Hello,
Reading the many threads here, I think most - if not all - are in agreement that after the remaster, the wizard ended up being mechanically weaker while other casters like the sorcerer or the oracle thrived.
(Short break to summarize)
When you compare a wizard of any build to an imperial sorcerer, the difference is painful. Sorcerer gets more flexibility, more damage, much better feats, spontaneous casting AND on top of that, better focus spells that allow to raise your DC by up to 3/add 3 to your spell attack roll.
Wizards are stuck with an outdated version of preparing spells, which was actually a good thing when spontaneous casters were stuck with a handful or spells, but is now an incredible drawback in PF2E where scrolls are cheap and arcane sorcerers can get the equivalent of a spellbook with a feat. There is simply no situation that comes to mind (or that happened in my many years of campaing) where preparing spells would be better than spontaneous since you can cover 95% of your needs with your actual selection and the 5% left with scrolls or your grimoire.
Only two wizard thesis have some merit (Spell Blending and Spell Substitution) and even then, they just patch weaknesses instead of giving the wizard some much needed oomph. The remaster added insult to injury with schools of dubious interest, where most of them aren't even considered apart from RP reasons, and where even the most battle-oriented one has glaring problems in its spell selection.
TLDR: Wizards are god-awful and need a huge buff.
(End summarize)
Suggested Fix
In our tables, we tried to fix it by giving all the thesis for free (apart from familiar thesis which stepped too much on the witch's toes. It was a step in the right direction but still wasn't enough.
So we thought about what the wizard was supposed to be: master of the arcane, like the fighter was a master of the blade. Other classes have a lot of special abilities: barbarian has rage, monk has flurry of blows and AC, ranger has hunter's edge and so on and so forth, but the fighter is the king of accuracy.
So here's what we are currently implementing in our tables:
Instead of the current arcane schools, wizards can choose one specific school and gets one proficiency better with it, just like the fighter with his favored weapon. All other spells are at regular proficiency - and cantrips aren't affected either.
So an evoker would start at level 1 with expert proficiency in his evocation spells using slots and trained in all others. Then master in evocation at lvl 7 and expert in all others, and so on, and so forth until lvl 19 where he gets legendary in everything like all other casters (and might get another perk at this time).
We first thought it would be too much but so far it's worked pretty well. +2 proficiency is a big swing in PF2E but it didn't unbalance the fighter and it didn't unbalance the wizard. Moreover, the fighter doesn't care about being extra proficient in only one kind of weapon since he usually won't change his fighting style during an adventure. But even the most specialized wizard cannot always rely on his expertise, since sometimes you need blasting, sometimes you need debuffing and sometimes you need utility.
So far, the schools we chose were mostly modeled on those already existing:
School of ars grammatica: Higher proficiency for all linguistic effects and counteract checks
School of battle magic: Higher proficiency for all elemental blasts
School of civic wizardry: Higher proficiency for all manoeuvers spells, higher wall HP
School of mentalism: Higher proficiency for all mental spells
School of the veil: Higher DC for all illusions
What do you think ?
I don't think the wizard needs a numbers boost. It's not really making the class any more interesting from a mechanical point of view, just more effective. It also risks shoehorning players into relying on certain types of spells more than they should and could be a trap especially for newer players.
I'd much rather see the class design fixed than its power. More useful and interesting focus spells and feats would be a great start. Maybe increase the uses of Arcane Bond (with some limitation to not give the class even more top level slots) and maybe the ability to spend those uses on various abilities depending on your thesis and/or school. For Example, the Spellshape thesis could allow you to spend an Arcane Bond "charge" to use a Spellshape as a free action or maybe to aply two Spellshapes to the same spell. Spell Substitution could spend an action and a Bond charge to instantly switch out a spell. Stuff like that.
Somehing along those lines would makes the thesis/schools choice more interesting and give Arcane Bond an identity that goes beyond "more spells".
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Meanwhile Hand of the Apprentice, Fortify summoning and Scramble body are absolutely great.
That's funny. Those three are the absolutely worst of the wizard's focus spells for me.
Always interesting to see how much opinions differ between players.
Hand of the Apprentice: Single action weapon strike using spellcasting. Expensive to invest in but it really is worth the damage and potential crit effect. Some people rule that potency rune doesnt apply, Other people do which does make its value vary from table to table.
Non-muscle Wizards will very likely use it with their staff. At best, you're looking at 4d8+7 damage for a single action. Not terrible (especially at the huge range), but still a very steep gold cost which might be better invested into other things, like a more powerful staff or more spells. Critical Specialization is unreliable and just a 10 ft knockback that's even defined as forced movement, limiting its usefulness.
Applying potency runes to this is very much a house rule and shouldn't be part of such discussions.
Fortify summoning: Using creatures with auto-grab abilities, stench, knockdown, engulf/swallow or similar.
Auto-Grab is no longer a thing in the remaster. But the worst thing about Fortify Summoning is that it essentially eats your whole turn since you also need to sustain the summon to get any use out of it. Spending two whole turns to get a slightly buffed summon is not a great deal in my book.
Scramble body: 2 action evil eye hex. but it instead targets fortitude and comes with slowed 1 + sickened 2 if they crit fail. Does lack the sustain part but i've never seen a witch sustain that hex outside having a spare action with nothing else to do.
It's still a two-action spell (i.e. basically eats your whole turn) that does nothing on a successful save. It's the only one that somehow got worse with the remaster since fort is often a strong save on enemies. The old version was a spell attack so it could at least benefit from off-guard and attack buffs.
Anyway, that's just my take. I'm not going to argue about this. We ulitmately agree that many of the wizard's focus spells are sub-par, even if we're thinking of different ones.
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What do you think ?
That Wizards are not god awful and needing a huge buff.
Besides that, PF2 is an extremely solid framework. Even if people tend to scream in front of a change as extreme as a proficiency boost, the actual truth is that the game will certainly not be affected much. So in my opinion, if it's what you want, go for it.
The only thing I'd worry about is that Wizard become the only real choice for Arcane casters due to this boost. It's hard to ignore a +2 to spell DC when choosing your class. But considering the low number of Arcane casters in the game (and the fact that we already have this effect with the Arcane Sorcerer) it's not much of a problem.