Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuljin
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Most people have never played with a good Wizard before and like any class in EQ its a great class in the hands of a good player.
Many people think DPS DPS DPS on Wizard which of course is true, but there are a couple more very key abilities that Wizard gets that make it excellent in groups (besides the obvious Evac) - stun, snare, and interrupt nuke. Also Flux Staff for tagging.
Stun is an incredibly powerful spell that Wizard doesn't get until 20, and later on you can load two stuns in your bar at the same time. You can stun out Enchanters charmed pets and also stun out caster mobs. Classic especially is full of very difficult and dangerous caster mobs. You can also use it to stun fleeing mobs until you get Snare.
You can also use Stun and Flux Staff to pull caster mobs very well with "ghetto CC" of rooting out of LoS. Flux Staff is good for tagging pathers but also an essential global cooldown clicky. You can stun, clicky, root, pop out of LoS. With the abundance of resist gear for Wizard you can stand up to caster mobs very well. Eventually at 58 Wizard gets Fetter which is an incredibly OP root.
A highly underrated spell line for Wizard that most people don't know about because most people don't really "play" a wizard is the Interrupt Nuke line. If you aren't exclusively dropping interrupt nukes on a caster mob you're "doing it wrong." Really magic based nukes don't resist appreciably more than elemental nukes. A very high Blue will get lots of resists despite whether the nuke is magic based or elemental. A nice level Blue mob will not resist magic nukes appreciably more than elemental and you get the incredible added bonus of spell neutralization. Then clicky staff and drop a stun because a caster mob will instantly begin to cast again after a 0 second interrupt stun. For melee mobs obviously drop elemental spells all the time.
If you really want to talk about damage percentage from a Wizard, once you get snare your group gets 20% damage per mob mana free. At that point what you do is snare the mob then time your nuke so he's nuked down to 20% and immediately begins to flee. You are effectively now doing near 50% damage to the mob and saving your healer inordinate amounts of mana from damage-free DPS. This amount of mana saved goes far beyond the "paper napkin" arithmetic of EQ nerds. Its a ton. If people in your group are going to complain about how inconvenient it is that snare and root don't stack they need to go play another game. Its really not that hard to coordinate.
In Kunark this scales back a bit, but for example against frogs in Sebilis you can Draught of Jiva a snared Shaman mob from 30something percent down to 20%, they skip their heal and the go right into snared fleeing. Its a tremendous help. There are also some nasty casters in The Hole that Wizards deal with very nicely. On Blue I got much of my experience in 50s in groups with great friends in non-traditional group compositions and I would always pull, CC, and be on point. I also always have the Enchanter's (or sometimes Druid's) back on pet charm breaks. Not "nuke, Netflix, repeat." You definitely need to be a good player among good players to make this happen though, which is tough to find in the age of ~~~~~~~~~rAiDiNg~~~~~~~~~~ and investing in DKP instead of coin.
So yeah, Wizard is really good and especially in Classic they are very powerful from a raw DPS standpoint against XP mobs. Yes, "a Wizard can't solo like an Enchanter or Shaman," but no other class can solo like an Enchanter or Shaman lol. Wiz can solo for XP but not for farming phats and thats fine.
I'm not one to "share secrets" but I've been banging this drum for so long nobody "listens" or elects to group on a Wizard anyways so it doesn't matter lol. Solmn I hope you're enjoying your Squallsurge Shawl =)
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Good read. I agree that nuking mobs to the flee threshold is a big advantage.
And yeah i'm lovin the shawl thanks for selling it to me at a good price. People always say that casters don't need gear, and that's somewhat true, but having a huge mana pool let me solo yellow mobs that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to.