What's wrong with Wizards?

[Messianic]

Originally Posted by stormlord [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I haven't played a mage or wizard on p1999, but when Iwas doing old man mckenzie missions I played mages and wizards several times. What I noticed was that mages greatly helped the group with their pets and damage spells whereas the wizards had only slightly better damage spells (more types though) and no pet. The wizard might have had a few other plusses, but overall, in my groups we never did it without a mage and wizards were kind of like rangers in their usefulness. I'm not trying to be mean or anything, but this is how it worked.

I don't know. It seemed like wizards didn't really have a niche in the missions. Yes, they have more spell types but this wasn't really a concern most of the time. Their spells aren't significantly better and don't make up for not having a strong pet like the magician did. I could count fingers on one hand the number of times I might have been thankful we had a wizard, but that was mostly because we had a gimped group. Mages were always a big help. The missions were limited in scope, so maybe this isn't a fair assessment of the wizard class.

Old Man Mckenzie missions are level 50 content that's supposed to be similar to how it was back in the day. It's an instance you enter from POK. They're in nagafens lair, undead guk, live guk (no undead).

I think a lot of it has to do with what your group is doing. I know that hybrids tend to be a lot more useful when you're in a new place and dangers surprise you. But once you got everything figured out and you're into a pattern, I think the value of hybrids drops like a rock. They're really, i think, meant for dynamic situations that're borderline chaotic and tend towards isolating group members from one another. In situations where they're packed together and organized it's better to have specialized members that excel in certain areas. I mean, what good is a cleric heal if the cleric isn't nearby to heal you? What good is a enchanter if they're too far away to mez or slow? What good is a rogue if they can't get behind the mob? What good is a melee that can't invis if there's no one there to invis them? Etc. There were lots of examples in the old man mckenzie missions where I couold see the benefit of having hybrids, but once i figured things out and knew what to do I just couldn't justify having hybrids in hte group. Call it powergaming, but it's just a tactical reality in gaming.

I'm not saying wizards are hybrids. I'm saying that maybe the range of challenges in hte missions I did were not appropriate for the wizard to truly shine. This though would be just like a hybrid. If a group is challenged in certain ways you will see certain classes doing well and others not. It depends on what you're doing.

From playing a wizard through 56 on live and having a friend who was a 60 mage through the velious era, this is basically true.

Mages have more reliable, sustained dps and only slightly worse nukes. Not that wizards suck, but they aren't part of the "perfect" group (if having a perfect group is necessary).

[Ghordo]

Originally Posted by Combo [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Did a search and really couldn't come up with a thread that properly answered this, so...

What's wrong with Wizards? I remember way more being on Live than I see here, and I keep seeing them get trashed on these forums (not to a Ranger degree, but still).

I know Mages are kings of everything in Classic, but don't lures become pretty important in order to reliably deal magic damage post-Classic? Is it because of the notorious AFK Wiztard legend? Or is it because the class is just boring/pointless to play, as other classes (Mage, Necro) just do their job "better" than Wizards?

play what you want and stop asking people retarded fucking questions.

[girth]

If you want a raiding character for Velious, wizard is highly needed for dps and mobility.

I wouldn't make one if you won't be raiding on him though.

[enzie]

I wouldn't make any class if you aren't planning to play them until Velious.. I mean, Kunark isn't even out yet. Get to 50 on a character you'll enjoy getting to 50 on, then see how you still feel when your 60 in Kunark, and twink out an alt.

[Quineloe]

Wizard had zero utility in classic, what I enjoyed about my wizard from luclin to the 1 week I endured GoD was that I had no "keep this buff up on everyone throughout the entire time we have this group going" buffs that the other casters all came with but instead I had highly situational utility spells that were awesome. Like evacuating really, really fast (0.1 second, could actually do that while running), translocate and port. Plus a wide variety of nukes, stuns and combinations of both that were either powerful or efficient.

A classic wizard has nothing of that. All they have is maybe 3-4 nukes that are worth memming at their current level which all have atrocious ratios (my best nuke right now has a 1.42 ratio. ISOS has a ratio of 4 in comparison. It also takes many levels until a Wizard can actually port other people around. I think it takes until 34 until a Wizard has a decent set of spells to port people around with, which you need if you actually want to go to a different dungeon with your group. No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by Quineloe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

This is a bit naive as often times people have pick up groups rather than pre-organized ones, so if you port to GFay and run to Unrest, you're pretty likely to find a group there already who will take you.

[Acillatem]

Originally Posted by Quineloe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Wizard had zero utility in classic, what I enjoyed about my wizard from luclin to the 1 week I endured GoD was that I had no "keep this buff up on everyone throughout the entire time we have this group going" buffs that the other casters all came with but instead I had highly situational utility spells that were awesome. Like evacuating really, really fast (0.1 second, could actually do that while running), translocate and port. Plus a wide variety of nukes, stuns and combinations of both that were either powerful or efficient.

A classic wizard has nothing of that. All they have is maybe 3-4 nukes that are worth memming at their current level which all have atrocious ratios (my best nuke right now has a 1.42 ratio. ISOS has a ratio of 4 in comparison. It also takes many levels until a Wizard can actually port other people around. I think it takes until 34 until a Wizard has a decent set of spells to port people around with, which you need if you actually want to go to a different dungeon with your group. No point in porting yourself ahead to Gfay and then wait 30 minutes at Unrest zone in while the other bums sit on the boat.

Sorry, but I beg to differ. On a raid - I have 2 stuns, root, snare, and nullify magic memmed. We offer a lot more than nukes. Some mobs it's more important to keep it stun-locked than it is to just nuke it for 8% of it's life. Revenants in Hate? I don't even nuke them. I usually stun/stun/nullify (get rid of dmg shield) rinse repeat. Keeping them stun locked prevents AE wipes and charm annoyance. It's much more "raid efficient" for me to stun lock than it is to nuke it for 8%.

In Fear - I'm easily one of the more active secondary crowd control members of the raid. I keep an /assist ENC hotkey so when their pet charm breaks I toss a stun so they can re-charm easier, I'm not nuking mobs as soon as the mob is engaged so I have time to help ENC with snares/root parks etc. Granted the RNGs are usually on top of this, it's pretty common knowledge that if you have 6 mobs in camp on a Fear break and your ENC team dies, the raid is screwed.

Yes, a wizard's primary job is to burst DPS - but any wizard who solely chooses to focus on this aspect of their class and not actively utilize the other options we have is simply a bad wizard IMO.

Even at lower levels you have options. You can help root park adds, you can stun/interrupt healers, etc. I think people just wanna be lazy and nuke and that's it, but like I said - on a raid? I only have 2 nukes memmed - Ice Comet and Conflag and that's it - the rest is utility spells to help the raid.

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Acillatem [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Sorry, but I beg to differ. On a raid - I have 2 stuns, root, snare, and nullify magic memmed. We offer a lot more than nukes. Some mobs it's more important to keep it stun-locked than it is to just nuke it for 8% of it's life. Revenants in Hate? I don't even nuke them. I usually stun/stun/nullify (get rid of dmg shield) rinse repeat. Keeping them stun locked prevents AE wipes and charm annoyance. It's much more "raid efficient" for me to stun lock than it is to nuke it for 8%.

This is nice and all that, but this is not your average wizard gameplay. In order to get there, you need to get through many, many days /played of being exactly what I mentioned - a 1 nuke every two mobs machine. I thought I made that clear.

Even at lower levels you have options. You can help root park adds, you can stun/interrupt healers, etc. I think people just wanna be lazy and nuke and that's it, but like I said - on a raid? I only have 2 nukes memmed - Ice Comet and Conflag and that's it - the rest is utility spells to help the raid.

So you say "lower levels" and "ice Comet" in the same breath. :-)

We both know the utility Wizards offer for the first 35 levels is nowhere near to what the other casters offer. The thread was started because the OP didn't see many wizards. Maybe you can offer some insight why the OP is wrong or an alternative explanation if you don't think mine is correct rather than talk up a class that is clearly underrepresented compared other casters?

Originally Posted by Estu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

This is a bit naive as often times people have pick up groups rather than pre-organized ones, so if you port to GFay and run to Unrest, you're pretty likely to find a group there already who will take you.

You're smarter if you just /who the zone and tell the players that are least likely to afk - the clerics. BTW you make it sound like you gate to the zone and then leave your group if you can get a spot in another one right away. Either that or you replied with a completely unrelated scenario, which I don't understand why you would do that.

[Estu]

Originally Posted by Quineloe [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

BTW you make it sound like you gate to the zone and then leave your group if you can get a spot in another one right away. Either that or you replied with a completely unrelated scenario, which I don't understand why you would do that.

Maybe I was confused about the scenario you were presenting. I just wanted to make the point that being able to self-port is useful for a wizard since you can get to the camp you want to get to faster, and then immediately start searching for a group (or, as you said, find a group first and then port to it); your implication seemed to be that it's useless because you are always with the same group, just moving to different dungeons, so you're only as fast as your slowest member.

[Quineloe]

Originally Posted by Estu [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Maybe I was confused about the scenario you were presenting. I just wanted to make the point that being able to self-port is useful for a wizard since you can get to the camp you want to get to faster, and then immediately start searching for a group (or, as you said, find a group first and then port to it); your implication seemed to be that it's useless because you are always with the same group, just moving to different dungeons, so you're only as fast as your slowest member.

Self port has extremely little utility for a group is what I meant.