You are playing wizards wrong

Here's a short PSA about properly playing the wizard in 5e. Of course there is no such thing as 'proper' when you can play something how you want, but hopefully this provides a bit of inspiration when learning new spells for a wizard. -Stephen

You are playing wizards wrong. Yea, I'm telling you your fun is wrong, and frankly... I'm just making a catching title. You can play a wizard however you want, but the 5e wizard has a great way of playing it that many people don't pay attention too. 

Before we really get started, let's step back in time and talk a bit about the wizard. Now, we just completed a deep dive on the history of the magic-user and how it has evolved and changed throughout every edition, and I'm not going to rehash all that. Instead, I'm going to focus on their spells. 

In every edition, the magic-user/wizard had access to a large number of spells that did a variety of things, some of them did damage, some of them opened doors, and some of them summoned a swarm of daggers to keep your enemies back. In the early editions, choices were a lot more limiting but you still had damage, utility and control spells. Now, I can imagine very few people would pick any of the utility or control spells because they had a single spell slot, and dammit I'm not wasting that spell slot on a door that the barbarian can just tear down with his bare hands. 

But times change, classes evolved and more spells are introduced... and I mean a lot more spells! And by the time 3rd edition comes around, wizards can do more than one thing a day, which boosts how useful they can be. Magic is always useful, but you are severely limited in those early editions to being useful a few times while the fighter is useful a lot of times in a day. 

3rd edition introduces the idea of 0-level spells, also known as cantrips, that can be cast over and over as much as you want and you never run out of 0-level juice. This is a great turning point for the wizard and means that they are completely useless during most of the day at low levels, and it means that they can take on more utility and control spells than they normally would as they can do more. This creates a more diverse way of playing as they aren't solely fixated on the cool damage spells because they get only a few chances to shine a day, now they can shine more often and, while it is nice to deal damage, they can shine without dealing damage and still be useful in combat. 

This brings us to 4th edition where they go through each class and tell you what that classes role in the party is. You have leaders, strikers, defenders, and the controller. In the first PHB you have a few options for leaders, strikers and defenders, but you had a single option if you want to be a controller, you could be a wizard and that was it. Maybe another day we can talk about the other roles, but for now let's go over what makes a controller a controller.

From the 4th edition Player's Handbook: 

Controllers deal with large numbers of enemies at the same time. They favor offense over defense, using powers that deal damage to multiple foes at once, as well as subtler powers that weaken, confuse, or delay their foes. 

What this means is that a wizard is not just a damage dealer, but rather the bane of the enemy, and the controller description is missing a very important aspect that a controller is also responsible for... the shape of the battlefield. A wizard, in 3rd, 4th, and 5th edition, are all capable of controlling the battlefield and adjusting it to the benefit of their allies. This might be through damaging spells, but more often than not, damage isn't going to be your main power.

Casting an orb of darkness on the opponent's archers isn't going to deal damage to them, but it does allow your allies to run up safely and without getting shot at for a round or two. You can then, at least in 5e, drop that orb of blackness outside of your turn at the most opportune time for your allies. 

Or you can control your opponents by making them scared of you, by summoning walls to block off their charges or by creating pits that they fall in to. A wizard has more of these options than any other class, and it's a shame to watch a wizard just summon a bolt of lightning over and over. If you just want to be a damage dealer, go with a sorcerer, they have all the power options of a wizard plus more to enhance and augment their spells. 

A wizard should be played in a way that no other class can be, by using spells no other class can, and by augmenting the battlefield to make the fight completely unfair for the enemies. A wizard has more options when it comes to preparing their spells every day, and they should use it to the fullest. Being able to summon a ball of flaming death is great, but if your allies are constantly getting hit and going down when you could've summoned a wall to protect them... you are failing your team and your role as the most diverse spellcaster. You have tools for every situation at hand and constantly casting the same spell over and over makes you no better than any other class out there. 

Wizards shine when they use their spells creatively to make their enemies struggle to do anything effectively.

I wrote a guide on how to play a necromancer wizard as the ultimate in controlling the battlefield, but you can use this for most wizard builds (this was for one of my old players who weren't sure on what they were doing). Being a controller provides you the chance of tackling combat in D&D in such a different way from everything else that it just isn't obvious to most players that they are playing the wizard wrong.