Choosing Between Two Wizards

[Center-of-All]

Wizards get +2 Will.

 

[Nifft]

Both good points Nfft.

I think the dex was for a future Arcane Reach feat choice.

I do not think the controller is optimizing for sleep-only. It's a strong character just with Cloud of Daggers and Thunderwave. I agree I am torn on the Ray of Frost vs. Scorching Burst. Ray has a slow effect that will be useful to high levels, while Burst kills minions even into high levels.

Cloud of Daggers, I agree -- and didn't give you any grief about as proof.

Thunderwave is tricky. Until you have Arcane Reach, you will be casting it specifically when you need to hit, because you do not want to start your turn adjacent to your targets. That's when I think the 18 Int + 16 Wis is the superior option.

Again with Ray of Frost: if a foe is within 10 squares and you want it to not get closer, you need to hit. Wisdom does nothing for you. I've used it, and it's a decent (situational) effect, but I've gotten so much more mileage out of the at-will area incineration.

You'll get Ice Rays as an Encounter power at 3rd level, and that will do Ray of Frost's job so much better. Honestly, the main reason to have Ray of Frost is to be Paragon tier with Lasting Frost, and be setting a target up for the Wintertouched Rogue's Frost dagger stabbity-stab.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Mistwell]

Cloud of Daggers, I agree -- and didn't give you any grief about as proof.

Thunderwave is tricky. Until you have Arcane Reach, you will be casting it specifically when you need to hit, because you do not want to start your turn adjacent to your targets. That's when I think the 18 Int + 16 Wis is the superior option.

Again with Ray of Frost: if a foe is within 10 squares and you want it to not get closer, you need to hit. Wisdom does nothing for you. I've used it, and it's a decent (situational) effect, but I've gotten so much more mileage out of the at-will area incineration.

You'll get Ice Rays as an Encounter power at 3rd level, and that will do Ray of Frost's job so much better. Honestly, the main reason to have Ray of Frost is to be Paragon tier with Lasting Frost, and be setting a target up for the Wintertouched Rogue's Frost dagger stabbity-stab.

Cheers, -- N

I went with your advice, swapped Int and Wis, and took Scorch instead of Ray. At least at level 1, Scorch was useful more often than Ray, though the Icy encounter power was obviously superior to Scorch, and I seem to be a bit overly focused vs. Ref at the moment.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I went with your advice, swapped Int and Wis, and took Scorch instead of Ray. At least at level 1, Scorch was useful more often than Ray, though the Icy encounter power was obviously superior to Scorch, and I seem to be a bit overly focused vs. Ref at the moment.

Yeah, at lower levels, you'll want the 18 Int. Now, admittedly it is pretty darn awesome at level 28 to be a Demigod who started with 18 Wisdom and now has 28, since combined with Spell Focus, its a -11 to saves (sleep forever for non-solos!), but giving them a 1/20 isn't too bad.

The three at-wills you took are my favourite suite of three. Though if you have a Warlord who eventually picks up powers that give you free basic attacks, you may want to retrain Magic Missile in there. But yeah, Ray of Frost has its uses, but it doesn't hold up to the others, I think (though admittedly, Wizard is more-or-less the only class where all five at-wills are nearly-always useful to have for any Wizard).

 

[Mistwell]

Yeah I am really surprised how relatively evenly matched the 5 at-wills for the wizard are (and therefore how useful being a Human is for this particular class). I am not at all sure how well they scale to higher levels, since I have not read far enough to know what feats, magic items, and other things will increase attack and damage and effects. But from the little I have seen so far, all 5 can be useful in most combats.

We have no warlord so far...and for some reason I thought the warlord gave a melee basic attack and not just a basic attack, but I could me misremembering. Anyway, lacking a warlord I figured cloud of daggers was superior to magic missile for a wisdom heavy build.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Yeah I am really surprised how relatively evenly matched the 5 at-wills for the wizard are (and therefore how useful being a Human is for this particular class). I am not at all sure how well they scale to higher levels, since I have not read far enough to know what feats, magic items, and other things will increase attack and damage and effects. But from the little I have seen so far, all 5 can be useful in most combats.

We have no warlord so far...and for some reason I thought the warlord gave a melee basic attack and not just a basic attack, but I could me misremembering. Anyway, lacking a warlord I figured cloud of daggers was superior to magic missile for a wisdom heavy build.

The at-will for Warlord is a melee basic, but a bunch of the other higher-level Warlord powers just give a basic attack. But yeah, in the absense of that, for a high-Wis build Cloud of Daggers starts out slightly better than Magic Missile and moves up to incredibly-awesome if you have allies who can exploit the cloud with some sliding exploits. And if ever you come across an allied Warlord with those powers (due to PC death or whatever), you can always just retrain.

But yeah, Wizard is one of the few instances where the Human ability to add a new at-will goes beyond worthless (most classes) or tolerable (a few others) to awesome. I would still trade that away if there existed a reasonable +Int +Wis race, but since there doesn't, Human is a pretty strong choice. Though Tiefling is good too for the Int and then for giving you that starting 12 in Charisma without putting any points in it (at which point the level 11 bump gives you 13 Charisma and you can take Spell Focus).