The state of Wand slingers: Undeniable proof why wands are not viable and why GGG should fix them

How wands should be in POE


How wands ARE in POE


In POE, better not bring a wand to a gunfight, knifefight, fistfight, or even killing the bugs in Dominus's garden. Those sticks are better used piled up as a funeralpyre for future people stupid enough to go wand slingers.
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Lets take a look



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Something is wrong

Take a good long look at this. I believe this is the most cost efficient way to get the wand nodes, it might be +/- 3-4 nodes, but at this kind of investment it hardly makes a difference.

Incase you are missing the point: 42 points. Massive 42 points, to make the weak wand nodes add up to a point where wand damage is on par with other weapons. That is almost half your skillpoints (Assuming you build for 100 points not 120, which is more realistic)

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Some notes

1) Wands have horrid base damage
2) No other weapon needs this amount of nourishing to become viable
3) People that want to use wand as their primary weapon, will not - *EVER* have skill points to also go spelldamage/crit builds, much less survival on hardcore.
4) Skillpoint efficency. Spells can get 50%++ spelldamage from a good wand, therefore going spellcaster witch is ofcourse viable. But when you go the other way, making a wand slinger, the spellmodifier is actually a useless stat - because you wont have enough skillpoints for primary: wand, secondary: spells, in addition to survival nodes.

5) At the current state of wands, you wont ever - ever, EVER have enough nodes left playing hardcore. I filled out the tree going only for survial (Life/block/resist)



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What does this tell us?

1) You will have good damage with wand but be an utter glasscannon, with a little bit better survival lategame. If you actually manage to get that far.

2) You can get good survival, but have absolutely crap damage postponing the wand nodes.

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What can GGG do?



The red circles, combine those nodes. The X'es? Remove them or incorporate those int points somewhere else.

This suggestion should free up 8 skillpoints. An acceptable amount.

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Conclusion

Spells (Primary) benefit from wand (Stats) = Spells dont get penalized
Wands (Primary) disallows spells (Skill starvation) = Wands get penalized

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To GGG: I apologize for my rather seemingly hostile and blunt approach. But can you seriously say wand slingers are not at a huge disproportionate disadvantage compared to other builds and classes atm? If you can come with solid, valid arguments backed by the proper math - to disprove my claim that wandslinger builds are not on par with other builds - then I will shut up about this issue forever.

Any comments and feedback from other wand slingers are most welcome. Yes, Im frustrated. But Id really like GGG to open their eyes, if I am correct. And if Im NOT correct - please open MY eyes.

(Edit: Edited the main topic for clarity. This is about wand slingers and the influx of lowgain wand nodes needed to make wand slingers (Power siphon etc.) viable. Not wands in themselves as multipurpose hybrid weapons. The problem here is that to make a wand user viable - you have to give up both survival and spells due to the vast amount of wand nodes to make a wand slinger viable)

Totally agreed in this with you. You have to get a lot of points into wand dmg nodes, therefore you lose a lot of survivability.
Besides we could have some new wand skill. That would be great.

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dlinnij wrote:

Totally agreed in this with you. You have to get a lot of points into wand dmg nodes, therefore you lose a lot of survivability.

Glad you agree. Thats only one problem. The second problem is that wand nodes are so plentiful that you are left with no nodes to improve actual spells either. Making the wand nodes cause a situation where the +spelldamage modifier on wands becomes irellevant.

maybe its a hardcore issue but wanders have the highest ranged aoe dps of any class or build by a long fucking shot. They do not die to anything but reflect and that alone is probably the only remaining reason to not completely remove reflect from the game.

The reason no one plays wander is because there is no way to deal with reflect, not because the build or base item is bad.

+1 Awesome post, I'm really hoping that GGG could read this post.
Gratz!

You're simply not wielding the Kraken!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxkyQ4EnF7E

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Nephalim wrote:

maybe its a hardcore issue but wanders have the highest ranged aoe dps of any class or build by a long fucking shot. They do not die to anything but reflect and that alone is probably the only remaining reason to not completely remove reflect from the game.

The reason no one plays wander is because there is no way to deal with reflect, not because the build or base item is bad.

Well... this issue makes wand slingers, or wanderer if you like, completely unviable for hardcore. Ofcourse any class that dumps all skillpoints into damage will have ludicrous damage capabilities. Wanderers are not unique in this case. Currently wands are not viable on hardcore because of the insane skilldrain. Again, 42 points... to up wands into combat mode.

GGG = hardcore gamers, that wanted challenging hardcore ARPs. It would make sense if they balanced around hardcore.

I mean... come on. On standard league you could place every single node randomly. Having infinte life removes the fun and challenge (Personal opinion) of the entire game and makes the skill tree trivial. You can make a 20k AOE dps lightning archer with 1 life if you wanted. There really isnt a point in balancing the game around standard, as the skilbuild only dictates the speed at which you progress.

I cannot comment on hardcore viability but wanders (phys and ele) have ridiculous clear speeds in standard/domination.

Edit: Given that less than 25% of players play in a hardcore league, making specific balance changes for those leagues is pretty dumb.

I believe you are completely discounting the base 10+ crit chance.
You are also discounting Power Siphon, which is a 125% DE attack with Culling and power charges built in.

Wands are incredibly viable, and wanders can do a ton of damage.

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undeniable

You keep on using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.