Beginner Wizard Questions

[Edame]

1. I understand that you can ghetto quad kite with pillar of fire at 16, provided you have JBoots or SoW pots. Is this true and any recommendations on zone progression?

2. Is soloing levels 1-15 possible? I assume you are single target rooting and nuking, which strikes me as the most inefficient way possible to kill a mob in EQ.

2. I would like to understand better how to play a Wizard in a group environment.. By that I mean levels 1-49ish grouping, not so much Seb or whatever. Do I use a big nuke at 70%? Save big nukes for emergency situations and pepper in a bunch of small nukes? Don't nuke at all and just chain stun mobs and snare runners? If so, what about zones with no caster mobs? Do I still chain stun?

[Estu]

1) Sure, this is doable. Not sure exactly where you'd do it since I didn't have this luxury coming up. Try the Karanas, you can probably find some good stuff there.

2) Yep, root-nuking. Yep, it's slow. Grouping would be a lot more interesting.

3) Always use your most efficient nuke, which most of the time is your biggest nuke. Using smaller, less-efficient nukes means you're wasting mana. Of course handle CC when there isn't someone else already handling it, though snaring can be tough because it's AoE, so if one monster resists, you might not be sure which; you might pull aggro on other monsters; you might snare yourself; and so on. So if you have someone who can single-target snare in the group, that's preferable. Also, since your snare is AoE, it costs more mana. Stuns can be useful on casters. Don't bother stunning non-casters. Grouping, you're a very weak party member; your DPS is shoddy and your crowd control is meh. Some specialized groups can be excellent, though (AE groups at higher levels, bard duos at lower levels).

[Lojik]

dont remember what level but i quadded EK late teens early 20's. Gorge hounds were good

[Jimjam]

Have you considered tanking 1-15? Get your defensive skill ups while they are easy.

[gotrocks]

wizards are really not as bad in groups as everyone thinks... I really think its just bad/lazy wizzies perpetuating that stereotype.

Can't overstate the power of dropping a mobs hp 30+ percent in one shot. And a good wiz being smart about his/her mana can do that to almost every mob.

2 wizzies can get even crazier.i can remember doing a group in lower guk on my wiz, full group had myself and another wiz, the group was basically doing a rest period to med/heal up, and we just started pulling and root nuking mobs. I think we had dropped about 12-15 before we ran out of mana. One guy made a snide remark saying something like, 'oh, you two wasting mana killing a couple mobs?' and the rest of the group stood dumbfounded and said 'do you see all these corpses on the ground? yeah, that was just the two wizzies by themselves.'

He stayed quiet after that.

[Estu]

Anyone who claims wizards are good sustained DPS has never done or looked at any DPS parses and compared them to wizard DPS calculated by mana regeneration.

Here's an example. I dug up some DPS parse from someone else's raid (Splorf posted this one):
Silverwing in 87s, 33k @378dps --- Adriana 8k @90dps (23.6%) --- Dravingar 7k @118dps (20.76%) --- Cecily 7k @83dps (20.55%) --- Tassive 2k @39dps (7.1%) --- Gobober 2k @44dps (6.1%) --- Destroyed 2k @28dps (5.42%) --- Xebeker 2k @35dps (5.31%) --- Xobeker 2k @41dps (4.64%) --- Jabeker 1k @32dps (2.9%) --- Jann 1k @22dps (1.8%) --- Vabarn 0k @35dps (1.47%) --- Xarartik 0k @10dps (0.33%) --- Verenity 0k @0dps (0%) --- Getsome 0k @0dps (0%)

Adriana is a monk; Dravingar and Cecily are rogues. Splorf also noted that Sakuragi, a warrior, usually did around 40dps in normal EXP fights. So this is an example of what melees can do at around level 60.

Now let's compare to a 60 wizard, and I'm stressing here that we are NOT looking at a raid boss situation, but an EXP group situation, meaning the question is not burst DPS but sustained DPS, so we have to take mana regeneration into account. The best wizard nuke is Sunstrike, which does 1615 damage for 450 mana. How long does it take to get 450 mana? Meditate gives 1 mana/tick per 12 points in the skill, so at 300 skill, it gives 25 mana every 6 seconds. Let's add in Clarity II: it gives 11 mana every 6 seconds. Let's add in Harvest: at 60, it gives around 320 mana every 600 seconds, so 3.2 every 6 seconds. Add all that up: you get 6.5 mana per second. To get 450 mana, you have to wait 69 seconds. So how much DPS is 1615 damage every 69 seconds? 23. And that's assuming you're never resisted, not even partially. This is much, much worse than even a warrior in an EXP group. Completely eclipsed by any actual melee DPSer, in other words. We can even see in that log a couple of pets that do more DPS.

Compare these results to any lower levels, where wizards have less-efficient nukes and worse mana regeneration, and the difference between the wizard and the melee DPS of the same level will be even more striking.

[diplo]

pro wizards throw stuns in their arsenal to interrupt mobs from casting in groups. sadly, there aren't many around.

[Estu]

pro wizards throw stuns in their arsenal to interrupt mobs from casting in groups. sadly, there aren't many around.

Stuns are fine but many classes can keep monsters from casting while also doing something else useful for the group. Bards, enchanters, tanks, and any large race all have monster stun/interrupt abilities. So do clerics and druids. This is an extremely common ability.

[Cecily]

I'd be happy to give you exp group logs later. But yeah, wizards are incredible burst damage.. Sustained they suck. Just a raiding class and a pretty damn good one.

[Alarti0001]

Anyone who claims wizards are good sustained DPS has never done or looked at any DPS parses and compared them to wizard DPS calculated by mana regeneration.

Here's an example. I dug up some DPS parse from someone else's raid (Splorf posted this one):
Silverwing in 87s, 33k @378dps --- Adriana 8k @90dps (23.6%) --- Dravingar 7k @118dps (20.76%) --- Cecily 7k @83dps (20.55%) --- Tassive 2k @39dps (7.1%) --- Gobober 2k @44dps (6.1%) --- Destroyed 2k @28dps (5.42%) --- Xebeker 2k @35dps (5.31%) --- Xobeker 2k @41dps (4.64%) --- Jabeker 1k @32dps (2.9%) --- Jann 1k @22dps (1.8%) --- Vabarn 0k @35dps (1.47%) --- Xarartik 0k @10dps (0.33%) --- Verenity 0k @0dps (0%) --- Getsome 0k @0dps (0%)

Adriana is a monk; Dravingar and Cecily are rogues. Splorf also noted that Sakuragi, a warrior, usually did around 40dps in normal EXP fights. So this is an example of what melees can do at around level 60.

Now let's compare to a 60 wizard, and I'm stressing here that we are NOT looking at a raid boss situation, but an EXP group situation, meaning the question is not burst DPS but sustained DPS, so we have to take mana regeneration into account. The best wizard nuke is Sunstrike, which does 1615 damage for 450 mana. How long does it take to get 450 mana? Meditate gives 1 mana/tick per 12 points in the skill, so at 300 skill, it gives 25 mana every 6 seconds. Let's add in Clarity II: it gives 11 mana every 6 seconds. Let's add in Harvest: at 60, it gives around 320 mana every 600 seconds, so 3.2 every 6 seconds. Add all that up: you get 6.5 mana per second. To get 450 mana, you have to wait 69 seconds. So how much DPS is 1615 damage every 69 seconds? 23. And that's assuming you're never resisted, not even partially. This is much, much worse than even a warrior in an EXP group. Completely eclipsed by any actual melee DPSer, in other words. We can even see in that log a couple of pets that do more DPS.

Compare these results to any lower levels, where wizards have less-efficient nukes and worse mana regeneration, and the difference between the wizard and the melee DPS of the same level will be even more striking.

Not sure if you mentioned this but the TOP melee DPS in a raid generally has Avatar on them and you won't find that in group encounters. Not to mention Raid level weapons and armor. Melee are much more gear dependent than a wizard. However if you want to throw in top end gear... mine as well add in the free mana item nukes wizards get.

[Estu]

Not sure if you mentioned this but the TOP melee DPS in a raid generally has Avatar on them and you won't find that in group encounters. Not to mention Raid level weapons and armor. Melee are much more gear dependent than a wizard. However if you want to throw in top end gear... mine as well add in the free mana item nukes wizards get.

Yeah, all of this is obviously a factor, but the difference is so vast that even with cheap gear the melee would be much better than a similarly-geared wizard. I'd have used a more representative DPS parse of a typical EXPing situation but I couldn't find one (I don't do DPS parses myself). In the post I got the parses from, Splorf mentioned that Sakuragi, a warrior, typically did around 40 DPS in an EXP situation with weapons that were not top-end.

[Tecmos Deception]

Alarti should convince TMO to reduce the price of trak teeth (for wizards only) and solist's robe in order to advance the "wizards aren't terribad in xp groups when they can click rend 4 times a minute at 50+" agenda, imo.

They'd improve to "mediocre" at least!

[Splorf22]

Sakuragi, a warrior, usually did around 40dps in normal EXP fights.

That was with the Sarnak Warhammer/Silken Whip of Ensnaring, so nothing particularly uber. Now that I have the lightsaber power, Sak puts out maybe 60 or so. Last night in the hole (I love saying that) with a 70 point DS and both Bard and Enchanter epic haste my parser was spiking into the 90s even :cool:

Also part of the problem wizards have is that they generate huge, huge amounts of aggro. In my experience tanking a melee will basically never pull aggro off a warrior if they are paying attention; its the bards and wizards who have trouble managing aggro. In fact I did some math and I'm really not sure how a wizard could even use the Velious uber bane spells.

Back of the envelope calculation: 3 minute fight, 4000 mana, +1000 regenerated mana, 5:1 damage/mana ratio = 25,000 damage / 180 seconds = 140 hate/second. Meanwhile my sperglord warrior weapon calculator suggests that an epic/shissar warrior with max dexterity puts out about 75 hate/sec, and one with an upgraded sceptre of destruction+blade of carnage about 90 hate/sec. Neither of those values is even close, and my understanding is that concussion is resistable, so good luck landing that on the Avatar of War.

Maybe I'm missing something <shrug>

edit: here is a parse from last night:

/GU Combined: A wanderer in 4757s, 835k @175dps --- An elemental capturer 317k @73dps (38.04%) --- Sakuragi 274k @58dps (32.86%) --- Kebartik 156k @36dps (18.72%) --- Lavarian 73k @16dps (8.78%) --- Gekab 13k @7dps (1.55%) --- Coeur 0k @0dps (0.03%) --- Winajil 0k @0dps (0.02%) --- Lighthawk 0k @0dps (0%) --- Fabumbus 0k @0dps (0%)

Kebartik is a 60 mage water pet; Lavarian is a 60 epic bard. Note that this counts the times when we weren't fighting, so its a fair comparison to a wizard. I did have that 70 point ds though, so Sakuragi is probably a bit under 50 without it. On the other hand, these were mostly L51-53 mobs so a wizard would certainly not be landing every nuke for max damage either.

[skipdog]

I grow tired of the 'wizards suck in groups' notion that floats around this server. It really does make people shy away from inviting wizards and makes finding groups harder than it should be.

Every group I'm in, I generally land 1 nuke on every mob and that nuke usually does 30-40% of that mobs health. If there are 4 DPS'ers in my group, I'm certainly pulling my weight just fine. I think people also underestimate the value of 'having a wizard that is always at 70% mana or higher who can do some crazy burst DPS if things get hairy'.

So yeah, sustained DPS? Of course we lose but only when we actually run out of mana. Fortunately, 'long, sustained DPS' is a pretty rare thing. Generally mobs die fast and so often you are limited by the number of mob spawns anyways. I don't need to parse anything when I personally know I'm dealing 30-40% of each mob's health every time. If your group is killing mobs so fast that you only have the mana to nuke every other mob then... well, your group is getting some crazy xp and nobody should be complaining, especially when we aren't a hybrid with a horrible xp penalty.

[Estu]

What level are you that you're nuking monsters for 40% of their health?

[SamwiseRed]

http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/1265308261_fake-wrestling.gif

[Jhaaz]

Wizzy are ok in groups, its nice to have burst damage available when you need it. Evacs come in handy too. Just find some friends to hang out with it will be ok. And you can always solo if you have too. I have been soloing almost all my lvls but, I choose this.