A serious Wizard thread.

[Ed Venture]

Yeah, I'd say that the spire suggestion is a tad bit too similar to nuke mode to be very feasible.

To understand how wizard rounds should be reworked, we must first look at what wizard rounds really are and what they provide as far as game mode balance. Wizards and nuke ops are the two chief "blunt" round types, as both antagonists are almost always very obvious in their methods and very uncomplicated in their motives. However, where nuke ops and wizards differentiate is a matter of numbers. Nuke ops teams are, and I'm speaking in terms of the ideal setup here, meant to pit teams against teams, with the nuke ops squad strategizing against the station forces, who must subsequently strategize to combat the syndicate menace.

Wizard rounds, on the other hand, are usually complete fucking bedlam, since the goals are much simpler than nuke ops: There's a big powerful dude trying to kill you, so kill him first. And you know what, there's nothing wrong with that! One good round of death and destruction flying around everywhere and the rules being thrown out of the window to catch that spell-swinging nerd is a good thing to have; it's a nice change of pace from the tension that pervades traitor/changeling rounds.

However, complaints abound about how wizard rounds are dull, bland, repetitive. Madcap murder doesn't need to just be giving one dude a bunch of guns and letting them loose on the station, but I think that wizards should remain as they are currently: Crazy overpowered antagonists who zoom in and start fucking shit up. If we start getting into resource management or other nonsense, it'll detract from what makes wizard rounds wizard rounds, and consequentially, what separates them from all the other antagonist types.

So how do we make an antagonist who's only job is murder enjoyable both for the antagonist and for those fighting them? The current issue that pervades the wizard's loadout is that of a power imbalance, which I'm sure is old news by this point, but should probably be mentioned if only for completion's sake. I think that the ubiquitous nature of fireballs and Shocking Grasp comes from them being basically the only dependable methods of dealing damage in a wizard's loadout: Skeletons and golems can be unreliable in their pathing, ice burst is more debilitating than anything else and is sort of rendered redundant by magic missile anyways, bull's charge is esoteric and really hard to use in a lethal manner, Rathen's Secret is rather unreliable for dealing damage, and the cluwne spell has a ludicrously long cooldown.

If the whole point of the wizard is to use their spells to kill people, why can only a few spells be depended on to kill people?

I think that the solution for making wizard rounds more entertaining is simply a matter of expanding the ways in which they can inflict magical death upon the station, giving them more solid and dependable tools in addition to the more esoteric and utility-based spells. Wizards have not been and do not need to be stealthy, that's just not what they're designed to be. Plus, while taking the station's arms is an option that some wizards take advantage of, that just seems embarrassing to be toting around mundane firearms when you're a space wizard who can bend the laws of reality to your whim.

Also, to this end, I am an advocate of downsizing the power of spells in exchange for having more slots for spells. A more diverse loadout allows for more viable combinations of powers, which equates to more variety in wizard loadouts, which equates to more variety in wizard encounters, which in theory equates to more fun in wizard rounds.

I 100% agree with all of this.