New Wizard - how should I build him?

[Zooey]

Hello there After playing a Swashy and a Monk up to Level 70, I just recently startet a Wizard as my new "fun char". I'd like to build him for maximum survivability and best possible damage in short fights (he won't be raiding ever, I guess). Most of the time he will be soloing or duoing with a warlock friend of mine. I'd love to be able to fight small groups of mobs and to survive the occasional heroic (named) encounter. I think I like the combination of WIS and AGI line - faster spell timers, enhanced damage and reduced power costs. Main question is - how should I start to spend my AA points? Would the Magi's Shielding enhancement from Wizard line do any good in lower levels, since root keeps getting resisted quite frequently? Or should I concentrate on KoS WIS Line first and try to get that little ward up as high as possible? Oh - and what about gear? Should I concentrate on INT or would it make any sense to sacrifice some INT for increased HP or Mitigation? Thanks in advance for any help

[tass]

If ur going to be a really good wiz then u have to sacrafice hp and mig for overall power and int. Thouhg you can get some nice legendary and fabled things with good mig on em. Anyway the main thing you should look for when gearing is power and int. Always look for the best way to get the most power as if ur out of mana ur useless. I think int has about 5 power per int on armor so you just add that to the int that the armor has as well as add in the power. U'll never really need master crafted as it doesn't really give great stats. Most likely treasured will be ur best bet in stats. You can always find lots of great armor peices of the broker for this or even quest some nice peices. Also the level doesnt matter. Your not looking to keep updated mig armor ur just looking for the gear with the best stats possible at ur level. NOW. For aa's. When you choose a wiz ur gonna have alot of spell cost and slow casting. The best thing you can do to have maximum dmg in a short time is to go the wizard tree line and go for speed in casting and reuse. Youd choose them in spells like ur lightning bolt and ur ball of fire lines and ice comet and so many other spells. In the sorcerer line you can also go for fastness by going down the agi line I believe. In grps and raids the amount of dmg u put out depends on how much power you have, how fast u can cast the spells, and how fast you can use them again. By going speed in aa's you get all of that plus mana cost reduction on all of them. I did alot of testing of this in the eof beta because of my wiz that I had. I tested the aa's every which way to get the max dmg and found this the best way in reg grps of zones, in raid grps like mistmore and raid zones.

[Calh]

How you should build your wizard should be based also on if you raid at all. If you dont raid, then you would build him to solo well or group well.

[slashalot]

<p>while what tass has mentioned is all good the point is that all that is for mid to upper level content. scince you mention the duo with warlock it then becomes a battle of which one of you can survive long enough to handle the onslaught. between the 2 of you you should not run out of power. the problem i have is tackling the ^^^ mobs and ussually while solo i cannot take more then 3-4 hits from them now that i no longer have magi shield & mail of frost maxed AA's. (went with manaburn) </p><p>a L35^^^ shadowknight named mob (thats 10 levels below) wiped the floor with me. was using too much power trying to keep him rooted. but with a tank taking down orange ^^^ is no problem better yet add a healer and 3 orange ^^^ are still no problem</p><p>anyways you get the jist. it's not all about power</p>

[Eldcen]

I very highly recommend 10 point in Enhanced Magi's Shielding as soon as possible.  I did it as soon as I could and never looked back.  I had another wizzy friend do it, then drop it because he wanted manaburn faster.  But the difference was so huge, he had to re-spec back to it and wait a while for manaburn. I was douing with a fury the other day, and we were slaughtering writ mobs.  Of course I was "tanking" because of my excellent taunt skills. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />  I wasn't bothering to root mobs, and at one point she commented "you know I've never really had to heal you".  And that was with up to 2-3 encounters beating on me at once.