[Wizard] Some thoughts about the ultimate Enchanter

[Lanhelin]

Recently I played an Enchantment focused Warforged Archmage 18 / Rogue 2 to Level 20 and now I start to level the EDs but I also started to think about TR. The far away goal would be 3 Wiz lives, 1 Bard life and 3 Druid lives until the final Wiz life.

I love the idea of letting the mobs fight each other and there is always a good chance, that the charmed Mob loses enough HP that the Dismiss Charm skill finally kills it (except you have a Hireling that can heal, because it will heal the charmed mob too if in range).

My core experiences were:
- SP get used up pretty quickly until I got about 1,5k of them.
- Vermins (Scorpions/Spiders) and Animals like Wolfs, Dogs and Lions cannot be charmed/holded by Wizard spells (except the few magical beast subtypes)
- I never recognized the benefit from Evasion except when running into Spellwards (which I could disable though).
- I waited too long to take Enlarge, which is a huge improvement to all the short ranged charm spells and comforts gameplay a lot.
- with U19, because of the new Skill Spellcraft and the Spellpower gained from Repair, (Heal) and Perform I had to skip UMD entirely to have enough points left for Search, Spot and DD.
- Trap skills without items granting +Search and +DD are nearly worthless (at Heroic Hard and Elite).
- Animals and Vermins (like most Undead) tend to have very low Will saves all over the game, which is why I could use the unmeta'ed Sonic Blast from 1 to 20 and am still using it frequently to daze them.
- Until I had no SP problems anymore I always used a Cleric Hireling with Divine Vitality. Since about Level 16 I only use Warforged Fighters, Paladins or Barbarians because of Reconstruct (assigning me the role of their Healer) and their noticable durability and contribution of dmg.


All these experiences lead to the following thoughts to build the ultimate Enchanter:

* The feats won't vary much, except when TR'ing and swapping for past life feats (maybe Mental Toughness and Improved Mental Toughness).

Insightful Reflexes
Augment Summoning
Enlarge
Heighten
Quicken
Spell Focus: Enchantment
Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment
Spell Penetration
Greater Spell Penetration
Mental Toughness
Improved Mental Toughness

* Splashing Druid into Wizard, at least one Level, at max three Levels. The goal for Wiz is at least Level 17 for Mass Hold Monster, at max Level 19. Trap skills are nice and perhaps Evasion is nicer than I experienced it, so it's possible to splash one or two Rogue Levels too. Possible combinations would be (there seems to be not much benefit from two Druid levels regarding Enchantment, so):

#1 Wizard 19 / Druid 1 (Charm Animal, Lesser Vigor)
#2 Wizard 18 / Druid 1 / Rogue 1 (Trap Skills)
#3 Wizard 17 / Druid 3 (Hold Animal, Cure light Wounds, Animal Form)
#4 Wizard 17 / Druid 1 / Rogue 2 (Evasion)

Cons:
x no Capstone
x -1 to -3 Caster Levels
x slightly shorter Duration of Buffs and Charms
x -1 Wiz Bonus Feat
x at Character creation more points into Wisdom are needed (I'd recommend to start with at least both 16 in Int and Wis)
x no Wiz Level 18 Archmage SLA V when following Wiz 17 paths
x Dismiss Charm doesn't affect Charm Animal (bug or not thought about it, I don't know), but due to only 3 Levels of Druid at max it won't last that long anyway
x The Wolf companion won't be effective, just use it to pull levers and things like that. If it gets into fight and dies, you will loose HP and SP which should be avoided.

Pros:
+ Charm everything that is not immune to it by design
+ Hold everything that is not immune to it by design (if going path #3)
+ Trap skills (if going path #2 or #4)
+ Evasion (if going path #4)
+ Animal Form makes the Wizard a bit more survivable in melee in early level areas (if going path #3)
+ Lesser Vigor and Cure light Wounds can be easily pushed by spending a few points into the Heal skill or wearing an item or augment a gem that increases healing Spellpower.

When splashed three Levels of Druid, the Charm Animal get's +1 DC from being heightened. Other +DC points are available only from raising Wisdom, +Enchantment feats and Enhancements and items that provide +DC to all schools or Enchantment only.

* Chosing race. I thought about Half-Elf with Cleric Dilettante instead of Warforged to gain more versatility regarding Hirelings and party usefulness because of CL Scrolls and Wands. Though Warforged is pretty standable too, gets more HP but is limited to a few Hirelings due to no normal Healing spells (this may vary with higher Int and more Skillpoints for UMD, but I didn't get any tomes yet so I can't tell anything helpful about it). Plus: Being a fleshy Archmage makes one to two spell slots available for other spells than Repair and Reconstruct (I slotted Repair serious Dmg, which is always in the SP Range of SP Recovery; maybe Repair moderate Dmg would as well be enough, since I just have abut 300 HP; and Reconstruct).

The starting Stats (32 pt) would be

STR 11
DEX 8
CON 14
INT 17
WIS 16
CHA 8

I'm fearing the Strenght reduction by enemy casts a bit, but these three points could either go to Wis or Con and Dex/Cha too.

* Chosing Enhancements
The fully enhanced Cleric Dilettante counts as Level 10 Cleric, enough to use the raise scroll without UMD check. The Helf racial tree also provides +2 Wisdom, 100 SP and 3 Spell Pen, 6 universal Spellpower, +1 Int from Core Enhancements and +3 Int for 20 Seconds during an Action Boost.

Update: Due to recent changes the Enhancement Points can get distributed in another way as suggested before. The Wand & Scroll Mastery Enhancement now costs the same and has the same effect in all class trees, so there's no reason anymore to spend points in Season's Herald to get it, but can be spent elsewhere. For Enchantment purpose only there seems to be no need to put points into the +Spellpower in the Helf tree. So our main trees are the Helf racial, AM and PM. If Rogue is splashed too, maybe the Mechanic tree is worth some investments for better trapping - for the sacrifice of some points in other trees. The point distribution should vary between:

Half Elf: 18 to 25
Archmage: 32 to 42
Pale Master: 11 to 22
(Mechanic: 4 to 7)

The main Enhancements of any build mentioned above should be: School Mastery II and Shroud of the Vampire. Cleric Improved Dilettante III if you play Half Elf. Secondary School Mastery is up to your choice, I'd probably take Necromancy, because the spells to control undead are all Necromancy ones. Arcane Supremacy can be nice but it's not necessary. In the PM tree to get the second +Int Enhancement 22 pts must be spent, I'd recommend to put some points into one or two SLA's [Core I (1) Deathless Vigor (6) Necrotic Touch (3) Core II (1) Core III (1) - either Metamagic (6) or Necrotic Bolt (3) and Bone Armor (3) - Int (2) Int (2)] because Beholders suck

Starting with Wisdom 16 the DC for Charm Animal would nearly touch the 30's because all the Spell focus feats, Wiz and Epic Destiny enhancements, and +Wisdom items push its DC. A few postings later I started to report about my leveling experience with a 17/2/1 build.


Thank's for reading and I'd appreciate your thoughts an opinions about this.

[Panzermeyer]

Recently I played an Enchantment focused Warforged Archmage 18 / Rogue 2 to Level 20 and now I start to level the EDs but I also started to think about TR. The far away goal would be 3 Wiz lives, 3 Bard lives and 3 Druid lives until the final Wiz life.

I love the idea of letting the mobs fight each other and there is always a good chance, that the charmed Mob loses enough HP that the Dismiss Charm skill finally kills it (except you have a Hireling that can heal, because it will heal the charmed mob too if in range).

Do you fight with a lot of summoned creatures? If not I would easily skip the 3 druid lives. I tend not too, except in certain circumstances. Why both TRing 3 times for something you don't use much.

You might consider 3 FvS lives. That will give you an addition +3 on spell pen and 60 spell points.

Also Bard lives do not give anything to your enchantment DC's. It gives you +2 to saves versus enchantments. However the Bard Purchased Past life feat does give a +1 to enchantment. So I would say go for only 1 bard life, the others would be pretty worthless for this build.

My core experiences were:
- SP get used up pretty quickly until I got about 1,5k of them.
- Vermins (Scorpions/Spiders) and Animals like Wolfs, Dogs and Lions cannot be charmed/holded by Wizard spells (except the few magical beast subtypes)
- I never recognized the benefit from Evasion except when running into Spellwards (which I could disable though).
- I waited too long to take Enlarge, which is a huge improvement to all the short ranged charm spells and comforts gameplay a lot.
- with U19, because of the new Skill Spellcraft and the Spellpower gained from Repair, (Heal) and Perform I had to skip UMD entirely to have enough points left for Search, Spot and DD.
- Trap skills without items granting +Search and +DD are nearly worthless (at Heroic Hard and Elite).
- Animals and Vermins (like most Undead) tend to have very low Will saves all over the game, which is why I could use the unmeta'ed Sonic Blast from 1 to 20 and am still using it frequently to daze them.
- Until I had no SP problems anymore I always used a Cleric Hireling with Divine Vitality. Since about Level 16 I only use Warforged Fighters, Paladins or Barbarians because of Reconstruct (assigning me the role of their Healer) and their noticable durability and contribution of dmg.


All these experiences lead to the following thoughts to build the ultimate Enchanter:

* The feats won't vary much, except when TR'ing and swapping for past life feats (maybe Mental Toughness and Improved Mental Toughness).

Insightful Reflexes
Augment Summoning
Enlarge
Heighten
Quicken
Spell Focus: Enchantment
Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment
Spell Penetration
Greater Spell Penetration
Mental Toughness
Improved Mental Toughness

Do you use lot's of summons? If you don't I would say there is not much of a point in augment sommoning. And swap that out. For that matter unless you use sommons a lot I would skip the 3 druid lives as well. Does not seem to add if you are not summoning lot's of help.

So personally I would skip that and add Maximize into the rotation. There are always situations that you just need to do some damage cause enchantments are not working. (most bosses at the very least)

If you go with 3 past FVS lives, you might be able to drop Greater Spell Pen as you will already have a base +9. But then again being able to get Epic Spell Pen would give you a total of +19. All depends on your style and what quests you like to run.

* Splashing Druid into Wizard, at least one Level, at max three Levels. The goal for Wiz is at least Level 17 for Mass Hold Monster, at max Level 19. Trap skills are nice and perhaps Evasion is nicer than I experienced it, so it's possible to splash one or two Rogue Levels too. Possible combinations would be (there seems to be not much benefit from two Druid levels regarding Enchantment, so):

#1 Wizard 19 / Druid 1 (Charm Animal, Lesser Vigor)
#2 Wizard 18 / Druid 1 / Rogue 1 (Trap Skills)
#3 Wizard 17 / Druid 3 (Hold Animal, Cure light Wounds, Animal Form)
#4 Wizard 17 / Druid 1 / Rogue 2 (Evasion)

You know I really fail to see the benefit of spalling a druid into this build. If it mainly is to get the Wand and Scroll heighting you have to look at your play style and see just how much you actually use them. If you do not use them a ton, I would probably pass on the druid splash.

If you don't find much utility from the evasion I would just splash one rogue for the trapping skills and call it good, and in that regard potentially dropping Insightful reflexes as well, for a past life feat.

The more splashing the more you are losing out on 8th/9th level spells AND nearly 100 SP each Wiz level you take away.

The Mental Toughnesses are tough to drop depending on what your spell pool looks like.

So if you are going for uber enchanter, I try and keep as pure as possible for spell DC's and mana.

But ultimately since you need 3 wiz lives you have a couple lives to play with these builds to see which you like best.

When splashed three Levels of Druid, the Charm Animal get's +1 DC from being heightened. Other +DC points are available only from raising Wisdom, +Enchantment feats and Enhancements and items that provide +DC to all schools or Enchantment only.

This seems like a very minor pro to the big con's of lose of spells and mana and other dc's.

* Chosing race. I thought about Half-Elf with Cleric Dilettante instead of Warforged to gain more versatility regarding Hirelings and party usefulness because of CL Scrolls and Wands. Though Warforged is pretty standable too, gets more HP but is limited to a few Hirelings due to no normal Healing spells (this may vary with higher Int and more Skillpoints for UMD, but I didn't get any tomes yet so I can't tell anything helpful about it). Plus: Being a fleshy Archmage makes one to two spell slots available for other spells than Repair and Reconstruct (I slotted Repair serious Dmg, which is always in the SP Range of SP Recovery; maybe Repair moderate Dmg would as well be enough, since I just have abut 300 HP; and Reconstruct).

The starting Stats (32 pt) would be

STR 11
DEX 8
CON 14
INT 17
WIS 16
CHA 8

I'm fearing the Strenght reduction by enemy casts a bit, but these three points could either go to Wis or Con and Dex/Cha too.

Like I said, I am not sure I would do the druid splash. As such you can drop Wis significantly, and I would put con to at least 16, maybe 17. Then the rest as you like. I woudn't worry about str too much. You are not a front line fighter and it really is an issue more at the lower levels which are easy to get through.

* Chosing Enhancements
The fully enhanced Cleric Dilettante counts as Level 10 Cleric, enough to use the raise scroll without UMD check. The Helf racial tree also provides +2 Wisdom, 100 SP and 3 Spell Pen, 6 universal Spellpower, +2 Int from Core Enhancements and +3 Int for 20 Seconds during an Action Boost.
The Season's Herald tree lets improve Scrolls and Wands for 4 AP only, getting the same effect in the Archmage tree would cost 9 AP (which would be an additional 9% universal Spellpower though, but dmg is only secondary for this build).

Points spent in the Half-Elf Racial tree: 26
Archmage: 39 (a few points are variable, eg. the Arcane Bolt and Arcane Blast which I took in my first life, but wouldn't in my second and spend them in better metamagics instead)
Season's Herald: 4
Pale Master: 11 (for Shroud of the Vampire which grants +2 Enchantment DC)

While shroud of the vampire would be great for your DC's especially with a 14 con you are likely to be on the squishy side, and one light spell away from death. Without some more hit points, and something to reduce the damage of the light spells.

Also being in Vamp form means you cannot be healed by that cleric dilly that you are taking. I would pick a route, if you are going fleshie, normal healing, forget about going undead form.

If you want the undead form, drop the cleric dilly and then invest more into the PM tree to make sure your negative self healing will work well and get some light protection like the pale rod and twist in that one destiny feat from one of the divine destinies that gives protection from light damage. I might then take Phally as the dilly for the boost in overall saves and being able to use some divine wands for non undead self healing. Then I would only take the arcanum and little else. Or consider just going human for the feat, or maybe drow for the higher int and potential innate SR.

Starting with Wisdom 16 the DC for Charm Animal would hardly touch the 30's - but even slightly above 20 is enough for most Animals in the whole game (eg. my Sonic Blast has a DC of 22 at Level 20 and dazes Bears, Scorpions, Dogs, Spiders and Lions pretty often).

Oh your splashing druid just to get animal charm. Interesting. Play with it in one of your wiz lives to see if it is worth it.

I am still not sold.

But overall should be fun, makes me kind of interested in an enchanter build.

[sephiroth1084]

Too much to read through, and there are plenty of threads discussing this stuff around.

But on topic: If you aren't noticing the benefit of Evasion, it means that it's probably working. Are you dying when something throws a Fireball at you? Do you find yourself healing around enemy casters a lot? Have you run any raids, and if so, have you died a lot in the big fights?

If the answers to those are "NO," then it means Evasion has been doing what it's supposed to. If you're answering "Yes," then it means you probably need to invest more in your [Reflex] saves.

If you're going to splash rogue in the first place, there's basically no reason to go only 1 level--Evasion is that good.

Splashing druid would be fairly worthless.

[Lanhelin]

Do you fight with a lot of summoned creatures? If not I would easily skip the 3 druid lives. I tend not too, except in certain circumstances. Why both TRing 3 times for something you don't use much.

You might consider 3 FvS lives. That will give you an addition +3 on spell pen and 60 spell points.

Also Bard lives do not give anything to your enchantment DC's. It gives you +2 to saves versus enchantments. However the Bard Purchased Past life feat does give a +1 to enchantment. So I would say go for only 1 bard life, the others would be pretty worthless for this build.

Thank you very much for the Bard hint.

I do not only use Summons, but also Hirelings and of course charmed Minions. To all of them Augment Summoning and the three passive Druid past life feats would apply (+10 to all abilities). One of the ED's also offers an additional +4 buff, stacking with AS - whether stacking with the past lives feats I don't know yet - which then would be +14 to all abilities. Having +14 STR or CON or whatelse or having it not should make a noticable difference I think.

While shroud of the vampire would be great for your DC's especially with a 14 con you are likely to be on the squishy side, and one light spell away from death. Without some more hit points, and something to reduce the damage of the light spells.

Also being in Vamp form means you cannot be healed by that cleric dilly that you are taking. I would pick a route, if you are going fleshie, normal healing, forget about going undead form.

I already use the Shroud with the Warforged Wiz I actually play. Repair spells don't work too when in Vampire, but it's easy to toggle off, get Reconstruct and toggle on again. Also with the Cleric Dili I'm wondering if I could use Inflict scrolls for healing purpose on myself while in Shroud?

Oh your splashing druid just to get animal charm. Interesting. Play with it in one of your wiz lives to see if it is worth it.

Yes, it's the main purpose to splash Druid since Wizards cannot charm or hold Animals and Vermin but Druids can. The good thing is, that Animals and Vermins have very low Will saves, so even with one Druid Level the charm spell would pretty often do what it's supposed to (in comparison to Tier 1 Wiz spell Sonic Blast, which I use unmeta'ed and it dazes animals and vermin pretty often too, even in High Road and King's Forest).

I think, I'd go either Druid 1 / Rogue 2 or Druid 3 the next life, and trying Helf with Cleric Dili.

[Panzermeyer]

I already use the Shroud with the Warforged Wiz I actually play. Repair spells don't work too when in Vampire, but it's easy to toggle off, get Reconstruct and toggle on again. Also with the Cleric Dili I'm wondering if I could use Inflict scrolls for healing purpose on myself while in Shroud?

While I have not thought about it to test it, yes inflict scrolls should heal you while you are in shroud form. Actually in fact now that I remember it, when I was running through my wiz past lifes, running with a guildie who was a cleric use to carry harm to be able to heal me when they wanted. So yes scrolls should have the same effect as well.

[Lanhelin]

While I have not thought about it to test it, yes inflict scrolls should heal you while you are in shroud form. Actually in fact now that I remember it, when I was running through my wiz past lifes, running with a guildie who was a cleric use to carry harm to be able to heal me when they wanted. So yes scrolls should have the same effect as well.

I tested it and it works, despite the tooltips of the inflict scrolls say that they affect foes and friendly undead only. I'm the best undead friend of mine.

A few days ago I TR'ed and now I'm testing the Wiz 17 / Druid 3 build, as a Half-Elf (34 pt: STR 10, DEX 8, CON 15, INT 18, WIS 16, CHA 8) with the Cleric dilettante like stated in the OP. Leveling plan is D,D,W,D,W(x16).

Funny detail so far: spiders are immune to player web spell, but not immune to the web spit attack of other spiders^^
Not so funny detail: Charmed Animals cannot be released by dismiss charm, but due to few Druid Levels the spell doesn't last that long anyway.

When I hit epic Levels again I'm sure to be able to tell some more things about this build.

[Golddragon87]

Something to keep in mind about the druid past lives and augment summoning. The +10 to all stats also raises the mobs saves by +5 against your charm spells. Depending on twinkage and what mob you target this may not be an issue but it is a factor to consider.