Wizards! Help a returning player out.

Discussion in 'Casters' started by SamuraiYoji, Sep 24, 2019.

  1. SamuraiYoji New Member

    I'm coming back to EQ Live after a LONG hiatus (17 years) and instead of playing my 50 Ranger (on Erollisi Marr) any further I'm thinking about starting over (possibly making a heroic character) as a Wizard. Not sure what server but, am leaning towards Firiona Vie since I hear the population is great and the +50% exp is always on.

    I'm not looking to play on a TLP server as if I'd like to play classic EQ I would keep going on P99.

    I've been playing a Wizard as my main on P99 and understand at least the root and nuke, snare and nuke mechanics but, had a question about Wizards and Live.

    With AA's and higher lvl/more damaging spells, are Wizards just going around 1 shotting mobs or what? I've not see a stream of any high level Wizards and wondered how the mechanics/playing is.

    Thank you in advance!
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  2. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    If you are going to use a heroic toon, I'd recommend getting one and just cycling through the potential classes you think you might want to play. All the classes go through significant changes from GoD upward (as spell/disc/aa lines propagate).

    As far as wizards, there is a reason you don't see many outside of groups (and not a lot in general). The game tends to favor melee, or at least the ability to stand up a mob. And since we cannot tank or heal, our merc choice can be irrelevant. Either you can kite mobs (which the devs have definitely limited the choices of this over the recent years) or root mobs … or you don't mess with current content. And getting gear (well … FV I guess you can buy anything) by yourself is very difficult since most named will summon...and then eat you.

    That said, a wizard is a great group addition. Burst damage is nice, sustained is okay and generally enough aggro tools to make the tank not notice you. It's not a hard class to be good at (curve is steeper to be great IMO).

    World mob hps have climbed faster than a wizard's ability to do damage. I think the last mobs I was realistically one shotting consistently were farmers in Valley of Lun (VoA) and only under a full burn. There used to be a little bit of decision making in familiars/spell lines/aas, but largely now it's pretty basic spell lineups . Hell, we're still using a belt that is now 4 expansions old.

    To sum...if grouping, wizard is fine. If solo/molo, meh to no. A wizard can be a duo partner with a tank class … but since we don't really help anyone but ourselves, there are better choices.
    Renotaki likes this.
  3. Renotaki Elder

    Yeah, I'd agree with a lot of what Cragzop described. Best situation to be a wizard in the group game is if you can get a good tank friend who can pull a lot of mobs for you to AE. Soloing is possible as wiz, but way slower than what you can contribute/ get out of a group. We aren't the best solo class by any means.
  4. Spellfire Augur

    Look up Kizant's posts. He streamed few TBL raids.
    Brohg and Sancus like this.
  5. Brohg Augur

    Wizards overall aren't in a great spot the past couple years. The ideas are still there, and changing a few numbers could put the class back in place; for this moment, though, you have to really want it to go for wizarding. As it stands, dilettantes in most other dps classes can meet or exceed the top performance of the best wizards. I do enjoy doing well as a wizard, but it takes basically every trick there is and I can't really separate it from liking the idea of wizarding:

    [IMG]

    The upsides are being fairly agnostic to mob position & fight duration and not taking a ton of prep to get going. Which also is a way of saying recovering from a death is relatively easier for wizards than some other dps classes (relevant to raids mostly). Sustained dps isn't per se good, but it is easy: just cast spells. Burn dps isn't per se impressive, but it is relatively easy to access: the wizard's own buttons can cap crit rate for a minute or so, that sort of thing.

    Pretty particularly since it was part of your question, there's no 1-shotting real mobs. The stars have to align pretty well for individual nukes to be *noticed* in killing enemies. At 110, basic non-named monsters have 12-20M hp (will be higher for lv115 things this Dec), named can be triple that. The crittiest double twin casting power with enc/dru/brd/nec/mag support plus spicy hotsauce nuke on debuffed mobs hits for a total of ~8M. Raiders might see that a couple times a year. Other classes are substantially better at getting the individual big hits consistently, right now.
    Micaiah and gnomeboss like this.
  6. Travestii Elder

    I came back to the game 6 years ago, and instead of returning to my original character I rolled up a wizard. Almost immediately it became obvious that I would not be able to manage named mobs or any mobs in a crowd; summoning mobs further reduce the remaining content soloable by a wiz to virtually nil. At that point I rolled up a warrior and enchanter on 2 other accounts, and progressed well with the 3 together, but it's worth noting that pet classes can generally manage most of that content easily with a mercenary, no boxing required.

    In the end game wizards can do well in the raid environment given proper adps, but as was mentioned earlier in this thread, melee dps can easily surpass what the wizard can do, toe to toe, in both raid and especially group content.

    I hope this helps you make your decision as you return to current content, because given the tradeoffs a wizard makes in relation to other classes, if I had known how they stand in the endgame dps hierarchy I believe I would have chosen differently.
    Renotaki likes this.
  7. SamuraiYoji New Member

    So... from what I've read (thank you all for the responses), a Wizard isn't going to be soloing much at the higher levels (85+), their DPS isn't going to impress, and they won't be asked to join a group for anything "needed"?

    Bummer... I was hoping Manaburn, crits, etc. would have improved things for them. Well, I appreciate everyone's input. I'll have to consider this some more.
  8. Brohg Augur

    fwiw, not me. I've faith that at some point a spell dev will be in the hot seat who doesn't act quite so afraid of wizards being good. It is a thing that a wizard's intrinsic power is fairly plain with less "emergent" power from labyrinthine combinations (contrasted with melee abilities or new ADPS), so it's that much easier to be scared by a spdat entry, but I have faith.

    Meanwhile, it's a marginal "challenge mode". No freebies if you wanna come top on competitive parses
  9. Brohg Augur

    no DPS is in that position. Groups need a tank (but up to three quarters of classes can serve in that capacity), and groups need a healer (about a third of classes, or a mercenary(if the group is particularly unambitious) can substitute). Sometimes groups really really want either a puller or CC, but clever players can frequently get around that or muscle through. It's a rare circumstance that any DPS is "needed", let alone any particular DPS, but as a tradeoff the benefit of adding DPS is open-ended. There's 2-5 slots in any group for DPS to jump into making the life of everyone playing better since mobs die ever.

    lul Manaburn
  10. Travestii Elder

    Your faith gives me hope Brohg ;)
  11. SamuraiYoji New Member


    You have to let me in on the "lul Manaburn" part. XD

    When I quit playing Manaburn was the hot topic since it was allowing Wizards to drop HUGE numbers.
  12. Brohg Augur

    once every 36 minutes, Mana Burn turns 70000 mana into a guaranteed, unmodifiable 2.8M damage, which is... higher than the expected damage of a regular nuke, but less than that of a twincast crit (i.e. the expectation during burns)... and then up to 10.2M more unmodifiable damage on the condition that the target is hit by 500 DDs after it's landed. The additional is credited to whoever puts those 500 DDs in (this is typically melee weapon procs). Contributing 13M damage with Mana Burn's 3s of cast time is fine if that condition is met, but even full damage isn't remotely mana efficient, and t h i r t y s i x minutes cool down.

    This contrasts rather too readily with the instant cast, no cost, 20 minute cool down Shd Harm Touch ability which deals 5.4M instantly and 4.2M more over the next 30s, both parts modifiable with assorted enhancements, without having to parcel any around to others' parses. Every twenty minutes, not t h i r t y s i x.
    Petalonyx likes this.
  13. Cragzop Cranky Wizard

    Brohg forgot that the current version is actually better than the old version...

    ...that was capped at 75 percent damage to a mob. So yes, you could mana burn 70k mana on a snake in your favorite newbie area … and the snake would not die.

    Also, wizards have to cue up to expend their 70k mana (again, at least the cast of another mana burn while the mob still has the 500 counter proc will bounce and not cast … unlike before where we would get cooldown without a cast). Shadow knights can all harm touch at once and the dots can run concurrent.
  14. Brohg Augur

    Ain't hatin' on SKs, btw. Like I don't hate on Mag Host of Elements when observing that Call of Zuzl isn't powerful. Just - barkin' up the wrong tree looking to the Mana Burn button for Wizard power. Wizard power, such as it is, is appropriately in casting wizard spells. And wizards spells are pretty sweet! except for some details & maybe overall numbers being conservative :p
  15. SamuraiYoji New Member

    Thanks for explaining it to me. Sounds like it definitely isn't worth emptying your mana bar for anymore. =/

    Appreciate the insight.
  16. Jimbob/Silvarfox Elder

    Cragzop mana burning snakes in newbie zones. Somehow this does not suprise me.....
  17. Kekenewah Journeyman

    You can solo wizard to 100 easy and faster than most other choices. It gets harder after 100 but I have 3 wizards I have soloed to 105 on test on my 3 accounts. I have soloed 2 wizards to 95 and one to 105 on Drinal which takes longer due to lack of exp bonus. At 105 I tend to run my wizard and two 105 mages for experience since I came back to the game earlier this year after a two year break. I have no experience after 105 yet but from the above posts it does not sound too good for my wizards.
  18. Nylrem Augur

    Meh, don't take every negative thing ya hear too much to heart. (not saying they aren't true, everything the others have said is true).

    But, play the class you like the most for the way it works overall, you'll just be miserable playing some class you don't care for.

    Make an alt of the next class, that you think you may like. Play it as well. Nothing says you can't play a wizard and any number of other classes.
    Yinla and Szilent like this.
  19. OlavSkullcrusher Augur

    I have that rank of Mana Burn that says it does 2,800,000 damage, but the last time I used it I could see in the chat window and log that it reported doing 2184422 damage. wtf?