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The Wizard is too squishy
anashim
Member Posts: 259 Bounty Hunter
I havent noticed it before the L30s when my Wizard entered Helmshold. But my Wizard dies way too often.
Being surrounded by four devils or even two Hellfire Maguses, is certain death. And if I use my Daily Ice Storm to push them away, eight more show up immediately after to attack. No defense. No deflection. No hit points.
If I am in a team, or even when other heroes just happen to be nearby, to keep the monsters busy, it seems ok. But when soloing in a quest. It is intolerable.
The Wizard needs more survivability.
The Wizard is too too too squishy.
Being surrounded by four devils or even two Hellfire Maguses, is certain death. And if I use my Daily Ice Storm to push them away, eight more show up immediately after to attack. No defense. No deflection. No hit points.
If I am in a team, or even when other heroes just happen to be nearby, to keep the monsters busy, it seems ok. But when soloing in a quest. It is intolerable.
The Wizard needs more survivability.
The Wizard is too too too squishy.
Post edited by anashim on
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I am intentionally trying to make a "Control" Wizard work. All my power build is control spells. Ice Storm, Entangling Force, Chill Strike (Mastery), Repel, Icy Terrain, Orb of Imposition, Chilling Presence, and Ray of Frost. It is called a "Control Wizard", and if the control spells are ineffective for solo quests, then theres a problem.
The atwill, Ray of Frost, is incredibly frustrating because it often simply fails to work. Monsters are attacking, I am pressing the button, and often enough nothing happens. The Wizard just stands there powerless without making any attack. Please fix Ray of Frost. ASAP. And make the Wizard more survivable.
Entangling Force can only keep one monster busy, ... while the seven others kill the Wizard.
Actually, I was kiting. I finally defeated the boss after dying five times in a row. Mainly by luck: this time the boss seemed to die sooner. When the boss died the devils that were surrounding the Wizard seemed to disappear before they had a chance to the kill the Wizard.
The problem is, the Wizard cannot stand when non-minion aggro focuses on the Wizard.
The Wizard is too squishy.
I will give Conduit of Ice a try, with the idea that it does area damage. But with its low damage, I dont see how it helps against serious aggro.
The Wizard cannot survive being the focus of aggro.
Now it seems even Potions of Healing cant keep the Wizard alive.
The Wizard is too squishy.
I finally defeat the boss.
Leave the dungeon, and am immediately attacked by imps. I kill the imps no problem but then devils show up to kill the Wizard.
The Wizard is too too too squishy.
You'll start noticing your skills disable trash so hard they never get the chance to strike back. You just smite them down full to null on stun at all times. You'll notice your AP bar goes crazy when you rotate your aoe skills and allows you to keep everything under singularity at all times when swarmed by opponents.
You'll see and you'll be amazed. Seriously.
Regards,
Kalantris
AM: Conduit of Ice
Q/E/R 50+: Shield, steal time, shard of endless avalanche.
Q/E/R 40+: Shield, steal time, chill strike.
Dailies: Ice Spike, Arcane Singularity.
Agro with chill strike, cast steal time when enemies approach. Stun them before they get to you (skill slows everything around you by 90% when channeling), cast conduit on one in the middle and spam some magic missiles. Once they get out of stun pop shield tossing them around. By that time you'll have your CD on the shield reduced by 50% by Arcane Mastery, so chill, it's just 8s. Dodge once or twice depending on how fast your opponents are, recast shield, SLAM. Now your arcane singularity is up. Run towards as many enemies as you can, agro a couple groups using autoattack and cast arcane singularity next to you. Start dodging, cast conduit on one of the healthier mobs. Stand next to the center and wait for the mobs to get pulled up. When they do, cast steal time again and then slam your shield.
Everything will be dead before you even charge your arcane singularity, but hey, even describing it is worth it.
Regards,
Kalantris
The wizard may be squishier than some, but with the array of CC and AoE abilities you have, there's no reason you can't out last / maneuver / kill the mobs in Helm's Hold. Sure, you can't go toe-to-toe on the shock troopers who are hitting for huge amounts of damage (hint: don't let them hit you) but there's no reason you need to anyway.
I got rid of shield because, while it worked, I'm an impatient bastage and instead have slotted an additional DPS power. Largely, I'm still using Chill Strike (tab), Entangling Force, Conduit of Ice and now the Spellstorm thing. No Steal Time or anything like that yet. Dailies I have Ice Storm and Singularity, though in the explorer zones I'm usually using Ice Storm just to out-damage folks.
Right, Shield, Steal Time, etcetera. In other words, prevent the multiple attacks from ever happening in the first place. Unfortunately, I didnt invest in Shield, and the Wizard is still too low level to take Steal Time. Even Wizards who choose not to take these spells should be able to survive normal combat scenarios. I did take Icy Terrain, but it needs to be far more effective at immobilizing and freezing high-level multiple attackers.
And I shouldnt have to spend ALL my money on Potions of Healing.
The Wizard needs better survivability.
Its making me stop using daily spells altogether.
I just did the shock trooper contest and won it again. Each of those had trash, one tough mob + the big monster demons.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a companion?
I also swill potions like crazy, but I rarely buy them - I must have over 50 of the 2000 hp ones, and near 20 of the next tier up.
I took [Storm Fury] thinking it would help me against aggro. But seems to suck. [Storm Fury] doesnt even kill imps. Infact, while it was active, I never once saw it kill anything. I never even noticed a health bar diminish because of it. I eventually just swapped [Storm Fury] out. I consider [Storm Fury] a waste of advancement resources in need of a respec.
I have a Manatarms at Rank 15 with good gear. (In fact, the gear has no level restriction so you can give whatever highest level item you can get a hold of.) The Manatarms is great. Great at forcing ONE target to be busy.
Again the problem is, whenever multiple high-level attackers all focus on the Wizard. The Wizard is simply too squishy.
I'm not talking about the class feature - the encounter power is what I have in my 3rd slot.
What I'm going to say is not just about this game. It's about all forms of D&D, MMOs, online RPGs, etc.
To be good at CC, you have to have CC strong enough to remove targets with a duration that maps to your ability to take out the non-locked targets.
What this means is, you still need offense - and how much offense you need is really based on the duration of your CC. If you don't, you're not going to be successful. You could build for less offense but you will ALWAYS need to group to have someone else make up the difference.
This doesn't make you a striker.
It sounds like you built a very-good-at-one-thing character, which needs to be part of a team.
Also, RE: Companion - I'd suggest the cleric for just about everyone in the early levels.
Observe your enemies, pay attention to the tells for their abilities, how often they use them and what they actually do. Learn what you need to interrupt (with Chill Strike/Entangling Force/knockback) and what should be dodged.
Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, a Control Wizard soloing through the storyline is not a facerolling experience. CW is closer to the CoH Blaster than it is to the CoH Controller.
And "control" isn't absolute. For a controller in 4e DND, it means that you do baseline damage + add on some sort of conditional effect (immobilize, slow, hold, etc.). It isn't a guarantee that your CC effect will be constant ('cause it isn't) nor is it suggesting you should drive your baseline damage closer to zero. A striker in 4e does baseline damage + more damage, in comparision.
The problem is when there are two sets of such encounters: four Legions plus two Erinyes. Or one set plus a boss. Or one set plus a Hellfire Magus, sniping from a distance. Or so on. These multiple encounters are unavoidable on that Helmshold street.
Likewise, the last boss I fought at the Sanatorium would continue to summon multiple devilish encounters.
The Wizard also kept dying from Shepherd of the Damned quest, another aggro freaky boss, for similar reasons, also in Helmshold. (In the case of the Shepherd, the best strategy seemed to be to engage her almost in melee, while Icy Terrain seems effective, and kill any aggro the instant they appear. Oppositely, in the case of the Sanatorium, the boss Ronini, the best strategy seemed to be to avoid the aggro as best as possible while sniping at her from a distance but dedicating everything to focus fire.)
Anyway. Again. Its the aggro. And the aggro is normal.
The aggro are unavoidable.
I have no problem w/ pulling one group at a time. Sometimes I yank lots (like running the Spy Hunt) but in general you can fight one group at a time. Their view distance seems really, really limited to me. I ran the 5-shields quest this AM and went from crypt to crypt without pulling any mobs on they way, and ran back also activating none of the optionals (unless I wanted them specifically - I needed to kill 2 additional summoners).
Is your companion aggroing?
FWIW, I am free to play and have 2 characters near the same level - the other is a GWF. The wizard "feels" far more resilient, and some of this is simply the fact that you can do basically everything at range, safe from most content.
In fact, in a recent fight, I noticed. The Manatarms ran ahead to attack a monster. All of other monsters ganged up on him and swarmed him. But when I attacked one of these monsters from range, all of the other monsters, except the one that the Manatarms engaged, suddenly left him and they all swarmed the Wizard. Who died.
Heh. As if your Wizard has any choice except to attack from a distance. And if an aggro focuses on the Wizard the Wizard dies.
I'm seriously not having the same problem you are.
If I feel like there is too much in a group as I approach, I start by entangling one of the toughs, then conduit, then chill strike - otherwise it's the same. Still, the ability to snipe / soften from a distance is handy. For instance, if I have a singularity handy, I may drop it as my opening on a group of toughies - holding them all a bit while I chill strike, then conduit and then pick one to entangle when the singularity drops.
Being able to range gives the wizard an advantage over the GWF. My wizard also has more real-CC than just a single slam. I still play in their face, because that's the best way to get all of them in my AoE damage.