"Strimtom's Forceful Hand" a self limiting wizard challenge build guide. (2024)

Disclaimer: This is a self limiting challenge build. If you are playing this build and finding it worse than a build which isn't limiting, that is the point.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Strimtom, author of Strimtom's Acid Arrow and I am here to share my two time emmy nomination winning build for the wizard class. The idea was to build a wizard using the newly revamped Arch-mage enhancement tree. Not only that, this build aims to focus 100% on force damage and spells that scale off force damage. If you are looking for a guide That will teach you how to play wizard well, or give you an easy time leveling through wizard, just stop reading. This is a self limiting challenge. Also, don't play this unless you are a masoch*st.

Lets start with the pros and cons:

• Early levels will require a lot of thinking and strategy if you wish to play solo, providing more depth to the gameplay.
• Force spells look really cool, especially Arcane Blast.
• Almost no creatures are immune to force damage allowing you to keep blasting away without fear.
• People will message you asking what spell you are casting when you cast Arcane Blast because nobody has seen it before.
• Will'o'wisps are very easy to kill with such high force damage.
• Any employer seeing this challenge on a resume will instantly hire you.
• My mom thinks this build is pretty cool.

• It's really hard until level 12.
• Like seriously, you do almost no damage until level 12 with spells.
• Not having access to instant death spells will force you to use crowd control if you didn't before.
• This build still can't make Elminster talk faster.

Rules

1. Cannot use damage spells that do not scale using Force Spellpower. Spells like Ice Storm that scale off force spell power are allowed. Spells that are excluded include Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Polar Ray, Cone of Cold. (You know, the good spells)
2. Must be a pure wizard and not multi-class.
3. Cannot put points into the Pale Master Enhancement Tree.
4. Cannot use any spells from the necromancy school.
5. Extreme challenge: Play this build without being a warforged. Doing this will give you 1000000 challenge points.

The Meat

This build is challenging. Most of your damage spells will have decent cooldowns, meaning your single target spells will not keep up with the damage that almost any other player will be pumping out, especially before you hit level 12. The damage output is low, and you have almost no area of effect until you get arcane blast.

Play a warforged. Warforged can heal themselves and are able to have a much higher life total that other races. Free fortification is also fantastic. Wizards get so many bonus feats that if you take adamantine plating at level 15, you can use a -10% arcane spell failure sapphire and some points in the warforged/eldritch knight tree to get 0% spell failure and some good PRR and Armor.

If you go for ultimate super challenge of not playing warforged, I recommend Drow. Better DC's, built in spell resistance is good, and bonus intelligence from the tree. Not as tanky, but still versatile.

Strength - This only affects carrying capacity. I like having 16 by end game, so starting with an 8, +2 from ship buff, and a +6 or better item is plenty. Strength has no other purpose.
Dexterity - I don't even know what this does. Avoid this stat.
Constitution - Gives you more life. The more life the better, so get this as high as possible.
Intelligence - Spell DC, mana, skill points. Also gives you more languages, but this ain't no pen and paper game, son. Max this for days.
Wisdom - This gives will saves so it's kinda good?
Charisma - Robots aren't nice, so this stat being low helps you RP. Just remember to chat entirely in grunts with your score of 6.
Ideal stats are as follows:

You're so smart you get a billion skill points. Lets talk about how to spend them.

1. Spellcraft - Gives Damages. You need the damages.
2. Repair - Heals yourself and your warforged friends. What's not to like?
3. Concentration - You will likely quicken every spell you cast, but just in case you should max this. Good for early levels.
4. Use Magic Device - Being able to raise teammates from the dead is awesome. They will most likely be raising you from the dead but that's not the point.
5. Balance - Wolves trip you, and that is bad. Use this to get up.
6. Swim - No cap on this skill, so maxing this and using merfolks blessing gives hilarious speeds that are faster than walking. I mean, why not swim super fast?
7. Haggle - Gotta get the best deal amirite

If you have extra points, put em anywhere. I used Diplomacy for being able to talk to guys in the crucible.

These are the feats I took as a warforged.
Level 1 - Mental Toughness, Maximize Spell (Bonus Feat)
Level 3 - Quicken Spell
Level 5 - Empower Spell (Bonus Feat)
Level 6 - Insightful Reflexes
Level 9 - Spell Focus Evocation
Level 10 - Greater Spell Focus Evocation (Bonus Feat)
Level 12 - Heighten Spell
Level 15 - Adamantine Plating, Extend Spell (Bonus Feat)
Level 18 - Improved Mental Toughness
Level 20 - Spell Focus Enchantment (Bonus Feat)

These feats give you the best options for damage, crowd control, and survivablity. Regardless as to whether you are warforged or not, take Insightful Reflexes. It's too good to pass up.

This is what defines the build.
46 Points

The super important enhancements in this tree are as follows:
All Core Enhancements - Awesome Spell-like abilities that can be enhanced by all your meta magic feats with no additional cost. Chain missiles, Fire Shield, and Cyclonic blast are amazing spells.
Arcane Blast and Arcane Bolt - Most of your damage comes from here. Now that they scale with 100% spell power and they are affected by all meta magic feats these two abilities become very potent and integral to your ability to deal huge amounts of damage.
Efficient Metamagic - You don't need to take all of these, but I highly recommend efficient quicken as you should always have quicken spell on.
Spell Critical:Elemental and Force - So much crit, you super need this. Elemental crit doesn't matter, what matters is the 6% force critical that you get.

22 Points

This tree is almost exclusively about survivability.
The super important enhancements in this tree are as follows:
Construct Toughness - Gives you life, what's not to love?
Inscribed Armor - Needed for being able to cast spells with adamantine plating.
Improved Body: Adamantine Durability - 10 PRR is almost 10% less physical damage taken, very useful to have.

12 Points

This tree is almost exclusively about allowing the use of adamantine plating without sacrificing spellcasting.
The super important enhancements in this tree are as follows:
Spellsword - This gives you -5% Arcane Spell Failure from both your armor and shield, allowing you to reliable equip a shield.
Toughness - You should already know how I feel about more life.
Shield Training - -5% Arcane Spell Failure when using a shield. This is fantastic since with this you can get away with a 5% spell failure and still hold a shield.
Light Armor Proficiency - -5% Spell failure with your armor. Even though it says light armor proficiency, it still helps with adamantine plating spell failure. Keep in mind, this does not affect the spell failure of shields.

With these trees, the path is simple.

1. Put all your points into Arch-mage Tree
2. Put Warforged Tree once you have extra points.
3. Fill out your Arcane spell failure from Eldritch Knight and Warforged Tree before level 15
4. Spend the rest of your points on Life in the Warforged tree.

If you follow this build, you will certainly feel bad for not playing a better and more helpful character/

I just used loot gen for this character. Anything that gives Impulse, Insightful Impulse, Kinetic Lore, Reconstruction, Insightful Reconstruction, and intelligence is what you should look for. If you are trying a challenge build you should already be aware to get items that give you constitution, saving throws, and false life. I can't think of any named items that really really helped aside from Voice of the Master.

The Gameplay

This character has a very slow ramp up time to becoming playable. You will want to be melee for a little while, since using only magic missile for damage from level 1 until 5 is quite the test of patience. Spells you might not have normally used, like Web, Hold Monster, Hypnotic Pattern, Gust of Wind, Power-word Stun become significantly more useful once you realize that killing monsters is very infrequently the best option for a long time.

Time to focus on the level by level information.

Start out by buying the barbarian hireling Byron Swordscout. He will solo all quests that are level 1 and 2 for you on elite. You don't do damage. You don't do anything. In fact, just join groups and let people kill stuff for you. If you are with other warforged, heal them and keep them topped up. Being helpful is something you can't do until level 3, so just wait.

Are you having fun playing a Byron Swordscout waterboy? I hope so, because you will keep doing that. Let Byron kill everyone and everything, and just walk behind him keeping his ass together. Maximized Magic Missile Spell like ability will only do like 6 damage on a 15 second cooldown, so get ready to patiently wait for enemies to get killed by hirelings.

I hope you liked helping Byron Swordscout, because now you can start helping Frenzy who will continue to solo all of the quests in the game for you. Take web, web some stuff, and stand around while the game is played without you. Wizards are so darn strong, huh? No scorch, no scorching ray. You'll wonder why you are even playing this game at this point. Will it ever become fun? Probably not. Not for another 40 hours or so. You can get arcane bolt here and start to help, which feels nice, but still deals low damage and has too high of a cool down.

Oh boy, still using Frenzy to kill monsters for you. At least you have arcane bolt? You don't get anything as a wizard, so just keep helping Frenzy. He's pretty good at killing monsters. He's mad you are taking all the loot while you watch him do the quests, but that's just the hireling life.

Holy cow chain missiles! It costs way too much mana for you to spam so don't even think about it. Keep using frenzy (or any hireling at this point) and just keep them hasted. Melee with haste will do more damage than you could ever even dream of. I mean, it's melee. They do all the damage in every game.

This is the first time it will feel kinda good to play this build. The Chain Missiles Spell like ability is super strong. 15 spell points for a maximized empowered quickened fast damage semi-AOE spell? Way better than doing 0 damage with spells. When using this, always try to target the lowest health creature in a group, since the initial hit does much less damage than the missiles that chain off of the first target. You can now begin to help with damage, but don't forget to keep the group hasted if possible.

ICE STORM. GET ICE STORM. Now make sure you always quicken and maximize ice storm. You do this because it is too efficient not too, since the damage over time is actually really good. Now you can run to the ends of hallways, dragging about 7 dungeons worth of monsters with you, and let everyone die in your super pumped up ice storm.

You just keep playing the same way as you have been at level 7. You now have more mana, more damage spells (Magic Missile and SLA, Chain Missile and SLA, Ice Storm, Arcane Bolt) and can sort of keep up in damage. If another wizard joins the group, you will find them killing monsters with good spells like acid blast and fireball before you can even do anything. You get disintegrate at level 11, but unless you have an item that gives you + to transmutation DC's you will find the spell pretty unreliable.

This is what you have been training for. This is what your whole life has amounted to. The last 40 hours have probably been terrible while you have suffered and fought and crawled over broken glass to finally achieve this point. Arcane Blast is now in your possession. "But Strimtom", you might utter, "It's just one ability and it's just like fireball. I don't get how this would be much easier." Don't worry, my simple minded friend, you will be rewarded with the best experience you have ever had. Arcane Blast does so much damage, cost only 6 spellpoints, has a 6 second cool down, and looks amazing. You will go from doing less damage than the healer cleric build your friend is running to doing almost as much damage as a poorly optimized barbarian. That's right, I'm talking about clearing groups of monsters in like 8-10 seconds instead of waiting for your team to kill everything for you! It's so amazing, you will never forget this feeling. Similar to skipping lunch and then eating dinner when you get home, it's that perfect level of satisfying. Sure, you're eating a bowl of ramen with some mixed vegetables and a twinkie for desert, but after that long day of eating nothing at all, it's the most satisfying feeling in the world. That's what challenges are about; overcoming them and feeling good about it.

JK it's about bragging that you did something that someone else didn't.

I don't really have any more to tell since the build just takes practice at this point. I do have some pro tips however.

• Spread out enemies are your nightmare. Because you are cool down based you really want to clump enemies so you can hit them all with your arcane blast. Try to use corners to keep enemies clumped together at all times.
• Try more spells! Mass hold person, Power-word stun, Otto's Irresistible dance, summon monster I-IX, Solid fog. There are so many good spells that most people don't end up using.
• Always focus champs first, and prioritize using Crowd Control Effects on the ASAP.

FAQ

Why did you write this?
Like 8 people asked me to make a guide since I was playing it on Stream. this build isn't good, but apparently people wanna play it themselves just to FEEL how bad it is.

Why did you play this?
When I saw the changes to the Archmage tree with update 29 I had to give it a shot. Especially since Master of Knowledge was added to the game I really wanted to try it.

You know, this would be better if you were a pale master.
Get out

Conclusion

Congratulations on leveling to level 20. You have proven that you have no life, don't know what joy feels like, and have no desire to succeed at anything. You are now a masoch*st, good job. You get 1500 challenge points. What I learned from playing this build is that the archmage enhancements are really strong and would supplement a standard build very nicely. Being able to weave in cheap SLA's that are almost impossible to resist/dodge while doing full damage with other spells is an awesome thing. I feel like many people will swap out of pale master in favor of being a warforged evocation wizard again.

So I played this build until about level 26, when I TR'd out of excitement for my new arti build. However, I did learn a few things:

• Master of Knowledge is very strong. The extra crit damage is insane. Not so good when only using arcane blast for damage, but it would be bonkers when combined with Draconic Incarnation
• I tried Shiradi and Magister (I avoided Draconic incarnation because of elemental damage). Shiradi was underwhelming since magic missle is less important than just straight damage for this build. Arcane Blast/Bolt don't benefit too much from Shiradi champion. Magister was fun, and I really liked using nullmagic strike/arcane tempest, but Draconic incarnation would be extremely strong with this build.
• Definitly playable up until level 30, I was able to do epic hard right out of the gate (using leveled magister of course). Get a thunderforged weapon for force and go to town.

Try it out as your next life and let me know what you think!