Relearning 4th Edition

[Neonchameleon]

I am interested in playing a Wizard. What I am looking for is some recommendations of powers, feats, and skills that would be good to take (given what I have access to) along with any tips or strategies for playing the character.

A quick warning. Coming froma background of 3.X, the wizard might disappoint you. Or it might enthuse you. They are no longer the completely dominating maniacs they sometimes were in 3.X - but they never run out of spells and need to draw crossbows. And the spells that they get are often weaker - skill matters more than raw power. (For instance the Suggestion spell in 4e simply allows you to make a diplomacy skill check but using your arcana skill rather than diplomacy for often a 9 or 10 point swing to briefly put you up there as the party face). Rather than what suggestion used to do. (Of course it's now a mage cantrip). And the powers you have are the 6 second "battle magic" - many more powerful spells are covered by ritual casting but you need smokey candles, incense, and the like.

Also with Essentials they did something smart. Rather than defining your type of wizard by what implement you wield (Staff of Defence and Orb of Imposition being stand outs) wizards now vary based on school of magic. Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms (HoFK anyway) has three schools - Evoker, Illusionist, and Enchanter. Dragon has the Pyromancer. And Heroes of Shadow has the Necromancer and Nethermancer (Nethermancy - curses, weaken, ray of enervation, etc.) Much more evocative and if it wasn't for the shameful absence of Ritual Caster (they are rethinking rituals right now so nothing new has it due to low heroic casters never using them and paragon casters able to spam heroic rituals) I'd have effectively banned the PHB wizard for the mage in my games as the mage is just a better implementation.

Schools: You get a major and a minor.
Evocation: It goes boom! Not what you want from your description. (Pyromancy likewise.)
Illusion: Normally no damage but the enemy is buggered for a while. Burst 1 immobilse (so they can't make it into combat) and -4 to hit (so even if they can shoot it won't do much) springs to mind as an encounter power. Maze of Mirrors.
Enchantment: It moves where you want and attacks who you want. Briefly for each spell. But still, spells like Charm of Misplaced Wrath are excellent.

Honestly, the fast way to make a character is borrow HoFL and take the two schools you want - and write both those spells into your spellbook. There are no bad spells in the book.

And [MENTION=56189]Kzach[/MENTION], little beats Staff Expertise as a feat. The ability to not take opportunity attacks is worth a feat on its own.

 

[Herschel]

I'll echo the Enchanter also. I'm personally not a big fan of Essentials characters (I've been playing all along so the options aren't too overwhelming to me) but in my Thursday Night campaign a new player joined what had become a group of all melee characters (life got in the way of two players) and his Enchanter doles out some seriously awesome control to the point where none of teh remaining four players felt the need to rebuild/re-make characters to make up for a lack of range.

 

[Tony Vargas]

IMany of the PHB1 Wizard powers are subpar. In that, for instance, a wizard had a burst At Wills that hit all targets, but later controllers had At Willss out of the gate that could just hit only enemies in the same burst. The Encounters were a bit on the weak side as well. (Wizard Dailies still rock the house).

To turn that around, you could say that later controller at-wills were overpowered.

If you compare the Wizard PH1 at-wills to the other at wills in the PH1, at publication, the wizard had:

The only range 20 at-will in the game.
The only area at-wills in the game.
The only close at-wills in the game.
The only at will in the game that /slowed/.
The only at will in the game that created a zone.
The only at-will in the game that did auto-damage.
The only at-will in the game that could push more than 1.


I played a campaign that got through 10 levels before PH2 came out, and the wizard was absolutely a stand-out character.


Where I'll agree is that the wizard's Dailies were extremely good, and the Encounters were not as impressive as the dailies (even given the usual encounter vs daily gulf).


The 'problem' faced by the wizard was two-fold:

1) There was an expectation that it be as overwhelmingly broken as it was in earlier eds, and that expectation, obviously, was never met (though the Mage potentially gets closer with each new school).

2) It's role-support was concentrated in it's powers, instead of being a feature. Wizard at-wills, in particular, are crazy-powerful compared to other classes (even more so with later powers), but, if you were to fold their marking(and'punishmen') and extra-damage mechanics and the like into other classes' at-wills, they'd be a lot closer.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

To turn that around, you could say that later controller at-wills were overpowered.

If you compare the Wizard PH1 at-wills to the other at wills in the PH1, at publication, the wizard had:

The only range 20 at-will in the game.
The only area at-wills in the game.
The only close at-wills in the game.
The only at will in the game that /slowed/.
The only at will in the game that created a zone.
The only at-will in the game that did auto-damage.
The only at-will in the game that could push more than 1.


I played a campaign that got through 10 levels before PH2 came out, and the wizard was absolutely a stand-out character.


Where I'll agree is that the wizard's Dailies were extremely good, and the Encounters were not as impressive as the dailies (even given the usual encounter vs daily gulf).


The 'problem' faced by the wizard was two-fold:

1) There was an expectation that it be as overwhelmingly broken as it was in earlier eds, and that expectation, obviously, was never met (though the Mage potentially gets closer with each new school).

2) It's role-support was concentrated in it's powers, instead of being a feature. Wizard at-wills, in particular, are crazy-powerful compared to other classes (even more so with later powers), but, if you were to fold their marking(and'punishmen') and extra-damage mechanics and the like into other classes' at-wills, they'd be a lot closer.

The issue with the PHB1 wizard is rooted in the fact that lacking a class feature which establishes control this falls to your power selection entirely. Control is a transitory phenomenon. You can only fulfill this role by constant application of powers with a control aspect. Secondarily wizard has no real additional role. It makes a uniformly dismal striker and has no leader or defender aspect whatsoever. This means in order to be effective you HAD to focus entirely on control. Half of the class' powers however are effectively weak direct damage powers (things like Force Orb, Acid Arrow, and Fireball are prime examples). You simply MUST avoid all of these if you have any hope of executing your role with enough effectiveness to succeed. The result is that there really aren't that many good options in PHB1.

You can't really take Wand of Accuracy. It indirectly can support your primary role, but it has too many flaws to be useful. Staff of Defense likewise simply doesn't support your role at all (and largely duplicates the effect of a level 2 utility power you'll take anyway). Orb of Imposition is really the only choice that directly reinforces your role.

Likewise any power lacking a decent control/area denial effect is simply off-role and saps your main purpose. So you really have basically one choice for a level 1 Daily, 2 choices of level 1 at-wills, and at most 2 (really one) choice of level 1 encounter powers. The same thing is true with the level 3 and 5 powers, in each case there's really only one or at most 2 useful choices. Some of the other powers CAN be good, but require a lot of build support (Sleep is the poster child, practically worthless at level 1, but one of the best dailies in the game in paragon/epic tier, ironically around the time you're expected to swap it out).

You can make a very nice effective PHB1 wizard, but its choices are very limited. You're pretty much going to find that all effective PHB1 wizards are going to use the same powers at low levels with only minor variations. Later on in THEORY you can branch out more, but the problem there is if you say want to be a high accuracy war wizard you basically have to suck for 10 levels to get there, or else use additional resources to effectively rebuild to the concept later in your career.

 

[Kzach]

Having said that (in reference to AbdulAlhazred), the mage/wizard with their massive spell choice lists can choose some really nasty control powers that combine to utterly dominate a battlefield.

A well-made mage, provided party support in the form of a defender and leader to keep him alive, can pretty much neutralise, lock-down and kill everything on a battlemap. And all that by 5-6th-level. By paragon, the DM can forget about ever being the tactical master of his own maps.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Eh, two can play at that game, and even at 5th level you've got 2 daily powers, which if you are clever are probably good enough to wreck some pretty good havok when used, but you'll still have to deal with using the weaker encounter powers the rest of the time. A nice enemy controller like the fun Goblin Hexer will equally well mess with the party. That one and the Swamp Mystic really did a number on parties.

 

[Kzach]

Eh, two can play at that game, and even at 5th level you've got 2 daily powers, which if you are clever are probably good enough to wreck some pretty good havok when used, but you'll still have to deal with using the weaker encounter powers the rest of the time. A nice enemy controller like the fun Goblin Hexer will equally well mess with the party. That one and the Swamp Mystic really did a number on parties.

Part of my argument was supporting yours but saying that the wizard (now) has a massive variety of spells and many of them have been either toned down or beefed up or changed for better control.

I just didn't convey that part of the argument in that post

This includes encounter powers, btw. Many of them are quite good now for control purposes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

True, current wizards are MUCH more flexible. You can definitely be a blaster or several types of controller, etc. Plus with a viable secondary striking role you can afford to do things like use Wand of Accuracy, many of the direct damage powers, etc.

 

[Jacob Marley]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I have had a very busy couple of days so D&D had to be sidelined for a bit. I appreciate all your help.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The issue with the PHB1 wizard is rooted in the fact that lacking a class feature which establishes control this falls to your power selection entirely.

I believe I said that, yes.

Secondarily wizard has no real additional role.

It's pretty clear that the Wand wizard was meant to be secondary striker. You could do some decent damage and single-target condition-inflicting. An 'area interdiction' build (concentrated on AEs) also incidentally put out a lot of damage - not as concentrated as a primary striker, but occassionaly /quite a lot/.

Half of the class' powers however are effectively weak direct damage powers (things like Force Orb, Acid Arrow, and Fireball are prime examples). You simply MUST avoid all of these if you have any hope of executing your role with enough effectiveness to succeed. The result is that there really aren't that many good options in PHB1.

Having actually played a wizard who took Scorching Burst, Ray of Frost, Force Orb and Acid Arrow (I didn't really /want/ to, for the obvious reasons you put forth, but I also didn't want to clone the wizard in the prior campaign, so I very carefully took /only/ spells she hadn't - since she'd picked the /obvious/ good ones..), I can say they're not nearly as bad as you might think. If you're intent on laying down area hurt, you can lay down quite a lot of hurt. The advantages of area attacks turned out to be myriad - they often ignore cover and ignore concealment completely, for instance. While you're sweeping minions, you can pile on to real monster you can catch in the same area. The accumulated damage can really add up. Force Orb turned into one of those 'make the DM groan' spells. It was a little odd. You could target objects with it, for instance, and it was enemies-only. So when enemies were clustered around the fighter, I could hit even more of them with Force Orb than Scorching Burst, with Wand of Accuracy it rarely missed, so the secondary attacks were pretty dependable, and the primary damage was high. Even Lightning Bolt (one of the most demeaned wizard spells on-line) turned out to be a great encounter spell, letting you hit three widely-separated targets late in a combat, after the enemy had been whittled away or smartened up and wasn't clumping up for your AEs anymore. I was always dissapointed when we got down to one enemy, but then, Ray of Frost helped keep it from getting away.

Man, that was a fun character. I really exected to suck, and rocked instead.

Orb of Imposition is really the only choice that directly reinforces your role.

The condition-inflicting end of it, yeah.

Likewise any power lacking a decent control/area denial effect is simply off-role and saps your main purpose.

There were vanishingly few of those. Most either hit multiple targets - area denial - or inflicted a nasty condition, or both. It doesn't take a zone to deny an area. Just the realization that gathering in /any/ 3x3 area is begging to be schorched is often enough. Sure, it's 'soft' control, so it doesn't always scatter the enemy, but, when it doesn't, it inflicts a lot of aggregate damage on them.

You can make a very nice effective PHB1 wizard, but its choices are very limited. You're pretty much going to find that all effective PHB1 wizards are going to use the same powers at low levels with only minor variations.

The optimal choices were really limitted at first - Orb lockdown was just too optimal - but, there were plenty of viable options, if you didn't let your expectations hold you back from trying them.