Two questions about playing wizard as a complete newbie

[Paragoons]

Is archmage really viable, I was reading some stuff and it seems like at level 5 everything is a bit of a challenge and even my friend the pally deals more damage.

Also if I reset to palemaster can that be a ranger caster/summoner only or do you have to dip into elderich knight?

[Mercureal]

Is archmage really viable, I was reading some stuff and it seems like at level 5 everything is a bit of a challenge and even my friend the pally deals more damage.

Also if I reset to palemaster can that be a ranger caster/summoner only or do you have to dip into elderich knight?

I'm not an expert with Wizard, but Archmage isn't a great tree to focus on. The SLAs it gives you are generally weak, and the other abilities in the tree are both expensive and limited. But there's no harm in putting some points into it to try it out, since enhancements are easy to reset.

Pale Master is strong, and you can definitely play as a ranged caster. Eldritch Knight is also a good tree and is worth putting points into, you don't need to use the melee skills if you don't want to and there are some good defensive bonuses at tiers 1 and 2. However, if you're playing solo or in a small party you might find it hard to completely avoid monster attention, and if you find that happening the EK melee abilities can be useful.

[Enoach]

I'm a long time wizard player. My preferred tree is the Pale Master. It's strength is in the necro focus and negative energy. Bonus in self healing.

I am currently doing my Warforged Lives and am experiencing these lives using the Archmage tree.

The advantage of this tree is the SLA based on a chosen school. My experience is these should be used to supplement and not be the main focus. You can still focus on your chosen path, be it a DC caster (Instant death/Crowd Control) or Nuker (limited by sp, not by metas).

So far I can say AM works, but I will admit I won't focus here because of my enjoyment of the PM.

As for Eldritch Knight, I enjoy using this for melee or range focus builds.

[slarden]

Casting is tough at lower levels and it's a tough class for a new player.

If you happen to have veteran's status II, shared bank and alchemist you can make a level 7 alchemist character that will give you a really good orb you can put in your shared bank and use on your wizard.

I would also take maximize and empower right out of the gate. You can use those for free on slas - so for example magic missle, chain missles and arcane bolt from the archmage tree. Necrotic blast from the necromancer tree. You probably want to turn metamagic off on most of your spells but for slas they are free so I try to get as much mileage as I can out of fully meta'd slas.

Martial builds are easier to play so you can also consider eldritch knight for damage with support spells. Harper Agent tree gives you intelligence for attack and damage which synergizes nice with eldritch knight. Know the Angles boosts your damage even more based on intelligence - so it would be fairly easy to make the transition from caster to martial. A pale master eldritch knight gives you good self-healing and survivability.

[janave]

Is archmage really viable, I was reading some stuff and it seems like at level 5 everything is a bit of a challenge and even my friend the pally deals more damage.

Also if I reset to palemaster can that be a ranger caster/summoner only or do you have to dip into elderich knight?

Archmage is a very old enhancement tree, all casters are generally weak in the early game, their base damage automatically improves with level ups, the trade off is that early on, that base damage is really low compared to warrior type builds. You can pick up Empower and Maximize feats, they will scale your spells by * 2.25, and apply them to the tree's spells: Arcane Bolt, (spell like abilities) for 0 spell point cost.

Casters generally get a large boost at level 12th, when they get tier 5th enhancements and-or 6th level spells. Also spell power and critical chance found on gear becomes a lot higher. There are a couple of low level named items too that raise caster level on a subset of spells. example: https://ddowiki.com/page/Item:Winter%27s_Wrath ( +1 damage dice on level 1,2,3 frost spells)

Early on it can help to pick up wand and scroll mastery, and carry lightning bolt, fireball wands, mainly to save spell points.

Archmage is not very up to date for current difficulty spikes, but the Wizard base class is very versatile, has a lot of tools to work with.

[KoobTheProud]

I put a very newbie friendly EK/PM build in the forum.

If you want to feel strong in the game almost right away take a look at it. It gets around a lot of the new player traps and probably more importantly it does the things the game encourages now.

[Montegue]

Archmage is terrible and needs a complete overhaul. PM and EK are the trees that work for us.

[archest]

I think it would help the specialization study of the other trees with spell penetration for enchantment spells as an example,
possibly add to warlock for a multiclass to gain the benefits of this tree? as a secondary tree.