I remember quite the opposite.
I mean druids sure were good, particularly at stacking damage over time. And best at healing. But noone could nuke quite like a wizard when he needed/wanted to.
Try Combusting Wounds with Blunderbusses, concussive missiles, walls, rays and other rapid firing attacks, maybe?
Nothing melts enemies like that AFAIR.
Or get the Shadowflame from White March: awesome nuke AND CC in 1 spell. Freezing Pillar should be good too, AFAIR.
Plus neat summons, great self-buffs and yeah, CC/debuffs too (though ciphers were better at this, I believe).
AOE, stacks Cipher debuffs on top and still does massive damage because debuffs increase sneak attacks.
But yeah ultimately damage is king because bosses typically have immunities and you hardly need to stack status effects to beat regular trash mobs.
The gameplay for a Wizard - in POE1 PoTD upscaled - went as described below, in my last playthrough (5.0).
First, you wait for the mandatory accuracy buffs from the priest, and for the engagement to be concentrated in one place by using the tank(s).
Once this is done, you start casting:
(i) expose vulnerabilities;
(ii) Slick, confusion or petrify, depending on the enemies' lower defenses and immunities, and then, and only then;
(iii) direct damage spells on the remaining foes.
Usually, by using such rotation, the fight is well on his way to victory, so you simply let the AI finish the job, by using auto-attack with a good weapon.
If needed, some uses of the higher level damaging spells on Petrified/heavily debuffed enemies to nuke them can be crucial for a hard fight, indeed.
Should you need to distract the opponent with more targets: cast Summon Tentacles. This a rare case: hard bounties and dragons, mostly.
If a mage/priest is being a nuisance, i.e. not dead by then (Concelhaut mostly): use Arcane Dampener.
That's it.
And, of course, the single most important thing is to
remember to focus fire all party damage on one enemy at a time, starting with the spellcasters (druid, mage, priest, in that order), folks.
Like in every RPG/game that I know of.
Now that I think of it, should enemy AI use such simple tactics in every fight against you, I don't think games would be beatable,like, at all.
