feats and has access to all arcane spells. As for buffs, mindblank, haste, mass haste, and improved invis are among the best possible buffs in the game. Later on, you have the best offensive and defensive spells in the game; Mordies, breaches, spell mantles, premonition, firebrand, isaac's missile storms, sunburst, shadow shield, horrid wilting, wail of the banshee, timestop, greater sanctuary. The epic summons are especially trustworthy and powerful, and they scale with your epic caster levels. You have a cornucopia of skill points, which you can invest into a wide array of interesting options, whether you dip into Bard or Ranger in epic. When you get your INT higher and some gear with spell slots, many spammable offensive spells should become available to you, but some lower level spells never really lose their usefulness; colour spray and negative energy burst are among my personal favorites.

I haven't played a wizard myself on Arelith, but it's a massively popular class whose popularity has sharply risen with the introduction of the Spellsword path. By all accounts, it should be sturdy as hell.

[Griefmaker]

I actually have to agree with Beard Master Flex on his viewpoint with wizards mechanically. But....with that being said, some of my favorite characters I have played have been wizards. It is mostly due to the RP and all, but I agree, it can get sort of boring on adventures after being a buffbot, perhaps tossing out a summon, and saving a few powerful spells "just in case" or for a boss or whatever.

However, that was also before the GSF infinite spells that wizards have. Now they can at least toss something off each round to do "something", but back when I played my wizard, I would simply have him RPing his heart out on adventures. Might as well, while everyone else does the hard work! Stories? Sure! Colorful commentary? Absolutely! Random acid arrow to the arse of a companion? Why not!

I will admit I am not the most savvy with NWN mechanics and have not really cared too much to figure out all the minutia and itty-bitty intricacies of spells and the like. But in the realm of RP, wizards are one of the powerhouses...even on adventures! (assuming your companions can handle your character spouting off crap non-stop, be it magically oriented or something else entirely)

[Nitro]

Wizards are very valuable in almost any situation. The three spells alone you mentioned are incredible party buffs, and while they can't deliver as consistent damage output as TF's, they can burst just as hard for shorter durations. With all the extra epic feats they get, a wizard will always have more epic focuses and epic spells than a druid/cleric of the same level which gives them more flexibility, both in combat and in building.

Wizards are flexible. They can excel at anything with the right preparation. Need a tank for a boss but no melee available? Drop an EDK on it. Need to absolutely destroy something? Pop timestop and obliterate it with any offensive spells of choice. Want a party buffed to a near-immortal level for a long time? Load up the spellbook with those sick extended buffs.

A trueflame might hit harder but they're limited to just that. It wouldn't be very fair if wizards, with their diverse and powerful skillset could do as good consistent damage and also do everything else that they can do.

And yes, finally. Being a wizard in a party is a lot of downtime. You summon your big guy, you buff up the party and then you throw one, maybe two spells per encounter, keeping your burst for the boss and microing your summon with ptool1. You can be some ultra-mind mage who throws out holds and dominates left and right but then you might as well be making a feylock instead.

[Ork]

To answer your question, "do wizards do more than haste + healbot in a party?" Nah, not really. If you want to have a more active impact during the grind, go sorcerer. No point reserving spells when all you have is 4 caster circles full of IGMS.

[flower]

Summons, warding, disable spells, stripping wards, and damage dealing on bosses. Nonone else can provide dungeon-long lasting mind ward.

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

I'll chime in here since my first and highest level character is a (pure) wizard (and since this isn't an optimization thread).

TL;DR

Basically, the main reason to play a wizard is your ability to change roles as needed based on the party composition and adventuring destination- no other class has the versatility of spell selection a wizard kitted with metamagic feats can produce- even a school specialized one can do more with their spell slots than any other caster class.
/end TL;DR


The key benefit of a wizard is versatility. A sorcerer gets 2 spells per level more than a wizard per rest, but you can decrease this margin by specializing and giving up one spell school. Many people decry this as a terrible choice, and YMMV, but if you examine the number of spells you give up by sacrificing one school against all the spells you can't "add" to your spellbook with scrolls as a sorcerer (whether pathed or not), specializing is drastically less of a sacrifice in the number of spells.

You're very unlikely to ever meet a cleric or druid (or sorcerer, for that matter) that has extend, empower, maximize, AND quicken in their build. A wizard can easily fit all of these and still manage three epic spell foci with epic spells. So while a cleric or druid might be able to cast 5 flame-strikes in a rest (at the expense of their other level 5 buff spells or by shifting them up to level 6 buff spells with extend), a wizard could cast 5/10/15/20 firebrands (which can reliably hit every enemy onscreen) by empowering, maximizing, and quickening their higher level spell slots, as well, which makes them a good companion to well-balanced party that also has a cleric (who is likely better off covering the buffing aspect).

A sorcerer can cast on the fly but has a much smaller selection to choose from. That's cool in its own way, but in terms of PvE, you will almost never be in a situation where you can't prepare your spells ahead of time. If you know you're going somewhere where monsters have low will saves you can stock up on confusion and hold and dominate slots. If you know you're going somewhere where it's low reflex you can load up on nukes and throw one or two per encounter, leaving your party with an easy cleave-and-cleanup situation. Low fort saves? Stock up on some death spells/horrid wiltings to clear threats and whole groups.

In terms of "over clerics and druids and sorcerers" another big versatility advantage is damage-type selection. Druids and Clerics are mostly fire and acid damage with a bit of divine as casters. A wizard can bring cold, fire, acid, electricity, sonic, and magical damage types, allowing them to accommodate for immunity to different damage types no matter where they go (except for outright immunity to magic, which is a weakness of every caster-focused build). A true flame can do the same, but has no buffing ability for the rest of their party, and a sorcerer can only get as much variety as they're willing to sacrifice in other selection for damage types.

[Dirac]

...

Opustus nailed all the points that came to the top of my head.

In reality the only thing that other classes actually offer you as a wizard is higher sustained damage, otherwise Wizards are pretty much carrying other classes around dungeons - it's not the other way around at all. Believe me, those mass hastes, concealments, and mind blanks are force multipliers. Not to mention, the rogue in the pocket and the tank at your whim thing casters have going on.

You should try leveling/playing a rogue or non-caster type and see what impression you get.

[Nevrus]

Wizards are batman.

You have the tools. You can prepare to fit the challenge if you know what it is ahead of time, and if you do that, you can beat anything.

Many other classes have a 'one size will hopefully fit all' approach that renders them really weak under certain circumstances. Wizards are only really weak if someone can catch them unprepared in a melee engagement. Otherwise they can win.

And yes, a lot of dungeons is following around the melee while they do all the work. That's okay! Use that time to RP and chew the scenery. You have minions to take care of the heavy lifting, after all!

[Beard Master Flex]

Good chat everyone thanks for all the discussion!

I think the really cool thing about the wizard class is that it’s the only class that you kind of get to RP growth through mentor ship through actually playing and learning from other wizards the minutia of various spells.

Having the downtime to emote and RP among the chaos of a dungeon is cool as well!

[Conversations With Your Car Alarm]

I would rather party with a wizard than any other class