Heighten, Quicken, Enlarge, Maximize ... I am confused :(

[Cynaes]

Hello everyone Guess this will show up as the first post on the forums, since I only recently started playing actively, although my first character on Turbine servers was created almost half a year ago. Last week, I started out as a rogue, with the intention of eventually unlocking Drow to level another rogue. Halfway through (not the game, but the third level) I realised that I should probably pick another class, so as to not get bored when having to level the same class twice in a row. So I spent some TP to unlock Warforged and made a Warforged Wizard (I spent 1 hour on the character creation screen trying to find a name, and when I finally found one that suited me and wasn't already taken, I recreated the same character 7 times, because I wasn't happy with the way the colors turned out). I hope that's enough to give you an idea of my important problem before I even started playing

Anyway, at level 3 I had to pick another feat, and since I wasn't sure about the effects of the spell feats, I went with Insightful reflexes (hoping that it's not too much of a mistake). I already had Toughness and Mental Toughness on first level. Feat pick will be back sooner or later (I guess) so I thought I'd ask my questions beforehand ... here come the questions:

#1 Will picking up a spell feat automatically enhance all applicable spells? E.g. when picking up Extend, will it increase the duration of Invisibility (does it even work with invis?) or do I have to 'select' the enhancement when switching spells? The reason I'm asking this is mainly because I fear I might run out of spell points too soon, if all spells are enhanced (and thus more expensive to cast).

#2 Which spell feats should I pick and - probably more importantly - when should I pick them? I already read through quite a few threads and the general concensus seems to be that Eschew Materials is the only worthless spell feat. Opinions definitely differ on all those other feats (Empower, Enlarge, Extend, Heighten, Quicken, Maximize). Is it worth picking all of them up? If not, which of them should I prefer?

#3 If I pick up all of the spell feats, which other feats should I aim for? Right now the only other feat i consider 'set' is Combat casting.

Well, those are all questions I remember (I'm sure I had some more while playing, but I forgot them already, so they probably weren't that important anyway).

Thanks in advance for your help

[Qzipoun]

Hello everyone Guess this will show up as the first post on the forums, since I only recently started playing actively, although my first character on Turbine servers was created almost half a year ago. Last week, I started out as a rogue, with the intention of eventually unlocking Drow to level another rogue. Halfway through (not the game, but the third level) I realised that I should probably pick another class, so as to not get bored when having to level the same class twice in a row. So I spent some TP to unlock Warforged and made a Warforged Wizard (I spent 1 hour on the character creation screen trying to find a name, and when I finally found one that suited me and wasn't already taken, I recreated the same character 7 times, because I wasn't happy with the way the colors turned out). I hope that's enough to give you an idea of my important problem before I even started playing

Anyway, at level 3 I had to pick another feat, and since I wasn't sure about the effects of the spell feats, I went with Insightful reflexes (hoping that it's not too much of a mistake). I already had Toughness and Mental Toughness on first level. Feat pick will be back sooner or later (I guess) so I thought I'd ask my questions beforehand ... here come the questions:

#1 Will picking up a spell feat automatically enhance all applicable spells? E.g. when picking up Extend, will it increase the duration of Invisibility (does it even work with invis?) or do I have to 'select' the enhancement when switching spells? The reason I'm asking this is mainly because I fear I might run out of spell points too soon, if all spells are enhanced (and thus more expensive to cast).

These feats are called "Metamagic" Feats and they are toggle abilities. Drag them to your hotbars and enable/disable them. Basically, if you want to cast an extended invisibility, you need to turn on extend and cast. Not all spells can be extended (doesn't make sense to have a "longer" scorching ray for example) but those that can will be cast on you for double the duration and cost additional spell points.

#2 Which spell feats should I pick and - probably more importantly - when should I pick them? I already read through quite a few threads and the general concensus seems to be that Eschew Materials is the only worthless spell feat. Opinions definitely differ on all those other feats (Empower, Enlarge, Extend, Heighten, Quicken, Maximize). Is it worth picking all of them up? If not, which of them should I prefer?

As a wizard, you get a loooooot of feats so this is up to you. Yes, Eschew is worthless and all the others have uses but keep in mind that as a wizard, some feats you MUST take a metamagic feat while others you can spend elsewhere (ie mental toughness, improved mental toughness, spell penetration, magic school, heck even normal toughness) so you want to think about it a bit. My personal recommendation is Extend, Empower and Maximize are a must, followed by Heighten>Quicken>Enlarge. As a warforged, quickened self reconstruct is useful but not that much if you're not getting hit a lot anyways...

#3 If I pick up all of the spell feats, which other feats should I aim for? Right now the only other feat i consider 'set' is Combat casting.

Don't bother with combat casting. Actually, insightful reflexes won't do you much good if you don't have evasion either, it's debatable if that's even necessary. But again, lots of feats, really depends on your play style

Well, those are all questions I remember (I'm sure I had some more while playing, but I forgot them already, so they probably weren't that important anyway).

Thanks in advance for your help

Responses in Red

[Taurnish]

The responses by Qzipoun are all good. I have several mages and sorcs as well. As he said feat choce depends on play style especially at higher levels. I like to solo a lot or short man quests/ raids so quicken on my WF casters is a must as well as empower and maximize. All melee types will bug you about extended haste so thats your call....but extend and max/ empower a few firewalls and run mobs through them and this is a very effective killing field unless they are fire based creatures . For added effect hit them with other spells as you run, such as COC (cone of cold).

Heighten is very nice...to steer away from arcanes a bit, I used heightened soundburst all through Gianthold and even into the vale on my clerics. It works well if you have a high Wisdom (which helps determine the monster save along with your caster level).

As a WF you can use the reconstruct spell and as long as you have mana will be okay most of the time at high level (assuming your concentration skill is high) with quicken on.

Many people who play casters (especially the first one or two) have trouble picking spells. Make sure as a Wiz you pick the spells you cannot buy scrolls of in a vendor (firewall, cloudkill, DDoor, etc.). These are listed on other threads.

I hope you have fun with your Wiz. I like mine as well as the sorcs. I am more of a caster player myself. You can learn to solo any quest in the game when you build up some resources (gold). Finally, casters are good money makers in game. The vale is a casters haven.

I hope you found my advice/ thoughts beneficial. Good luck and have fun. Learn what spells to use in certain situations and on certain monsters. Remember to look at what save (if there is one) a monster must make and choose a spell wisely. Decide what spells you like and you may with to choose a school of focus (feat) or even greater focus (another feat). An example is necromany focus which helps with the saves against your FOD (finger of death), enervate, and other debuffing spells like waves of fatigue, ray of exhaustion, etc. As a starting Wiz you likely will not be twinked and have unlimited resources so be patient. Many players who start a wiz give up before they truly shine and complain about lack of spell points. Be patient with it.

Oh, and get spell pen and greater spell pen. End game this is necessary as well as some investment into the enhancement line.

So to sum up, I would suggest empower/ maximize/ quicken/ extend/ spell pen/ greater spell pen and possibly a spell school focus (not necessarily in that order). The rest you can use enlarge (hit enemies far away and they cant see you), toughness for extra HP and opens the WF racial toughness line of enhancements, mental toughness of spell points.

[oweieie]

(Empower, Enlarge, Extend, Heighten, Quicken, Maximize). Is it worth picking all of them up? If not, which of them should I prefer?

Extend then Maximize then Empower then Heighten are all necessary. Quicken is nice but ultimately optional. Enlarge likewise is optional. Extend becomes useful around level 5 to 7. Heighten is technically "useful" at level 5 for web but not really worth picking up until 12.

#3 If I pick up all of the spell feats, which other feats should I aim for? Right now the only other feat i consider 'set' is Combat casting.

Combat casting isn't worthwhile. At low levels your d20 will matter more, at high levels that extra 3 will be meaningless compared to your 50 or 60 concentration.

Spell penetration is also necessary as you get to higher levels (16+), greater spell penetration is also pretty much a must have. VoD normal the devils have 35 SR. So even at 20, with both spell pen feats, 3 enhancements and en epic spell pen item you're only getting +30 on your roll so you'll fail 20% of the time. It gets pretty ugly if you're doing crazy stuff like going 18/2 wizard/rogue and not taking spell pen, your +18 spell penetration means you're basically flat out useless and can't really even dance them let along get a finger through both SR and fort.

You might also want to consider spell focus feats. Necromancy is good for pre-epics and getting pale master. Other schools, mostly enchantment or maybe conjuration, are both pretty good in and out of epic.

[ddoer]

Hello everyone Guess this will show up as the first post on the forums, since I only recently started playing actively, although my first character on Turbine servers was created almost half a year ago. ...

it seems you have some good ideas about what feats to pick by reading other post already. I would like to share my view towards when to take which feat.

every class have 7 normal feats at Level 1, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18. Human will get an extra feat at L1. Wizard has 5 class feats at L1, 5, 10, 15, 20 that you could choose metamagic feats, mental toughness and school focus feats only. In short, for your WF wiz, you should have 7+5 = 12 feats.

the first thing you should learn is to avoid taking metamagic feats with the normal feat slot. e.g. for maximize, extend, empower etc. Take them at L1,5,10 ... if possible.

most of the feats that you have mentioned are useful but you don't want to take them in a wrong timing. Let me talk about some of them:

• maximize
  it is inefficient to maximize L1-2 spells. (lower damage per sp) so it is preferable for a wiz to get maximize at L5+. And you will want to get maximize no later than L7 that is the level you'll get firewall.
  
  
• extend
  at wiz level 5 you will have L3 spells including haste and displacement. Extended haste is very desirable to any party. at L7, extended could be used together with firewall.
  
  for new players, i would suggest to take extend at L1 as a class feat and take maximize at L5 as the 2nd class feat. It's ok to swap the order if you like to play as a nuker.
  
  
• heighten
  heighten is a very useful spell in end game, but it doesn't give significant benefit in low level. Any heightened spell is counted as the highest level spell in spell DC. e.g. for a L17-20 wiz, a heightened web is counted as L9 instead of L2, that give +7 in spell DC. (roughly mean +35% chance of landing a spell)
  
  I would suggest to take height in no earlier than L15. if you plan to take it, take at L15 or L20.
  
  
• spell penetration, greater spell penetration
  two feats together will give you +4 spell penetration that will help a lot to by pass mobs' spell resistance (SR). However, in low/mid level, 95-98% of content do not have mobs with SR. It will be unwise to take the feats in low level that it offers no meaningful benefit. The first area you may need spell penetration is in vale / shroud flagging quests that are around L16.
  
  It depends on what level you will start doing vale quests. for some power gamers, they got shroud flagged at L12-13. when I TR2 my wiz, I start doing vale only until L16-17. my suggestion is to make sure you take both feats before you start doing vale quests. e.g. taking them at L12/L15. Notice that you cannot take spell penetration as a class feat so you got to use normal feat slots for them.
  
  
• toughness, mental toughness (MT), improved mental toughness (IMT)
  these feats provide benefit progressively.
  
  toughness is a must to take but the benefit is insignificant in low level. at L1/2, it gives you +3/4 HP in total. at L3, it enables you to take racial toughness enhancement that give you an extra +10 hp. HP is important in any level, but in low level, it is easy to recovery HP by using CSW potions, that the value of extra HP less significant. I think it's just unwise to take toughness in L1 (+3 hp), and it makes a little more sense to take at L3 (+15hp), and it is much better to take it at L6. (+28hp) I would recommend new players to take it at L6, and bring enough CSW potions to quest.
  
  MT and IMT are similar to toughness that the benefit of taking them in low level is insignificant. I would not consider to take them before L9. If you are able to manage your mana, you could just skip it or take one or two of MT at the last few levels. if you got a big problem with mana, take them from around L9
  
  
• spell focus
  school focus is completely depend on which school/spells you plan to specialized at. Necromancy is a typical focus and you could utilize it for Finger of Death (FoD) that is a L7 spells that you'll get at L13. So, it will be desirable for you to pick up one or two spell focus: necromancy before L13. Similar concept applies if you want to focus on another school.
  
  some vets utilize Niac-Web-Acid Blast (edited) intensively in low level before L7. For me, I always use double Conjuration Focus at L1. I won't suggest any completely new players to do in this way, however.

for the other feats, you could fit in the remain slots. I personally think Quicken is a must no matter you are WF or not, but it is not necessary to take it in low level. And empower is desirable but not mandatory unless you are a nuker. Enlarge is a waste of feat slot. If it turns out you have feat slot that you don't know how to spend, just take multiple toughness feats. You could always swap the feat out when you got better gear (such as greensteel HP item).

[Cynaes]

Thanks for the detailled answers

I'll try to sum them up, to see if I understood them correctly ...

I already have Toughness and Mental Toughness, picked them at level 1. If ddowiki is correct, swapping out feats at lower levels is way less expensive than waiting with that until level 20. I already have 220 Siberys Fragments, so I could swap out two of my feats. After trying to find a balance between all of the suggestions (although they only differ slightly), this is what I came up with:

1 - Metamagic Feat - swapping out for Extend (previously: Mental Toughness)
3 - General Feat - swapping out for School Focus: Enchantment (my preferred playstyle right now) (previously: Insightful Reflexes)
5 - Metamagic Feat - Maximize
6 - General Feat - Greater School Focus: Enchantment
9 - General Feat - Mental Toughness
10 - Metamagic Feat - Empower
12 - General Feat - Spell Penetration
15 - General Feat - Improved Mental Toughness
15 - Metamagic Feat - Quicken
18 - General Feat - Greater Spell Penetration
20 - Metamagic Feat - - Heighten

There's one alternative I'm thinking about, but I'm not sure whether it is a viable idea:

12 - General Feat - Mithral Body (instead of Spell Penetration)
15 - General Feat - Spell Penetration (instead of Improved Mental Toughness)

Mithral Body is supposed to be medium armor (I guess), so it should help to avoid some of the incoming damage. It increases spell failure, but at level 10 I can invest (a total of) 6 action points to put it back to zero. Is it worth sacrificing 105 spell points (at level 20)?

Thanks again for the input!

[ddoer]

Mithral Body is supposed to be medium armor (I guess), so it should help to avoid some of the incoming damage. It increases spell failure, but at level 10 I can invest (a total of) 6 action points to put it back to zero. Is it worth sacrificing 105 spell points (at level 20)?

no. Mithral Body is useless to you and you won't get a meaningful AC anyway. As a WF wiz, you should get a lot of HP and be able to self-reconstruct so taking damage is not an issue at all. the 6 action points is a lot and you should not spend them in enhancement that doesn't help your HP or spell casting.

btw, you get both of 1 general feat and 1 class feat in L1.

[Cynaes]

no. Mithral Body is useless to you and you won't get a meaningful AC anyway. As a WF wiz, you should get a lot of HP and be able to self-reconstruct so taking damage is not an issue at all. the 6 action points is a lot and you should not spend them in enhancement that doesn't help your HP or spell casting.

btw, you get both of 1 general feat and 1 class feat in L1.

Okay, but it sounded cool anyway

I'm already level 3, and I only have enough Siberys dragon shards to swap out two feats (the general feat I took at level 1 was Toughness, and I'm just going to stick with it until it becomes useful).

edit: Okay, I just found out that taking a new feat is more expensive than expected ^^ I still got the free feat swap from Lockania (just did the quest), and since I can't get any dragonmarks anyway, I'll use it to swap out the first feat. Will have to do a few quests before I can swap out the second, but it should work out eventually, so that I'll be on track with my planned feat list soon

[DragonMageT]

You should look at going with Greater School Focus: Necromancy instead of Enchantment.
Since you are already looking at swapping feats around, you will want Necromancy once you get Finger of Death.
I did the same thing starting out, Enchantment sounds good but you get more use from Necromancy.

[Cynaes]

You should look at going with Greater School Focus: Necromancy instead of Enchantment.
Since you are already looking at swapping feats around, you will want Necromancy once you get Finger of Death.
I did the same thing starting out, Enchantment sounds good but you get more use from Necromancy.

Necromancy seems to be more about damage and sounds very viable if you're going Pale Master. I intend to be more specialized in Crowd Control, and although Necromancy includes all the options to control undead, Enchantment is (judging from what I read on DDOwiki and elsewhere) the better way to achieve Crowd Control. If I wanted both, Enchantment and Necromancy, I'd have to give up other metamagic feats.

[DragonMageT]

Necromancy seems to be more about damage and sounds very viable if you're going Pale Master. I intend to be more specialized in Crowd Control, and although Necromancy includes all the options to control undead, Enchantment is (judging from what I read on DDOwiki and elsewhere) the better way to achieve Crowd Control. If I wanted both, Enchantment and Necromancy, I'd have to give up other metamagic feats.

It's not all about damage, it's about insta-kill IE Finger and Wail.
Now that's crowd control

You can still use charm and dancing spells for your crowd control. I am just saying you will get better
use from Necromancy. Wait til you start missing FOD and have to cast it 2 or 3 times.

Once you get FOD, you will find that you use it more than enchantment spells.
FOD the casters, archers, really bad guys, best form of crowd control.

[wolfy42]

Great responses in this thread already

A few things.

I don't think you really need extend till level 5 (and you get a free feat at that level). If you don't care about haste/heroism you could even hold off till level 6 to get it (so you have it by lvl 7 and firewall).

Taking extend before level 5 isn't the end of the world...but since you would be swapping out a feat for it...you might as well take somethign that will help you now.

Up till level 13 or so you'll get more CC out of SF enchantment but depending on your stats and equipment you can get your DC up pretty high without it. If you didn't already need to swap feats that is one way to use your free swap later on. Personally I don't like going with spell focus at all.

Heighten is not really that useful until at least level 7. Even web just gets boosted 1 DC with it at level 5.....which is a 5% greater chance at max for enemies to fail their save.

With a high int you'll have decent CC abilities early on (with +4 int from fox's and a DC item equiped) so I'd suggest going with survivability initially and possibly extra mana. Definately get toughness though even as a WF. You won't need combat casting as mentioned especially as a WF who has a high con.

By level 4 I think it is you get an enhancement to toughness that adds 10 more hp, and by level 8 (or earlier) you get a second enhancement for 10 more. That makes a significant difference even for a WF wizard...so you WANT toughness by level 4 at least for sure.

Personally even for a CC wizard I'd STILL take maximize at least and possibly empower as well as early as possible (can even take both at level 1, then toughness at 3). The combo is great any time you have plenty of shrines to spare...and especially vs bosses right after shrining to full sp. By level 7 for sure you are going to want both hands down for your firewalls (max + empower + extend = yummy BBQ'd enemies).

So I believe by level 7 you want for sure the following:

Maximize
Empower
Extend
Toughness

You get feats at 1,1,3,5,6

Which means you have 1 feat left over.

If you have not already switched it out...and you plan on doing quests on elite by yourself at all...you might want to keep insightfull reflexes till later. It adds significantly to your reflex save...which not only reduces spell damage you take (halves it) but stops you from being hit by spiders webs in Misery's peak, traps etc. If you have an 18 starting int + 4 from fox's, 1 from enhancement and 1 from level 4 that is 24 int or +7 to your reflex save. If your dex was 8...unless you use cats grace thats a difference of 8...or 40% chance to take twice the damage without insightful reflexes (or be held by a spider etc).

As a quick example a character with a low reflex save can easily be held constantly in Misery's on elite...but with a 10+ reflex save (Easy with insightful) you'll breeze through it.

So don't give up on insightful reflexes. They are much better with evasion, but can still be very useful without.

Spell penetration is needed later on, but you can also grab enhancements for that which helps...that is a more long term ability in my opinion (10+ at least...maybe not till 15).

So I'd keep your insightful reflexes for now and later on possibly switch them out for heighten or quicken. Both of those are best taken at 9+ (again in my opinion).

Mental toughness is doing you almost no good at level 3...and even by level 7 it will still only give you 40 extra spell points...which is really not worth it.

I'm not sure if you can hold off on your free respec until after using one yourself at lower level (you can if you don't do the quest of course...but you said you already did it). If you can, then don't use your free one yet and just swap out MT.

[Cynaes]

It's not exactly easy to make a decision between all those options

I swapped out Mental Toughness for Extend with the free Feat swap (it cannot be used later on, as it is automatically selected first when talking to Fred). I still have Insightful Reflexes though ... and now I'm no longer sure if I want to swap it out. Is Insightful useful later in the game? I'd rather walk around a little less tough on earlier levels (and I don't have a problem playing in groups), so I don't have to pay 80,000 pp and collect 1 million sibery dragonshard pieces That seems like alot to someone who only just started playing the game.

I'm also no longer sure about the spell focus thing. Is Enchantment a bad choice? I'm not sure I want to run around using Necromancy, if everyone else is doing that. And is not taking a (greater) spell focus really recommended?

I guess most of it comes down to personal preferences, so I'll have to make the choice myself. But thanks for all your advice!

[wolfy42]

It can be hard as there are many ways to play a wizard. I would almost say it is the most complicated class to play with the most choices. Melee classes might choose 2handed or 2 weapon combat....and which specific weapon they want. But other then strength based or dex based and weapon choice they don't have too many other decisions really.

Wizards can be melee based, CC, Evocation specialized, Necro specced, Echantment heck even conjuration isn't horrible. You can go WF, Drow or even halfling for pretty big differences in how the character plays (not to mention human as a good choice as well) and wizards can multi without a huge penalty better then just about any other class (even fighter really since you need 18 fighter levels for kensi 3).

So yeah, wizards can be a bit confusing.

As far as insightfull reflexes....it is useful, but you need to figure out if you have room for it later on or not. If not, ditch it now before it's too expensive. It's totally worth it with evasion of course. Without evasion it's a bit of a harder choice but here are my thoughts to help you.

Insightful reflexes will eventually give you a MUCH higher reflex save. With an 18 base int + 3 from enhancement + 5 from level + just 2 from tome and +6 from item you get a 34 int...and it can easily go higher then that. 40 int isn't that rare...which gives you +15 to your reflex saves with insightful reflexes. Compared to the -1 from an 8 dex (you could cast cats grace to get a +1 I guess...but thats dispellable) your talking about +16 to your reflex saves. Basically your 80% more likely to fail a reflex save without insightful reflexes at that point.

What does it mean to fail a reflex save?

Well many damage spells will do half damage if you make a reflex save. For wizards you'll have elemental protection on (30 by then) and often you'll have fireshield on (but only 1 element is halved). If a fire spell was going to hit you for 150 damage....and you have fireshield on.....but you fail your reflex save you'll take 150/2= 75 - 30 = 45 damage. That hurts as a wizard especially if it happens multiple times in a row.

But if you make your save you take h alf that base damage so 150/7 =75....then fireshield halves that to 38.....and then you take off the top 30.....meaning only 8 damage.

You can take 5 hits of 8 damage MUCH easier then 5 hits of 45 damage.

And thats just the damage aspect.

There are many other places where a reflex save will stop all the damage, traps for instance, or where it will stop you from being held (spiders web attacks). A high reflex save is still very useful without evasion. Evasion of course makes it VERY useful since it stops all the damage all together.

There is another factor here though that gets added in.

While resist energy takes a flat amount of damage off each elemental attack you take while it lasts (and isn't dispelled) protection from energy (or elements)works kind of like stoneskin for elemental damage (maxes out at 120 damage at level 10).

A high reflex save makes that 120 points last twice as long....so it's still quite effective indeed for a wizard to have a high reflex save without evasion.

You'll get nice spells like greater heroism to also boost your reflex save later on...but without the help of insightfull reflexes you probably won't have a high enough reflex save to matter.

For a WF.....with insightfull reflexes you can have high saves across the board. With just base saves + stat bonuses + enhancements (WF get will and fort save boosts) +5 from item and +4 from heroism....you'll be able to save against almost anything...which is a very nice bonus. Remember evasion only affects DAMAGE dealing spells (and not even all of those). All the other effects of having high saves are still gained as a pure wizard...and it is VERY nice to have high saves especially solo.

So if you can fit it in, I would suggest insightful reflexes for any wizard.

So to answer your question....I would take insightfull reflexes over a spell focus (especially a greater spell focus) since it's only a 5% better chance for enemies not to save against your spells of that school. I wouldn't take it over things like maximize, empower, quicken, heighten etc. Extend is nice for haste....firewall to some extent and a few other spells.....but you can live without it. It does save spell points though having extend even by level 5 (30 spell points for double duration haste vs 40 for casting it twice etc).

Honestly it's not going to make a huge difference if you don't take a spell focus...and it lets you pick and choose your spells easier as your first playing up a wizard. I'd stick with what you have right now and concentrate on getting maximize, empower, heighten, quicken in that order. At 5 get maximize (it will help a ton vs red named boss fights), at 6 snag empower (even better for boss fights) and at 8 get heighten (by level 9 it will be boosting your DC of some spells by 4 or making them 20% more likely to go off).

Quicken is important later...especially ifyour a WF...but it's not needed early on as much..and it's situational. In fact as a non-WF you might even want to take enlarge before quicken as it also is situational but may have more uses at that level (10). Enlarge lets you snipe enemies with spells and is very nice vs beholders which you'll be fighting at the level 10 range.

Focusing on enchantment gives you better DCs on your hold spells, your otto's spells and your hypnotism spells...which is quite nice early on especially. Late game otto's has no save anyway (spell resistance only) and you'll have better alternatives then hold spells in most situations (ie..instant death is better then holding a monster).

Necro is only really for Finger of Death and Wail of the Banshee.....both are great at killing enemies...but it's very situational again. If you really want to specialize in this you might as well go with Pale master...but I would not suggest it.

Illusion is for Phantasmal killer and thats it....some people spec in it...I don't suggest it. 2 spell focuses only gives you a 10% better chance....and you can boost it with equipment anyway.

Conjuration is the other choice...and it's a pretty yummy one early on at least. It boosts Niac's cold ray which is the highest early damage spell in the game.....rocks hard for the first 5 levels or so. It also boosts your acid spells including Acid Blast which is very useful early on. If I was making a new character I'd go with this and swap it out later with my free feat.

Anyway thats it for now, dinner is here....good luck!!

[Cynaes]

First of all, thanks for the explanation. I really appreciate the details, as it helps me alot in making a decision. I think I've (kinda) made up my mind (until someone else finds something that's important as well). I'll keep Insightful Reflexes and will take Maximize and Empower at levels 5 and 6 respectively. At level 9 I will probably still take Mental Toughness (because I want to have at least the lesser version of that). And finally, I hope I will have made up my mind about a Spell Focus until level 10. I still really want to go Enchantment, but chances are that by then I'll be more able to make an educated guess whether it is worth the investment - or not. Keeping Insightful Reflexes means I won't be able to take both MTs and both SFs, but (after reading your explanations) I think it's worth it.