i have reached #9 on the Wizzy Leaderboards! YAY! .... have a drink on me! =))

Noice... how do you like the Wizard overall? Pretty fun? How's the difficulty?

I just created a wizard and it's really difficult. I'm around lvl 12 and im at the riven grotto I think (or the dungeon before it). . . the boss that summons a pet and fears was insanely difficult for a wizard. I have no tools against it. All I have is anti-melee tools. It is a bad idea to root them because they nuke me with powerful spells, and the vizar's shield resistance buff doesn't really help. I eventually won with a lucky crit and had 4 hit points left! But that was luck, I don't think I could win consistently, even though I was 2 levels above him.

I think the wizard needs some anti-spell and anti- CC tools early, like something to dampen magic damage. For example, vizar's shield could lower all ice, fire and lightning damage by a % instead of just adding resistance like all of the other spell casters. I would like to see a spell that breaks CC at the cost of 10% hp. A wizard can die in one fear duration, and if it doesn't die then a stun or silence after the fear = dead wizard.
There is really no point in getting all of those AOE spells early because at such a low level you haven't the equipment or stats to pull 5 mobs at a time to take full advantage of those spells. So I just want to see some skills early on that help the poor wizard survive in a heavy spell and CC fight.

Maybe it would be easier to not root them in that fight. I'll try it out and see for myself.

Regarding the wizard, I've noticed a few things. Some of these are more general things, but I may as well include them now.

1. Deep Freeze becomes rather useless when you have any Mirror Images up - the images repeat casts break the Frozen status right away, since Deep Freeze has a damage on the cast. Perhaps this is intentional though?
2. The Silence effect on Counterspell doesn't seem to have any effect. Counterspell interrupts casting, but mobs still seem to be able to cast while Silence is on them.
3. Fear is indeed dangerous for wizards, although being able to Iceblock during fear can help a lot. Not sure that is intentional though.
4. Similar to 3., it seems one can cast instant casts while silenced. Is this intended? (I hope so, it's extremely useful!)
5. It would be nice if cancelling a spell stopped the casting of it right when you cancel it. But perhaps this is also intended - it can make for tricky situations though, when stuck casting something you don't want.
6. The ability to permanently turn auto-attack off would be great - having to deactivate it at the start of every single battle gets annoying.
7. At the moment, the most annoying thing for me, which it seems just changed in the last few days, is not being able to pull another mob while casting. Is this intended? It's a pretty big change, and makes getting long chains much more difficult. It is especially painful for casting classes, for example Wizards.

Moving on from the questions/comments, I find the Wizard really fun to play. Mine has become increasingly strong as the game has progressed, for a while perhaps a bit too strong, although now in nightmare it has become challenging again. (The lack of INT caster Unique items makes me rather sad though, although maybe this is just in my mind - I swear 1/30 unique I get is INT caster friendly - maybe this is in line though with what it should be?) In particular, their AE potential becomes incredible after a certain point - big AE pulls can be really fun, and can rack up really large chains with good rotations. Really enjoying it.

Playing wizards in the early levels is not easy, i died plenty of times. The most important skills for the wizard class are ... evocation, of course, abjuration, then conjuration.
Evocation for our damage, abjuration for viziers shielding and conjuration for magic missle and meteor.

#1 get your viziers shielding maxed asap. not only does it increase health and armor, at level 20 you get a 35% cast haste which is HUGE for us.
#2 this is player preference ... i went with the fire line ... max out the skill that reduces the cool down time for that specific element ... also HUGE for our survival.
#3 on gear ... casting haste and resistances, and obviously intelligence, but attributes max at 250 ... so i swapped out gear that had intelligence and went with casting haste.
#4 upgrade all your armor by at least 1 upgrade ... may not sound like much, but that equals to +7% to all resistances.
#5 with weapons ... i went with a 1 hander so i can reap the benefeits of the weapon stats and the stats of the offhand item. We dont tank, we're elemental damage dealers.
#6 and magic missile ... dont under estimate the power of this spell. When you kill a mob with it, you gain health, and it saved me many times. Keep conjuration maxed as well.
#7 when u get meteor shower ... line'em up and watch'em burn! =)

One thing I've noticed is this ... My fireball is maxed at 20 dealing 2278 - 2847 damage and my chain lightning and ice comet spells are still at skill level zero, no where near that damage ...
when i cast Harness Ether with either of the 3, fireball seems to deal the least amount of damage ... i can one shot most mobs with chain lightning and sometimes with ice comet, but rarely with fireball. This is with mobs with absolutely resistances. Not sure if this is a bug or if most mobs just have an innate fire resistance.

Everything Zurrain noted is true, except for #6 .. you can shut off auto attack in the options window.

Well, thats my 2 cents and a mug of ale ... hope it helps =)

and one more thing on my #3 with gear ...

gear that increase our 3 major casting skills is a must! ... evocation, abjuration, and conjuration.

This is with mobs with absolutely resistances. Not sure if this is a bug or if most mobs just have an innate fire resistance. .... it should read ...

This is with mobs with absolutely NO resistances. Not sure if this is a bug or if most mobs just have an innate fire resistance.

Thanks for the wizard feedback. Thoughtful posts like this are really helpful as I cannot possibly play every class and discover every nuance to the extent players can. I'll try to respond to each point:

#1 This should be fixed. Mirror Images is not supposed to punish players for using it.
#2 At this time this is designed as an interrupt-only silence. So the mob must be casting in order to use it. This is different from something like Rogue's Lobotomize, which can be used at any time to silence a mob for its duration. Quite honestly, I think this requirement might be excessive, so I think I will change this to be usable at any time. Thanks for mentioning this.
#3 It's intentional. A lot of skills have special properties that allow them to be used at any time, like Paladin's Lay Hands and Cleric's Guardian Angel.
#4 Yes, this is intentional. In NeverGrind being silenced means you can't channel a spell. In a sense, instant cast spells are not truly considered spells. "Spells" like Frost Nova and Counterspell are more like a "skill" because it triggers a global cooldown, not a spell bar lockout. That means having + skill haste will actually make you recover from these skills faster.
#5 Uh, funny you mention this. It used to be this way ages ago but it was changed for some silly reason. But on second thought I think it would be way better to instantly cancel the spell. This would promote "faster" or more agile gameplay for casters. I think back in the day there was some desire to play more like classic Everquest, which required you to continue channeling.
#6 Yep, in the options.
#7 Did I do that? Yeah, that's annoying. I'll change that.

There are zillions of +INT caster items. I promise! That's just Murphy's Law at work and I can't do anything about that. In games like this you'll always find the items you don't need. My recommendation is to play an Ogre Warrior and you'll probably find every +INT item

If I designed the game correctly, most players should be able to cruise through Normal without too many problems. Normal mode is not designed for hardcore gamers, but I do want nightmare and especially hell to be particularly challenging. It sounds like perhaps the difficulty is pretty close to where it needs to be, at least based on your experiences.

Thanks for playing the game and for the great post. Look forward to the big changes coming to NeverGrind in version 1.0 coming toward the end of the year. I will probably release a preview of the new backgrounds at some point prior to release.

Zarky: I'll check on that fire resistance thing... sounds odd but it could be a possible bug.

##1 It's annoying too when auto-attack breaks the encasement. I'm relying on auto-attack to increase my dps so turning it off is not an option for me. I really wish wizard's Deep Freeze works the same like rogue auto-attack to stop immediately after using Flash Powder.

Oh, sure. That's an easy change, too.

Yay! <3 Lurve Maelfyn <3