The Control Wizard: Ice Spells and You

Neverwinter, The Control Wizard 

After talking to some people about the launch of my new blog, I decided to take a look at the Control Wizard class in Neverwinter.  And so far, it's pretty nice.  My elven wizard just hit level 16, and will be running his first dungeon and foundry quest sometime tonight.  Like D&D 4th Edition, upon which the mechanics are based, the Control Wizard in Neverwinter is built around keeping the bad guys at a distance, and then burning them don with area of affect abilities and applying affects/debuffs on their foes.  Like in World of Warcraft and other games, the methodology here is frost magic.  You start out with magic missile, a D&D staple from day one.  As you level up, you get Ray of Frost, a channeled spell that over time can freeze your target in place.  These are your two at will abilities.  Your big guns are of course your Encounter and Daily abilities, like the pen and paper version of the game.  Ice Storm, your daily, is pretty potent as you'd expect.  The encounter powers are pretty nice including something that resembles a force choke from Star Wars.   Having a companion certainly helps, of course. But even without one, the wizard solos relatively well. The key is, of course, to start the pull off with an aoe encounter power usually, freezing or immobilizing the biggest melee type in the pack.  Then magic missile down the ranged, before channeling your ray of frost to keep mr bad guy away from you.  If they get close, and you have enough action points built up: nuke em with Ice Storm and blink away.  Yeah, double tapping the W key allows you to blink in a magical effect that makes me want to say "Bamf" and talk with a kitschy faux German accent ala Nightcrawler of the X-Men.  

Bosses are a bit trickier, as you usually have to fend off adds while trying to keep the big guy away from you, this is where the chill/freeze effect comes into play. Freeze/chill the boss long enough to burn down the adds and then reapply the chill asap.  Then blink away and channel while your pet beats on it. If you have a pet that is.  If not, you beat on it, and blink away whenever trouble rears its ugly head.  Which can be often if they get close to you.  

But other than that, I have so far found the Wizard to be a treat to play.  I made mine a bit on the scrawny side, as one would expect of a class that traditionally had d4 hit dice.  But hey, it hasn't stopped him at all.

Koli Vile, Scrawny Elf Mage admires the death of his first boss.

The little orb in the corner that reminds me of the "bit" in the original Tron, is your implement orb that you use as a "weapon" to cast your spells.  The wizards are easy to spot in game, they are the blinking fools followed by their little orbs. It's pretty funny actually.

As usual, I took the cleric companion, to keep me healed and buffed. Plus its the only female companion available so far, and well those who know Koli from my old games would know he would NEVER hire a male hireling.

Why does she look like she could beat me up?

You can see one of the mounts in the background along with some of the "creative" and "awe inspiring" names I have seen in game.