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Master the wizard class in Dark and Darker with optimal perks, skills, and gear for both PvP and PvE dominance.
The wizard is a powerful class in Dark and Darker that has undergone several nerfs but still retains its overpowered status and diverse options when it comes to builds. Wizards have low health and physical damage, but make up for it with magical weapons and spells.
In order to make a build that works well for your intended purpose—whether it is PvP Arena or PvE Dungeon—we will go over the perks, skills, and equipment choices of the wizard class.
Wizard Build Choices in Dark and Darker
The wizard class is surprisingly versatile when it comes to viable builds. Using the right perks, equipment, and skills, you can be a traditional mid-ranged caster, a buffer, and even a strong melee combatant. Perks like Ice Shield, Melt, Reactive Shield, and Fire Mastery can make wizards durable enough to hold their own in melee while still retaining their mid-ranged capabilities with spells like Fireball, Explosion, and Lightning Strike.
Perks
Perks are bonuses and passives that become the building blocks of your intended playstyle. You can only equip four perks at a time, making it important to determine which ones will provide the most value and synergize with your spells and equipment. Here are all the perks discussed from most important to least:
- Fire Mastery is a top-tier perk for PvP. It increases fire damage by 5%, increases the duration of burns by 2 seconds, and reduces the burned target’s physical and magical healing by 50%.
- Arcane Mastery is an important perk to have in a pinch since it reduces the casting time of arcane spells by 0.5 seconds, which makes casting Invisibility almost instantaneous and Magic Missile much faster.
- Quick Chant is a must-have perk that increases spellcasting speed by 15%. Be sure to equip it if you are below 70% spell casting speed.
- Ice Shield grants 20 armor rating when the spell is off cooldown and slows down enemies when they hit you in melee.
- Mana Surge increases the magical power bonus by 10%.
- Melt is a great perk to have if you have teammates who do physical damage, since it reduces the target’s PDR (Physical Damage Reduction) by 20% for 5 seconds when dealing fire damage. This effect also applies to teammates caught in the AoE of your fire spells.
- Reactive Shield triggers a shield after taking damage, which can absorb 15 damage for 3 seconds. It can trigger again after a cooldown. This perk is best used with a melee wizard build.
- Sage provides a 10% knowledge bonus but doesn’t match the cast speed increase given by Quick Chant.
Skills
Skills are active or passive abilities that have a drastic effect in combat. You can equip two skills at a time.
- Spell Memory I and Spell Memory II: One Spell Memory perk is necessary as it sets the total spell count to 5. Use Spell Memory II to have 10 spells for PvP Arena. For PvE Dungeon crawling, it is better to have Meditation to recover spells.
- Meditation: Must-have for clearing mobs without constantly using campfires.
- Intense Focus: Reduces the cast time of your next spell to 0.1 seconds. A nifty skill to have, but it needs to be combined with the Spell Overload perk to increase spell count while you shore up Knowledge through other means.
- Arcane Shield: Absorbs damage for 12 seconds. Once the shield absorbs maximum damage, it explodes, dealing 5 Base Arcane Damage that scales at 100%.
Spells
Fireball, Explosion, Zap, and Ice Bolt are good damage-dealing spells to have, while Haste and Invisibility provide useful buffs.
- Fireball is a low-cost and quick-cast spell that is essential for applying the effects from perks like Melt and Fire Mastery.
- Ice Bolt is a very quick-casting spell that slows down the target by 20% and is useful for kiting.
- Invisibility is required to reposition and create distance, especially if you are running a non-melee build.
- Haste considerably buffs movement, action, and casting speed for you or a teammate.
- Lightning Strike is great when fighting with a frontliner, as you can shoot past them.
- Chain Lightning is a powerful spell that must be used carefully to avoid friendly fire.
- Light Orb illuminates your surroundings and is primarily used to counter rogues by forcing them out of hiding, especially in Arena.
- Ignite sets your weapon or your teammate’s weapon on fire to deal bonus fire damage and burn enemies. It is primarily equipped to buff warriors, barbarians, or if you’re creating a melee wizard build.
Equipment
Your equipment as a wizard needs to increase movement speed and shore up the class’s main weakness: low health. The items equipped should focus on PDR, increasing max health, and movement speed.
Secondary focuses include magical damage resistance, true magic damage increase, and spell cast speed. You’ll need to equip items with Knowledge increase if you have chosen the Spell Overload perk to offset the Knowledge reduction penalty from the perk.
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