I can't decide whether I suck at playing Wizards, or if I just have crappy Wizard items. It seems like on my Warrior and/or Cleric's turns, I consistently pump out 7-15 damage, and when my Wizard attacks, he pretty regularly does 3-5. Now I realize that the range is much greater, but I almost never encounter a situation where that extra range actually helps, because either enemies start up in your grill or they have more and better ranged attacks than my Wizard (and Priest, natch) have. So...am I just playing wrong? Currently using an Arcane Skill that gives both Spark Generator and the lesser version thereof along with Staves that give 10+ Spark attacks between them, and items that mostly either move enemies around or throw Big Zaps. Does my build just suck, or am I missing something about how Wizards are 'supposed' to work?
Range matters a lot - many of the creatures you meet are melee fighters and your wizard can pummel them from a distance before they get to you. If nothing else you can fire on them during the first turn and then move back, whereas your melee fighters have to either pass (and risk losing their attacks altogether if the enemy passes before advancing all the way) or move forward and maybe lose the initiative. Even if some of them start up near you, they may not be the top kill priorities, and furthermore even if you want to kill a nearby one, a ranged attack gives you a better choice. The other thing is that wizards don't need to be up close in melee, and so they less in the way of armour and blocks. Furthermore, if enemies have ranged attacks, you wizard doesn't have to chase them all over the board to fight back. It's standard for ranged attacks to be numerically less powerful than melee in nearly all games, for reasons like this.
Well, mages has a lot more options damage wise - they can go for terrain effects, movement control et c. They don't need to be all targettable damage like the most singleminded class - the warriors.
Great wizard, simple version: Hot Spot and Wall Of Fire. Get as many as you can and enjoy the barbeque
I've won games with only my wizard left, because he was the only one who could effectively "kite" (damage and run away) enemies. The wizard also has much better area attacks. And under certain circumstances you can win battles with a single wizard spell, like Volcano or Firestorm. Having all these strong sides obviously comes with downsides, and one-on-one damage output being low is one of those downsides. The wizard is not a pure damage dealer, but has a lot of crowd control and similar tricky stuff.
Wall Of Fire appears somewhat regularly on higher level items (like Blister Stone) but Volcano and Firestorm are rather rare. I think I found one item with Firestorm during my playthrough and none with Volcano. But even Hot Spot is more than enough to turn a weak wizard into a killing machine. Heh, it was probably the most valuable card for me during the whole campaign! And once you manage to get Unholy Wellspring for your priest, even weak spells turn deadly
Volcano and Firestorm are both rares, therefore dependent on finding specific items. Wall of Fire and Hot Spot cards are all over common and uncommon items, you just need to be checking the store. I play 2 wizards in campaign, they end up looking very close to a MP build these days. Focusing mainly on wall of fire and winds of war in my arcane item slots, plus a little bit of path of knives. My staves focus on encumber effects. I don't really worry much about the arcane skill slot. This method avoids enemies blocks. You can swap in some armor destroying cards for certain levels, and counterspell is very good against spell casters. Fireball can also be good in the campaign, but again you need the right items.
The priest is not too bad when he's the last survivor, but it can be slow - he has to run away and heal up, then jump into melee, rinse and repeat.
Blister Stone is a lvl 13 common item and turns up daily in my lvl 11 shop for 5gp Burning Bangle lvl 5 common item lvl 1 shop for 5gp
I just want to say, those cards are entirely unnecessary. I've run many highly successful wizards that didn't use a single copy of any of those. They are very popular, commonly-used cards right now, but you don't need them to have a good wizard.
If you want your wizard to be a ranged (flexible) damage dealer, there's three solid routes to go; You can load up on Sparks, Spark/Ice hybrid, or Surges. All of these depend on your staff selection. I have a Spark/Ice wizard and a Surge wizard, both work well. Surging basically means the series of step attacks Wizards get. It's less damage but it makes positioning very flexible, and gives melee characters a very hard time landing the more powerful attacks. If your wizard is a controller, it means he's setting up your other damage dealer for his hits. You want a lot of Winds Of War and encumber/cold spells. There is an item with 3x Winds of War, but there is many more with 2x so find those. Adding lava terrains will increase damage potential, but they come at the cost of controller cards; many of which are needed to set up lava terrain damage, or at least if you want to stop them from moving off or put them on for a second round.
Ice is a bane to unprepared/unluck dwarves and a minor inconvenience to others. You have to think of tactical uses of a wizard within a team. For example, the wizard is useful it getting rid of pesky block cards from an opponent so your warrior can go in and carve them up.
Volcano and Firestorm seem a bit cheesy to me, TBH, along with Whirlwind Enemies. I prefer not to use them.
One thing I've found is regardless if you're elec, fire, etc. whichever way you go you should really spec it out for that one element. My wizzie is currently geared for electricity and he does good ranged damage with that.
One thing I'd suggest based on your comments. You seem to be limited by your collection. The difficulty of the game seems to be inversely proportional to the size of your card collection. Growing that collection will make the game easier. If it's available you should be checking the level 11 shop daily. Start another party from the beginning, this will help you get more items and give you some flexibility in party make up (you can swap in a wizard or warrior or whatever based on your needs or based on items you've found). Try to win 1-3 games of MP each day for the chests.
That third chest is great. I've been tracking what I get from chests lately, and in the last 6 times I've opened that chest I've gotten 5 rares, 2 epics, and 1 legendary, and only two of those were below level 9. Had I been a club member, I would have gotten 5 more rares and 1 more legendary.
