Why Play Wizard or Sorceror?

[But Will It Blend]

I am conflicted.

Wizard is my favorite class in pen and paper.

I've been leveling one with a warlock and a cleric.

Both of them independently of me, do better at anything I'd want to do, far earlier, and it's not even close. The warlock has better CC, as it's infinite. Better damage from eldritch blast (Infinite). And later better healing.

The cleric can summon and do other things, heal, and has more damage and also more options.

Clerics got a lot of love. A lot of other classes got a lot of love.

Specialist wizards feel like a trap. And they don't give you enough for what you get.

Why would anyone play this outside of RP if every other spellcaster does what you do better? With summons nerfed too, unless you go necromancy you're kind of just incredibly bad. I've made it part of a joke that my character spent his entire life studying to be a wizard to be outclassed 10x over by everything else and it was a bad use of his magic tuition and entire life so far.

I will pre-empt anyone who says "BUT THE RP! ITS POPULAR STILL!". I get it. RP is important. But also you shouldn't feel like you're objectively worse and can't even fill a role in the party not better served by LITERALLY anyone else.

[But Will It Blend]

Added note: Saving throw spells are also basically worthless in PVP. And in PVE you're still getting entirely outclassed.

The new changes to gear crafting will make this even worse. I've not had a single build I've made that can fail almost any saving throw on anything but a 1.

Another added note: Even mundane classes are able to do the cool stuff that you'd need to spend 3 feats to do as a wizard with all those bonus feats. I just don't see where this class fits in any group anymore.

[silverpheonix]

I've seen plenty of builds that fail saves handily.

But I agree. Specialist wizard is in a bad spot. There's a few specific builds and combos that are still quite strong, but the fun in wizard has crashed hard since the summon and pixie nerfs.

Arcane Flux is unreliable and best used to keep haste up 80% of the dungeon. Otherwise you lose your cantrips in one mob.

You can't open chests without dipping or gearing for DT. And if you gear swap you're losing spell slots. Or you're still forced to go pixie for the +10 DT bonus and sacrifice some skill slots on your gear. The pixie change was supposed to make other familiars worth taking. It has, but it's made the dungeon experience worse.

It's been a real struggle to find any dungeon on wizard fun lately.

[Security_Blanket]

I find myself in the same conflicted position, I have an Elementalist and I have a Wizard, the Elementalist flies through PvE, I often don't even bother with a summon I blast things so effectively and without having to keep a close eye on those annoying Spell Components. The wizard on the other hand gets less HD, a very limited number of castings, even with Arcane Flux in the mix it only speeds things up a little bit, the Spellbound Wands are nice if you've got the money to eventually buy one.

Everyone has high saves, even if you fail you can just -pray out of it, you can keep drinking heal pots, greater restoration runes, mords gems, anti-magic rods, word of faith scrolls. It feels like there are these archaic items and systems were put in place when Wizards/Sorcerers were in a different position that have severely hurt the class as more things were added to make them obsolete.

[Anomandaris]

There have been a series of changes over the last several years that have made martials obscenely powerful and also made wizard/sorc very underwhelming compared to other caster classes.

Magic levels are way too high on gear, and just getting worse. Everyone has +5 weapons making premo useless. HP pools and saves are obscene. Spellcraft changes made formerly viable spells not viable. Inficasters are more prevelant. Loot matrix like anti-magic and mords gems give mundanes high-magic access for coin, which is basically infinite. Pray is a thing, greater resto is a thing, heal is a thing (grats your spellbook is empty you better run). And now for some reason we have more abilities on CD that provide saveless arcane spell failure.

Not to mention what is probably the biggest factor. Unless you're a palemaster, you're getting your spells interrupted. This is devastating to a caster, and pretty much ends the fight. The only thing you can do is cast from scroll or epic spell otherwise archers, str builds, warlocks and others are going to 90-100% reliably interrupt EVERY SPELL YOU TRY AND CAST. I've said before its akin to me doing dmg to a martial and them losing every APR for the round or -20 ab.

The list goes on and on. I'm not sure how anyone seriously looking at mechanical balance thinks that these classes are in a balanced state. They're still fun to play, but it's just laughably out of sync. Tons of chars running around dishing out 150-200+ damage crits with AB over 50 with HP pools of 600+ and unbeatable saves, and access to 95% of wards, magic, and immunities that matter through wands and scrolls.

Why play a wizard when you can play a martial that has a majority of what makes a wizard powerful? People complain about save vs. death and CC abilities, but death ward is not on the breach list (for some crazy reason) and getting one rounded by a Str martial or dual wielding dexer is basically the same thing.

[Dreams]

They’re fun to RP. That’s basically the reason. All of the mechanical issues can be overcome with some planning, or by thinking about specialising in a certain school or method.

Cool builds to try:
(Shadow Mage) Sorcerer 27 / Dirgesinger 3
(Your fav specialist school) Wizard 22 / Loremaster 5 / Specialist 3

[Xersaoth]

There is a group of players who consistently choose wizards in pretty much every game and expect them to perform on par with the classes such as fighter and rogue.

On Arelith, the wizard has disappointingly become one of the weakest classes in PvP, surpassed probably only by the bard, which is a total support class, and the commoner.

As someone who has played the wizard class in every possible variation, I will not even bother listing all of its comparative and significant weaknesses - it is a long list.

However, it is worth mentioning that unless players choose a race with a natural Intelligence bonus, they cannot even access a full spellbook or have 8 spells in the 9th circle without taking the Great Intelligence V feat. This is absurd.

Wizards absolutely need some significant empowerment.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

Added note: Saving throw spells are also basically worthless in PVP.

this is completely misleading, but the outliers have been slowly getting addressed. see: alignment protection spells losing their universal save components.

[AskRyze]

There is no real reason to play Wizard.

The reason to play Sorcerer is to have a 3 level dip in Pal/BG, have untouchable saves + div shield AC, and ready access to Mass Haste, IGMS, and Mordenkainen's Disjunction on tap while your buddy who is playing a better class than you kills people. That is the one thing Sorcerer does.

That is all.

[Kalthariam]

Div Sorcerer is fine, until you have someone drink 50 cure critical heal potions and completely out heal every single spell you can push out. You have protections, but your offenses are a very short burst, and if it doesn't kill your target. You are dead. And it's awful in Dungeons because everything has hundreds of HP, you can't do nearly enough damage before running out of spells, and half your spells are hazardous to your allies. You exist to buff martial, and give them haste. That is your purpose.

Wizards with a lot of knowledge on their spells, and I mean A LOT, and knowledge on what you are fighting can win skirmishes, but it takes significantly more effort, planning, preparation and actual execution of abilities and skills to pull off what other classes can do effortlessly.

Martials Rule the world of Arelith. Spellcasters exist only to support martial characters. There are those that do not want to admit this. But it is the truth.

Also the Fact Elementalists and Warlocks exist is a giant slap to the face of all other casters on Arelith.

Some Cleric Paths are fine, others are utterly lackluster.

[RaeRey]

Added note: Saving throw spells are also basically worthless in PVP.

this is completely misleading, but the outliers have been slowly getting addressed. see: alignment protection spells losing their universal save components.

The extremely slot-limited DC spells that a wizard can cast are worthless in PvP against people who have gear.

Anyone who knows how to put relatively cheap T2 runes onto their gear can have great save vs spell. You don't even need T3 runes for this.

e.g. An 8 base wisdom Fighter/Cavalier/Weaponmaster (all three are low-will classes) with no save feats, and cross-class spellcraft has a +36 will save vs spells which is reached with T2 runed gear and hour/level buffs.

In comparison, a 26 base INT wizard, with Epic Spell Focus, reaches DC39 on 9th circle spells (which have to compete for slots with Mords, Timestop, Gate), or DC38 on 8th circle spells.

Even in the ideal scenario, a wizard cannot fit more than one or two 9th circle DC spells, so they must rely on five or six 8th circle DC spells at DC38. When someone's lowest save is a +36 will save, they can roll a 2 + 36 = 38 vs DC38 spells, and only fail by rolling a nat1.

And no, the stacking penalty on repeated casts of a spell between 7-9th circle (and the much weaker version on 4-6th circle) that can reduce saves to +35 do not help, since the duration is so low, and the wizard has so few spell slots to take advantage of this mechanic.

Even if saves are reduced to +35, your 8th circle spells only have a 10% chance to work. On average, you will use up all your 8th circle spell slots without a single one working. The DC spells below 8th circle is a nat1 fisher against +35 saves.

[RaeRey]

Saving throw spells are also basically worthless in PVP.

This is not true. A hemomancer can spam 20+ 9th circle spells in a row, reducing anyone's saves down to +35 with the stacking -2 penalty mechanic designed for infinicaster spamming the same spells over and over.

Invokers also get heightened DCs on some spells to ensure they work better when saves are lowered to +35. (e.g. Hemomancer gets DC38 Great Thunderclap compared to DC37 on wizard, so it's twice as likely to work compared to wizard.)

If you play a wizard, and most of your spells are tied up in spell slots below 8th circle, then enjoy being useless.
People roll 2 + 35 = 37 vs DC37 success against your 7th circle spells.

[Sincra]

Anyone who knows how to put relatively cheap T2 runes onto their gear can have great save vs spell. You don't even need T3 runes for this.

e.g. An 8 base wisdom Fighter/Cavalier/Weaponmaster (all three are low-will classes) with no save feats, and cross-class spellcraft has a +36 will save vs spells which is reached with T2 runed gear and hour/level buffs.

Let's examine this claim:
20 of 3 low will save classes,
6 base will
5 epic level will

11 base will
Assumed 20 save cap is met by your argument, 31 will vs spells
8 wis, let's do an assumption you're counting as if you geared for 7 wisdom ontop of saves ontop of skills ontop of str/dex and con you hit 36 will saves at your absolute peak.

This is alot of assumptions, but that aside I'd like to see how your gear looks with just t2 runes to reach that!

[RaeRey]

I'd like to see how your gear looks with just t2 runes to reach that!

[Kalthariam]

Is the Protection from Alignment still +4? I Thought they fixed that.

Even so, that is still +31 base, +34 with Greater Owl's wisdom, does that have Iron Will at all? Which is pretty high. Though not impossible to beat. I think I managed to push my Clerics Storm of Vengeance DC to hit 40. But ya know, you just gotta walk out of that.

[RaeRey]

Is the Protection from Alignment still +4? I Thought they fixed that.

Even so, that is still +31 base, +34 with Greater Owl's wisdom, does that have Iron Will at all? Which is pretty high. Though not impossible to beat. I think I managed to push my Clerics Storm of Vengeance DC to hit 40. But ya know, you just gotta walk out of that.

Protection from Alignment is +2 Fort, +2 Reflex, +4 Will.

Greater Owl's Wisdom gives 6 wisdom on average.
Normal Owl's Wisdom gives 5 wisdom.
I put a single point of wisdom on gear.
= +12 soft wisdom.

No save feats at all, but fighter has plenty of room for save feats, so I can exchange Great Strength III and Great Strength IV for Epic Will and Epic Reflex.

[Kalthariam]

Oh, I didn't realize it was +4 Will specifically, learning something new everyday! Hah ^^;

Thought it was just a flat +2. Still! Yeah, that's pretty crazy seeing how you can slap on iron will and epic iron will and hit 40 with a greater owls wisdom, and then my cleric's just fishing for 1's even with a solid DC 40 on a 9th level spell.

[Kuma]

Greater Owl's Wisdom

[Windows95 CD-ROM]

Is the Protection from Alignment still +4? I Thought they fixed that.

Even so, that is still +31 base, +34 with Greater Owl's wisdom, does that have Iron Will at all? Which is pretty high. Though not impossible to beat. I think I managed to push my Clerics Storm of Vengeance DC to hit 40. But ya know, you just gotta walk out of that.

Protection from Alignment is +2 Fort, +2 Reflex, +4 Will.

Greater Owl's Wisdom gives 6 wisdom on average.
Normal Owl's Wisdom gives 5 wisdom.
I put a single point of wisdom on gear.
= +12 soft wisdom.

No save feats at all, but fighter has plenty of room for save feats, so I can exchange Great Strength III and Great Strength IV for Epic Will and Epic Reflex.

Where are you getting a consistent source of greater owl's wisdom?

[RaeRey]

Where are you getting a consistent source of greater owl's wisdom?

If you're not finding them in drops, a limited quantity of greater zoo pots are sold by an NPC, with stock updated after a server reset.

Should be more than enough for all the PvP you get into, especially considering how many hours a single potion will last. You certainly don't need it for PvE.

[AskRyze]

I will state something for the benefit of the class - I feel like people nowadays forget just how good Mords is. Sure we have Mord gems, sure we have grimores. But I think that access to no-holds-barred 26 ECL Mords is one of the things gatekeeping wizard and sorc. It's still one of the best parts of Spellsword, and was removed from Hemo and Ele for a very good reason.

The discussion of saving throws comes around every time someone brings up casters - I'm honestly on the side of lowering saving throw accessibility across the board, or otherwise doing a full remake of most spells so that they have a partial effect on successful saves - and I think that, realistically, players have just moved away from using save spells in combat unless they're playing Lock or Hemo who can get away with rolling 5% chances on repeat. Players had moved to Withering Ray (pre-nerf, though it's still good), Redbolt, Eldritch Blast, Darkbolt, Sound Lance, and other spells that either deal saveless damage or 'enough damage when saved' that it doesn't matter - and there are enough of these options to make blasting an appropriate and viable strategy in the current state of the game... You just have to be playing one of the three classes (Lock, Hemo, Elementalist) or archetypes (Defiler cleric, to name one) that make it sustainable.

We do not play in an era where a wizard can cast one spell on a pack of mobs and let his summoned creature mop up the rest - Or, if he can, he'll find that he doesn't have the spell slots to make up for what his summon can't just plow through directly. Even though Mords is a horrifyingly powerful tool, it doesn't kill your enemies directly. Spellsword, again, benefits heavily: they target AC with reasonable AB, allowing them to directly pressure hitpoints without worrying about saving throws, and have access to both a better spell refresh mechanic than Wizard ever will have and plenty of sources of offensive magic to use when their spellstrike procs a refresh. That said, dungeons are dense with content and XP, and in order to clear those dungeons efficiently you either need to kill 15+ packs of player equivalent mobs (usually player-superior mobs at that) or bring someone who can - in the form of a friend or an antfrog. Wizards and sorcs cannot keep up with the pace of the game...

...And I'd argue they never could, but instead just relied on their summons to keep the pace for them.

[Windows95 CD-ROM]

Where are you getting a consistent source of greater owl's wisdom?

If you're not finding them in drops, a limited quantity of greater zoo pots are sold by an NPC, with stock updated after a server reset.

Should be more than enough for all the PvP you get into, especially considering how many hours a single potion will last. You certainly don't need it for PvE.

I'm familiar with this npc, their stock rotates between resets (Owl's wisdom is occasionally part of this rotation, and one or two are sold) and some resets he doesn't sell anything at all. Those potions in particular are only sold once as well, I've come and found his stock of rp items completely ransacked of all 'optimal' items from time to time. I think this should be considered importantly for the argument of this spell being considered for high saves or pvp, given how rare these items are to be found or how difficult they are to attain.

TL;DR, These potions are rare and not everyone you'll encounter will have them. (You'd need to spend every reset running over and purchasing them before anyone else does.)

[AskRyze]

TL;DR, These potions are rare and not everyone you'll encounter will have them. (You'd need to spend every reset running over and purchasing them before anyone else does.)

"You cannot kill that which has no life" has never been a more literally applicable quote

[Windows95 CD-ROM]

TL;DR, These potions are rare and not everyone you'll encounter will have them. (You'd need to spend every reset running over and purchasing them before anyone else does.)

"You cannot kill that which has no life" has never been a more literally applicable quote

I suppose you got me there. It's too bad that these rp items are getting used like that.

[RaeRey]

no-holds-barred 30+ECL Mords

Mords is never CL30+.

Wizard mords is capped at CL23 + 1 per Abjuration Spell Focii feat, (CL26 max) using their precious 9th circle spell slots.
Loremaster mords is capped at CL22 + 1 per Abjuration Spell Focii feat (CL25 max) cast from a big stack of scrolls with refunds.

So the advantage of having a wizard is the action economy of opening combat with two CL26 mords, while the loremaster steadily scrolls mords repeatedly over the duration of the fight.

Evangalist / Loremaster / Dirgesinger for example will currently have CL28, CL30 vs dispels, and a near limitless amount of CL25 Mords scrolls to spam repeatedly.