Conjuration Conundrum

[arminius]

I have an ArchMage Wizard that has Conjuration primary and Necromancy secondary. Up to level 18 now, and up till now has been a standard Web + Wall of Fire/Ice Storm, Finger stragglers kind of character. I LOVE the Conjuration part of the character. I hadn't planned on going past Web for the Conj SLAs, and no SLAs for Necro.

But as Fire-speccing is reaching the end of it's natural life at 18, I am wondering how viable it is to go whole hog with Conjuration, take all the SLAs and go full Acid-specced. I took the Stinking Cloud SLA and it seems very effective with free Heighten and Quicken.

But I have some concerns that I'd like to have help hashing out. Have any of you gone for broke on an AM school?

1. I've never Acid-specced on any caster. Is it viable on a Wizard at end game without the benefits of Earth Savant? Or do I dump Empower and take Greater Necro, and just focus on webbing and instakill? I dunno, that sounds like a recipe for twiddling thumbs at Boss time.

2. If I go with this I'm looking at Stinking Cloud and Cloudkill as SLAs. On top of that Solid Fog really pumps Web effectiveness as well. Then Mind Fog helps Dancing Ball... and suddenly I'm the guy who pumps out clouds everywhere and annoys everyone. Is this path viable or will it just cause me to be blacklisted for clouding up quests and causing everyone to lag out?

3. If I'm already committed to clouding up the place, do I dump Necro and just go 1 or 2 feats of Enchantment to be super crowd control guy? This sounds attractive, but I solo a lot and wonder about the effectiveness of capturing the world in my webs and disco balls and then not being able to do anything to hurt them.

4. Initially, going all 5 SLAs on a spell school seemed very unattractive given their extreme spell point costs. But I am wondering now if it really is viable to slather everything in Cloudkill and other Acid spells, and if all the free metamagic feats on the SLAs makes the loss of spell points a net positive in the end. Have any of you gone whole hog on SLAs, esp. for Conjuration? Does it work out as a net positive?

Thanks for helping me think this through. Cheers!

[Doxmaster]

But I am wondering now if it really is viable to slather everything in Cloudkill and other Acid spells, and if all the free metamagic feats on the SLAs makes the loss of spell points a net positive in the end. Have any of you gone whole hog on SLAs, esp. for Conjuration? Does it work out as a net positive?

Thanks for helping me think this through. Cheers!

Cloudkill can be affected by:
Enlarge-I doubt you have this
Heighten-costs 4 or 3 points per level as a 20 wizard.
Quicken-9 sp or less

In this case, you are probably not coming out ahead any time soon.

[FooWonk]

Acid is useful at end-game; even without investing in spell focus or maxing DC.

High conjuration DC is only useful for web, trap the soul and cloudkill. I like all three of these spells when I can use them. A lot of mobs are immune to cloudkill. Trap the soul requires mob prepping before casting (e.g., level drain -> crushing despair -> hypno).

The rest of the acid & conjuration spells gain little to nothing from high conjuration DC.

Though some of the spells are still very useful:
° Acid Fog for -4 AC debuff on hard to hit bosses
° Solid Fog and Sleet Storm for slowing, concealment & blindness

[Raoull]

A lot of mobs are immune to cloudkill.

Yes and no....

They're immune to the poison part, but I'm not sure if any mobs are immute to the Concealment part. I throw cloudkills on almost all raid bosses, it seems to be the cloud that is the least annoying visually.

[Kinerd]

Assuming you have Maximize, you don't need Empower to be useful against bosses. Even a dabbling of ranks in Cold and Ice gets you there. Acid is just so limited against bosses: Black Dragon Bolt and ??? Melf's? If you wanted to do a melee computer check you could throw Acid Fog and Acid Rain and see how many you lag out, but other than that.

One major drawback with clouds everywhere is that absolutely everything will aggro on you, the same way the Hound aggros on people who use Solid Fog clickies. If your CC is up to snuff, no big deal. If not, things can get ugly.

One nice thing about getting the expensive SLAs is that it frees up level slots for you. I can't say I've ever really exulted over having an extra level 2 slot thanks to SLA Web, but I could be tempted by 2 extra level 4 and 1 extra level 5 slots.

[DarkForte]

You don't need to go all-out with conjuration in order to be awesome at it. Just take 1 focus in conjuration, and your webs will still be awesome CC. The only acid spells that would benefit from conjuration are CK, Acid Rain (which benefits only marginally) and Acid Blast (which I wouldn't use at endgame anyway due to low capping dice, rather have Otiluke's or chain lightning).

The difference in effectiveness in conjuration from a total specced wizard to a half-specced wizard does not compare in the least to that between a wizard that goes all-out necro to the half-necro focused.

[balancetraveller]

up to level 18 now, and up till now has been a standard web + wall of fire

Huh?

---

There is simply not enough good high-end acid spells ingame now that'd make you wanna go fully acid spec'd.

I'd invest some points into the acid line for BDB to counter some niche enemies like Lich & Doomsphere, but BDB is very weak comparing to Polar Ray when used against epic bosses (elemental resistance will be applied thrice instead of once negating way too many damage).

[morticianjohn]

I've played a conjuration specced PM (different from what you're talking about in the OP so I'll stick to what is relevant)\

Web alone is good enough CC with (insert your AOE dot here) even for epics. There are very few mobs that you'll fight where web is not good enough those mobs are generally limited to 1.) spiders which are easy to kill 2.) some elementals (fire air and water I think are all immune to web) which are rare and usually easily taken care of with FoD or OID.

Everyone likes mass hold for the 50% DPS so they spec for enchantment but what I've found is that web is 50% more effective which makes up for the lost DPS (unless your melee are missing which happens sometimes without the -4 AC from mass hold). 1st web is persistant so if they don't get hit by it the first time then just run them back through it while mass hold is hit or miss. You have to recast if you happen to miss. 2nd spell resistance doesn't matter. 3rd it usually lasts a little longer (could just be my perception because my DC is higher on web) in general I see the 30 seconds of web outlasting a hold. 4th web costs less SP. Especially as an AM.

I honestly don't see the need to go any further as enhancements are generally tight for wizard. I would just stick with web as your sole conjuration SLA.

[Kinerd]

One thing to add to morticianjohn's breakdown: the fiendish spiders in the new pack can be webbed. I like to think that I'm webbing the fiendish part the way clerics heal the living part of living constructs, but it could be a bug. The moral of the story is that for 3 SP Web everything and let the DM sort it out, because you never know what Web will work on.

[arminius]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. It makes a lot of sense. I think I will just end up being Cold specced and not go for all Conjuration SLA levels.

The jury is still out on whether to keep Stinking Cloud or not, it is hard to tell how effective it is. The only feedback you really get from it is skeletons and such saying IMMUNE IMMUNE IMMUNE (not that I cast it on skellies, I mean like the IQ quests where skellies are mixed in with the fleshies).

But Web? Yeah.