Do any of you ever use DC-based wands?

[sephiroth1084]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.

[bartharok]

Nope, havent seen the need.

[sephiroth1084]

Keep the replies coming, folks. Really hoping some dev sees this and takes note of the responses.

Actually curious to see if anyone has enjoyed employing this tactic. Theoretically, with the Wand Heightening enhancements and 3 past lives, DC-based wands like Charm Person and PK could have a shelf life of a few levels, but I'm skeptical.

[blerkington]

Hi,

Good idea for a thread, thank you.

I have never, ever even considered spending AP on those enhancements. Even as a new player it didn't seem like a good idea.

The effect of increasing the DCs is negligible, and there is always something better to spend points on.

Perhaps this enhancement made sense back in the dim, dark past when DCs and the level cap were both very low. But in the game as it is now, it's just useless.

Thanks.

[fmalfeas]

Let's run the numbers. Best case scenario, even. But first, some info on wands.

A wand (by the numbers) cannot hold a spell higher than 4th level. So for our theorycrafting wand, the spell level is 4.
A wand (by the numbers) uses the lowest casting stat modifier possible for the spell level. So for this wand, the stat is 14, or +2
A wand is unaffected by spellpower from enhancements or gear, and cannot be affected by your metamagic feats.

So, our Wand of Theorycrafting has a DC of 10+4+2 or 16, a caster level of 7, and a minimum level of 7.

Next we'll assume 3 wizard past lives, for +6.
Then we'll assume 3 Wand Heightening enhancements, for another +3.

This, with rather impressive investment for the idea, gives us a DC of 16+6+3, or 25. 19 if first life.

Now, this wand will do lowish damage if a damage wand, regardless of DC, compared to an actual cast spell.

The question remains though, at what level does a DC of 19 or 25 become too low? It's certainly of absolutely no value in epic content, and I doubt it would do anything at all in Inspired Quarter either. Are we looking at Pre-Gianthold for it to work out? Sands maybe?

And I'm assuming Normal difficulty. On elite, I doubt it would be much good past Marketplace.

[Onetunge]

I have 3rd live wiz currently on lvl7. I use a lot of wands, but they are wither self buffing ones or ethernal no save damage dealing ones. I never used DC based wands. I imagine they would be usefull only on lower lvls because high lvl wands are rare if not non-existent all together.

[Archangel666]

Nope.

[Dandonk]

1) I have used a wand with DC. Once. Several years ago, before I knew better. Since then, offensive wands have been vendor trash.

2) No

3) No

4) No

[lhidda]

4x no

but I true reincarnated my wizard 2x to get more spell penetration and for the active past life feat.

[Munkenmo]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.


I tried running around with PK wands during an arti life to see how effective they'd be.

I gave up within an hour and wrote it off as the terrible idea I always thought it was. (said character did have 3 wiz lives, but bot for the wand dc's)

[Apoxia]

I used a PK in Elite VoN 1 at level once and it hit. Must have been a fluke.

[sephiroth1084]

The replies of, "used it and it sucked," are especially useful.

[stretchcore]

Only use I've ever had for them is using fireball wands to break down doors and save SP. at low levels (usually up until harbour) I will sometimes use the eternal wands on trash mobs, for much the same purpose. Otherwise the DC's are much too low as they are, and the small improvement isn't worth the investment.
Example: Cacophonic verge rarely works to stun past level 7 or so, depending on the target.

[Indoran]

very seldomly and on very specific circumstances like low level (level 4 or such with a web wand for example)

NOT something I consider to do beyond level 6

[Xyy]

With some extra lovin', the Arti captstone can hit 40+ DC on applicable items. However, spell pen is atrocious :)

[Daemoneyes]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
No
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
No
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
No
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?
No

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.
............................

[Derailment]

I'm using http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Dampened_Cacophonic_Verge for breaking boxes, probably not answer you looking for, but technically it's DC-based wand.
P.S. Happy link

[sephiroth1084]

Ah, yes, how are the epic wands? Same experience overall with those?

[Azaghan]

No. Never. Not at all.

This wand heightening stuff could maaaybe make some sense for PnP DnD, but it is absolutely worthless in the inflated enviroment of an MMO. If they would remove this line altogether, it would be one less TRAP for new players.

[sephiroth1084]

No. Never. Not at all.

This wand heightening stuff could maaaybe make some sense for PnP DnD, but it is absolutely worthless in the inflated enviroment of an MMO. If they would remove this line altogether, it would be one less TRAP for new players.
That's kind of what I'm getting at.

Well, that, or SERIOUSLY buffing the ability, with things like using your own Int on top of applying a few bonuses or some such.

But, mainly, I'm trying to demonstrate that: A) the people that have tried them, found them to be useless, B) no one really uses them, C) no one wants them. That way perhaps we can have them expunged from the game, and replaced with something people actually want (and hopefully also remove needless prerequisites for Wand & Scroll Mastery).

[Aashrym]

At low levels, yes. At 7th or 8th level maybe to stretch out SP if needed.

Tried wands on a capstone arti and the DC's were impressive for wands but the speed using them was slow, the spell selection was limited, and caster DC's were still better so pretty much no point. After the new epics the DC's also looked less impressive.

Not a strong enhancement line. Double the bonus then maybe it would be worth it a bit longer.

EDIT: a person is better of with a weapon proc and a lot of attacks, making wands largely junk

[FranOhmsford]

The http://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Wand_of_Blasting is probably your best bet for testing out this idea.

Frankly however the damage it does is pitiful at level without Wand Heightening and I highly doubt the +3 from that is going to make the difference.

With the Wizard Past lives it may be nice though.


As to the original questions:

1&2 - I seem to remember being told {by a friend} to take Wand Heightening on my first Wizard {He may have meant the other Wand enhancement however}.

I think I took it and got rid of it with my first Greater Reincarnation upon buying 32pt Build.

3 - No - I've never even made a 2nd Life Wizard yet.

4. Not a chance!
They're Flavour only as things stand and like the Iron Defender Line of Enhancements atrocious!

I will say however that the DCs of Wands/Scrolls and Clickies in DDO are out of line - This is another one of the myriad of places where the Devs have stubbornly stuck to PnP.
Whilst taking AC/HP/SPs etc. etc. way past PnP levels!
If you can't find a reasonable way to keep things in the game and actually USEFUL Devs then remove them - Don't leave them there as newbie traps!


P.S. The Weapon Focus/Specialization Enhancements are another example of the Devs sticking rigidly to PnP {Where +1 to hit and Dmg was a powerful feat}.
In DDO However the ONLY reason anyone other than Newbies from PnP take these feats is for the Kensai Prestige {and then ONLY because they're Pre-reqs!}.

This would be a pretty simple fix in my view btw
Weapon Focus - +20% to Hit & +3 Dmg with Sword & Board/Ranged*
+10% & +6 with Two Handers/Two Wpn

Greater Weapon Focus - +1 to Crit Threat Range {stacks with Keen/Imp Crit}
+1 Weapon Dmg {Long Sword goes from 1d8 to 1d10 etc.}

Superior Weapon Focus - +20% to hit & +3 Dmg with Sword & Board/Ranged*
+10% & +6 with Two Handers/Two Wpn
AND +10 Non-Stacking Seeker Bonus {Imp Crit removes the need for Keen - Let this remove the need for Seeker}.

Remove the Specializations entirely - 6 Feats is Insane!

* Or with Runearm for Artis or Single Weapon Style if the Devs ever manage to make that style playable.

[Truga]

Nope.

[Schwarzie]

To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?


bwahahahaahahaaahahahahaha Bwahahahahahaahahah Bwahahahahaaah Bwahahahahahaha

Is that answer useful enough?

DC wands are Vendortrash. I tried them out when i first got one (no idea if that was during beta or a whenever they were first introduced) but they sucked hard. Even in PnP DnD i would consider Wands with DCs utterly useless even with a +3 from a Feat or something like that.

And in an inflated environment like DDO? Dont even think about landing a spell with something besides a maxed DC. Its simply a wasted action.

[stretchcore]

Actually, I'd say there's one amendment to my previous post.
Knock wands when soloing at low levels, although I'm not even sure if they are affected by this line.
Mostly a moot point for anyone with arty capstone or the wizard spell, but for pure bards and sorcs, they can be useful.

[Flavilandile]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.


No
Really ? No
Seriously ? No
Ultimately ? No


Or put in words of more than 2 letters :
I have never used wands with dificulty class intending for augmented something, neither trying for failed saves.
( it's tough to put only words of more than 2 letters, I relent for the rest, there will be two letter words )
I have never invested in wand heightening. I have never reincarnated as a wizard for hte past life DC. I don't use Wand Heightening at all.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

I would only want wand heightening, if it heightened it to the same DC as my other spells.

In theory..... DC based wands are useful at low levels.
But I usually just sell them.

I used to use the lvl 10 Fireball and Lightning bolt wands..... back when the cap was 10, and my build had only a single level of Wizard.



Now... a lvl 20 Artificer can get some use out of DC based wands...
But then inventory space becomes an issue... so which wands do you actually find beneficial enough to take up a backpack slot? Hmm.....





On the other hand.... since wands have such a horrible DC...... they "DO" have a use as a single target pulling device. :cool:

[Mastikator]

Saw a dude with 3x past life wizard use wand of web, the +6 DC seemed to work remarkably well.

Otherwise no.

[redspecter23]

Tried it once a few years ago. It was completely useless. Chalked the ability up as very niche at best (with multiple past lives and max investment) and just pretend it's not even there anymore.

The mechanic of the ability is very poorly designed. If it's to be kept, it should just be revamped into something moderately useful. Maybe allow the wand heightening enhancements to translate into using a portion of your spellcraft to add to the DC? At rank 1, you add 1/4 of your spellcraft to the DC. Rank 2 would be 1/3 your spellcraft and rank 3 would be half you spellcraft. This could lead to 50ish DC's on wands by endgame. The math isn't perfect, but it's a good starting point to work with.

[Noctus]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.


/no to all.

[Theolin]

Wand of web at level 1 with 3 past lives works ok for level 1&2 trash on normal or hard but not elite

Tried the Arti capstone with 3 wiz past lives with a PK wand on the infamous rats in the vale .... well I got it to kill a rat about 50% of time ... or I could just shoot it and kill it in one volley. Anything else out in the vale was about 25% chance to kill on a charge, assuming you got through their spell pen.

I then gave up the idea totally completely and well till they ........ well never mind

Other wise I often carry a wand of fireballs for doors, webs & such that can be blown up :) but I do not consider this a DC wand :)

[Alavatar]

I use Fireball and Ice Storm for lighting/extinguishing the torches in Inferno.

Back in 2007 I used to use wands to bust down doors.

Other than that, I haven't used a DC wand maliciously against monsters since ... 2006?

[Qezuzu]

If they really want us to take this enhancement, make it useful by making it let us cast wands and scrolls faster. 10/20/30% faster sounds good.

But to answer your question: No, at least not past level 4 or something. Wands are moderately useful in the first few levels or so, but nowhere else.

[bbcjoke]

The wand/scroll mastery enhancements are actually good for rogues who want to heal themselves. Not the case for the wand heightening enhancements, so it's a 4x no. But then again, the artificers' capstone allow them to actually make the wand heightening enhancement useful (free +3 DC that stacks with your own bonuses, haven't tested yet).

[OldCoaly]

To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?

Yes, during the first several months of play, I saved and used "offensive" wands.

Initially I didn't understand that they weren't doing much because I had no context for what "much" could be.

Once I began to understand how to interpret damage numbers, monster save rolls, and other metrics for performance, I was very disappointed.


Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?

Yes. During the period of time that I did not understand that offensive wands weren't comparable to cast-spell effectiveness, they seemed like reasonable enhancements.


Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?

Never gave consideration to a past life's influence on wand performance.


Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I will be angry if Wand Heightening is forced upon me as a pre-requisite for something useful.

[bartharok]

Increasing the DC is useless. But the mastery is useful to get the max heal out of a stick or scroll, yes,

[maddmatt70]

Back when the cap was level 10 I regularly used these on one of my bards. I think even a little bit when the cap was level 12 so about 6-7 years ago was the last time I used a dc wand for anything other then to extinguish torches in inferno. I would not mind being able to use these on my bard Hangover - it kind of fits the character, but no point right now because they are so ineffective. Good thread. The devs should know that nobody uses these so either they should remove the line or really really bump the ability to use wands. It would be kind of nice if bards and artificer and wizards could actually use these effectively, but probably not worth the devs time so favor removing them altogether.

[bartharok]

Oh, the verge, which is technically a DC wand is useful for breaking boxes and killing through gates and such, even at higher levels.

[Cryptic.Assassin]

I actually love using wands at lower levels. With 3 wiz pls my web wands and pk wands land all the time which is very useful on a lowbie wizard. I was able to wand whip phantasmal killer and have it land on the red names in tear of Dhakaan.

I wouldn't ever specifically build for wand use but they definitely can be useful pre-level 10. At least with a few wiz pls anyway.

[maddmatt70]

Say this is good read by a dev thread so hopefully we at least get an acknowledgement that devs read informative threads like this. After all the devs have been putting epic wands and the like into the game.

[danotmano1998]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves? No
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live? No
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life? No
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all? No

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.

Answers above in Yellow.
I use wands for healing, removing some status ailments, and the wand of blasting to knock down doors for fun occasionally.

[AzB]

I've tried taking the full line on a toon with 3 wiz pls. Fireball wands landed occasionally, but did very little damge. Lightning is meh simply because everything evades lightning anyway. Wand of blasting recharges itself, soit was useful enough to carrry for emergency use. It would do about 80 pts of damage per hit with max pls and enhancement lines. It would hit a bit more than half the time. It will also light up tunnels and enemies in rainbow.

Cacophonic verge is the most useful. It never stuns anything, and it only does about 40 pts of damage, but on a large crowd, a rogue or other magically ******** class can do that damage to everyone in the crowd, and from a pretty great distance. But a first life bard using the sonic spell can do similar damage and at least have a chance of landing some stuns. It's also great for a box breaker.

Overall, higher level wands need to be avaiable. For that matter, a high level wiz should be able to scribe scrolls as well. Other than the healing lines, and a few utility items, wands and scrolls are pretty useless. It's a shame because umd should be for more than healing.

[Missing_Minds]

No, I have NEVER used those. It has NEVER been worth while and was always just a joke/trap.

[XL_Jockey]

I use Fireball and Ice Storm for lighting/extinguishing the torches in Inferno.


This is the same for me. I've used the low level eternal wands to get aggro and save SP, until I learned how to play the game much better.

[Mercureal]

The only offensive wands I remember ever using were on a Sorceror, all before hitting level 10:

1. Ice storm wands - when paired with a web spell could do some decent damage to groups of lower-level mobs. Not DC-based.

2. A Phantasmal Killer wand - when I got one in a chest. I used it up while in Tear of Dhakaan, Hard, and I think one, or possibly two, mobs might have failed their saves.

3. Charm Monster wands - also from chests. I used one in the same Tear run mentioned above. It worked a bit better than the PK wand, so I tried using another one when venturing out into the Desert Sands wilderness area. It was useless enough there that I didn't bother using one again.


All in all, I'd say the wands were useless. As a newbie arcane at the time, I didn't know any better, but the reality was that using them was far less effective than using my own spells would have been, even on a low-level, first life toon and with no real understanding of how to build or play an arcane.

And the only reason I could even get away with using the ones I did was because I was soloing at the time. No party would have been willing to wait around while I whipped a wand at a single mob from around a corner and waited to see if it worked, and then tried again if it failed.


(so, to actually answer the questions posed...)

1.To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?

Yes

2. Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?

No

3.Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?

No

4. Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

No (well, speaking for myself; it would probably be considered a bit hubristic to claim to speak for everyone...)

[MaximusParthas]

No. I have never.

But... I was going to right after I max out my heal and repair skills.

[DeadlyPoison]

Too much of a penalty to use some wand that has low level on it, because the wand has a very low DC. I suppose if you play casual and run low level content all the time, the wands are the cats meow.

Since I don't do that, the wands are all vendored into plat ASAP.

[Enoach]

This is a serious question.



To date, in the live game, have any of you ever used DC-based wands with the intention of having them augment your other abilities, hoping or expecting enemies to fail their saves?
Have any of you invested in Wand Heightening enhancements in Live?
Have any of you picked up wizard past lives in order to bump your wand DCs by 2/life?
Ultimately, does anyone actually want the Wand Heightening enhancements at all?

I'm hoping to run this as a poll, so please address the questions in a useful manner.

1. Yes, and to great effect. With only 2 Wizard PLs I was able to use a Charm Person and Hypnotism wand through level 10 Quests on Elite. As always targeting those with lower Will saves. Also due to the nature of Hypnotism, if the first cast missed, the second hit. Now with 3 Wizard PLs and currently as a sorcerer I was able to land these spells up to level 12 quests Elite.

Also I found DC wands rather effective cast by my Artificer with Capstone. With no wizard past lives and just the Artificer wand enhancements and Heighten I was getting anywhere between a 31 and 36 DC. Not uber compared to "from SP" casting but still enough to see full damage, or CC when utilized against the right foe. Again not as useful on Epic Elite, but still useful through Epic Hard.

2. Yes, On my second Wizard life is when I discovered its usefulness. My 2nd Life which was also my First Wizard Life I had completed two epic wands Brimstone Verge and Winters Wrath. On that life the wands did like 99 damage tops with reflex saves all over the place and forget it against evasion foes. But I noticed on my second life that these same wands were now doing 150 to 200 points of damage and I only saw 1/2 the saves as I did before. Just before my 2nd Life ended they updated the Epic Wands with Wand Maximize and Exta Effects that raise the elementals spell damage or caster level (the extra effects not effecting the wand). On my 3rd Wizard life at Epic Levels I started to see 200 to 300 damage (as much as 600 on creatures that are highly susceptible to the element), These wands are AoE so I'm seeing the 200 to 300 damage on all mobs. The third life I took 1 wand heightening enhancement. This is at Epic Levels including Elite, much more saves on Elite but with non evasion mobs still seeing 99ish points of damage all around, so casting this on a large group allowed me to continue to do damage but spread out and not enough to draw agro from the melee.

3. I would not say I picked up the Wizard past lives specifically for the Wand heightening. For me it was more a bonus as the real goal was the +6 Spell Penetration.

4. Yes, it is very useful. In fact in my opinion I think many people who find themselves drinking tons of mnemonic potions every quest would benefit if they truly understood that these wands could save them a ton of SP and not just for buffs with even a small investment. I saw a noticeable difference with just a +2 Wand DC on my Second wizard life. That would mean a First Life character could see more use with wands with just investing in two ranks. And a first life character is even more strapped for resources than any other. And when they find they don't need the Wand Heighten enhancements because it is not their style they can then rest their enhancements and spend those points elsewhere.

A technique I use to stretch my Spell Points further is to cast Hold Monster, Mass and then follow it up with a few blasts from my epic wands. Doing this I see +50% more damage, conserve my SP and make melee in the groups happy because they get a couple extra seconds of swinging time.

I do admit that at Epic Levels outside of Hypnotism (primary use is the debuff) I only utilize the Epic Eternal Wands for their damage and saving Spell Points.


Let's run the numbers. Best case scenario, even. But first, some info on wands.

A wand (by the numbers) cannot hold a spell higher than 4th level. So for our theorycrafting wand, the spell level is 4.
A wand (by the numbers) uses the lowest casting stat modifier possible for the spell level. So for this wand, the stat is 14, or +2
A wand is unaffected by spellpower from enhancements or gear, and cannot be affected by your metamagic feats.

So, our Wand of Theorycrafting has a DC of 10+4+2 or 16, a caster level of 7, and a minimum level of 7.

Next we'll assume 3 wizard past lives, for +6.
Then we'll assume 3 Wand Heightening enhancements, for another +3.

This, with rather impressive investment for the idea, gives us a DC of 16+6+3, or 25. 19 if first life.

Now, this wand will do lowish damage if a damage wand, regardless of DC, compared to an actual cast spell.

The question remains though, at what level does a DC of 19 or 25 become too low? It's certainly of absolutely no value in epic content, and I doubt it would do anything at all in Inspired Quarter either. Are we looking at Pre-Gianthold for it to work out? Sands maybe?

And I'm assuming Normal difficulty. On elite, I doubt it would be much good past Marketplace.

Technically you are correct that it uses the lowest casting stat, there are wands with higher than 4th level spells.

Epic Brimstone Verge casts Delayed Blast Fire Ball - Active (not Trap) Level 7 Spell
Epic Winters Wrath casts Otiluke's Freezing Sphere - Level 6 Spell
Epic Cacophonic Verge casts Greater Shout - Level 8 Spell

Wand of Blasting casts Elemental Surge - Level unknown Suspected of doing 10d6 points of damage average.

While normal wands themselves are not effected by Metamagic or the caster Spell Power enhancements, they can be an alternative to casters that find themselves low or out of Spell Points constantly. Wands are not going to be your bread and butter, but they sure can stretch out your SP to save for when it is even more useful.


At epic levels I find wands of Hypnotism still useful for their debuff, I've only ever gotten 1 or 2 at Epic Normal Hypnotized on the first cast, Nothing on any higher Epics - But you have to understand that expecting a Level 1 Wand to work on Epics is like bringing a pocket knife to a Tank Fight and expecting to win, something only MacGyver would be able to pull off ;).

[Gizeh]

A few words from a rogue player's perspective (people who play a lot of casters may have different experiences):

Even with Wand Heightening the DCs of wands and scrolls are too low to be meaningful. Also, depending on your class, even if they were increased to +3 per tier, Wand Heightening would be mostly useless - rogues for example use wands and scrolls (almost) exclusively for buffs and heals.

And yet under the current plans Wand Heightening will be a prerequisite for Rogue Wand and Scroll Mastery (I don't know if it's similar for the other classes). That means that everyone who wants to take Wand and Scroll Mastery (in the case of rogues that would be every rogue with maximum ranks in UMD, aka every rogue :p) would have to take Wand Heightening first (completely useless on every rogue I've played or seen in the game).

The simplest solution would probably be to merge Wand Heightening and Wand and Scroll Mastery into one enhancement line.

But at the very least don't make Wand Heightening a prerquisite for Wand and Scroll Mastery, those are completely different things in many cases - CC spells require DCs but do not benefit at all from increased dice, cure wands/heal scrolls do not depend on DCs*.



*I know I have to say this, otherwise someone else will: unless you plan to use them on undead, but rogues/artis are better off using weapons of disruption :)