Magic Man

I have built various toons over the years and thought that I should put my thoughts down on what you can do to make your wizard or sorcerer that much more powerful. I will leave Cleric and Favoured Soul alone at the moment as I will admit that I have no love for a healer. I will eventually step up and develop characters that are healers but that is not what I want to discuss today. I want to cover the aspects of effective combat magic.

Frost Lance is good for single monsters

So when creating a character that uses magic the first step I guess is spending build points in the right way. Wizards are intelligence driven and Sorcerers are Charisma driven so push every point you can into those stats. It will affect the amount of mana (the blue stuff that characters use to cast spells) you have, the more mana you have the longer you can cast spells. There are feats that can increase your mana such as mental toughness and I think anyone who has played wizard or sorcerer knows the feeling of managing their mana.

So we know that we need mana but what else will help your character? There are meta feats that make a difference but the first thing I look for personally is the feat spell focus evocation. This improves the difficult check of all evocation spells, which when you go through spells is one of the most useful schools in the early and middle part of the game and if I am creating a human wizard I will use the extra feat that you get for great spell focus: Evocation. Spells like scorching ray and frost lance are part of my core spell choice for almost every Wizard to start with. Sometimes I play around with the choices but the most effective spells when I am soloing in the early/mid life are nearly all evocation so that will be my focus.

Merlin is on his 6th Life

It is slightly different for the Pale Master Wizard which is totally built around the necromancy school of magic. The sorcerer works well with Evocation but of course each Savant is focused on a particular element so players should prepare what spells they will be taking in advanced. This will identify if you should select another school other than Evocation. I would also suggest that spell penetration and great spell penetration are worthwhile feats to take as they enable your spells to work more effectively.

First Life at Cap

Depending on your choice you will want to choose weapons that increase your spells effectiveness. Be it selecting one elemental type to focus on, which is especially true on the different Sorcerer Savants, to increasing spell penetration or upping the chance of the spell doing critical damage a lot comes down to personal choice. A fire savant is very effective in the early/mid game but the higher levels see more creatures that are fire resistant. In fact the higher you go the more monsters will resist your magic so the more you need to increase the effectiveness of your spells.

I use a character slot to test builds

When in combat you will need a choice of spells to fit the combat. Ray spells like scorching ray and frost lance are effective against single targets whilst electric loop and acid blast are effective against multiple targets. I have selected a spell from each element but depending on build and magician class you will find spells that fit what you want to use. Finally it is easy to use magic but not so easy to use it effectively. The wiki and the ddo forums will go much more in depths as will I when I focus on individual builds but when starting out remember:-

Add to the difficulty check
Increase your spell penetration
Select a school of magic and use that focus to maximise your effectiveness
A mixture of area of effect (multiple targets) and single target spells is good.
Find weapons that will boost your magic: Quarterstaffs, clubs and daggers
Increase your pool of mana so you can go longer between shrines.

These are all things to consider when you are building and leveling your character.

Grousemerlin