It's That Time Again: The Wizard Complaint Thread

[Noah Buttes]

The ling is the one that should have the best 1v1 abilities, imo. That shouldn't even be approachable.

Of course thems just be my opinionses.

I firmly disagree, but that's also just my opinion.

[Lady Birb]

If you ask me, it should be that changelings have the best stealth ability while wizards have the best loud rampage ability.
Changelings search the station for someone who is alone and vulnerable and silently eliminate them, using their shapeshifting abilities to escape arrest, and their acid spit and stings allowing them to deal with single targets in combat easily, but their long cooldowns and single-target nature means they lack crowd-control ability; while their horror form is powerful, it drains DNA too quickly to be used as anything but a last resort, forcing them to run and hide from most organized security responses or lynch mobs.

Wizards, on the other hand, are loud, mobile, and deadly combatants; unable to use stealth but deadly in combat against even groups of foes, and almost unbeatable in one-on-one combat. They have multiple spells that can almost always instantly incapacitate a target in melee range, a variety of ranged stuns the help them close the distance, and multiple mobility and utility spells allowing them to easily escape if overwhelmed; they rely heavily on their very visible equipment however, being unable to cast spells without a robe and hat, and being greatly weakened without a staff.

tl;dr: changelings are stealth murder kings, wizards are loud rampage kings.

[Vitatroll]

So, wizards have the best crowd abilities, the best 1v1 abilities, the best survival abilities, and they can tank if they want to?

Well, I won't argue. Here's hoping nobody adds familiars, a healing spell, and a transform-self spell.

[Frank_Stein]

I mean, I think Lord Birb is right. Maybe what Wizard needs is for their spells to all be geared with a specific style in mind. They've always struck me as the glass cannons amongst the special antags

[Lady Birb]

I am just making conclusions from reading threads like this, as I only started playing march of last year, but from how I understand it the theory behind how wizards are balanced is that they have absolutely no subtlety, so they will get a few easy murders in before the crew rallies against them and they have half the sever actively hunting them, giving even skilled wizards a challenge. However, these days the crew would rather hide in their department and pray they are spared than fight, so we are lucky if we get 2-3 people actively hunting the wizard. Now that we have an option for /tg/ style controls, though, the surge of new players from servers with more violent cultures means this should stop being a problem, I hope at least.

[awfulworldkid]

I really do think we need to get people to leave their departments and go fight more. If the entire crew rallies against a non-crew antag, they should be put down quickly, and the issue is that it NEVER happens. I know I'm guilty of this, as I don't leave my department often enough, but at least I do things that are useful to the rest of the crew (looking at you, Mechanics)

[misto]

when a wiz is clever, he will double up on his strengths. that is, take rathens secret to have a second multi stun, and take doppleganger to have a second escape. then you can phase shift into a place, drop a stun or two, do whatever other damage you can with your other spells, and doppleganger back out and run/hide till your cooldowns are done. nearly as hard to pin down as a wraith, who is a literal ghost

oh yeah, but always remember to find and kill the captain or someone of similar stature first to snatch their id, then you can steal guns and the stupid securitrons/buddies wont touch you anymore and youll have all access. instead theyll fuck up anyone who tries to make a zipgun or flamethrower to fight you with

thankfully, ai core/upload redesigns have helped to make it a little bit less simple for wizards to instantly corrupt the ai like they used to, so thats a plus

also bring back that purple eldritch ore shit to make antimagic armor/spears out of

[Sundance]

The "glass cannon" thing is THE major problem with wiz.

You see, wiz hasn't actually changed much AT ALL bar the addition of 1-2 spells since tasers got nerfed, before you could take him down in one stray shot, requiring the wiz to use the teleport scroll (granted back then they could use it when they were unconcious), + the introduction of stamina and all that.

Essentially goon (re: cogs) agenda was to push towards longer firefights that were more thrilling and more fair. Wizard however remained very much the same, when in truth they should've changed their spells to reflect this change.

So the fix for wizard is to make him a lot less glass cannon-y (while still being super obvious). IFor clarity because we've been yammering on about a fix for wiz for eons, it was concluded in the last threads that it'd be better to:

- Buff the minor spells. So spells like ice beam and bull rush are now actually viable.
- Split the powerful spells. Notably fireball; the fire effect and explosion effect are now two different spells.
- Raise the spells allowance overall. This means that instead of 4 powerful spells, he has 5-6 less powerful. This means far more varied loadouts.
- Add more defense spells, or combine defense spells into more powerful defense ones, adding healing spells and the lark.
- Add more tools like staff of cthlulu for the wiz to play with. Y'know, wizardly stuff.

Essentially makes him less of a glass cannon and does the following
✓ It raises the wiz' ability to survive with various healing + defense spells. It also allows the wiz to do more gimmicky shit.
✓ It raises the crew's ability to survive with less bullshit spells like fireball
✓ It enhances the wiz ability to target multiple people, with more than 4 core spells, making the wiz the 1 vs many master.
✓It breaks down the "best 4 core spells" loadout that many wiz' pick, forcing wizards to properly diversify
✓ It does all this without a complete rework of wizard.

[amaranthineApocalypse]

--Glorious Words--

Why is it that i feel a need to code practically everything that Sundance says

[Nnystyxx]

I am in favor of the wizard getting more goofy shit to play with, like other staffs/magic doodads because wizards have all those artifacts and magic thingers so why doesn't he?? he's a wizard!!

also everything else sundance said.

[Berrik]

I submitted an idea about Bull's Rush a long time ago to buff it so that while the Wizard is using it, he can rampage through everything (walls/doors/players) like the macho maen, instead of it being a useless joke like it is now. Would be nice if that became a thing, because no one uses that shitty spell ever.

[Paineframe]

I really do think we need to get people to leave their departments and go fight more. If the entire crew rallies against a non-crew antag, they should be put down quickly, and the issue is that it NEVER happens. I know I'm guilty of this, as I don't leave my department often enough, but at least I do things that are useful to the rest of the crew (looking at you, Mechanics)

It's particularly hard to do against Wizard, though, because he's incredibly mobile and often difficult to track - he can walk through walls, teleport around the station, and even has a decoy spell sometimes. Every wizard round is filled with people shouting "Where's the wizard" and "AI, track the wizard", because otherwise he doesn't stand still long enough for people to gather up and mob him. He zaps/blasts a few people and bails.

[Berrik]

Also, a smart wizard will phase shift on top of the AI and beat the shit out of it.

[Musketman12]

Also, a smart wizard will phase shift on top of the AI and beat the shit out of it.

asshole wizard*

[Mageziya]

A smarter wizorb with subvert the AI and make it rain hell upon the station.

Smartest wizbob just leaves the AI alone because the AI can't really touch the wizarb.