How Would you Fix Broken Power: Beguiling Strands

[Tony Vargas]

In essence the Sorcerer IS that build, but created as a primary striker. Certainly with PHB1 you couldn't really build an excellent staff build. Even so, T-Wave is still decent as a vs Fort backup power too.

PH1 staff wizard seemed pretty awesome at the time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

PH1 staff wizard seemed pretty awesome at the time.

Well, sure, but then you start to look at how it works...

There wasn't the defense feat for using a staff back then, nor the feat for boosting your AC in cloth, etc. Staff is a two-handed weapon, so you couldn't play with the two-weapon feats either. That seriously limited your AC options. You could start with an OK AC, but it was hard to really keep up.

Raging Storm requires CON and DEX, while T-Wave requires WIS. There's simply no really good secondary for staff wizards. You could go with CON, maybe squeeze in a 13 DEX, and 12 WIS, but that wouldn't make your T-Wave super potent.

Overall you'd be reasonably tough (modest AC, modest HP, Staff of Defense + Shield) in melee, with a couple reasonable powers, but you're not getting great control, or else you're falling back on powers more ideally suited to other builds. AP helps a bunch, offering up Summons as an option for CON based characters, but then focuses that on using the tome implement (you can of course pick one up and go dual-implement with it even, but you'd really need to have the actual Implement Mastery with it). In effect you're probably best off to play a Swordmage instead, which is available before AP comes out.

You can make a usable staff wizard, but it never really gelled into a compelling build option. It was always sort of "I took it for the thematics and made do".

 

[Tony Vargas]

Well, sure, but then you start to look at how it works...

There wasn't the defense feat for using a staff back then, nor the feat for boosting your AC in cloth, etc.

Our Staff wiz just took leather proficiency.

Staff is a two-handed weapon, so you couldn't play with the two-weapon feats either. That seriously limited your AC options. You could start with an OK AC, but it was hard to really keep up.

You're INT primary, and can get enhancement bonuses even in cloth, and even that has MW versions, so it doesn't sound hard to tread water.

Raging Storm requires CON and DEX, while T-Wave requires WIS

Ours went CON/WIS for secondaries.

Overall you'd be reasonably tough (modest AC, modest HP, Staff of Defense + Shield) in melee,

Yep. I kept doing the 'protect the wizard' thing, until it came out we had the same hps...

As far as spell choice she was pretty pragmatic, picking good spells whether they dovetsiled with SoD or not (and PH-only there was very little of that, anyway...

...part of it is that what's awesome is relative, and the wizard got crazy pretty fast...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Our Staff wiz just took leather proficiency.
You're INT primary, and can get enhancement bonuses even in cloth, and even that has MW versions, so it doesn't sound hard to tread water.

Ours went CON/WIS for secondaries.

Yep. I kept doing the 'protect the wizard' thing, until it came out we had the same hps...

As far as spell choice she was pretty pragmatic, picking good spells whether they dovetsiled with SoD or not (and PH-only there was very little of that, anyway...

...part of it is that what's awesome is relative, and the wizard got crazy pretty fast...

Eh, I don't think they were TOO crazy. The Orbizard cheese was the one exception, but they did nerf that pretty early on with the 'one time only' change to the orb save penalty and changes to some of the items along the same lines (yea old Orb of Infinite Solo Suckage). Beyond that wizards were really moderately tame. Rituals gave them a dimension many other classes lacked as a given, but for whatever reason many players ignored that.

Naturally, all the wizard builds did get a little buff post-Essentials. I remember building a tome wizard with expanded spellbook and the Wizard's Apprentice theme. The ultimate utility wizard, had some stupid number of rituals, and a LOT of options for swapping in and out different sets of powers. It was an often overlooked sort of wizard build. He was a decent controller, but just stupid crazy good at coming up with some way to break different scenarios with some ritual etc. VERY much like an AD&D Wizard! Essentials definitely helped him, but it was really mostly a PHB1/AP build.