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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5065746" data-attributes="member: 82106">I still say Thunderwave isn't really that great. It sounds awesome in some theoretical sense but truthfully its very hard to target a blast 3 into a melee and not hit your allies. The push also sounds cool but it usually has tactically marginal consequences. Pushing an enemy that is in melee with you just means they get to charge you next time their turn comes up. It certainly isn't useless, but a level 1 wizard should NOT be adjacent to the enemy anyhow, even with staff of defense (which is by far the most lackluster IM in terms of doing your party role).Scorching Burst - Gives great control in that the DM now has to worry about avoiding getting his monsters too close to each other. It does pretty decent minion sweeping, especially with Enlarge Spell. Yes, it has no fringe benefits, but just the fact that you have at-will AoE is in and of itself a form of control that DOES work. If the DM ignores that, then you get to do some quite impressive overall damage output.CoD works pretty well as both an MM substitute and a guaranteed 1 minion kill, but killing one minion isn't THAT impressive. Still it can be good when you need a ref attacking at-will. I'd still take MM instead. Again my load out would be Illusory Ambush (vs will and -2 is better than Phantom Bolt's push 1), Scorching Burst (just basic area control and its vs reflex), and Storm Pillar (total block of one square and pretty reliable situational damage). Forget about Armor Proficiency. Your a wizard, you're squishy, accept that. Take Shield as your utility spell at level 2. It will usually deflect the worst damage and all you need to do is survive the combat as you will almost never bottom out on surges. Use cover wisely (remember your allies grant it vs ranged attacks) and you'll be OK. Later on you can worry about your defenses but a +2 AC for a feat is not worth it for a non-melee character at level 1.</blockquote>

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