Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - Battle Wizard Build Guide

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Career Overview

Weapons

Talents

Sienna Fuegonasus is Warhammer: Vermintide 2's resident spell-caster, harnessing the power of fire to immolate her enemies. Her first career, the Battle Wizard, has Sienna using her powerful long-rage fire spells to ignite monsters and blow up groups of rats.

The Battle Wizard is a powerful damage Career that can play several different roles in battle. Below, we'll take a look at each of the Battle Wizard's abilities, weapons, and Talents, and some tips for building this class.

Career Overview

Ability	Description
Career Skill – Fire Walk	Teleport forward, covering the area you travel in flames that burn for 6 seconds.
Passive Ability – Tranquility	Increase Overcharge decay rate by 200% after not casting spells for 6 seconds.
Perk – Reckless Haste	Increase spell charge speed by up to 30% with higher Overcharge.
Perk – Pyromantic Surge	Increase ranged attack damage by 10%.

General Gameplay

The Battle Wizard is a ranged-focused career specializing in taking out high-health targets from afar. The main mechanic you will be playing around on any of Sienna's Careers is Overcharge. By casting spells with her ranged weapon, Sienna will generate Overcharge, which will fill up the three-segmented Overcharge bar. When the bar is filled up, Sienna will explode, getting knocked down.

The Overcharge gauge will slowly decrease on its own while you are not casting spells. Alternatively, you can manually vent the Overcharge by pressing the reload button. Venting in the first segment of the Overcharge gauge won't deal any damage to you, but you will take damage by venting in the second and third segments.

The Battle Wizard's unique passive, Tranquility, will even further decrease Overcharge if you don't use ranged attacks for 6 seconds.

Overall, the Battle Wizard must balance Overcharge by switching between ranged and melee weapons. Save your charged ranged attacks for high-health enemies like specials and elites, and use AoE spells to clear groups of enemies. Generate temporary health with your melee attacks to build a buffer, allowing you to vent Overcharge at higher levels without taking damage to your permanent health.

Weapons

Melee Weapons

The Battle Wizard can use the following melee weapons.

Sword
Flame Sword
Dagger
Mace
Crowbill (Back to Ubersreik DLC)
Flaming Flail (Winds of Magic DLC)

Although the Battle Wizard is a ranged-oriented class, your melee weapon choice will slightly change your playstyle and how well you can generate temporary health, which is essential for staying alive. The Flame Sword has a powerful charged attack that can ignite enemies, playing to the strengths of the Battle Wizard's burning-focused Talents like Famished Flames and Soot Shield.

Alternatively, the Dagger has fast attacks at the cost of less power. Similar to the Flame Sword, the Dagger's charged attack burns enemies hit, making it great for quickly applying burning before switching back to your staff.

Ranged Weapons

The Battle Wizard has access to these ranged weapons.

Fireball Staff
Flamestorm Staff
Bolt Staff
Beam Staff
Conflagration Staff
Coruscation Staff (Forgotten Relics DLC)

Each of Sienna's staff weapons will provide a different playstyle, as their charged attacks all do different things. For horde-clearing and AoE damage, the Conflagration Staff is the best, while the Fireball and Bolt Staff are great for single-target damage. Ultimately, choose the staff that you like to use the most, and base your Talents around this weapon.

Talents

Level 5 Talents

Confound	Spark Thief	Flame-Fettled
Staggering an enemy with a melee attack generates temporary health, proportional to the strength of the stagger.	Killing an enemy with a melee attack generates temporary health, proportional to the health of the slain enemy.	Healing yourself with medical supplies also restores the health of nearby allies equal to 20% of their maximum health.

The Battle Wizard is one of the more fragile Careers, making temporary health generation very important. To that end, Confound will generate the most amount of health through repeated staggers, and pairs well with cleaving weapons like the Flame Sword.

Spark Thief can be good at lower difficulties where enemies die faster, but doesn't provide enough health fast enough in higher difficulty maps.

Level 10 Talents

Volcanic Force	Famished Flames	Lingering Flames
Fully charged spells have 50% increased power.	Increase the damage of burning over time effects to 150%. Non-burning damage is reduced by 30%.	Burning now lasts until the enemy dies, but burning effects don't stack.

Before you decide on your level 10 Talent, you'll first need to determine how you want to play the Battle Wizard. If you're going for high single-target damage against high-health enemies through charged attacks, Volcanic Force will be the best choice.

On the other hand, if you'd rather focus on igniting every enemy in your path through charged melee attacks, spells, and Fire Walk, then Famished Flames will be the better choice.

Level 15 Talents

Bulwark	Smiter	Enhanced Power
Staggered enemies take 10% more damage from melee attacks for 2 seconds, and staggered enemies take 20% more damage from all attacks. Staggering an enemy that is already staggered adds a count of stagger, increasing the bonus damage to 40%.	The first enemy hit by an attack is always staggered, and staggered enemies take 20% more damage. Staggering an enemy that is already staggered adds a count of stagger, increasing the bonus damage to 40%.	Increases power by 7.5%.

Usually, ranged-focused playstyles choose the Enhanced Power Talent over any others at level 15, as this Talent will increase the power of ranged attacks unlike the other two options. However, since you are relying on Confound to generate temporary health, Smiter will be the best choice here to make that easier. Because the first enemy hit will always count as a stagger, you will generate temporary health every time you hit an enemy for the first time.

Level 20 Talents

Unusually Calm	Rechannel	Centred
Reduces the cooldown of Tranquility by 3 seconds.	Reduces ranged charge time by 40% while Tranquility is active.	Increases the Overcharge decay effect of Tranquility by 100%.

For your level 20 Talent, Unusually Calm is the best option for your goals as a Battle Wizard. This Talent will reduce the cooldown of Tranquility by 3 seconds, drastically reducing the time it takes to start automatically venting Overcharge. With this Talent, your Overcharge will rapidly vent after just three seconds, which is essentially the time it takes to switch to your melee weapon and swing a few times.

Level 25 Talents

Soot Shield	Fires from Ash	Immersive Immolation
Burning an enemy reduces damage taken by 10% for 5 seconds. This effect can be stacked up to 3 times.	Killing an enemy reduces the cooldown of Fire Walk by 3%. This Talent can only trigger every 0.5 seconds.	Striking 4 enemies with a single attack increases attack speed by 15% for 5 seconds.

Soot Shield provides a massive damage reduction buff that can be consistently activated thanks to the Battle Wizard's high number of burning-inflicting attacks. Just using Fire Walk into a group of enemies will stack the buff to its maximum, providing 30 percent damage reduction for five seconds. Although Fires from Ash and Immersive Immolation can be great, and will boost your overall damage output, Soot Shield is essential for staying alive, which is much more important.

Level 30 Talents

Volans' Quickening	Kaboom!	Burnout
Reduce the cooldown of Fire Walk by 30%.	Increase the explosion size and burn damage of Fire Walk, but removes the burning trail effect.	Fire Walk can be activated a second time within 10 seconds of the original cast.

Finally, your level 30 Talent choice is up to you. Volans' Quickening will allow you to use Fire Walk more often, which can help for consistently avoiding enemies and applying burning in multiple areas.

Kaboom! is a bit more situational, and should only be used in builds that don't care about burning damage. This Talent will drastically increase the damage of Fire Walk's explosion at the cost of no longer inflicting burning, which may be counterintuitive for some burning-focused setups.

Burnout is a very strong Talent that can provide powerful utility with Fire Walk. Using this Talent, you can use Fire Walk to teleport into a group of enemies, setting them on fire, then immediately use Fire Walk again to escape before you take damage. Alternatively, you can use this Talent to quickly cover ground and get away or close to enemies.

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