Which Wizard Subclass Should You Play in Baldur's Gate 3?

hey it's dry bear the wizard in Baldur's Gate 3 has eight different subclasses whereas most classes in the game have anywhere from two to three so today I'm gonna help you understand the difference between the eight different schools of magic for Wizard and there's some things about each of them that might surprise you but first you should come hang out with me on my live stream I'm live every single day on twitch.tv forward slash dry bear if you don't come hang out with me in the community on Twitch then the next time you go to open your mustard bottle you're going to peel the seal off and the silver part of the seal is going to come off but not that thin plastic layer underneath all right to avoid spoilers I am showing footage of my third playthrough in Act One the very beginning of the game in one of the first quests that you run into uh just so we can show this but I am playing a double wizard playthrough and the theme of my third playthrough is around magic and the weave so I wanted to have multiple Wizards I want to test around with wizards but as I've been playing I've been getting questions around the wizard in chat talking about what's good for Wizard what builds are good and I will be posting my summoner build for Wizard soon but the big thing about wizard is that they are are the masters of magic and what this means relative to say warlocks or Sorcerers warlocks have the ability to gain magic powers from a patron that they swear feel a T2 Sorcerers have the power built into them but Wizards have the ability to study magic and learn it from Scrolls and they can have a very large wide set selection of spells to choose from now on screen I've placed the subclass agnostic decisions for wizard from level one all the way up until a level 12. so you can see what they get that is agnostic of the subclass all wizard specs will get this it's very easy to just kind of go through and see every level you get an extra spell that you can have on your bar prepared and ready to use so as you level up wizard wizard by the way is one of the few classes in DND and in Baldur's Gate 3 that you are encouraged to level up as high as possible specifically level 11 is when you get your level six spells and they're all incredibly powerful and so they are one of the few classes that you do want to consider taking all the way up to at least level 11 with a one or all the way to 12 if you really want to because they do benefit greatly from having that but you can see that you get spells you learn spells every level you get hand trips every now and then you'll unlock more and more spell slots as you go along but specifically at level 2 just like Druids you will choose your subclass of the eight available and that level and that level you will actually get a benefit for having that subclass level four is still your ability score adjustment or heat then level six you get another bonus for whatever subclass you chose for Wizard then level eight you get another feat decision or an assy if you want it and then of course level 10 you get your final Mastery of that school of magic whatever it is that you're taught whatever it is that you chose for your subclass so now we have a basis for what all wizards get let's focus on the differences between the subclasses that you might be choosing from to figure out which one you're going to be playing with your playthrough by the way all wizards get access to all spells and each spell that you learn in the wizard book will have a specific School of magic associated with it and for most not all but most of these subclasses they will have some sort of strength or benefit that they have when utilizing that specific School of magic so that's one thing you want to think of but no matter what subclass you choose for your wizard you will always be able to use any of the wizard spells you just might be better at using specific ones depending on the choice that you made AB duration is one that I think a lot of people should strongly consider playing it is a very strong subclass for Wizard but it's one that's not super popular for whatever reason and what AB duration does every time you cast a spell you get to Shield yourself for that Shield amount and at level two that's where your ward your Arcane Ward comes from so you're able to do uh use things to keep yourself tanky but as you put more points into Wizard and level your wizard up and do more with it at level six you get a projected Ward which means that when someone near you an ally takes damage do you cast a spell you get an Arcane Ward around you because you casted a spell then at the same point when someone at level six when someone near you a teammate takes damage you have the option to grant them that's that shield and then avoid absorb some of that damage when they take damage instead so it's almost like playing kind of like a paladin with protection or Shield being able to help people while still being an aggressive spellcaster that can deal damage then level 10 you get improved AB duration and this is uh this allows you to improve your Shields even further every time you take a short rest so in between each long rest you have two ways to improve your Shields and make them even stronger so you can become even tankier and I think this is also a great option if you're not going to go for like Eldritch Knight I think this is a great option for battle casters or Battle Mages that want to do melee and casting because having that extra shield especially one you can give to allies is incredibly powerful the next one is conjuration and is personally the one I'm working on right now for a summoner build and this is summoning the things objects items creatures that sort of thing uh through through Wizardry through magic at level two you get minor conjuration create water so you're able to create water this works great for any cold or lightning spells new to DND and new in Baldur's Gate 3 is a brand brand new status Effect called wet if for whatever reason you or any Target gets wet by walking through water or by being drowned in water through create water they'll get the status effect wet and when you're wet you are vulnerable to cold damage and lightning damage so you get some pretty serious bursts out of this this is super helpful if you're gonna be running with uh like shocking grasp or which bolt or uh Ray of frost or any of those early uh Frost or lightning spells you can just cast create water it's also good for clearing puddles in the ground of acid or blood or anything you might slip on that might be dangerous for your party and it helps with those sorts of things so it's actually a very useful spell and one that you should consider but you get this right off the bat at level two for conjuration but that's not the big win for conjuration their level two isn't the greatest it's when they start pushing more points in Wizard that things really start to come online at level 6 you get benign transposition which means that you can teleport anywhere in the uh the a space that you can see so it's basically like a misty step on an action that doesn't use a spell slot now it's only usable once per short rest but if you cast any kind of spell any kind of conjuration spell afterwards it'll refresh so you can cast a spell teleport cast a spell teleport which is incredibly powerful and you can also swap locations with an ally you're targeting with this is great for summon builds because it means you can swap like if someone moves up on you into melee range you can swap with one of your tanky minions one of your Elementals and have them take the damage or you can swap around for maybe your barbarians far away and you're being onslaughted you can swap with them put them in that spot and then if they want to keep chasing you they're gonna have to risk the opportunity attack from your Barbarian or your fighter or your Paladin or whatever it is then level 10 they get a super cool passive Focus conjuration damage taken while concentrating on a Conjuration Spell will not break it it won't trigger a saving throw it won't break your concentration it's not about damn images just they'll have to trigger your saving throat other ways rather than just hitting you directly now it has to be a Conjuration Spell which is a little bit different than just any kind of concentration it's not like hold a person or something like that but not only is there there are spells like flaming sphere which is concentration and a very strong minion that you can summon but you can also do things like grasping Vines as enchantment or is conjuration you can put it down on the ground and you can slow enemies and then they can't hit you and just deal damage to stop you from casting it it'll have to be a different way to prevent you from having that divination is another slept on subclass for Wizard and it's insanely insanely powerful it's just not as upfront obvious how good it actually is so what you get for divination is you get at level two when you choose your subclass you immediately get portend dice Horton dice allow you to change the die roll of anything near you twice per long rests so I believe it's long rest so you'll be able to change your saving throw you'll be the change in attack roll so if your ally makes a bad attack roll and like they do poor damage you'll get the option to roll a port and die and change that outcome before it actually goes or a saving throw say there's like a saving throw on your uh your hold person and you will want it to go away or maybe someone throws out a really nasty debuff you fail a saving throw or someone near you fails it you can re-roll that port and dice to get a different outcome so it's incredibly powerful to be able to change the fates of what's going on with divination at level six you get even better at this you gain an additional Porton diet which is three total and you receive a pop prophecy each short rest that will allow you to uh restore one important die so you get an extra you know get that extra important die which means you can do it even more then at level 10 you get two I believe there's both actions you get the ability to cast dark vision and and see invisibility and it grants whoever you target that effect until they take a long rest so you can get dark vision on any character that doesn't have it which is super used useful some people think dark vision is just being able to see in the dark and it's useful when you're in caves or in Act 2 but it's actually much much more than that because if you're attacking an enemy that is in the dark or obscured you have disadvantage because of that you have negative effects for attacking someone that you can't properly see so giving especially like a ranged character dark vision especially Superior dark vision you can allow them to attack enemies that are farther away that may be sitting in the dark without having to roll a worse outcome because you lose that that you gain that disadvantage for you is the invisibility is super nice there are a lot of characters that go in viz there are also a lot of traps and secrets you can find with seeing visibility so having that as just an ability that you can use whenever you want for it all the way until long rest makes it very very interesting and very cool to be able to do this with divination enchantment is probably one of the strongest options because it focuses a lot on your ability to crowd control enemies especially if you're playing on tactician or you monitor tactician plus cc is the way to go there's just the enemies do so much damage they have so much more their attack rolls are increased their proficiencies are increased their HP is increased their AI focuses more on killing people off and focusing on weak targets so it becomes a lot more aggressive and difficult to survive so cc is really really big for this so enchantment is most of those uh kind of hypnotic patterns and hold person and CC and those sorts of things which is super useful your level two when you unlock enchantment as a subclass it gives you hypnotic gaze as an action not as a spell slot do you get this as a pure action you can charm and incapacitate a target for two turns and you get the chance to re-up this to reapply it to extend the duration of it so you can charm someone take them out of the fight you're good to go which makes it a lot easier at level six you get instinctive charm charm and enemy attacking you forcing them to attack a new Target instead so you can just avoid damage this is super useful when there's an enemy that's incredibly strong or has a big weapon and you feel like it's going to take you down you can choose to redirect them with this reaction and then level 10 you have split enchantment which is really when enchantment comes online you any enchantment spell that targets only one creature with this passive you will allow it will allow you to without adding a spell tier to it Target an additional Target so for example any spell that you have that targets one person if say it's like a normally a level two spell or a level three spell if you raise the spell slot you cast with that then it will give you another option for targeting more this gives you that option right off the bat and you can ultimately start casting hold person on four or five people which is almost like hypnotic pattern but even better because you can just hold them and attack them without breaking it which is one of the strongest spells in the game which makes enchantment very very powerful for team support and for dealing damage evocation is probably the most popular and it is the base subclass that Gail starts with if you have him as a companion in your party and this one just makes Wizarding so much more fun and more relaxed because it gives you some options to cast large dangerous AOE spells without endangering your teammates but they have to be evocation so level two you get sculpt spells allies automatically succeed any saving throw so if there's like a you you create ice and they might slip or you have some CC effect or something like that you can cast a big AOE evocation spell in that area and your allies will always succeed that saving throw they won't be affected by the negative status effects that come with it and they take no damage from your spells which means that you can cast evocation spells towards the target if you do like a big Fireball or a lightning bolt or something like that and their allies in the way you don't have to worry about that anymore because you can just shoot right through them and they won't even be affected by it at all which is probably full stop all you really need to make evocation worth it it means that your your melee your melee companions can go in and start attacking you don't have to worry about clipping them or having Friendly Fire you can fire away with those evocation spells level six you get potent can trip which means that when they succeed a saving throw against any of your evocation can trip spells it still takes half damage so no matter what you can't you know you can't do any failure and especially if you go with elemental Adept which means that you can't ever roll a 1 on any of your spells including cantrips you'll be able to focus on those and do some really crazy damage with can trips when you're out of spell slots or you feel like you don't want to spend one and then if you want to do a big screw you massive evocation spell you can do that and not have to worry about hitting your teammates then in level 10 you get empowered evocation which means you get to add your intelligence modifier whatever your proficiency a level intelligence is you get to add it as damage to your evocation spell so if you have 18 or 20 intelligence you get to add a couple damage to every evocation spell hit that you have allowing you to do even more damage with those so again you're specializing in evocation spells but you do a lot of damage and most of the best uh spells for the early game like tier one tier two tier three and even the can trips are all evocation later on some of the best spells are not just evocation like disintegrate is uh transmutation and things like that you can get a ton of very high damaging wizard spells that don't aren't limited to evocation mid and late game but early on all the best damaging spells are really a vacation for that reason so it's super awesome to be able to have these effects for that the illusion subclass is super fun I love this one uh one of the most slept on abilities in the entire game is minor illusion you can cast it as a can trip and what it does it creates an illusion of something at a location and I think people just haven't really messed around with it too much to know exactly how good it actually is but when the illusion spawns all enemies in the area and the radius is massive you can cover an entire room all of the enemies that are affected by that minor illusion will have to roll an investigation check if they fail the investigation check they will then want to go over and investigate whatever it is that's over there because they don't know what it is so it's almost like a black hole light because if you cast it on an entire room of enemies some of them will fail that check and they will all go over to stay stand in front of the illusion to see what it is and they'll spend their turn they might even Dash which uses an action they might even Dash over to the illusion stand in front of it realize it's nothing and then they wasted their turn and they're just all grouped up in one spot you can do tons of damage you can throw an explosive barrel uh some kind of uh you know smoke bomb or smoke powder explosive on top of them or just blast them with a big spell it's super strong so on top of that when you run illusion subclass for Wizard you get improved minor illusion which means you can cast minor illusion as a bonus action which means you can cast minor illusion and then cast a normal action or spell on top of it which is incredibly powerful and you can cast my illusion while you're silenced and you can do it while hiding and it won't take you out of hiding incredibly powerful you can you can do some amazing you can do a full playthrough of just tricking people getting people to gather up distracting them with little illusory cats that meow and things like that at level six you get you gain see invisibility and as an action without a spell slot which means you can just cast this whenever you want and you can see invis again super useful for puzzles and solving uh you know going through traps and dungeon delving but it's also useful for finding stealth targets which you will find a lot of in uh your playthrough of all Baldur's Gate three and level 10 you get a loser yourself which means you can get you can fashion a loser a version of yourself when you're attacked causing your foe to miss which means that you get to use this um when they're again a big attacks you know there's bosses that deal very strong melee damage like almost one shotting damage especially if you're on tactician well they'll walk up to and won't hit you you can use illusory self to make them miss that attack and it'll cause you to survive which is super useful next is one of the most popular schools of magic for Wizardry and that is necromancy and there's a lot of great reasons to run necro I'll probably be posting a necromancer build because that they're just so much fun to play and they're so powerful as well so you'll be able to create a lot of really fun armies and do do some cool necrotic damage and that sort of thing so when you choose necromancy as your subclass for Wizard at level 2 you'll get Grim Harvest which means that you heal when killing a creature with a spell equal to two times the spell slot level you use to kill the Target or three times if it's a necromancy spell so you'll be able to do if you do a tier one that will heal you for three HP if you kill the target if it's Necromancer but if you kill them with say blight or you go all the way up till tier five tier six you can get some pretty significant like upwards of 18 to 20 hp when you kill a target with a necromancy spell which is a big big self heal when you're taking an offensive action at the same time which is crazy and level six things really start to take off for Necromancer and it sets them apart from most minion builds because they're able to do this at level six three things get added to your spell book Undead thralls get added to your spellth book which means that your animate dead summons are stronger than any other anime dead summons in the game you you have to be neck romancy wizard level 6 in order to gain access to this and it allows you to some enthralls which are very very strong versions of the anime dead you can also gain one additional uh Undead minion which means you can have a maximum of three out at one time instead of two and if you're non-necromancer you can only have one which is a big big difference you can have like two Ghouls and then a mummy uh at late game which makes you super strong and then you also have under thralls which is it makes your uh yours your minions better which means that animated minions have your wizard level in uh you you're one of your wizard level is it adds that to them in HP and your proficiency bonus for attack gets added to theirs which means that when they deal damage when any Undead minion deals damage whatever your proficiency bonus is for dealing damage they gained it as well which means they do more damage they have more Health you have better versions of them and you can summon an additional one as well at level 10 you're a nerd to undeath which means you are resistant to all necrotic damage and your max HP cannot be reduced so any debuff that lowers your max HP doesn't affect you and you're resistant to necrotic damage there's at least two major encounters without giving you spoilers in the game that are primarily necrotic damage so being a necro in this case gives you a significant advantage in that encounter and the last one is transmutation and one that I hope I see people use more often because it's super unique and very fun and very different it'd be very cool to do just uh transmutation focused playthrough so if you didn't know already there is alchemy in the game you'll find Alchemy supplies you can craft potions and effects in the game and when you are running a transmutation wizard you have the ability to double any production that you have from your Alchemy so you can make two potions of resistance you can make two explosives you can make two healing potions and honestly there's not enough Alchemy supplies in the game I feel like you don't really get enough to be crafting all the time so being able to double that output is a unique effect that only transmutation Wizards can do and it's super strong and super valuable at level six things get even more interesting because you unlock the ability to create a transmuter's stone what this is is an ability that you can cast once per long rest you cast it and when you cast it'll give you an option to choose what kind of transmuter stone you want to create and whatever Stone you create will have a buff effect on it and then you can take that stone and put it in anyone's inventory and as long as they have it in their inventory they will gain whatever benefit that you chose which means that if you are paying attention to the encounters you're running into to the uh the effects that you're running into the fights you're running into you can craft a specific magical stone that gives you benefit towards that in some way an example of some of the things that are there inside of that you can increase your resistance to any kind of effect bludgeoning fire uh whitening things like that so if you know you're going into a big encounter where they use a lot of specific damage types you can create a transmitter stone for your tank or maybe even for your squishiest character that makes them resistant to that kind of damage you can grant extra movement speed for your melee classes you can get more Constitution saving throws you can even Grant someone Dark Vision by crafting them a transmitter stone that has dark vision and putting it in their inventory the the applications there are very extensive the last one is one that doesn't seem all that powerful for a level 10 at first it's shape changer and allows you to turn into a blue jay which has 5 HP and grants you the ability to fly and so essentially as a wizard it's granting you the ability to fly because any shape changing in this game in Baldur's Gate 3 if you die in your changed shape you just revert back to your original form with all your original stats in HP so you can turn into a blue jay fly up to a very high position and then you can transform back and then you're now somewhere that someone else can't get to if they follow you you can Thunder weigh them off and they knock them down or if you want to drop down somewhere that might have fall damage you can turn into a blue jay fly down and then transform back and you're good to go so the applications there are incredibly incredibly powerful for transmutation those are the eight subclasses for Wizard I hope this clears things up for you and makes it feel a little less daunting to choose between them they're all incredibly powerful and again I would encourage wizard players to try to push towards the end those level six spells that you get at level 11 are incredibly incredibly power powerful and you do want to try to push towards those but there's plenty of multi-class options as well and focus on the tier 5 versions tier 5 spells for casting that take advantage of these passive effects for all eight of the subclasses if you found value in the video leave a like down below leave a comment for the algorithm to help this video get seen by more people and I'll see you on my live stream if you enjoyed yourself today leave a like down below you can support me and my work on patreon and you patreon exclusive content Link in the description thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you in the next one [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: DrybearGamers

Views: 37,000

Keywords: drybear, rory newbrough, baldurs gate 3 drybear, baldurs gate 3 wizard, baldurs gate 3, best build, balders gate 3, baulders gate 3, larian studios, baldurs gate 3 best spells, baldurs gate 3 wizard build, baldurs gate 3 wizard guide, baldurs gate 3 wizard spells, baldurs gate 3 wizard subclasses, baldurs gate 3 wizard tips, baldurs gate 3 wizard overview, baldurs gate 3 wizard multiclass, abjuration, divination, conjuration, transmutation, evocation, necromancy, enchantment, illusion

Id: pNCWJJbHlhA

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 18 2023