Struggling to find a spell style I click with, looking for advice especially from Phoenix tail aficionados
I loved the spell abilities in sacrifice and while I had a magic character I hit NG+ on they mainly used black widow and not really any spells. I come back to the game on and off every year and a half or so and the character had already taken me a few returns to even get that far with.
In my last return it looks like I had forgot that arcane magic scales up in cost the the heavier gear you load on, and I had equipped & burnt upgrade mats on some pieces of golem armor and just wasn’t clicking with trying to figure out spell use on NG+.
I also started another character who I wanted to be primarily dex using using guns and whips/daggers but with a little magic, put a lot of levels into Magic and grabbed the phoenix tail, only to realize between the weight of phoenix tail and equip slots I was just trying to do too much.
SO, tldr- started another new character, using phoenix tail and enjoying it though it still has a lot of room to grow. I’m wondering if anyone has good advice on a good offhand wand and spell selection, I like the storm Geist well enough but even found things like lightning storm and flame tower pretty underwhelming though I’ve heard good things before.
Is there some trick to get more damage out of these? Or am I just spoiled by the pretty high bar my heavy paladin & dex/wis polearm master set?
Which wand handles best for base NG before I have cracked magic scaling and the endgame wand? Just looking for any advice/ideas/suggestions from others who have played hybrid int/magic casters. Thanks!