Wizards *need* an update pass to make them viable in legendary

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Currently, Wizards are awful in Epic/Legendary. Because of the amount of hitpoints and DR the mobs have in EE/ER/LE/LR content, Wizards are almost impossible to play and do well, unless you are a competitionist maybe. A first lifer doesn't stand a chance to solo anything EE/ER/LE/LR even if they buy and use a 1000 superior spell point potions. The Wizard enhancement trees need to be updated and brought in line with the current Epic and Legendary content; I believe the wizard enhancement trees were created around the time of the Underdark expansion which would put it back into heroics content and date it about 8 years old - which is fine for heroic content, but for EPIC/Legendary wizards sit at currently the worst of all the casters and not by a little; they are spell point starved, damage neutered, enhancement gimped - having only heroic viable SLAs - into epic and legendary the Pale Master tree, Archmage tree, and Eldritch Knight tree fail completely all being out of date compared with other classes in the current content. Make your wizard a drow and you literally may be on the weakest playable toon currently in existence in DDO.

Are there any plans in development to update the Wizard?

Eldritch Knight tree needs to be completely re-tooled. Currently it is a mess; yes it allows us to wear medium armor and grab PRR which is great, but it requires many points to be invested with not much benefit. Compared to the new Druid or Favored Soul, or even the Warlock Enlightened Spirit tree, the Eldritch Knight tree is a joke; it needs to give way more PRR/MRR, like wayyyy more. It should be either re-tooled or replaced with a new enhancement tree altogether.

Archmage is probably the most outdated in that the SLAs come too late, cost too much, and are all evaded by EPIC/Legendary mobs reflex saves and their damage is suck ass poor. There are way too many old metamagic optimizing buys and too few useful things in the tree - again compared to the new Druid trees, say, the Archmage tree is mostly useless - you can grab spell pen and spell DCs which are nice, but in EE/LE/ER/LR content over 40% of mobs are deathblocked - why is that? It makes a DC caster completely useless, or forces them in to Shiradi - which is fine but most DC casters are in Magister not Shiradi. It isn't a fun endgame for a wizard to be unable to do anything in endgame content. The Archmage core enhancements need more things in line with the new DDO legendary content, to make them viable casters.

Pale Master is great in heroics but once you hit Epics and legendary become a complete disaster. The skeleton pet becomes useless and costs way too many points - it should cost a total of 6 AP to get a lvl 30 skeleton not 18 points to get a heroic capped idiot skeleton who does literally nothing but chain die. The SLAS need to allow all metamagics be applied to them to allow them to scale correctly to level 30, they do negligible damage in Legendary content now. The entire pale master tree should be rethought to add more necro spell SLAs and work like new druid tree or favored soul tree. Stances like 'vampire' 'wraith' and 'lich' should be made into separate enhancement trees similar to 'Falconry' or 'Vistani Knife fighter' or 'Harper trees.' That way any class could splash into an undead tree - since being undead should not require one to be a wizard. Undead monks, warlocks, druids, etc would be very fun. While you're at making 'Lich' and enhancement tree like 'Harper' consider too a 'werewolf' enhancement tree. Would be very fun too and inline with the core rules about lycanthropy.

Currently the Deep Gnome iconic makes the wizard slightly more viable as an illusionist, but in EE/LE/ER/LR content as I said before 40%+ things are deathblocked or immune to PK so then what? The illusionist has 2 spells - PK and Hypnotic Pattern - there needs to be many many many more spells added to DDO including illusionist spells; the core rules has many. I think its time to add more spells to DDO.

I hope to hear that Wizards are getting a pass soon - especially the pale master because I know many people who play this and spend lots of money to make their undead wizard viable. They shouldn't have to - its agonizing to be on such a core dungeons and dragons class - wizard - that is so impractical for Epic and legendary content.

[Kaboom2112]

What game are you playing?

[Shadow_Jumper]

DC casters are some of the most powerful classes in legendary content.

[blerkington]

It sounds like the problem here is you are using the worst parts of the wizard trees, while perhaps overlooking what makes the class strong. The trees could use some improvement and a lot of what they offer now is a terrible new player trap. But if done right the class will perform well right up into the game's very hardest content.

So rather than railing about how terrible this class is and demanding changes to it, when other people are making it work, the more productive path might be to seek help with your build, gearing and how you play. There are people here who can give you a lot of useful information about how to be effective in low to mid range difficulty content (including early reaper) even on a character with no to minimal past lives and that doesn't have all the best gear in the game.

Thanks.

[cru121]

Here's a good guide to get you started:
https://brieflywriting.com/2012/03/3...-less-is-more/

[Pilgrim1]

wow, wizards are great!

Undead wizards are insainly strong. I was running around healing for 2k/tick! its nuts no other class can do that afk healing.

[Rull]

Eldritch Knight tree needs to be completely re-tooled. Currently it is a mess; yes it allows us to wear medium armor and grab PRR which is great, but it requires many points to be invested with not much benefit. Compared to the new Druid or Favored Soul, or even the Warlock Enlightened Spirit tree, the Eldritch Knight tree is a joke; it needs to give way more PRR/MRR, like wayyyy more. It should be either re-tooled or replaced with a new enhancement tree altogether.

True

Archmage is probably the most outdated in that the SLAs come too late, cost too much, and are all evaded by EPIC/Legendary mobs reflex saves and their damage is suck ass poor. There are way too many old metamagic optimizing buys

True

and too few useful things in the tree - again compared to the new Druid trees, say, the Archmage tree is mostly useless - you can grab spell pen and spell DCs which are nice, but in EE/LE/ER/LR content over 40% of mobs are deathblocked - why is that? It makes a DC caster completely useless, or forces them in to Shiradi

False

The skeleton pet becomes useless and costs way too many points - it should cost a total of 6 AP to get a lvl 30 skeleton not 18 points to get a heroic capped idiot skeleton who does literally nothing but chain die. The SLAS need to allow all metamagics be applied to them to allow them to scale correctly to level 30, they do negligible damage in Legendary content now. The entire pale master tree should be rethought to add more necro spell SLAs and work like new druid tree or favored soul tree.

True

Pale Master is great in heroics but once you hit Epics and legendary become a complete disaster.

False

Currently, Wizards are awful in Epic/Legendary. Because of the amount of hitpoints and DR the mobs have in EE/ER/LE/LR content, Wizards are almost impossible to play and do well, unless you are a competitionist maybe.

Very False

Even though most of your arguments are valid, you derive the wrong conclusions from them. Wizards as a class are strong enough due to the instakills and CC, but many aspects of the enhancements need work.

[Dark_Lord_Mary]

Well, to the lovely trolls above - I've been playing since beta, I run a guild, people come to DDO to play, who are new, and when they make wizards, they all experience the same thing - I have 3 new players in my guild, new to DDO. No past lives, no raid end game gear, no min-max farmed anything - just their wizards, and they get stomped.

I'd like to you you guys who responded above that wizards are fine to post videos of yourself clearing LE/LR content on a 1st life pale master or archmage 'pwning' LE/LR content solo.

I'm not talking about deep gnome illusionist PK monsters or any other iconic - the iconics have many very useful and up-to-date racial abilities which help make the wizard much more viable. This is what I mean. the Wizard enhancement lines are out of date. I am talking about non-iconic wizards

For a first lifer with none of the past lives or gear to fall back on, eldrtich knight, pale master, and archmage are very weak when compared to the sorc, druid, cleric, or favored soul casters, for the reasons I put forth. I will summarize again - The archmage is too meta-efficiency heavy and lacks useful SLAs; the Pale Master doesn't allow metamagics on its SLAs and uses up way too much of the tree on a pet that is useless, and eldritch knight is only good for getting medium armor, the rest of the tree needs to be reworked.

[Rull]

I'd like to you you guys who responded above that wizards are fine to post videos of yourself clearing LE/LR content on a 1st life pale master or archmage 'pwning' LE/LR content solo.

I'm astonished you'd expect a first life to do legendary quests on reaper SOLO!

On the other hand, a first life wizard should be perfectly capable to CC for LH and LE, speeding up a party of first lifers' clear time by up to 100% and increasing chance of success by more than any other class could add to the party.
Same for a first life wizard specialized in instakills, clearing thrash so dps can focus the rednames and deathblocked mobs.

It sounds like the problem lies mainly in your unrealistic expectations of new players and overfocus on soloability.

That said, I agree the trees need an update. Not because the overall powerlevel of wizards -first life or 50th- is in such a bad spot, but because the tree are just badly designed.

[Hobgoblin]

For a first lifer with none of the past lives or gear to fall back on, eldrtich knight, pale master, and archmage are very weak when compared to the sorc, druid, cleric, or favored soul casters, for the reasons I put forth. I will summarize again - The archmage is too meta-efficiency heavy and lacks useful SLAs; the Pale Master doesn't allow metamagics on its SLAs and uses up way too much of the tree on a pet that is useless, and eldritch knight is only good for getting medium armor, the rest of the tree needs to be reworked.

I disagree with this.


while I am not saying past lives are not powerful, the amount of game knowledge you get from doing the trs is invaluable.

what you get from pls (class) 30 hp, +3 evo dc, +60 sp, +3 conj dc, +1 to all schools, +6 to spell pen and a mm sla 10 per rest, +2 int

it seems like a lot, but it can be worked out with gear/party members/knowledge

archmage - a lot of the sla's are useless. grease? chill touch? invis?
perhaps the solution here is to let wizards pick a spell from that school to use as a sla

energy of the scholar needs to be 1 ap per rank like the rest of the sp from other classes

remove the reflex save from the arcane blast and bolt or up the damage
make the capstone better (more int or make it interesting something like have a chance to remove the spell cast of a spell when you cast, or remove the sp cost from all slas)
double the bonus from the primary school in t4/5

Palemaster - i dont actually have an issue with most of this - but it gets hammered in reaper. I cant prove it, but it feels like they get nailed twice from reducing the damage of death aura and then reducing the healing they get
I would rework the pet. take it down to 2 areas instead of 4
i do like the slas but woefully underpowered. maybe add metas back to them?
maybe make death aura passive and undispelled at core 5?


to respond, wizards are not fine, but they are not as bad as you make them out to be.

[Thrudh]

Wizards are not great at soloing reaper, but they can certainly solo EE and LE. And it's really just red-names and bosses that are the issue.

Palemaster SLAs need to be updated. They are indeed worthless. Skeleton is good in heroics, worthless in epics and legendary. Self-healing is rock solid in EE and LE. Low reaper, it still works decently.

Archmage SLAs are decent.

Wizard DPS is not great, although Ruin and Greater Ruin help. Which again is mostly a problem with red-names and bosses on reaper. But you can kill trash quite well as a wizard.

And DC wizards are hugely useful in groups in reaper with Crowd Control.

I'm not sure there is a problem.

[blerkington]

Well, to the lovely trolls above

Maybe the lesson here is next time be more careful about how you approach the issue. There is a huge shift of the goal posts between your first and second post. Your first post is full of unconditional statements about how wizards suck in harder content, which is obviously wrong, and it's entirely appropriate that you be called on such nonsense. Both posts are also very combative, rather than attempting a discussion of what new players can do to be more effective on this class.

Yes, the trees could be improved. But no, not all wizards suck in harder content. And you can fail on any class by making poor build choices, not gearing your character properly, and by attempting content which is too hard. That should be obvious and trying to argue about it is silly.

As an experienced player, you could be guiding newer players away from newb traps into effective builds and helping them get geared so they can perform better. You could teach them how to play an arcane, like what they can do against high spell resistance enemies, targetting low saves, making use of spells with no saving throws, using debuffs, etc. And if for some reason you don't know how to do this yourself, you could be seeking help here instead of getting into a slap fight with us over our replies after doing such a bad job with your first post.

Thanks.

[xenon211]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LStw2FzrhIk

Mainly a duo team for r10's, but that's Rys on a 2nd? life wizzie build showing you that you don't "NEED" PLs to run high difficulty with wizard.

Btw, be careful what you wish for, you too might become the new monks of DDO and end up worse now than before your pass.

[Indubitably]

I can't see them making wizards WORSE.

I get where the OP is coming from. fantastic gear is required to make your spells land in high levels / harder difficulties. Wizards have some great spells that can make them viable in these scenarios, but our enhancement trees are in fact, a joke. Its a class of unique strengths and glaring flaws. A few fixes and it will be fine. But not a noob friendly class. And solo is NOT a great idea.

Palemaster... so much of this tree is pointless garbage. Summon and SLAs. It's an effort to find things to invest in to get to T5 and then the final cores (never tried for the capstone). But the worst thing is reaper difficulty... reaper has killed the necromancer. Unless your with a dedicated group or some amazing players... dont expect anyone to be able to heal you, which is a problem when you can barely heal yourself. Went from being the durable tough suvival option for wizards, to being the fragile liability option in the blink of a new difficulty mode.

Archmage is ok, just needs some updating to what is now common (sla's using metas, less points invested, maybe something new thats not just RAW STAT increases).

Elderitch Knight.... hahaha

My main issue with wizards is that I feel like there is little option for me. Palemaster's whole undead self healing mechanic is worthless now, a liability in reaper. EK is utter garbage and unusable. Archmage is a bit on the boring side, but the only option. I feel wizards need another enhancement tree thats not so crazy out of the box. Wild mage springs to mind (which, ironically, is "out of the box").

The other problem is damage.... every other class can at least do decent damage, reguardless of what they are good at or supposed to do. And they can do it either for free, or for very very cheap (often enough that echos can keep them going).
Wizards can't. With unusable SLAs and terrible melee (even with EK)... wizards get stuck. No options. I know wizards CAN instakill CC... even at legendary/reaper.. and I don't think thats where wizards need to be made better. But for leveling and heroics/epic... why can't we do some damage? and not get stuck on bosses because of SP.

Third issue... and not a problem so much. We really need a spell pass. So many amazing spells... made pointless because of poor numbers/coding/scaling/... and so many awesome potential spells that could be added. LIKE ILLUSION SPELLS! You have gnomes, and you have spellsingers (who focus on illusion, enchantment, and evocation) and almost no illusion spells. And so many classic mainstream spells are illusion.
Mirror Image, project image / simulacrum / mislead, all the shadow spells, Solipsism, ... give us colourspray as a spell!

TLDR;
Wizards are fine end game, just overly gear reliant. To fix early/solo game
> Too many bad (old) enhancements to invest in. The ones that are good are bland and boring. Feels like were missing out on build choice.
> Pale masters undead form is a crippling liability in reaper mode. EK is a joke.
> Insanely poor sustained / single target damage. Terri-bad at killing named monsters and bosses. Can be bad at killing trash. SLAs are shamefully bad (especially necro).
> Spells need a pass, more spells would be nice after so many years.

*EDIT* and give us colourspray as a learnable lvl1 spell since its now in the game anyway as a gnome SLA!

[Elfishski]

For a first lifer with none of the past lives or gear to fall back on, eldrtich knight, pale master, and archmage are very weak when compared to the sorc, druid, cleric, or favored soul casters, for the reasons I put forth. I will summarize again - The archmage is too meta-efficiency heavy and lacks useful SLAs; the Pale Master doesn't allow metamagics on its SLAs and uses up way too much of the tree on a pet that is useless, and eldritch knight is only good for getting medium armor, the rest of the tree needs to be reworked.

There is a world of difference between "first life wizards are an incredible struggle, especially at high level" compared to "wizards all suck".

I think we can all agree with the first statement, and a wizard is definitely the last class I would recommend to a new player. But that doesn't mean that wizards are doing badly. Unreasonably zergy high skull legendary completions very often have a wizard at their core, and in the hands of a skilled player they do what they do better than anyone else. Upcoming pass on wizards needs to tread a bit carefully as a result, but making wizards less terrible for new players would certainly be nice.

[HungarianRhapsody]

wow, wizards are great!

Undead wizards are insainly strong. I was running around healing for 2k/tick! its nuts no other class can do that afk healing.

Did they fix the max caster level for the Death Aura/Lesser Death Aura? I didn't get anywhere near 2k/tick the last time I was a Wizard.

[Enoach]

Well, they did recently announce they are hoping to have the Caster Pass (Wizard/Sorcerer) before the end of the year

https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea...=1#post6144863

[count_spicoli]

Why would anyone want healing for a wizzie? You should never get hit. Get hit =dead. Cc and staying away you really shouldn't need healing. Wizzie is not one of the classes I think need help right now. Ftr on the other hand. They keep nerfi g them into the ground. Can't use action boosts together and power surge was way to powerful so let's give a handful of them. That's a class that has problems

[Indubitably]

Why would anyone want healing for a wizzie? You should never get hit. Get hit =dead. Cc and staying away you really shouldn't need healing. Wizzie is not one of the classes I think need help right now. Ftr on the other hand. They keep nerfi g them into the ground. Can't use action boosts together and power surge was way to powerful so let's give a handful of them. That's a class that has problems

Your right, wizards totally don't need healing. Other classes don't (well, only rogue and fighter spring to mind, but still).
However, when one of our trees core mechanic is "making us undead" and all of a sudden repair/healing doesn't work. Healing becomes a problem. It doesn't matter if its self healing or other, but there needs to be some way. And no one expects divine casters to go around packing "harm" and "cause critical wounds", there is no "Mass harm" nor would that be cast just for you. Harm is also not a buyable scroll.

It's one of those "it wasn't an issue until they made it an issue" kind of things. With EK existing, wizards can't afford to ignore PM much. Going PM introduced a serious healing issue. I know "wizards shouldn't be hit" but its rediculous to assume a wizard will never be hit, or any class for that matter. To further that, many undead forms have some form of melee bonus, with the terrible intention that maybe these should be used for some melee build... getting hit is going to be more likely under these scenarios. Obviously the pure core idea of a wizards is glass cannon, but with the defensive enhancements in PM... clearly they are catering to different playstyles, and thats the right thing to do.

[Malekithe]

I am pretty much a ddo noob, but began playing dice and paper d&d 38 years ago and have nearly 20 years mmo time(started eq1), stopped playing about 4 years ago just before reaper and slavelords and have recently returned to playing =) Very excited about the caster pass, thought it would never come... I play a 20 sorc and 20 wiz and that is all I ever intend to play. So here goes.

Arcane bolt/blast and necrotic touch/bolt/blast should all be 2d6 dmg per caster level, and the necrotics should be able to be at least quickened, probably quickened/heightened. This doubling of dice seems warranted considering the arcanes can be evaded, and the necrotics scale at 50% spellpower. If 2d6 seems a bit much, 1d12 would be fine.

PM minion should for sure scale better, if you put all the points in he should be equivalent to a fighter of your level equipped in cherry picked green gear, with summoning augment feats/destinies etc adding further.

One of my biggest problems is with the magister and draconic destinies. All the other destinies give a bonuses/ability at each rank, and rank 0 gives bonuses/ability+1 class level for each additional rank, however draconic and magister specifically state at rank 0 that you get 50sp and +1 caster level for each additional rank, but you do not get this. At rank 1 draco/mag you get 50sp and +1 caster level, yet if the text were true, and the destiny equivalent to the others, you would in fact, in total, get 100sp and +2 caster levels, counting the stacking rank 0 bonus. In other words rank 5 draco/mag should give 500sp and +10 caster levels, not the 250/+5 it currently gives. Only the rank 5 gives caster level and sp in addition to an ability/bonuses like ALL the other destinies. This change would increase damage for the PM and archmagi SLAs(and a few spells) and spell pen for DC casters as well. An arcane caster should never feel an arcane destiny is unviable to main destiny, and that they should only use it for twisting...

I do not have the lives to play DC caster style, so damage is my thing, but from what I read on the forums DC casters are in a good place DC wise, surely some spell pen wouldn't unbalance them considering wards etc. I don't think anyone should expect DC casting to affect bosses.

No idea what to do with eldritch knight, it's a mess, I just use it for reducing arcane spell failure....

Anyway these are some clear and simple changes I think would increase wiz viability a lot, to be honest since the changes to apotheosis vulnerability debuffing and the awaken vulnerability enhance, sorc seems pretty fine, excepting, again, the draconic/magister destiny rank 0 issue, which in contrast to other destinies seems downright unjust.

EDIT: The epic/epic destiny "spell" feats should be proper SLAs and treated as such, being able to be meta'd at no additional cost. Most of them are already quite costly in spell points as they are, and considering many of them are the crowning achievement for a variety of playstyles, they should be more significant, not just a filler feat or "use only in emergencies". Examples are glacial wrath, hellball, arcane pulse, ruin, spirit blades etc etc. Most of these are not nearly as useful or impactful as feats from other spheres, and when used are situational at best.

And to add to the problems with the draconic and magister destinies above, a specific example, primal avatar, it gets a stacking per rank bonus at rank 0 and rank 1 for a total of 2, in addition to bonuses/ability at each rank. Whereas draconic and magister essentially get Nothing at all ranks 1-4.