We wizards had a lot of cool variety and fun in the past. It's gone!! It's sad that we are now mostly pure dps and suck at it. Let me take you back to the good old days, before the developers gave up on us. Level 1: Sphere of Light. "Conjures a sphere of energy that provides light in dark areas." Wizards can summon stuff! Nothing exciting happened here. Level 2: O'Keil's Radiation. Damage shield! Yes Wizards had them too. Last seen upgrade at level 31 Level 5: Fire Bolt. Cool bolts that fly and kill. They took away the flying part and gave Magicians the flying Flame Bolt at level 5 Level 20: Elemental Shield. We could resist fire and cold. Last seen upgrade at level 62 Level 25: O'Keil's Levity. Cool multi buff. Increase DS, Levitate, Infravision. Multibuffs are rare these days. Ethereal Unity AA is _1_ spell. Level 43: Gravity Flux. Tosses the mobs in the air. Great fun, last seen at level 59 and they removed the fun part. No tossing, only dmg. Level 51: Atol's Spectral Shackles. A magnificent 4 mob ae-snare. Decrease Movement by 36% to 95% I think. It's now an AA (cool) at only 60% snare (not cool). Now they made it too difficult to "quad kite" for xp in general. Too poor spells. They killed a popular playstyle there. Level 55: Fire Mark. You set a trap and it explodes when mob runs over it. Great game design idea. Today it would need maybe 12 million dmg, but why the heck not? Level 59 to 114: Summon a temporary pet to fight one mob. Great idea if it could be worthwhile to load. Too little dmg and too weak. Level 60 Porlo's Fury/Hsagras Wrath. Bane spells for giants and dragons! It is another great design idea that they abandoned Level 60 Disintegrate !! Omg this could have been awesome but they left it! The mob disappears so no loot. But could have been a small mana burn to get outta trouble if it worked on all mobs and levels. What else can you think of that could have put the fun back in wizarding? Think big ! Except fixing the current dps state, which obviously nees to be done anyway.
Is manaburn still a thing? Use to have a full group of wizzies take down a raid boss with 1 cast back in the day.
Low levels are great fun. Too bad you out level them and end up grinding for hours for a tick of blue. Enchanter illusions used to have faction adjustments. Enchanter Minor Illusion used to pick really interesting things from the environment, not just a loot sack. Magician Summon Monster Pets used to be a cool thing. Dire Charm is great in a specific range, then becomes totally useless (no level appropriate mobs to charm). Wizards used their Eye spells to look around a dungeon for a specific spawn or two.
Wizards stand in one spot and wiggle their fingers while everyone else does the hard work.... Maybe you try a fun class? Like SK.
On your list the only thing I really did was quad kiting, but did a heck of a lot of it. That and charm solo'ing morphed into boxing once they were no longer viable for me. Still use eye every once in awhile but what the heck was it for against Aaryonar?
I don't really have anything to say about Sphere of Light or O'Keil's as I never much cared for either, but as for the rest: - Bolt spells suck. Ask Mages, they'll tell you. - Resist spells mostly died out when we hit permanently maxed resists with gear alone. They'd need to fix the resist system before it would make sense to make new spells for it. - Unity shouldn't have Levitate on it. But it SHOULD have Shield of Destiny, Aegis of the Crystalwing (rune), and Frostscale Husk (spell rune) [Which also needs a really big upgrade cause it's super bad right now.] - Gravity flux line = Pillar line, which still exists for fire/ice. The magic pillar was removed for idk why. The push was nerfed because of exploits. - Level 51 Atol's is 60%. Use a spell parser that shows correct info. (Not Alla). - Traps are bad. I'd much rather have some sort of damage aura. It's sad Wizards never got one. - Swarm pets needs to be deleted. The absolute LAST thing they need is to be made better so people have to use them. - The old bane spells are hardcoded = not good. They actually did make some for TSS but they never went live. That said it should be possible for them to make a normal spell that adds extra damage for dragons/giants similar to other nukes that do extra damage when they meet certain requirements. - Disintegrate they would never let work on anything good (e.g. rares or raid npcs) so I don't know why anyone would want to use it. It's not really even that fun to use on low level stuff...it's more fun to use a regular nuke.
Wizzys back in the day were more fun than they are now. Really miss having to quest and make spells. Ethereal Unity makes no sense for 1 spell.....guess we only got it cause every casting class got it. Would be good if they could fix our DPS and make the class fun again.
DPS and fun are not mutually exclusive if some of the population derives fun from DPS. Fun is an abstract concept that can encompass many things.
Can and Must are not the same thing. But you go ahead and deposit that fun currency where ever your heart desires.
I cut your post a little You are a great dissecter of posts, but you missed the spirit of it. Be creative and suggest something that could have been continued and more fun! How about something new like, chain lightning!! OMG! On the other hand, a regular great nuke might be fun enough for you. I too wish for wizard balancing. That could be enough fun, I don't know. But since we are in such a poor state at the present, I thought we could look at fun.
They could give us a very hard hitting (maybe instantcast) nuke with a cooldown(1 mins tops). With the extra twist that if you get the killshot with it, it gives you some mana. To make it an extra gamble, it could give much more agro than other nukes to balance it out... It will be risky, but good dps on raids(you rarely get killshots, and you would need to be careful with agro), and for group/solo it would be a very useful finisher.
I mean, that would be interesting. But Wizards really need their core DPS brought in line with Monks, at least. Right now Wizards are sitting behind Druids. That's not right.
I don't think you understand how useful this spell is in group content. It's a wonderful pulling tool.
I agree, but this thread is more about fun and creative spells/abilities, than yet another cry for help. I think the devs already got the point that wizards needs a damage-increase(if they choose to do something about it, is another discussion).
That's exactly what I am trying to tell you, Jumbur. You start asking for special abilities and spells, the Devs are going to ignore the need for a DPS increase. One or the other. Not both. They don't have that kind of time.
