The greatest of stars: Wizard

[brehobit]

OK,
After playing about 4 sessions, I'm becoming fairly sure that wizards and warlord/wizards are the "best" classes in the game. One big advantage is that he really doesn't need anything other than INT. Wisdom can be helpful, and Con is always nice, but a wizard seems to have the easiest time getting a 20 in his prime stat. A staff wizard that stats with INT 18, WIS 13, CON 13 (or WIS/CON 14 and 11) seems pefectly viable.

Secondly his powers are very good indeed. Basic attacks that target a 3x3 area are huge in this new scheme of large numbers of baddies. The ability to pump up magic missile because it's a basic attack is also nice. His encounter powers are great. Force orb does as much damage as the powers of the strikers (or more) though doesn't have the sneak attack/curse bonuses. Flame burst (or what ever the 3rd level 3 close burst that only targets enimies is called) is huge. Hit a 7x7 area centered on you for about 12 points of damage? Yes please. The dalies are nice. Nothing is really better than flaming sphere when fighting groups or individuals. Auto-hit just can't be beat.

Finally, he's just about as tough as anyone. With leather armor and a staff, he's got an 18 AC at 1st level. A defender might have a 20, and a striker probably has a 15 or 16 (warlock) or 17 (ranger, rogue). At first level he's got 5 hit points less than a fighter. At 30th level he's down about 30% hit points from a defender and manages to keep up with the defender (+6 plate=+20, shield =+2 vs +6 leather=+10, INT=+9, staff=+1). Toss in the staff power (dally) and the shield spell (encounter) you're pretty tricky to hit. So you are generally 2 or 3 behind the defender and 0-2 better than the striker.

Huge I say. A party of 4 wizards and a warlord/Wizard would be viable.

 

[Dysmachia]

A wizard has 6 + con modifier healing surges per day. A Fighter has 9 + con modifier healing surges today. A healing surge is 25% of your maximum hit points. Fighters have a very substantial hit point advantage over wizards.

Your other argument is pretty weak too, because it can be reliably shown that strikers do far larger amounts of damage to single targets than wizards, and defenders have a far easier time in close combat because of their abilities and keeping enemies in place, which is their purpose. Finally, a wizard can't ever be a leader because they don't have any significant leader-like abilities.

Wizards do what they do well. That doesn't make them the best class. It makes them competent.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Many ranger or rogue builds also look at 18 AC at 1st.
Archery ranger can afford to max out dex. So can rogues.
Hide = +3
To be fair, rogues don't get hide for free, but then they also have other feat options to bump AC, such as shield proficiency, or two-weapon defense (later for non-humans).

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

So he's balanced with the other classes then. Great.

 

[Danceofmasks]

No, he's squishy due to lower HP total and surges.
Every class should be able to achieve a similar AC if they want to invest in it, the difference is in the "pow I take 1/7" vs. "pow you take 1/5"

 

[brehobit]

Good feedback folks. I still think the wizard is better than the strikers. Same or better AC (with lots of ways to pump that up short term), much more damage against multiple opponents, and can pull off similar damage against a solo. Slightly fewer hit points/surges.

As most fights (80%+?) will involve 3+ opponents, the wizard's area attacks will do much more damage per round than anyone else.

Against a solo, you just drop one of the sustainable dallies for auto-damage. You can do 100% for sure damage with a minor and move. Plus your normal attack. At first level that's something like 7.5 damage from a flaming sphere _per round_ plus the magic missile for 10 points that hits about half the time or an average of 12.5.

A rogue with an 18 Dex and 14 Str does something like 18-20 points of damage per round (at wills) that hits about half the time. So that gives you slightly less damage per round (say 10-12). Yes, the mage spent a daily, but the rogue's daily just isn't going to matter against a solo over the whole combat. And this is in the rogue's area of specialty as a striker vs. the wizard's area of weakness (one opponent).

Yes, if the mage has burned his daily already, things are different.

I just feel the wizard is the most powerful over-all class. And this has left out all the flavorful uses of his "bonus" at wills in pure role-play situations. But the fact a lot of people disagree with me makes me happy as it implies things aren't as unbalanced as I feel...

Mark

 

[Cadfan]

The wizard's total damage dealt per round is sweet if there are multiple targets he can hit without burning his allies. But there's no way he matches a striker against single targets. And he lacks knockout power, because lots of damage spread out evenly doesn't drop anyone, and if you don't drop anyone, the enemies continue to attack at the same strength.

My party's 4th level ranger hits about 50% of the time, and when using her typical attack gets two attacks at 1d10 each, with an extra +1d8 if at least one attack hits. This makes her expected damage equal to 8.875 per round. That's a simplification, and I'll spare you the math, but its Twin Strike, no magic, and an assumed hit rate of 50%.

My party's wizard, if he also hits 50% of the time using his best single target attack (Cloud of Daggers), deals an expected damage per round of 5.25. Again, I'll spare you the math.

That's just how it is. The wizard makes up the low single target damage by having spells that hit multiple foes. He can quickly exceed the ranger's 8.875 if he can hit three targets with a scorching burst.

Its all a lot more variable given all the feats, magic weapons, racial powers and so forth, but those are good benchmarks. The wizard wins versus groups, the ranger versus single targets.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Like said elsewhere, Wizard's encounter powers are meh, but their dailies are teh awesome.
No striker can match the knockout power of sleep.

 

[Verys Arkon]

The fact that people are arguing either side bodes well for its overall balance. Either that, or people will argue about anything on the interwebs.

 

[NightMoor]

Good god, have you even played this game at all? Wizards cannot do big damage to single figures consistently, their shtick is basically to kill weenies (aka Minions) in the early rounds of combat. I'm currently playing in three separate campaigns, each with a wizard, and the thing that is most obvious is that the wizard has a very narrow, specific role in the game. No way in heck is he "the best" class, he's got his role like any other.

Honestly, just seeing you type those words makes me 99% sure you have not even played the game and are just dancing around with contextless calculations.

You're missing the fact that the wizard's powers tend to have nothing which consistently just wallops individual characters. The majority of his combat powers are weak area attacks with interesting rider-effects while his non-combat ones are interesting reality-warping effects.

A wizard cannot Evasive Strike to shift out of the way of several attackers and then pound one for 2[W]+stat, force every enemy on the board to get pulled next to him only to wallap each one for a full attack AND mark them until the next turn (Come and Get It), can't heal anyone (the first reason your suggested all-wizard party will be turned to paste in the first few encounters) and simply can't fight toe-to-toe with a "boss" character of any kind for any amount of time.

Seriously, get a few games under your belt and come back here, I guarantee you'll have a different opinion.