10 weeks have passed,thoughts?

[AstralUniverse]

It sounds like their value comes from team play and thus I would assume they are played by players who join factions, enter politics, and generally dont need to solo with summons, perhaps.

[perseid]

It sounds like their value comes from team play and thus I would assume they are played by players who join factions, enter politics, and generally dont need to solo with summons, perhaps.

Enchantment wizard is interesting. First, if you're going to be a mords bot anyway then the Good Hope is just an extra feature for your value to the team as you touched on. But Enchanters also care less about minion nerfs in pve because if you're tackling an area via things you dominated then you're not that impacted by the nerfs anyway.

[AstralUniverse]

Enchantment wizard is interesting. First, if you're going to be a mords bot anyway then the Good Hope is just an extra feature for your value to the team as you touched on. But Enchanters also care less about minion nerfs in pve because if you're tackling an area via things you dominated then you're not that impacted by the nerfs anyway.

First of all, I dont think all wizard paths need to be equally strong. So if at least 1-2 wizard builds are very valuable to players, its already quite a lot. I agree most wizard paths are memes but I dont know if that's actually an issue.

Secondly, correct me if I'm wrong but several players have said (in this thread or in other threads) that Conduit has barely been touched in the last round of nerfs and that it still performs great in late-game content.

So if the class has tools to perform late-game content and is also appealing in RP and especially in team play, what is the problem?
In comparison, most dexers are also at the mercy of finding a party early on because their soloing is abysmal early on when they still dont have damage to solo.

[perseid]

Enchantment wizard is interesting. First, if you're going to be a mords bot anyway then the Good Hope is just an extra feature for your value to the team as you touched on. But Enchanters also care less about minion nerfs in pve because if you're tackling an area via things you dominated then you're not that impacted by the nerfs anyway.

First of all, I dont think all wizard paths need to be equally strong. So if at least 1-2 wizard builds are very valuable to players, its already quite a lot. I agree most wizard paths are memes but I dont know if that's actually an issue.

Secondly, correct me if I'm wrong but several players have said (in this thread or in other threads) that Conduit has barely been touched in the last round of nerfs and that it still performs great in late-game content.

So if the class has tools to perform late-game content and is also appealing in RP and especially in team play, what is the problem?
In comparison, most dexers are also at the mercy of finding a party early on because their soloing is abysmal early on when they still dont have damage to solo.

I don't think every path needs to be equally strong but I don't think it's unfair to suggest that at least half of them should be roughly at par with each other which I'm not sure I would say is the case. If you just want "a few wizards" to be good then why bother having all the fancy specializations at all? Mind you I think the specialization expansions were a mistake that complicates balance so personally I wouldn't disagree with just axing them so that wizards at large can have more toys but I doubt that'll happen because it means the dev who designed them will have their effort wasted.

To the point about conduit, not everyone wants to run conduit. Necromancers don't want to be told "If you're not performing just take conduit". It's already bad enough that if you use undead your only good option in pvp is still to spam Gate after the MD changes to scrolls. Expanding further, what is the point of all the streams and such if the design goal is going to be "People who actually want to clear in pve need to spend a feat to do so"? It relegates are large amount of summon options to being a leveling novelty at best. Before the current round of nerfs you could at least justify S:IX and G.PB as sufficient even if there was a clear speed different in high-end content.

I think my own issue with wizard pve is... it's a hassle and not a very rewarding one when you could just be an optimal gish or mundane and circle grind with ease. If I don't want to run conduit I'm basically constantly doing minor things to supplement the minion to keep it alive when I could just be a more efficient non-caster who just leftclicks through everything. I know it's kind of controversial to focus on "valuable" content but... That's my priority as a player so I just don't have feedback beyond that lens and I don't think wizard is nearly as effective as many classes in that regard.

To the early game point... I don't really have a good rebuttle. I don't care about early game leveling when most characters will spend the majority of their time at level 30.

[-XXX-]

The only difference I see between Conduit and MDust atm. is a corner case scenario where an unanswered Conduit has a higher probability of killing a player character than unanswered MDust.

Conduit has:

• better baseline stats
• it's the only summon that double-dips in Epic Caster Bonus and ESF bonus.

As a result it has much higher out of the box and ready to go AB than MDust summons - enough to threaten player characters.
This isn't true for MDust - while one can bridge the stat difference with NE burst and Stone bones, this costs spell slots, tempo and still won't result in on-par stats.

When it comes to PvE MDust offers a wider toolbox and is generally much more fun to play around with than Conduit

[AstralUniverse]

If you just want "a few wizards" to be good then why bother having all the fancy specializations at all?

RP reasons. I feel like I already gave you this very answer regarding something else entirely recently. There are many baits and traps in the game, designed for people who care soley about doing this one specialized thing in rp and dont care about combat much. These things were born usually as a result of players asking for them. You can imagine something along the lines of "I'm a Conjuration specialist and I got nothing". So these specializations were given cookies but at no point I think they were meant to be stronger than generalist. Enchantement spec was possibly unintended exception in that sense. Again, I'm speculating an example here but the premise is that not all classes/paths are designed to be equally strong, some of them just have a cookie for people who would already play it regardless but now they at least got a cookie. Spec wizards exist in vanila nwn and they are much worse than they are here.

To the point about conduit, not everyone wants to run conduit.

I agree, that when it comes to epic summons we should set a goal that all of them are more or less equally strong. It's hard to do when they come out in several different streams and when each spell has different number of creatures summoned, but I do agree Conduit shouldnt be much better than other options and we should aspire towards balance in that regard.

I think my own issue with wizard pve is... it's a hassle and not a very rewarding one when you could just be an optimal gish or mundane and circle grind with ease.

I think this is where I generally find myself disagreeing with caster players.
I played casters, and I played mundanes, for 18 years on and off, and at no point in time I felt like grinding on mundane is easier. Maybe that's just my perspective but none the less, your opinion here is not something I understand or agree with. Whenever I play a mundane, and I roll 1 against some silly cround control and stare at the screen for 2 minutes dying slowly but steadily I wish I played a caster damnit.

[perseid]

If you just want "a few wizards" to be good then why bother having all the fancy specializations at all?

RP reasons. I feel like I already gave you this very answer regarding something else entirely recently. There are many baits and traps in the game, designed for people who care soley about doing this one specialized thing in rp and dont care about combat much. These things were born usually as a result of players asking for them. You can imagine something along the lines of "I'm a Conjuration specialist and I got nothing". So these specializations were given cookies but at no point I think they were meant to be stronger than generalist. Enchantement spec was possibly unintended exception in that sense. Again, I'm speculating an example here but the premise is that not all classes/paths are designed to be equally strong, some of them just have a cookie for people who would already play it regardless but now they at least got a cookie. Spec wizards exist in vanila nwn and they are much worse than they are here.

To the point about conduit, not everyone wants to run conduit.

I agree, that when it comes to epic summons we should set a goal that all of them are more or less equally strong. It's hard to do when they come out in several different streams and when each spell has different number of creatures summoned, but I do agree Conduit shouldnt be much better than other options and we should aspire towards balance in that regard.

I think my own issue with wizard pve is... it's a hassle and not a very rewarding one when you could just be an optimal gish or mundane and circle grind with ease.

I think this is where I generally find myself disagreeing with caster players.
I played casters, and I played mundanes, for 18 years on and off, and at no point in time I felt like grinding on mundane is easier. Maybe that's just my perspective but none the less, your opinion here is not something I understand or agree with. Whenever I play a mundane, and I roll 1 against some silly cround control and stare at the screen for 2 minutes dying slowly but steadily I wish I played a caster damnit.

I think you're right about a lot of our disagreement coming down to general differences of mindset. That said, I think in the case of mundanes I could elaborate a little more. You're not wrong about the cc angle in my opinion. Since not many dungeons are breach/dispel heavy it's very easy to just slap on some extended buffs and be generally safe from instant-shutdown abilities in pve that might force a -pray or just a begrudging acceptance of death.

The reason I think melees have the edge really comes down to my grind preferences I think. I like to do grinding in long bursts so that I can just focus on making money and then dedicate the rest of my time to rp (even if that rp might be going out with people to a dugeon or something). In that regard I like melees because I can just repeatedly churn through zones without needing to think about things like buff durations, rest% management, or anything like that. There's more upfront costs from disposables and gear maintenance but my own feeling is that if you're doing extensive grind sessions then clear times in zones with ideal work:return ratios are a bit faster and have less downtown needed for spell prepping.