Wizards Underwhelming in Multi-player

Hmm, that's not too bad at all. I'm gonna keep rolling with my three warrior or 2 warrior and a priest party. So far I'm 15-2, but against lower ranked opponents. We will see at what rank the brute force party hits a wall.

 

Here is the exact build I've used in most of my ranked MP matches since around May 1st: http://www.cardhunter.com/forum/threads/mp-builds.1773/#post-21987
It may be worth mentioning that my ranting was obtained without intent. It was simply a side effect of playing many games and playing to the best of my abilities. As Penda proved if you want the rating you can grind for it. If you noticed the discrepancy between his and my win loss ratio you will understand what I mean. It's not about what you play as much as how you play it.

As far as exactly what shops carry, obviously that varies. Although, I find a few items that posses the aforementioned cards every week. Yes, I was referring two those to shops in particular.

 

No reason not to stay positive.

Wizards are good, just play more. They'll wreck you and you'll learn. Lance and Generica covered the high points, pay attention to them. At higher levels of play it's not at all uncommon to run into multiple wizards. But there is no one "best" party, so don't focus on that. It just depends on your items and your preferences.

Wizards do a lot of damage, but in different ways than warriors. I would suggest starting with frost/encumber spells and lava, both are very accessible out of the level 11 shop.

Chillfrost Staff and Blister Stone will more than get the job done with low rarity equipment.

 

Base, Raw power. Warriors are by far above other classes. That is their role. I think the issue with your comparison here is that it's not an apples to apples issue. As others have said, Wizards deal damage, but that's not their entire role. If you build them entirely for damage, you won't get as much as a warrior out of them, but you get range and secondary effects as well. They have a lot of control, they have a lot of utility. They can lock a warrior down for 2+ rounds making it effectively a 3v2 match for a while and can often repeat the process for another two rounds. I used to run 3 Wizards and did just this, consistently. No Gimmick, that's part of what Wizards do.

Warriors only do damage. Personally I have a problem with the amount of damage they do. I've recently started testing a 2xPriest, Warrior build and I feel pretty bad when I take out two characters in round one with my warrior. I've taken out all three opponents characters, from nearly full health, in a round multiple times as well (when the opponent doesn't just resign on me). Having wizard's damage on par with warriors and be able to do this at range would be ridiculous.

 

I am going to post my last thought on this matter. Again, I notice everyone who says wizards are good mentions running with multiple wizards. I see now that a multi wizard party is viable because multiple wizards means multiple locks and teleports. Sort of like the geomancers in single player.

However, I still do not see a strong argument for adding a single wizard to form a well-balanced party. Are wizards confined to merely all wizard strategies, or can they be incorporated into a balanced attack?

The problem with putting a wizard into a balanced party is that they immediately become the #1 target. Any good player will know taking out a character means you just took out 1/3 of the cards a guy can play - a tremendous advantage. Naturally, skilled players will look to pick off the weakest character immediately. With a balanced party your wizard has a big target on his head. You will speand most of the time moving him away from warriors and trying to keep him alive. This is not a problem in multiple wizard parties because you have multiple encumbers and teleports, but in a single wizard party you expend too many turns simply trying to keep your wizard alive.

Let the haters hate, I know they will. But from what I've seen in this post from everyone the answer is the same: multiple wizard parties with cold spells and teleports are viable. However, no one seems to be advocating the addition of one wizard to a balanced party, and frankly I don't think that type of party would be competitive at high levels. A single wizard works in single player with unintelligent AI not targeting him, but in multiplayer vs human opponents a single wizard screams "kill me immediately".

 

You generalize a lot, and assume even more. It is not "everyone", there were a lot of different opinions. And you assume "Any good player", maybe with n=1 and the group asked consisting of you?
Of course the wizard is a target, that's why he has ranged attacks and can evade them. You don't "expend" turns without your opponent doing the same. If he chooses to chase the wizard he has to invest the same turn count. In fact the opponent is likely to invest more, and charging into the enemy lines can get a character killed quickly.

 

1. the support for multiple wizard is because wizard just gives so much board control, as well as displacement.

2. As it stands right now, in a balanced 1 warrior/1 priest/1 wizard party, taking out the enemy wizard first WOULD BE SUICIDE. I repeat, SUICIDE. The problem of warriors is that they have to reach the enemy in order to deal damage, if someone is willing to for some reason ignore my warrior, and tries to go straight for my wizard at the backline, my warrior would annihilate whoever comes through.

3. The fact that you think damage = everything shows a lot of inexperience with board strategy games. Perhaps you should explore more strategies, and try different combinations.

 

Who said I think damage is everything? I believe I mentioned that warriors have more damage, more health, better armor cards, and blocking cards. That's not just damage. But if you want to give up all those advantages for some encumber/slide & push cards, go right ahead. I don't think it is an even trade.

I also find a bit odd that you mention how your warrior will annihilate anyone that tries to get your wizard... why not just take a second warrior and have two characters annihilating people instead of one protecting the weaker one?

 

The full quote was "any good player will know taking our a character will remove 1/3 of the cards a guy can play". I guess I'm the only one in the n=1 set who thinks that. Though for such a mathmatically minded person, I would think you agree with taking out a character means 1/3 of the cards the opponent can play are no longer playable. But, I suppose I'm the only one who came to that brilliant conclusion.

 

The fact that you don't think any of those are related to "damage" now just baffles me. Those are things that are directly related to damage, what I should have clarified is that you care about direct damage (and anything related to it). So far in all your posts, all I see are things related to direct damage, and if something does low or no damage, it is not mentioned.

Armor, block, and health are directly related to damage, btw.

 

I don't think anyone would disagree that removing an opponent's character is a huge advantage. I think many of us are disagreeing that removing that character is as easy as you are implying (though yes, Elf Wizards are horrifically squishy, so you have to be very careful when using them). Just because a wizard has less health (and usually has much less in the way of armor and blocks) doesn't mean it's that much easier to kill. You have the advantages of range and disables on your side, you need to leverage those.

For the cards I currently have, the warrior+cleric+wizard party is not very good, primarily because many of my best cleric cards are melee buffs, which is not at all synergistic with what I want my wizards to be doing. Almost any combination that does not involve cleric+wizard is a better build for me.

 

One of the thing that could use a change is dodge

Dodge could remove the 2 move primary effect, and add block melee as a second effect, then nerf it to 5+. This change means 1/3 of the time it would block a melee, and move back one. Dodge as it constitutes right now is just an okay card, but this would improve its usefulness, and make it more of a "dodge" effect.

 

I think the crux of the matter is this; A party with only a single warrior and a single wizard is generally weaker than one with a pair (or more) of either of the classes. One wizard isn't able to play enough spells on a turn by turn basis to exert strong control on the field, and if he tries then he's basically only doing it to protect himself because the warrior and possibly cleric have lesser need to keep enemies away because of thier higher HP and greater threat in melee. Furthermore, if the wizard gears for damage, he gets outclassed by the warrior anyways. A single warrior, then, is easy to evade because he can't cover all angles by himself and is particularily vulnerable to opposing encumber/slide effects, being the sole target of them. He won't be enough of a threat to stop the enemy team from gunning for his wizard teammate.

I've seen people sway both sides on the issue; Either they decide "My wizard keeps dying, I might as well get more warriors" or they decide "My warrior is having a hard time being productive, I might as well get more wizards". I guess it depends largely on preferred playstyle and early experiences. I couldn't tell you if "more warriors" or "more wizards" is the superior playstyle. I personally favor the wizard and I've manhandled plenty of warrior based teams, but I've seen the strength of warriors and some of the ways they are able to counter my tactics if played and geared properly.

 

The argument was "Wizards are underpowered", and we're saying it is not, that's all. The thread is not about "wizards are overpowered."

 

Okay confused. You've now gone from Wizards aren't good, they don't do enough damage, to Wizards aren't good when there is only one of them? Your reasoning is because they can be killed?

If I'm expending all of those turns keeping away from the warrior, then their warrior is occupied spending all of it's turns going after my wizard. I'm not stupid enough to make it easy for them. Even bait them into positions where you can wall them off causing 2+ turns for them to get back into the battle "taking out 1/3 of the cards a guy can play - a tremendous advantage". It's really not as easy as run up and kill the wizard.

I've seen plenty of two priest one wiz builds that rip people up. Sure, if you have one wizard it can become the target, but I find I spend more turns trying to keep my warrior alive than I do my wizard. The warrior is always in danger, the wizard hardly ever. Why? because I position it that way. Sure a warrior with sprint may throw a wrench into my plans, but my stored up moves, knockbacks etc. muck with him as well.

For people that don't use only a single wizard, it's not because wizards are weak. People like to focus on their strategies. A balanced party in a MP setting generally doesn't work because you're not really strong at anything. Sure a Wiz,Priest,War party can do just fine against some builds, but if you like the play of warriors you drop the Wiz and add a War, if you like the play of Wiz you drop a War and add another Wiz, if you like the play of Priests, you drop whatever you like the least and add another priest. It's not about avoiding a single Wizard, it's about maximizing your strategy.

 

One Wizard, two Wizards, three Wizards, or even no Wizards are all excellent, viable, competitive choices for both MP and SP.

The obvious choice is not always the best choice. I in most instances would rather kill a priest above the other 2 classes. Although, to play effectively you need to be able to read the board and your opponent in order to determine the greatest threat to address.

Um, I've personally played a character down (starting using only 2 characters) and still managed to win 70% of the time that way. So, I would disagree!

 

Crap like this makes me want a "dislike" button. You're being deliberately disingenuous and willfully missing the point. The point is that removing an opponent's character is a huge advantage. The fact that you are able to win despite giving your opponent a huge advantage doesn't mean it's not a huge advantage. Stop it.

 

I somewhat disagree especially on the disingenuous part since I'm convinced hes telling the truth. The fact that he's missing the point is hardly worth a dislike for that matter. But yes generally in a even gear and skill battle being one guy down is obviously a big disadvantage the question is what does that have to do with wizards power?