Defense skill on a wizard

[senna]

So I tried to make sure that I was tanking early on with my wizard to raise his defense. I'm sitting at level 16 right now with 38 defense skill..which is pretty abysmal.

What are some ways you guys went around to raising your defense? just grab a regen and tank a single lblue or what?

[Vexenu]

It's honestly not even worth your time. There's no point. You should never be getting hit as a Wiz, especially once you start quadding. I would go for stretches of multiple levels without taking any damage whatsoever. That's not a brag, either. Any competent quadding Wizard who's paying attention can do the same quite easily.

Just continue to level and don't worry about your Defense skill. Worst case scenario, at some point in the future you hire a bored Shaman or Cleric for a few hundred plat and have him babysit you while a high green/light blue mob beats on your for awhile.

[Estu]

You will sometimes take hits when you are grouping/raiding. Personally I just let it level up when that happens.

[Swish]

If you can wait for Velious, there's a floor trap in Tower of Frozen Shadow that hits you (as if you're in combat with it)... on live this used to be a great way to max your defense skill. If that isn't implemented here I'll be the first to scream "not classic" :p

[Velerin]

I'm a big proponent of leveling up defense as a caster. You will get hit and that defense will make a difference between a death and a run to zone more often then not. Just let yourself get hit now and again in controlled environments (ie. when mob is rooted). You gotta sit and meditate anyways so you might as well regen some health too. I find if I just do that on occasion as you're soloing it'll work wonders.

[NegaStoat]

Defense is free armor class. Free is good. On a Necro, you can cap Defense for your level pretty easily with taps / health siphon DOT. With a Mage, I was able to melee things in a limited fashion to keep Defense capped with level all the way to the low 30's, thanks to their Skin spells which regen health and bandages.

I think if I were to level either an Enchanter or a Wizard, I'd level a Mage to 8 or so first just to crank out 10+ stacks of bandages to ground twink to my main caster to go solo with. For some unholy reason, Summon Bandages gives you a whole stack per cast (not like pre Velious retail).

The goal isn't to constantly melee - The goal is to safely raise 5 points of defense per level as you solo so... The summoned stacks could make it possible.

Edit - while the summoning could be a pain, No Rent items being stored on level 1 corpses could be a time saver if you take a little effort with it. Above poster has the right of it.

[goshozal]

You don't have to worry about raising defense on an enchanter. It'll cap itself.

Can't speak for wizards, but I remember the ToFS trick and had that filed away for mine... but that's many levels from now.