Playing a Wizard in a group
 

Any tips on being effective as a wizard in a group?

Do you drop your mana via chain nukes then afk med for 5 min? :P

How do you consistently contribute to DPS? Avoid over aggro?

Should I use ae spells or rains?

What other roles and abilities should I look for to maximize the group experience? root cc? burning down casters or something?

I've played a wizard mostly with root & nuke, and quad kiting and that's fine. I am not sure how to be effective in a group situation, particularly xp grinds where you see chain pulls etc.

Roots and tactical stuns.

Some zones it is fun to pull with eye, snare bomb the incoming mobs and root them off 1 by 1. Works well in Hole at the drop down after the swim - in zoneline.

the other thing us nonwizards love when wizards do is quick response nukes, either for mobs fleeing without snare/dangerously close to causing adds if snared, or when an add is stuck on the cleric or enchanter and the melee arent getting it off easy. just Boom drop that sucker.

edit: also be ready with Evac, and vocal about offering/doing it. everyone would prefer to have to break back into camp rather than wipe, as long as they get a heads up that youre casting/ready to cast it

Pretty much everything here is the main good advice. Keep mana in a good place so that you are of use. Your DPS isn't good so don't worry about it. Make the fast damage count. Use your utility to keep the team strong and healthy. Don't die.

Dont use aoe or rain. Especially if grouped with chanter. Rains/aoe hit multiple mobs. Good groups *try* to only deal with 1 at a time. Where do you think those (upto) 3 other mobs are gonna go?

As above, tactical stuns for casters the fastest casting one, nvm the duration. A CH mob takes 10 secs to cast, wiz mana bombs cast fast. Leave casting animations/particle effects on and learn what is what.

You are better off doing the last 8% of a mob and killing it than the 1st 10% and just pissing it off.

Edit bit
Regarding the aoe snare wiz get. Snare (if you are the designsted snarer) even if you cant put enough distance to NOT snare yourself in dungeons. Its not iike running around helps melee pull agro off you.

Ya, I tend to wait until a mob is ~40% hp to start casting, usually execute it around 15-20% as its about to run.

Another thing I'll add is, try to stay fairly high on mana. Wizards are unique in that unlike a lot of other classes, if shit kinda hits the fan, Wizards can go nuclear and put the situation back to normal by just murdering something.

Or, similarly, as things get low you can essentially function as an executioner to let the rest of the group more quickly move to the next target. It's a boring life, most of the time, but I always really enjoyed grouping on my wizard and knowing that 90% of the time I'm just kind of idling, and I can push on the throttle when its needed. There's something fun thinking about most classes can kinda go full bore if they want to but wizards have to very consciously hold back for most of the fight because their DPS is so high when they want it to be.

1. Having the mana to burn down a mob quick when needed. This is when you get to be the hero.
2. Root CC, Root prevent fleeing mob, and interrupt NPC casters
3. Talk to group, have fun, make friends
4. Be group leader, you have lots of time on your hands, when someone is leaving in 15 minutes, be proactive and line up a replacement, get them ported in. Vice versa, port people out.
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100. Cast nuke on mob when at full mana

Was about to say number 1 as well. Keep some mana in reserve for whenever that one nuke to kill (or nearly kill) a mob is needed. Maybe you have a bunch of adds and so the sooner the group can turn to the next one the better. Maybe a mob is running in a dungeon and it's about to create a shit storm of social aggro. Nuke that thing one time and kill it. But yeah otherwise the other tips in here are solid. If you have an Enchanter in your group who has a charmed pet, you can help them by hitting them with a stun if charm breaks...saves the Enchanter from having to do it before they mez and re-charm the thing.

Do be careful on 'helping' enchanters with charm breaks - wizard stuns all have a damage component, which will break a mez if they get off one of those spells before you complete your stun cast.

Pull with eyeballs. Pretargets setup to root when in LOS.

Zero reason you can’t keep a pet snared and control breaks with flux staff etc.

If epic, all the more of the above.

Obligatory stuns when needed. You have incredible aggro potential. Your dps is the worst thing you can do in most cases.