Wizard no attack penalty?

[Dwarf Wizard]

Good evening everybody!

So I just switched from Alpha to the full-fledged version of DD and one thing that I find amazing (amongst countless other things) is how much better the Wizard in this version is! Wizard was a painful class to play in alpha; too many spells where of little to no use - but now they all have effects to make them worthwhile in many situations!

His ability to treat glyphs as small items make him super flexible, too. Plus his Fireball is even stronger than ever before with the new burning effect (which gets doubled). But one thing I don't understand is this: did they remove Wizard's attack penalty? He seems to be doing exactly the same attack damage as my other basic classes (haven't unlocked anything else yet). Also, can somebody explain to me what his "+10 to other conversions" is supposed to mean?

sorry for bad englando and for noob question

[OneMoreNameless]

The wizard has no attack penalty. You'll find that pretty much everything has been rebalanced from the freeware version, so be careful to check the abilities and stats of every class, item etc. as you unlock them!

The conversion bonus means that every time your wizard converts an item, they gain an additional 10 conversion points for every glyph they are currently holding. Example: if you are holding three different glyphs in your inventory and then convert a Fine Sword (usually worth 35 points), you will instead gain 65 points towards your race's conversion bonus.

[Darvin]

[Sidestepper]

Wizard went from bottom of the heap to top tier. He is very, very good.

The conversion power is a bit tricky. Every time you convert an item, ten CP get drained from every glyph in your inventory and are added to your conversion pool. These bonus points aren't free. If you mouse over your glyphs, you'll see that their conversion total has been debited by 10. Eventually you'll suck all of the CP out of them. This allows you to have your cake and eat it too, since you can drain your spells of CP and then still get to keep them.

EDIT: Darvin said almost exactly the same thing as me, but posted a few seconds faster

[Lujo]

If you're into the why's and how and the whatnots (probably not, but it takes my mind off the idiotic situation in my country), here's the whys:

1) The glyph conversion means your glyphs get drained of CP as you convert other stuff (the CP gets transferred). This is so you can ge more mileage out of being able to pick them all up. Otherwise all the other guys could get all their conversion when they wanted, and if the wizard wanted conversion points he'd have to scrifice his flexiblility which is what he was supposed to be all about.

2) Why no attack penalty? Well, it's a bit complicated (and only the devs can confirm it) but the attack penalty and the CP benefits got changed at the same time. At the time people were complaining about the wizard as being newbie unfriendly because of the attack bonus. He was bloody strong, tbh, but you couldn't tell because he was really weak in the beggining of the game when there isn't so much spellcaster support laying around. So people would avoid him in the beggining and later unlock "better" spellcasters and never either revisit him or give him enough time to figure out that he's both good and that his attack penaly was meaningless in the long run.

I mean there were probably other considerations, like his attack penalty didn't in fact affecr pissorf damage, and the wizard is the king of pissorff, but this was unintuitive and confusing so people whouldn't naturally even feel inclined to try it out (it's really good with the right tools). So the devs let him be flexible and have his CP as well as made him have an easier time in the early game.

What's strange now is that he actually has a skillset that deserves a penalty - -1 mana per glyph is very, very powerful, glyph scouting is very, very powerful, free inventory space is very, very powerful and getting CP while keeping all your glyhs is also very powerful. And all of it is completely unique. And he even stacks burning faster. And doesn't he start with a fireball glyph? Most of his abilities are utility, but he's still very overloaded

[Dwarf Wizard]

Thanks for all the replies! I had to read the part with the conversions multiple times (mostly because my brain stopped working as soon as the words "keep", "cake" and "eat" showed up) but I get it now; you can still take full advantage of conversions without sacrificing your glyphs for it.

Talk about overbuffing a class! Maybe it's because I haven't reached "end-game" (as if Desktop Dungeons would ever end lol) content yet, but Wizard looks super strong now. Maybe even a little too strong.

[Blovski]

Yeah, I think the Wizard's gone from being an enormous one-trick pony to a very strong well-rounded class. Which works for me : )

[Darvin]

[The Avatar]

Very true, although I would say wizard is the best purist class out there. He's what I use for almost every dungeon purist.

[Wargasm]

Also probably the best Hoarder and Miser. I might argue Tinker for Purist, since they come with so much and are built for buying anyhow.