About the batman/god wizard

[Kaeso]

Hey guys,

I'm a first time poster but a long time lurker. I've noticed that alot of people on this board (and alot of other DnD related boards) think the batman/god wizard is one of the most powerful, if not, the most powerful class in the game. I understand that in theory the batman wizard always has a few powerful "I win" spells that he can cast, but I think there's one glaring weakness for these characters: they prepare their spells. The wizards weakness is that he can't prepare himself on the fly and his spell preparation is mostly hit or miss. Sure, grease is a powerful spell that could end an encounter instantly but what if your opponent can fly or cast 'freedom of movement'? The tome of battle classes can take one full round action (with the adaptive style feat) to change their manouvres and adapt to the situation while a wizard is pretty much dead meat if he doesn't have the proper spells. Could anybody tell me wether or not I'm wrong and explain why in case I'm wrong?

[Aroka]

You're missing the whole point of the Batman wizard: divinations. (And, at higher levels, impregnable planar hideouts with different rates of time.)

The Batman wizard prepares for exactly what's ahead. That's the whole idea.

[EvilJoe15]

Three things:

1.) Divination spells.
Knowing what will happen before it happens.

2.) Rope Trick.
Need something you didn't prepare, well, reprepare.

3.) Persisted Time Stop Incantatrix Cheese.
F*** you, I got a whole day now. Don't ever use this one, it's TO only.

[Kaeso]

You're missing the whole point of the Batman wizard: divinations. (And, at higher levels, impregnable planar hideouts with different rates of time.)

The Batman wizard prepares for exactly what's ahead. That's the whole idea.

Could you elaborate on the divinations? If I'm correct wizards don't get the future predicting divinations like sixth sense until they hit at least level 15.

[derfenrirwolv]

4 reasons

1 is that wizards have scribe scroll. This allows them to walk around with at least one of every spell they know ready to cast at all times. If they have the spell "decapitate sparkly poofy shirted vampire" saved on a scroll, they can break it out if they see a sparkly poofy shirted vampire whether or not they expected to run into one that day.

Second is that Not everyone uses the tomb of battle. Its an optional supplement that would require big changes to a campaign.. every fighter would need to swap their class out for something better. It also changes combat for everyone.

3 is that some wizard spells are pretty versatile. As V says, as the size of the explosion increases the number of situations it can't solve approach zero. There's also the summon spells which can be like a swiss army knife if the player takes the time to learn what they can summon. Heck, even a pair of teleports used to run to town and get what you need.

4) Is that the alleged balance between melee and spells relies on iterative attacks.... which don't happen. Everyone and everything is moving around the map, getting cover, and NOT holding still to be turned into sushi.

[The Glyphstone]

Contact Other Plane is available at level 7. You play 20 Questions with a God (theoretically) until you know everything you need to, and since Int is a wizard's prime stat, it's very hard for him to fail the Int check versus backlash.

[EvilJoe15]

Wizards can start chain gating Solars as early as level 1.

It needn't be perfect prediction for it to work. Even the low level divinations can do wonders. Personally I never go without casting Detect Magic on everything.(I spend a lot on wands of it.)

[The Glyphstone]

Wizards can start chain gating Solars as early as level 1.

It needn't be perfect prediction for it to work. Even the low level divinations can do wonders. Personally I never go without casting Detect Magic on everything.(I spend a lot on wands of it.)

Technically, so can Truenamers, so that's not really +wizard there.

[tonberrian]

Could you elaborate on the divinations? If I'm correct wizards don't get the future predicting divinations like sixth sense until they hit at least level 15.

Contact Other Plane is available at level 9, and is fairly useful for finding things out.

Edit: Ninja'd, but I'm not sure how you're getting level 5 spells at level 7 without serious cheese.

[Aroka]

Could you elaborate on the divinations? If I'm correct wizards don't get the future predicting divinations like sixth sense until they hit at least level 15.

You don't need to look into the future. Scrying or clairaudience/claivoyance are pretty much sufficient. You only need to ask "what is going to happen in the future" if you're not actually thinking. If you're smart, you're going to want to ask "what's in this specific place now" and similar specific questions.

And, of course, contact other plane.

Then there's teleport (or invisibility) - whenever you run into something you don't want to face, you just bug off, reprepare, and come back.

Plus there's the fact that you can pretty much prepare the right spells for most situations. When you only need 1-3 spells to beat most encounters, you can afford to prepare for a lot of different encounters. There's plenty of wizard guides on these very forums that detail the spells that are useful for most circumstances.

[Keld Denar]

Commune is available as early as 9th level, assuming a 1+ investment in the Divine Oracle PrC. Commune is pretty much the ultimate future telling Divination you can hope to accomplish. Contact Other Plane is also fairly decent, if you are smart enough.

Still, though, the trick to being a well prepared wizard is to take a little of everything. Have 2-3 Will save spells, 2-3 Fort save spells, 2-3 Ref save spells, 2-3 no save spells, 2-3 ranged touch attack spells, plus as many party buffs (like Haste) as you think you'll have combats. Most days, you won't run out of spells, so you'll always have something appropriate to cast in any given round in any given combat.

You don't just memorize 15 Greases (well, not unless you are planning on going to Construct-land and fighting nothing but golems). Diversity is the key in MOST cases.

[The Glyphstone]

Contact Other Plane is available at level 9, and is fairly useful for finding things out.

Edit: Ninja'd, but I'm not sure how you're getting level 5 spells at level 7 without serious cheese.

You're not, I thought CoP was lvl4. My bad.

[Flickerdart]

A wizard doesn't even need divinations. For example, a Focused Specialist Conjurer has, assuming a low-ish INT score of 30, 7 spells for each of his 3 highest levels and 8 spells for the next four. That's 53 different ways to deal with a situation without even touching the lower-level slots, and no opponent will be able to annul all of them. By the time your opponent has Freedom of Movement, you're not using Grease, you're using things like Disintegrate or things like Summon Monster, Planar Binding or Gate, which summon up monsters with whatever SLA you need for the job.

ToB maneuvers, on the other hand, are much more limited in both what they can do and how many the individual adept knows. Wizards know as many spells as their waller desires.

[jiriku]

Others have touched on many points, but I think two bear special mention:

Versatility: Some spells are very flexible, and with imagination can be applied towards solving many problems. You mentioned grease as being useless against flying enemies. However, grease can also be applied to a flying opponent's weapon, causing him to drop it. Or it can be applied to a grappled ally, giving him a +10 bonus to escape the grapple. The spell has more than one use. Disintigrate is another example of a highly flexible spell. It can be used to zap an opponent, and is especially effective against undead. However, it can also be used to disable a trap, bypass a door, create an opening where there wasn't one before, dispose of inconvenient evidence, prevent a dead enemy from being easily raised, destroy an enemy's weapon or getaway vehicle, collapse a structure by destroying a load-bearing column, and more. If your spell choices are flexible, you can often find a secondary use for them if you end up not needing them for the primary purposed you expected.

Quantity: Wizards get a lot of spells. I mean A LOT of spells. When you have 30, 40, 50, or more spells available to you each day (and even more via scrolls and wands), you can screw up half a dozen of your spell choices and you'll still have more spells available than you can probably even use in a day. Thus, the class is forgiving of mistakes.

[awa]

at lower levels depending on optimization running out of spells is a big problem but once you can cast greater teleport you can fight one encounter and then go home. And with so many spells that can defeat a foe with only one casting many of wich are low level you see where this is going.

[Eldariel]

Contact Other Plane is the first really good Future Sight; level 9. Can do just about anything tho with nasty downside (just get high enough casting stat and you can take 10 in it tho).

Anyways, that's besides the point. First, Batman Wizard (and God for that matter) are both powerful, yes, but specifically aimed to build a Wizard that does not hog the spotlight. It is possible to build a Wizard that's literally a one-man party; with some work you'll get very respectable destruction capabilities and by using broken spells (Polymorph-line, Planar Binding-line, Simulacrums, etc.) you can generate tanks and healers and faces and whatever you need for yourself. This is not what God is about though, or God for that matter.

The idea of God is to take the power of Wizard, and use it subtly so the other people in the party don't run out of things to do either. You could do it yourself, but your friends make it unnecessary. You just make things easy for them.

Now, to the crux of your argument: That would apply if you only had one spell slot per level, and if you didn't have access to Divinations. Most important tho is the spell slots. You can easily have 4 1st level slots on level 1 (20 Int Gray Elf specializing in any or school or using Elf Generalist; any other race could be a Focused Specialist to reach 4 too): This allows you to prepare...say Color Spray, Grease, Sleep and leave one slot empty. Then, when you need some other spell, you can use the empty slot.

Or you can replenish it with whichever spell needs replenishing. On 1st level, facing 4 flying encounters seems rather unlikely and if they're flying creatures using weapons, you can Grease a weapon to force Reflex vs. dropping it still; and you'll probably be able to use at least Sleep and possibly Color Spray.


Point being, those spells are so open-ended that they just tend to work vs. the majority of encounters you could be expected to beat. And when you gain new spell levels, the versatility of your preparations just explodes; you get Glitterdusts, Pyrotechnics, Webs and so on which means you suddenly have something like 9 or 10 quite relevant spells for various circumstances; Grease retains value 'cause it's a low-level slot and thus has low opportunity cost to prepare while still maintaining usefulness on high levels. Things like Glitterdust, Web and Slow are much the same; they scale very well.

You always have something very relevant to do and as you increase in level, the number of scenarios you cannot find the perfect spell to solve approaches zero. Sure, there may be cases where you just can't find a good spell or scroll to cast anymore, but those are rare and tend to take DM planning specifically against you. And they are much more rare than such scenarios for any other class, simply due to the variety of options you have at your disposal, and how widely applicable they are.

In short, no, it's not a real problem if you know what you're doing. Generalist slots with an open slot or two tends to be the ticket. The higher level, the more leeway you have as you have more spell levels to prepare. Also, your Knowledge-skills (which every Wizard should again place most points into outside Concentration and Spellcraft due to them being very useful and Int-derived and very Wizardly) give you a lot of insight as to what you might encounter especially if your party has a goal and a direction and in general, some idea as to what you are doing. Your divinations add up on top of that.

[EvilJoe15]

You don't even need Teleport. An Extended Rope Trick works at level 5.

[Keld Denar]

And even if you don't have the proper tool to get the job done, you can cast a spell on your party to turn them into your proper tools. The god wizard is all about using tools, not all of which are spells.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Don't forget about things that let you access spells without preparing them. MotAO (draw CL spell levels from the spellpool per day into an unprepared slot), Alacritous Cogitation and Uncanny Forethought (cast 1 or Int mod spells as a full-round action, respectively), Rary's spell engine (swap out prepared spells), and other abilities let you have your entire spell book (or more!) at your fingertips for several spells per day.

[Eldan]

Or, of course, at high enough levels, if you lack a spell, you conjure up a creature to cast it for you. Problem solved.

[Aroka]

Don't think this was referenced yet, so...

Quoth the SRD:

When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.

Once you run away, it's 15 minutes of prep time to get ready to come back with the right tools, even discounting staves, wands, and scrolls.

[ericgrau]

I think this thread is confusing situational spells with battlefield control spells. Situational spells are in fact nearly useless except in theory, even with divinations, as divinations are highly limited and situational themselves. The classic batman wizard uses battlefield control spells. The situational save-or-win buttons are usually failure-prone or overly situational garbage, but somehow their supporters sneaked onto the bandwagon.

Typical battlefield control involves barriers (often with no save) or area debuffs (so at least 1-2 monsters are bound to fail, even though there is a saving throw). i.e., whatever removes or severely hampers half of the opponents in the fight. Then the encounter is divided into 2 encounters that effectively each have a much lower CR. From there the wizard's allies mop up; batman wizards are actually a bit ineffective on their own.

There are also a handful of spells that give the wizard and/or party better control of the situation, like haste and greater invisibility. These are also quite good. In this case the wizard is activating his allies' abilities to greater effect.

You'll notice in both cases the batman wizard, while highly effective, is very much an over-glorified team player. The techniques to win solo, OTOH, usually involve failure prone save or SR, or situational spells that nobody ever prepares, and aren't that effective. I should also note that all the strategy Logic Ninja listed was on the Wizards of the Coast website strategy guides 2 years before he posted it with added wizard arrogance. Right down to specific examples. I think it's a shame there's so much internet hype and people telling people "Don't play that, play a batman wizard". That's fine once, but then people post about how they're bored playing that wizard when they don't realize there are other styles that are almost as good.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I think this thread is confusing situational spells with battlefield control spells. Situational spells are in fact nearly useless except in theory, even with divinations, as divinations are highly limited and situational themselves. The classic batman wizard uses battlefield control spells. The situational save-or-win buttons are usually failure-prone or overly situational garbage, but somehow their supporters sneaked onto the bandwagon.

Well, usually God Wizard refers to the "buff your team and use battlefield control so you're a team player and downplay your own contributions" style of play, whereas Batman Wizard refers to the Crazy Prepared wizard who can pull any effect out of thin air and defeat any enemies (while astral projecting from his fast-time demiplane, if we're talking TO). As mentioned, LogicNinja made a Batman guide, which focused on various combos and strategies to cover every possible base, while Treantmonk's God guide focused on helping the Glass Cannons and BSFs do the flashy work while your BC makes it easy for them. The thread title mentioned both and the OP referred to a bunch of I Win spells, so most of the responses are addressing that (i.e. Batman divination/preparation/versatility strategies) rather than the spells and strategies that contribute but don't overshadow (i.e. God BC/buff strategies).

[ericgrau]

Hmm, then I think my second set of comments apply. The spells the OP mentions aren't actually that good because saves/SR/immunities make the high level killers extremely failure prone and situational spells are situational. When I go from one thread that says "ban evocation" to another that says "archery is useless because of windwall", that's when I know to roll my eyes once and then get out of that thread (b/c comments will only get crazier). Windwall is evocation and even if you haven't banned the school almost nobody even lists it in their spellbook b/c it's so situational. Divinations are also highly situational, so they only go so far.

[Kaeso]

I think this thread is confusing situational spells with battlefield control spells. Situational spells are in fact nearly useless except in theory, even with divinations, as divinations are highly limited and situational themselves. The classic batman wizard uses battlefield control spells. The situational save-or-win buttons are usually failure-prone or overly situational garbage, but somehow their supporters sneaked onto the bandwagon.

Typical battlefield control involves barriers (often with no save) or area debuffs (so at least 1-2 monsters are bound to fail, even though there is a saving throw). i.e., whatever removes or severely hampers half of the opponents in the fight. Then the encounter is divided into 2 encounters that effectively each have a much lower CR. From there the wizard's allies mop up; batman wizards are actually a bit ineffective on their own.

There are also a handful of spells that give the wizard and/or party better control of the situation, like haste and greater invisibility. These are also quite good. In this case the wizard is activating his allies' abilities to greater effect.

You'll notice in both cases the batman wizard, while highly effective, is very much an over-glorified team player. The techniques to win solo, OTOH, usually involve failure prone save or SR, or situational spells that nobody ever prepares, and aren't that effective. I should also note that all the strategy Logic Ninja listed was on the Wizards of the Coast website strategy guides 2 years before he posted it with added wizard arrogance. Right down to specific examples. I think it's a shame there's so much internet hype and people telling people "Don't play that, play a batman wizard". That's fine once, but then people post about how they're bored playing that wizard when they don't realize there are other styles that are almost as good.

I'm probably digressing but do you know any threads/guides that explain the other playing styles? The God wizard and Batman wizard are the only ones I'm (sort of) familliar with.

[Keld Denar]

Not really a guide, but the thread bout the Mailman is a pretty decent idea of the rediculous levels of blasting a wizard can achieve. Kinda makes Finger of Death redundant when you can shoot a 500+ point Orb of Fire from a lower level slot that is enough damage to pretty much insta-gib anyone, save or not.

It is optimized blasting, probably taken to levels too rediculous for most games.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Hmm, then I think my second set of comments apply. The spells the OP mentions aren't actually that good because saves/SR/immunities make the high level killers extremely failure prone and situational spells are situational. When I go from one thread that says "ban evocation" to another that says "archery is useless because of windwall", that's when I know to roll my eyes once and then get out of that thread (b/c comments will only get crazier). Windwall is evocation and even if you haven't banned the school almost nobody even lists it in their spellbook b/c it's so situational. Divinations are also highly situational, so they only go so far.

Granted, most of the one-shot spells aren't necessarily win buttons in and of themselves; however, it's usually assumed that the Batman wizard will optimize such that their preferred trick(s) are more effective (boosting save DCs extremely high and possibly taking Fatespinner levels, using assay resistance + Arcane Mastery + CL boosters to render SR useless, using Searing Spell or other immunity breakers, etc.). You'll only want to focus on a handful of good offensive options and optimize those to Baator and back while keeping your utility options wide open.

On the Evocation issue, you'll notice that people say Evocation is the easiest school to ban because most of it is direct damage, so if you end up specializing you lose fewer options than the other schools, good as those options may be; anyone saying you should always ban it is often met with "Um, hello? Contingency, wind wall, forcecage?" Keep in mind also that a lot of wizard vs. X advice in fact deals with the party X facing wizard bad guys as much as the party wizard facing X bad guys; "As a PC specialist wizard, you probably want to ban Evocation because you'll lose the least that way" and "For a PC, archery sucks because an enemy caster can just put up a wind wall or protection from arrows and fly out of range" aren't mutually exclusive, they're giving advice from different sides of the screen.

[Tar Palantir]

Hmm, then I think my second set of comments apply. The spells the OP mentions aren't actually that good because saves/SR/immunities make the high level killers extremely failure prone and situational spells are situational. When I go from one thread that says "ban evocation" to another that says "archery is useless because of windwall", that's when I know to roll my eyes once and then get out of that thread (b/c comments will only get crazier). Windwall is evocation and even if you haven't banned the school almost nobody even lists it in their spellbook b/c it's so situational. Divinations are also highly situational, so they only go so far.

While admittedly banning evocation is common enough to seriously hamper windwall's ability to negate archers completely forever, I heartily protest the second point; if I'm not banning evocation, it's because I want to grab windwall and manyjaws, and never touch the school again (excepting perhaps contingency, but I rarely play at levels where that's necessary).

[ericgrau]

(to both above) Possibly, except I've never seen wind wall on a spell list. And there's good reason. You don't have enough spell slots to prepare for everything.

And FWIW I'm not against evocation. Wall of force is perhaps one of the best battlefield control spells b/c it's nigh impossible to stop. Fireball is also good crowd control; that damage really adds up against swarms of baddies. Lightning bolt is a good alternative against the 10-20% of enemies with fire resistance. Etc. on both the control and area damage sides.

Assay spell resistance is cheesy no matter what you use it with, I've heard of DMs banning it for this reason.

[Tyndmyr]

Hmm, then I think my second set of comments apply. The spells the OP mentions aren't actually that good because saves/SR/immunities make the high level killers extremely failure prone and situational spells are situational.

Orbs are no save, no sr. Force orb makes a mockery of immunities, and orb of fire is also lethal with searing spell applied.

Failure prone isn't a problem unless you pick things that are failure prone.

Other blaster wizards involve abusing sanctum spell/grtr arcane fusion, or (less cheesy)a force missile mage build.

Incantatrix/Iot7V also have the potential to be used almost purely defensively. Last campaign a ran a wizard that way, and didn't actually control the battlefield as such, just made my party nearly impossible to kill. Actual offensive options were mainly limited to reserve feats.

Malconvoker is your summoner option.

[ericgrau]

Orbs are no save, no sr. Force orb makes a mockery of immunities, and orb of fire is also lethal with searing spell applied.

Failure prone isn't a problem unless you pick things that are failure prone.

Other blaster wizards involve abusing sanctum spell/grtr arcane fusion, or (less cheesy)a force missile mage build.

Incantatrix/Iot7V also have the potential to be used almost purely defensively. Last campaign a ran a wizard that way, and didn't actually control the battlefield as such, just made my party nearly impossible to kill. Actual offensive options were mainly limited to reserve feats.

Malconvoker is your summoner option.
That is the much maligned blaster wizard, not what the OP is talking about I think. Those are a fine option IMO in spite of the hate they get.

Yeah, I usually wouldn't pick the failure prone spells either. But that's what a lot of the supposed win buttons are.

[Kaeso]

That is the much maligned blaster wizard, not what the OP is talking about I think. Those are a fine option in spite of the hate they get.

A blaster wizard does alot less damage than a well built fighter, doesn't he? If that's so he's pretty useless compared to melee classes. I could be wrong though.

[Flickerdart]

A blaster wizard does alot less damage than a well built fighter, doesn't he? If that's so he's pretty useless compared to melee classes. I could be wrong though.
A well-built blaster wizard deals damage that puts the best Ubercharger to shame.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

(to both above) Possibly, except I've never seen wind wall on a spell list. And there's good reason. You don't have enough spell slots to prepare for everything.

Which is where the various cast-from-your-spellbook abilities come in. When I play a wizard (rare) or DM one (more often), I pretty much always pick up Uncanny Forethought, and since wind wall is one of those spells that isn't always useful but is amazing when it is useful, it always makes its way into my spellbook sooner or later.

[Kaeso]

A well-built blaster wizard deals damage that puts the best Ubercharger to shame.

I see. But even then, wouldn't a sorcerer be a better blaster than a wizard (because they can apply metamagic on the fly).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I see. But even then, wouldn't a sorcerer be a better blaster than a wizard (because they can apply metamagic on the fly).

Not unless you pick up ways to make metamagic not increase the casting time (since Quicken can double your damage output). Assuming you do, then yes, sorcerers shine because a repeatable schtick is exactly what they do best. The sticking point there is that the sorcerer does nothing but blast (which is exactly the martial problem), whereas the wizard can handle out-of-combat stuff more easily on the whole.

[Flickerdart]

I see. But even then, wouldn't a sorcerer be a better blaster than a wizard (because they can apply metamagic on the fly).
With a way to cast metamagicked spells as a standard action, they're comparable.

[Kaeso]

With a way to cast metamagicked spells as a standard action, they're comparable.

*Is really digressing* If we assume it's a wizard, would the blaster wiz be a generalist or a specialist (or even focused specialist)? If it's the later, what would he specialise in, Evocation? Usually specialising in Evocation is considered a beginners trap.

[Flickerdart]

*Is really digressing* If we assume it's a wizard, would the blaster wiz be a generalist or a specialist (or even focused specialist)? If it's the later, what would he specialise in, Evocation? Usually specialising in Evocation is considered a beginners trap.
Focused Spec Conjuration for the Orbs.

[Tyndmyr]

A blaster wizard does alot less damage than a well built fighter, doesn't he? If that's so he's pretty useless compared to melee classes. I could be wrong though.

You are.

First, damage above "enough to kill the target" is wasted. So, when you're talking about 500+ damage orbs at sub-epic, it's mostly irrelevant if you do 500 damage or 600. Either way, the target dies horribly.

The range is valuable. The ability to avoid saves, DR, SR, resistances, immunities, and so on is also quite valuable. Most typical blaster archtypes(orb, ray, force missile) tend to accomplish all of these.

Plus, a blaster can do things other than just blasting, 100% of the time. They tend to bring more additional tricks to the table than a melee class.

Edit: Got ninjaed...

Conj is generally considered the best to specialize/focused spec in. However, evocation is good, provided that you do actually specialize in blasting. I've played them, and they work out well. It's just that picking three schools to ban when evoc isn't an option is generally a tough decision.

[Kaeso]

I see. Thanks guys, I've learned alot about wizards from this thread.
I just want to know one last thing: what feats should a blaster wizard take? I suspect maximize and empower spell, but there are probably a few better feats out there.

[jiriku]

Yeah, sorcerers have an edge over wizards in blasting. But it's only a slight edge, plus really, once your average damage per round gets up to 200, 500, 1000, or more, how much better do you really need to be?

The best blaster wizard is probably a conjurer, because conjuration is loaded down with blasting spells that don't allow spell resistance or saving throws.

Edit: good feats would include -

Empower
Maximize
Twin
Energy Substitution
Energy Admixture
Piercing Cold Spell or Searing Spell
Split Ray
Sculpt
Arcane Thesis
Practical Metamagic
Easy Metamagic
Residual Magic

[Flickerdart]

I see. Thanks guys, I've learned alot about wizards from this thread.
I just want to know one last thing: what feats should a blaster wizard take? I suspect maximize and empower spell, but there are probably a few better feats out there.
Split Ray is a good one, as are Twin Spell and Repeating Spell. You'll also want metamagic reducers like Easy Metamagic, Practical Metamagic or Arcane Thesis.

[Keld Denar]

In general, Empower is better than Maximize. While on paper, Maximize does more average damage than Empower, Empower CAN spike higher. The other important factor to consider is that Empower is still only a +2 MM, while Maximize is a +3. You are better off Empowering a spell 1 level higher than Maximizing a spell 1 level lower.

And yea, Split Ray is good. Its a +2 MM, and doubles your damage for just about every ray except Scorching Ray (for which Empower Spell is better once you are above CL8).

Don't forget that there are lots of ways to blast. Enervation does 5 HP per negative level, and a Split Ray Enervation deals 2d4 negative levels. If you hit max damage, thats 8 negative levels or 40 damage. 40 damage might not seem too great, but combine that with the fact that on top of the damage you are debuffing the target's attack bonus, saves, and a few other attributes by 8 points as well.

Thats really the best way to blast. Do a search for duel threat spells. If you can deal some damage to someone AND find some way to restrict their options, you've won twice over. Some spells, like Acid Fog and Freezing Fog, don't do much damage, but combine them with a way of preventing escape can result in massive amounts of damage over time, along with the inconvenience of trying to get out of them.

Oh, and a Sorcerer who knows Arcane Spellsurge and has the Residual Metamagic feat (CMage) is a REALLY scary blaster. Likewise, Ultimate Magi (with Residual Metamagic) and Shadowcraft Mages are all really good blasters. Free Metamagic and hyper-reality is where blasters REALLY thrive.

[Eldariel]

Which is where the various cast-from-your-spellbook abilities come in. When I play a wizard (rare) or DM one (more often), I pretty much always pick up Uncanny Forethought, and since wind wall is one of those spells that isn't always useful but is amazing when it is useful, it always makes its way into my spellbook sooner or later.

Why bother? Just keep a scroll along, and be done with it. That's what I always do. Wind Wall is a perfect scrollable; huge impact situational with no save or SR.

[Tyndmyr]

No mention of quicken, fell drain, or invisible?

Fell drain is a great insurance debuff. Negative levels make any monster that managed to somehow survive ridiculous damage not only take a little more, but be immediately less threatening. It combos especially well with spells that deal damage on multiple occasions, be they aoes, twins, multitarget like magic missile, or damage over time like PW: pain.

Quicken is great for breaking action economy. Assuming you abuse arcane thesis, quicken, fd, and twin spell, you can easily hit someone for four spells in a single turn. In addition to the massive hp loss, four negative levels is a non-trivial power reduction.

Invisible has a coupla advantages. First, +0 allows it to help power arcane thesis reduction of higher adjustment mm. So, that's already a win. Secondly, it has a few cheese options for countering true seeing and see invisibility, both of which are quite dangerous. Thirdly, removing the visible effects of your spells removes one way players can spellcraft you. If they can see you directly, and you don't still/silent, they can, but those people are probably already dead anyhow. Fourth, if stealth is ever a goal, invisible fireballs are a lot stealthier than the visible kind.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Why bother? Just keep a scroll along, and be done with it. That's what I always do. Wind Wall is a perfect scrollable; huge impact situational with no save or SR.

Well, you have to learn it in order to scribe it yourself, and I end up copying any scrolls I find or buy into my book anyway. I'll usually use a scroll the first time I need it, but I don't bother scribing it again since there are plenty of other scrolls I'd prefer to have first.