Hello all,
It seems there are general guides/suggestions for most of the classes but I cannot find anything for the mages.
I somehow managed to survive the Abashed Expanse and after unlearning everything I learned to get past it,
I now have several points to distribute but have no idea about what works and what doesn't...
I'll appreciate hints and build suggestions very much.
Thank you in advance!
http://te4.org/characters/29411/tome/1c ... 130750710d
Archmage general guide anywhere?
Moderator: Moderator
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Lots of archmages go tri-beam. If you look at your spells, you have Flame (becomes a beam at talent level 5), Manathrust (becomes a beam at 3) and Lightning (starts as a beam at 1). That's 3 beams. And they each have a cooldown of 3. Get the picture? Building those and your utility stuff (arcane reconstruction, shield stuff, phase door, teleport, etc.), can get you pretty far. Flameshock is a nice stunning cone, and Chain Lightning is good for hitting multiple enemies who just refuse to line up properly for your beams. Play around with the different AoEs as they become available. If you find you don't like them, unlearn them, and put the points elsewhere. Archmages are pretty versatile.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Sounds interesting, I'll start with this plan.TheRani wrote:Lots of archmages go tri-beam. [snip]
Thanks for the quick reply!
EDIT:
The initial suggestion was sound enough and managed to reach lv20.
At some point, I was so challenged in making a decision, that I resorted doing a search for 'archmage build' on google,
restricting it to 'site:http://te4.org', which turned up a couple of very interesting reads:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=29682
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=34829
Some thoughts, to summarize a bit:
- * Being able to cycle through the cheap beams (and have an answer for different resists), helps a lot.
* Illuminate is your friend. Initially I thought I'd only spend a point in it but soon I raised it to 3.
* No real need to raise Phase Door over 4, and Teleport over 1, at least early on.
* Flameshock at maximum as early as possible. The spellshock effect it provides inhibits the boss and the crowds alike.
* The Aegis talents are essential to survival and the Displacement Shield is a nice addition.
* I went out of my way to unlock the Technique / Combat training, only to get Thick Skin and Armor Training, but I'm unsure I want to do that again in the early game.
That rune more than makes up for all the time I've spent around the shops looking for a good shielding/healing rune.
Upon reaching lv10 I decided to unlock the Spell / Meta path. In retrospective (at least by those threads general advices) seems like it was a good decision...
The only real troubles I had so far were in Sandworm Lair. I simply can't resist opening chests and that means getting surrounded. Haven't found a good answer to that situation, except a short distance Phase Door followed by Flameshock back on the mob.
Ah, let's see if I can take the fortress...
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Strongpoint
- Wyrmic
- Posts: 212
- Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:33 pm
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
* Being able to cycle through the cheap beams (and have an answer for different resists), helps a lot.
Not really agree. Manthrust is enough against most early game enemies. I rather spend skill points on more useful things than beams.
Yes, but illuminate shines as attack skill. I raise it to 5 AFAP, it trivializes most of the early fights...* Illuminate is your friend. Initially I thought I'd only spend a point in it but soon I raised it to 3.
Yes, Stun is good. But IMO, Blind > Stunned and Frozen>StunnedFlameshock at maximum as early as possible. The spellshock effect it provides inhibits the boss and the crowds alike.
Sure* The Aegis talents are essential to survival and the Displacement Shield is a nice addition.
Thick skin early is always good. As for armor training - if you found good helmet\gauntlets\boots. Sure, it's needed. Heavy armor archmages are viable option of cause* I went out of my way to unlock the Technique / Combat training, only to get Thick Skin and Armor Training, but I'm unsure I want to do that again in the early game.
My hint on early game survival as archmage, work on whatever spell build you choose
1) You need constitution, you really need constitution. +hit points items aren't something to ignore, either.
2) You need willpower for your sustains and expensive spells
3) You don't need magic stat early, don't put many points here. Just buy\find mag+ items, that should be enough to learn all spells you want. Don't worry about spellpower - you have a cool talent, staff and items for that, those 10-15 spellpower before scaling gonna help you way less than hit points or mana
4) Buy a good (tier 3) staff in the mage city as fast as soon as you can afford. You'll use it for a loooong time.
5) Remember that many spells, especially sustains work fine with 1 point invested
Archmages are so, so versatile that it's impossible to suggest one strategy. I should try a challenge archmage that never use offensive spells. Think it's quite doable even for player of my skill.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Okay, Archmage.
Stats:
Magic. Constitution. Willpower. Cunning.
Roughly in that order. Always cap out Magic. Always build up at least some Constitution-surprise attacks are what is killing you, not anything else. Willpower is good if you need more Mana, but remember that you'll be finding Willpower on items incidentally, and that you don't need much currently stored for some builds-it varies a lot on the build how much of this you need. Cunning is the remainder stat-crits are how you do real damage as an Archmage, but you need Constitution and Willpower for some builds, period, and you have to make the damage cut to get them.
Races:
-Higher is great for Arcane builds, or builds that plan on utilizing Aether Permeation later. Since that's a pretty good skill, Higher is a pretty good go-to race. Downside: You want as much HP as you can get, and Higher's 11 is not that.
-Cornac doesn't bring much to the table. If you're going for more than two unlocked Class categories, you're probably spreading your Class points too thin anyways. 6 HP Mod total and fast leveling speed isn't unusable, but there's very little point to this combo.
-Halfling is good. 8 HP mod and anti-physical/anti-Stun skills! Decent leveling rate! Good option.
-Dwarf is kinda weird. The main reason would be for saves-if you find you have status problems in general, or with Archmage in specific, go with it. I didn't, and I played a Skeleton, but if you do...
-Shalore is bad. +10% critical hit rate is a nice skill, reactive invis and a Haste skill(...that scales off Dex, so you're not getting the most out of it) are nice...but Timeless is mostly a status cure for you (Or a Shielding duration extender, I suppose, but one of your shields lasts insanely long, another is iffy to extend and standard damage shields simply aren't likely to stand up 10 turns, even repeatedly boosted, against anything that matters.), and 5 HP Mod is terrible. I'd take it over Cornac probably, but as an Archmage, your main cause of death will be the things you don't see coming. No need to make that worse with more terrible HP than you need to put up with.
-Thalore is probably pretty decent, granting you a physical save option and some nice resists. 7 HP Mod like Higher is okay too. I'd prefer Halfling-faster leveling is nice-but it depends on what you want I suppose.
-Skeleton is pretty classically amazing. If, for some reason, you really need all of the category points ever, this is a better option than Cornac, as you can easily ditch an inscription slot here, and you're surprisingly flexible on the Generic end. Bone Shield with Shielding and Aegis is just this side of invulnerability, as long as you see the threat coming and it doesn't last longer than the shield, and Resilient Bones/Reassemble are always nice. Usually considered the best/OP/etc. option.
-Ghoul is surprisingly good with niche builds. 10 HP Mod Archmage-same as a Higher Alchemist or Cornac Rogue-is very, very hard to drop, and Temporal can cure their speed woes. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine using one without Temporal, as otherwise you can eat brutal damage bursts thanks to the speed. So, you have to build around the Ghoul.
-Yeek Archmages don't exist.
General builds:
As a rule, you want to think in terms of an element and a support category, for your unlocks. You want five Runes/Infusions for status curing, barriers, etc., but that's more of a later thing(And you can substitute one of the five for Celestial/Light if you prefer). The important thing is that you pick up advanced categories, though, and build around them.
Then, you will want to make some investments for support effects and attacks to shore up holes or make your life easier, within these main builds.
Here's some thoughts about the possible builds and my personal feelings on them...
Main categories:
-Wildfire. Classic good build, has gotten better recently since it no longer requires Meta. 5ing Wildfire(the actual skill) will cause you to so heavily resist your own fire that it's nearly negligable/is actually beneficial thanks to Cleansing Flames(even better if you have Fire Affinity!). Basically blast things with the excellent Fire skills and then produce large DoTs every single time that debuff enemies and remove your negative status.
The downside is, well, you have to unlock it, if you're not just hacking your unlocks open. Many players have issues getting it. However, I have seriously seen people clear 5/5/5/5 5/5/5/5 Fire/Wildfire builds with very little extra support. Fire is good.
Combines with: Meta used to be classic, to avoid your own fire damage. It's still an okay option, more for Quickened Spells(For more Fire spam) than before. You can go with Temporal for Essence of Speed or just grab an extra Generic category, even.
However, my personal favorite support for this is Storm. Storm makes a surprisingly good support category-1/5/5/(0 or 5 depending on your preference and how much investment you have in Air) will give you a surprisingly good attack for nuking any dangerous crowd, in the form of Nova and Hurricane. Applying a massive radial damage over time effect to anyone that can be stunned is amazingly good, and for ten points, this makes a really good support effect to Fire's general slugfesting balance.
-Storm. Has improved a lot, thanks to Tempest recently allowing any Lightning attack to daze(and hence, add Hurricane). Hurricane is basically amazing-an area of effect, extremely high damage, damage over time effect. Hit two people side by side? Well, they both basically take double. Hit five? Marvel as they vaporize. It's pretty fun. It's the main trick of the tree-downside is, Stun resistance shuts it down, and Air/Storm are not that great at direct damage. Oh, and Hurricane can't hurt you, so you don't need Spellcraft out of Meta, either.
The other thing is Thunderstorm. It consumes a ton of Mana, but it's essentially crowd clear heaven, doing constant area of effect strikes. The best use for this is with Mana on critical hit weapons, as the bolts refund mana. (Hint hint Staff of Archmage Tarelion, AKA the best Archmage weapon in the game, hint.)
Also, this is an easy unlock, so most people have this.
Combines with: You'll want some support tricks (I'm getting there, really!), but the main combo for this is Wildfire, to me, as mentioned before. You can do a heavy Wildfire build that uses Hurricane and Nova as a support, or you can do Lightning/Chain Lightning/Thunderstorm/Tempest/Hurricane/optionally Nova heavy builds, and then shore it up with some basic Flame/Fireflash and 1/1/1/5 Wildfire. Either way is good.
If you don't have Wildfire, things become dicier. Temporal and Meta both fail to combine well. Aether's probably your best bet, but Aether's best with Meta. Sorta a weird situation, there.
-Aether. The relatively new spellset. There's good news and bad news here-the bad news is that Pure Aether causes Disruption Shield's manastorm, if you screw up and let it form, to blow you up much, much better. The good news is that Aether Avatar and Aether Breach are pretty much amazing-the former is a great buff to all your Arcane focused skills, and the latter is essentially a smaller Fireflash that blasts the same area repeatedly.
Generally speaking, I find Wildfire a little better from the on paper-sadly, my run of Archmage was before this got put in, though I know the stats. But it's still good, and importantly, it starts out unlocked, so that newer players can actually use it.
Combines with: Meta. As far as I'm aware of, both Aether Beam and Aether Breach are good ways to kill yourself without Spellcraft, and Spellcraft's useful in general. There's some use for Temporal+Aether Avatar if you're feeling dangerous, though-Aether Avatar gives you insanely fast cooldowns, and Essence of Speed lets you take advantage of them. Just don't blow yourself up. No real point in not taking one of those two(A Skeleton could possibly get away with both, as could a Ghoul).
-Ice. Sorta relatively weaker than the other options, and best used for very, very tanky Archmages, which is generally a contradiction in terms. Looks good on a Ghoul, though. The big thing is that Shivgoroth gives you lots of Cold affinity, which in turn means that, as long as you don't fatally hit yourself, you can heal tons off your own attacks. The fatally is pretty important, though, as I believe the heal comes after and you die if you go below 0 from the hit.
Be careful! Probably not a good beginner build, which is fine as you probably don't have this unlocked anyways.
Within all of that, Freeze is a brutal nuke of a spell if heavily boosted(by, say, Uttercold), and hitting yourself with Ice Shards and Glacial Vapours is a heck of a lot of healing(though, it works best without Uttercold, due to resistance penetration from it. Sorta a catch 22.).
Combines with: Not Meta. You want to hit yourself. All the time. Temporal's probably your best bet, or Storm. Temporal/Ice Ghoul is something I'm pretty tempted to try at some point...
-Stone. Don't use Stone. Don't get me wrong, Stone has some good stuff-Earthen Missiles is amazingly good(probably the best CD to damage ratio of any spell, in a vacuum), Earthquake is very solid(repeatedly Stunning damage over time attack over a big area!) and...that's...it outside of Mudslide. Three spells, none with very fast cooldowns, even with Body of Stone lowering them, isn't a skillset, not really, so Crystalline Focus is iffy and you can't really buff Physical with your other elements you're running. It's not great on Archmages. Fun, but not optimal.
Combines with: Arcane Blade, Stone Warden.
-Meta. Not a focus of the class, instead is support for other spells. Has two roles: Making you not get hit by your spells(Spellcraft, which has the nice side effect of basically allowing you to constantly nuke resistances with every spell you ever use. Spellshock's fun.), and letting you cast your spells faster(Quickened Spells, generally the lesser of the two skills, but really good with Essence of Speed. Notably can produce 2 CD beams pretty easily, with any other spell cooldown lowering equipment!).
Disperse Magic is useful, too, though, don't get me wrong. Quickened Spells is probably the better option if you want an investment to give you cooldown handling, though, not Metaflow.
Combines with: See above. Best with Aether, sorta okay with Wildfire, good with Temporal.
-Temporal. Congeal Time isn't bad in theory(it's actually a piercing projectile, so it can hit more than one enemy, and it's a lot of slow at cap), Time Shield's decent enough(Lowers negative status duration, spreads out damage, generally nice enough albiet not actually something that prevents damage, only delays it), Time Prison is a good way to buy some time(albiet really expensive)...
But you're here for Essence of Speed. 60%~ Global Speed as a sustain? 250 Mana is expensive, but this is still insanely good. You don't want to combine this with a bunch of sustains, though. Avoid Storm heavy builds, and Wildfire's only good if you're not bothering much with many sustains in general.
The best combo is Quickened Spells+this though, since you'll always have spell ammo to fire at people that way-the speed's no good if you're sitting around swinging your staff at people half the time!
Support effects:
The stuff that greases the gears of your main build. The little skills that make your life easier. You can't afford all of these, obviously-so here's some thoughts on good, primary skills for this.
-Tri-beam. As L4(the beam is gained at 5 modified talent, so you need 4) Flame, L3 Manathrust and L3 Lightning is referred. You can invest more if you find yourself using this heavily. Gives you a constant ranged damage source, no matter what happens-three 3CDs means the cooldown constantly cycles, and the Mana costs on this are incredibly cheap.
This is really, really good early and mid-game. It's an extremely powerful constant barrage of damage early on, while you're getting your main setup going. The downside is, it's not that great long term-spamming your primary element is better for elemental setups(which will only make up a third, at best, of this-Cold focused setups get their own 3CD skill in Ice Shards), so once your main element gets going, this will make for a useful backup but not something you use much, at best.
Best with: Meta/Temporal. You want overkill Cooldowns with Temporal, and Meta will, with equipment luck, get you 2CD beams! Otherwise, it's useful for any setup without being incredible at any.
-Status skills. Illuminate's the bigger one here-Never is your primary element, sure...but at L5 it's decent support damage, hits a huge area, and Blind is a surprisingly good status.
Flameshock's good if you aren't Fire(where you want heavy invest in it) or Lightning(where Storm will grant you something nearly as fatal as Stun, that runs off the same check), as well, because it's a nice area of effect Stun. You could alternatively invest heavily in Freeze, if you like more damage-same Stun resist, but does a ton more damage and has a different, more debilitating but harder to damage through, effect.
All of these stay pretty good at all points in time.
Best with: Anything, really.
-Disruption Shield.
Disruption Shield is practically a skill you can create an entire build around-it makes consuming more mana better in a sense, since it can absorb more damage then. Fatigue becomes better if you're trying to heavily abuse this, as does huge cost skills like Thunderstorm. Take a good hard look at this at some point in your build.
Best with: Stuff that costs a ton of Mana. The more, the better. You'll want to at least 1 it no matter what, it's never bad, it's rarely even bad to 5 it, but consider your build for how much of a priority it is.
-Blur Sight.
As a general rule of thumb, Defense of 40 will cause most earlygame physical threats to miss and lategame physical threats to gain at least some miss chance. Defense of 60 will cause most lower end lategame physical threats to reliably miss and high end ones to gain a 50-50 miss rate. Bit of a rough rule of thumb of mine.
Blur Sight at 5 can grant 50~ Defense, which is enough with any old robe to hit 40, and with Defense oriented equipping in mind can hit 60.
"But I don't want to be at physical range as an Archmage! Isn't that useless?" Enemies with Rush don't care what you want. They want to Daze you and then hit you with Stunning Blow criticals, two-shotting you. This is the kind of thing you risk as Archmage.
Blur Sight's not a great defensive option, but it's better than Stone Skin for the most part(though, consider Stone Skin if you happen to run into the Wrap of Stone, I suppose.). It's worth considering.
Best with: Anything, depends on how much you value the effect.
-Fireflash.
If you're not running Fire, you're probably still running your staff in Magestaff mode. If you're Storm, you can skip this-you have plenty of crowd control. Otherwise, 5 Fireflash. It is amazing and almost certainly my favorite Archmage attack spell.
Best with: Not Storm.
As a note: I'm obviously not listing every spell here, and that doesn't mean the spells I'm not listing are bad. But these are the big support draws to me.
-Generic points.
The simple part.
Conveyance, pick which one you like better: Phase Door or Teleport, and then level one to 4(which is 5 modified talent and gets you the controlled effect, IIRC). Phase Door gives you better short range mobility when controlled, while Teleport gives you the ability to reliably appear in a safe zone after a teleport. I prefer Teleport, but it's a matter of taste. If you're really into mobility as a playstyle, consider 4ing both, there's worse ideas.
Displacement Shield is amazing, at least 3 it. Costs a ton, but it's a very long barrier that can stack with other barriers and even does some damage.
Probability Travel is a good 1 for an emergency teleport-it works in very low mana situations, or when other teleports are on cooldown-and makes for a very interesting playstyle choice if heavily leveled. I don't recommend this for a new player, though, make your own decision if you want it.
Aegis, get Shielding up to 4(for the extra turn), take Arcane Reconstruction at least to 3 and possibly to 5(depends on how much you like a heal), Arcane Shield's a good 1 no matter what and worth leveling if you are into using Healing Infusions, and Aegis(the spell) is a very good 1, and a pretty good 2-3 depending on how many shields you like to run.
Divination, Arcane Eye is a great 1(and leveling it is an option), Keen Senses is a good 3+(more spellcrits and some stuff that is less important than spellcrits!), and Vision/Premonition are worth considering but not major.
See? Simple! Not really build specific at all. You can pick up Celestial/Light off an escort, or heavily invest in your racial category.
-Prodigies.
Aether Permeation is good (lets you turn Arcane Resistance into All Resist, which is nice if you find some decent Arcane resistance pieces, and also amounts to more ways to prevent yourself from getting suddenly ganked.), Meteoric is good(though, watch out, without Meta right now the Stun can sometimes Stun yourself. It's a bug, will be fixed next version), and Cauterize and Corrupted Shell are really good protection against sudden kills.
You can grab other stuff, too, but those are the ones that strike me as the best draws off the top of my head.
-tl;dr version for a single build:
If you're a new player that just got Archmage? And you want to try one?
Go Higher, go for Lightning 1/Manathrust 3/Flame 4/Lightning 3 in that order.
Work towards getting Aether and Meta going, so you don't blow yourself up with Aether-go for Aether first, though, you can use Breach and Avatar before that, you'll probably want ?(your call, experiment with the skill some to see how much you like it) in Arcane Beam, 5 in Breach, and probably 5 Aether Avatar/Pure Aether. For Meta, 5 Spellcraft, rest of the details is your call.
Keep an eye out for Arcane resistance stuff and take Aether Permeation at 30. Pick up Cauterize at 42 for sudden kill prevention.
For Generic, heavily build the Higher skill Born Into Magic so you have Arcane resistance and damage boosting. 4/1/5/(0 or 1) in Conveyance is my suggestion for new players, (3 to 5)/(4 or 5)/1/2 in Aegis is pretty good, and 1/5/0/0 is reasonable for Divination. Pick up Combat Training in Last Hope and get Thick Skin up and running as soon as possible, as well as L1 Armor Training.
Lategame, look at those support options for more options to work with-or decide on your own support skills.
I can't promise this is an exceptional build set overall-I've cleared an Archmage, but it was a while ago, before Aether, so I know mostly the code for this. But I'm pretty confident in it, and I've seen builds that looked fairly similar clear.
It's not necessarily the best build, but it doesn't require any of the special unlock categories-Aether and Meta are both starting on an Archmage, the moment you unlock the class. So it's probably the best "out of the box" setup, outside of Meta/Temporal. I don't suggest that due to Essence of Speed's huge Mana drain, it creates a weirder curve and tempts early players to grab Essence of Speed too early, which is easily fatal.
Stats:
Magic. Constitution. Willpower. Cunning.
Roughly in that order. Always cap out Magic. Always build up at least some Constitution-surprise attacks are what is killing you, not anything else. Willpower is good if you need more Mana, but remember that you'll be finding Willpower on items incidentally, and that you don't need much currently stored for some builds-it varies a lot on the build how much of this you need. Cunning is the remainder stat-crits are how you do real damage as an Archmage, but you need Constitution and Willpower for some builds, period, and you have to make the damage cut to get them.
Races:
-Higher is great for Arcane builds, or builds that plan on utilizing Aether Permeation later. Since that's a pretty good skill, Higher is a pretty good go-to race. Downside: You want as much HP as you can get, and Higher's 11 is not that.
-Cornac doesn't bring much to the table. If you're going for more than two unlocked Class categories, you're probably spreading your Class points too thin anyways. 6 HP Mod total and fast leveling speed isn't unusable, but there's very little point to this combo.
-Halfling is good. 8 HP mod and anti-physical/anti-Stun skills! Decent leveling rate! Good option.
-Dwarf is kinda weird. The main reason would be for saves-if you find you have status problems in general, or with Archmage in specific, go with it. I didn't, and I played a Skeleton, but if you do...
-Shalore is bad. +10% critical hit rate is a nice skill, reactive invis and a Haste skill(...that scales off Dex, so you're not getting the most out of it) are nice...but Timeless is mostly a status cure for you (Or a Shielding duration extender, I suppose, but one of your shields lasts insanely long, another is iffy to extend and standard damage shields simply aren't likely to stand up 10 turns, even repeatedly boosted, against anything that matters.), and 5 HP Mod is terrible. I'd take it over Cornac probably, but as an Archmage, your main cause of death will be the things you don't see coming. No need to make that worse with more terrible HP than you need to put up with.
-Thalore is probably pretty decent, granting you a physical save option and some nice resists. 7 HP Mod like Higher is okay too. I'd prefer Halfling-faster leveling is nice-but it depends on what you want I suppose.
-Skeleton is pretty classically amazing. If, for some reason, you really need all of the category points ever, this is a better option than Cornac, as you can easily ditch an inscription slot here, and you're surprisingly flexible on the Generic end. Bone Shield with Shielding and Aegis is just this side of invulnerability, as long as you see the threat coming and it doesn't last longer than the shield, and Resilient Bones/Reassemble are always nice. Usually considered the best/OP/etc. option.
-Ghoul is surprisingly good with niche builds. 10 HP Mod Archmage-same as a Higher Alchemist or Cornac Rogue-is very, very hard to drop, and Temporal can cure their speed woes. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine using one without Temporal, as otherwise you can eat brutal damage bursts thanks to the speed. So, you have to build around the Ghoul.
-Yeek Archmages don't exist.
General builds:
As a rule, you want to think in terms of an element and a support category, for your unlocks. You want five Runes/Infusions for status curing, barriers, etc., but that's more of a later thing(And you can substitute one of the five for Celestial/Light if you prefer). The important thing is that you pick up advanced categories, though, and build around them.
Then, you will want to make some investments for support effects and attacks to shore up holes or make your life easier, within these main builds.
Here's some thoughts about the possible builds and my personal feelings on them...
Main categories:
-Wildfire. Classic good build, has gotten better recently since it no longer requires Meta. 5ing Wildfire(the actual skill) will cause you to so heavily resist your own fire that it's nearly negligable/is actually beneficial thanks to Cleansing Flames(even better if you have Fire Affinity!). Basically blast things with the excellent Fire skills and then produce large DoTs every single time that debuff enemies and remove your negative status.
The downside is, well, you have to unlock it, if you're not just hacking your unlocks open. Many players have issues getting it. However, I have seriously seen people clear 5/5/5/5 5/5/5/5 Fire/Wildfire builds with very little extra support. Fire is good.
Combines with: Meta used to be classic, to avoid your own fire damage. It's still an okay option, more for Quickened Spells(For more Fire spam) than before. You can go with Temporal for Essence of Speed or just grab an extra Generic category, even.
However, my personal favorite support for this is Storm. Storm makes a surprisingly good support category-1/5/5/(0 or 5 depending on your preference and how much investment you have in Air) will give you a surprisingly good attack for nuking any dangerous crowd, in the form of Nova and Hurricane. Applying a massive radial damage over time effect to anyone that can be stunned is amazingly good, and for ten points, this makes a really good support effect to Fire's general slugfesting balance.
-Storm. Has improved a lot, thanks to Tempest recently allowing any Lightning attack to daze(and hence, add Hurricane). Hurricane is basically amazing-an area of effect, extremely high damage, damage over time effect. Hit two people side by side? Well, they both basically take double. Hit five? Marvel as they vaporize. It's pretty fun. It's the main trick of the tree-downside is, Stun resistance shuts it down, and Air/Storm are not that great at direct damage. Oh, and Hurricane can't hurt you, so you don't need Spellcraft out of Meta, either.
The other thing is Thunderstorm. It consumes a ton of Mana, but it's essentially crowd clear heaven, doing constant area of effect strikes. The best use for this is with Mana on critical hit weapons, as the bolts refund mana. (Hint hint Staff of Archmage Tarelion, AKA the best Archmage weapon in the game, hint.)
Also, this is an easy unlock, so most people have this.
Combines with: You'll want some support tricks (I'm getting there, really!), but the main combo for this is Wildfire, to me, as mentioned before. You can do a heavy Wildfire build that uses Hurricane and Nova as a support, or you can do Lightning/Chain Lightning/Thunderstorm/Tempest/Hurricane/optionally Nova heavy builds, and then shore it up with some basic Flame/Fireflash and 1/1/1/5 Wildfire. Either way is good.
If you don't have Wildfire, things become dicier. Temporal and Meta both fail to combine well. Aether's probably your best bet, but Aether's best with Meta. Sorta a weird situation, there.
-Aether. The relatively new spellset. There's good news and bad news here-the bad news is that Pure Aether causes Disruption Shield's manastorm, if you screw up and let it form, to blow you up much, much better. The good news is that Aether Avatar and Aether Breach are pretty much amazing-the former is a great buff to all your Arcane focused skills, and the latter is essentially a smaller Fireflash that blasts the same area repeatedly.
Generally speaking, I find Wildfire a little better from the on paper-sadly, my run of Archmage was before this got put in, though I know the stats. But it's still good, and importantly, it starts out unlocked, so that newer players can actually use it.
Combines with: Meta. As far as I'm aware of, both Aether Beam and Aether Breach are good ways to kill yourself without Spellcraft, and Spellcraft's useful in general. There's some use for Temporal+Aether Avatar if you're feeling dangerous, though-Aether Avatar gives you insanely fast cooldowns, and Essence of Speed lets you take advantage of them. Just don't blow yourself up. No real point in not taking one of those two(A Skeleton could possibly get away with both, as could a Ghoul).
-Ice. Sorta relatively weaker than the other options, and best used for very, very tanky Archmages, which is generally a contradiction in terms. Looks good on a Ghoul, though. The big thing is that Shivgoroth gives you lots of Cold affinity, which in turn means that, as long as you don't fatally hit yourself, you can heal tons off your own attacks. The fatally is pretty important, though, as I believe the heal comes after and you die if you go below 0 from the hit.
Be careful! Probably not a good beginner build, which is fine as you probably don't have this unlocked anyways.
Within all of that, Freeze is a brutal nuke of a spell if heavily boosted(by, say, Uttercold), and hitting yourself with Ice Shards and Glacial Vapours is a heck of a lot of healing(though, it works best without Uttercold, due to resistance penetration from it. Sorta a catch 22.).
Combines with: Not Meta. You want to hit yourself. All the time. Temporal's probably your best bet, or Storm. Temporal/Ice Ghoul is something I'm pretty tempted to try at some point...
-Stone. Don't use Stone. Don't get me wrong, Stone has some good stuff-Earthen Missiles is amazingly good(probably the best CD to damage ratio of any spell, in a vacuum), Earthquake is very solid(repeatedly Stunning damage over time attack over a big area!) and...that's...it outside of Mudslide. Three spells, none with very fast cooldowns, even with Body of Stone lowering them, isn't a skillset, not really, so Crystalline Focus is iffy and you can't really buff Physical with your other elements you're running. It's not great on Archmages. Fun, but not optimal.
Combines with: Arcane Blade, Stone Warden.
-Meta. Not a focus of the class, instead is support for other spells. Has two roles: Making you not get hit by your spells(Spellcraft, which has the nice side effect of basically allowing you to constantly nuke resistances with every spell you ever use. Spellshock's fun.), and letting you cast your spells faster(Quickened Spells, generally the lesser of the two skills, but really good with Essence of Speed. Notably can produce 2 CD beams pretty easily, with any other spell cooldown lowering equipment!).
Disperse Magic is useful, too, though, don't get me wrong. Quickened Spells is probably the better option if you want an investment to give you cooldown handling, though, not Metaflow.
Combines with: See above. Best with Aether, sorta okay with Wildfire, good with Temporal.
-Temporal. Congeal Time isn't bad in theory(it's actually a piercing projectile, so it can hit more than one enemy, and it's a lot of slow at cap), Time Shield's decent enough(Lowers negative status duration, spreads out damage, generally nice enough albiet not actually something that prevents damage, only delays it), Time Prison is a good way to buy some time(albiet really expensive)...
But you're here for Essence of Speed. 60%~ Global Speed as a sustain? 250 Mana is expensive, but this is still insanely good. You don't want to combine this with a bunch of sustains, though. Avoid Storm heavy builds, and Wildfire's only good if you're not bothering much with many sustains in general.
The best combo is Quickened Spells+this though, since you'll always have spell ammo to fire at people that way-the speed's no good if you're sitting around swinging your staff at people half the time!
Support effects:
The stuff that greases the gears of your main build. The little skills that make your life easier. You can't afford all of these, obviously-so here's some thoughts on good, primary skills for this.
-Tri-beam. As L4(the beam is gained at 5 modified talent, so you need 4) Flame, L3 Manathrust and L3 Lightning is referred. You can invest more if you find yourself using this heavily. Gives you a constant ranged damage source, no matter what happens-three 3CDs means the cooldown constantly cycles, and the Mana costs on this are incredibly cheap.
This is really, really good early and mid-game. It's an extremely powerful constant barrage of damage early on, while you're getting your main setup going. The downside is, it's not that great long term-spamming your primary element is better for elemental setups(which will only make up a third, at best, of this-Cold focused setups get their own 3CD skill in Ice Shards), so once your main element gets going, this will make for a useful backup but not something you use much, at best.
Best with: Meta/Temporal. You want overkill Cooldowns with Temporal, and Meta will, with equipment luck, get you 2CD beams! Otherwise, it's useful for any setup without being incredible at any.
-Status skills. Illuminate's the bigger one here-Never is your primary element, sure...but at L5 it's decent support damage, hits a huge area, and Blind is a surprisingly good status.
Flameshock's good if you aren't Fire(where you want heavy invest in it) or Lightning(where Storm will grant you something nearly as fatal as Stun, that runs off the same check), as well, because it's a nice area of effect Stun. You could alternatively invest heavily in Freeze, if you like more damage-same Stun resist, but does a ton more damage and has a different, more debilitating but harder to damage through, effect.
All of these stay pretty good at all points in time.
Best with: Anything, really.
-Disruption Shield.
Disruption Shield is practically a skill you can create an entire build around-it makes consuming more mana better in a sense, since it can absorb more damage then. Fatigue becomes better if you're trying to heavily abuse this, as does huge cost skills like Thunderstorm. Take a good hard look at this at some point in your build.
Best with: Stuff that costs a ton of Mana. The more, the better. You'll want to at least 1 it no matter what, it's never bad, it's rarely even bad to 5 it, but consider your build for how much of a priority it is.
-Blur Sight.
As a general rule of thumb, Defense of 40 will cause most earlygame physical threats to miss and lategame physical threats to gain at least some miss chance. Defense of 60 will cause most lower end lategame physical threats to reliably miss and high end ones to gain a 50-50 miss rate. Bit of a rough rule of thumb of mine.
Blur Sight at 5 can grant 50~ Defense, which is enough with any old robe to hit 40, and with Defense oriented equipping in mind can hit 60.
"But I don't want to be at physical range as an Archmage! Isn't that useless?" Enemies with Rush don't care what you want. They want to Daze you and then hit you with Stunning Blow criticals, two-shotting you. This is the kind of thing you risk as Archmage.
Blur Sight's not a great defensive option, but it's better than Stone Skin for the most part(though, consider Stone Skin if you happen to run into the Wrap of Stone, I suppose.). It's worth considering.
Best with: Anything, depends on how much you value the effect.
-Fireflash.
If you're not running Fire, you're probably still running your staff in Magestaff mode. If you're Storm, you can skip this-you have plenty of crowd control. Otherwise, 5 Fireflash. It is amazing and almost certainly my favorite Archmage attack spell.
Best with: Not Storm.
As a note: I'm obviously not listing every spell here, and that doesn't mean the spells I'm not listing are bad. But these are the big support draws to me.
-Generic points.
The simple part.
Conveyance, pick which one you like better: Phase Door or Teleport, and then level one to 4(which is 5 modified talent and gets you the controlled effect, IIRC). Phase Door gives you better short range mobility when controlled, while Teleport gives you the ability to reliably appear in a safe zone after a teleport. I prefer Teleport, but it's a matter of taste. If you're really into mobility as a playstyle, consider 4ing both, there's worse ideas.
Displacement Shield is amazing, at least 3 it. Costs a ton, but it's a very long barrier that can stack with other barriers and even does some damage.
Probability Travel is a good 1 for an emergency teleport-it works in very low mana situations, or when other teleports are on cooldown-and makes for a very interesting playstyle choice if heavily leveled. I don't recommend this for a new player, though, make your own decision if you want it.
Aegis, get Shielding up to 4(for the extra turn), take Arcane Reconstruction at least to 3 and possibly to 5(depends on how much you like a heal), Arcane Shield's a good 1 no matter what and worth leveling if you are into using Healing Infusions, and Aegis(the spell) is a very good 1, and a pretty good 2-3 depending on how many shields you like to run.
Divination, Arcane Eye is a great 1(and leveling it is an option), Keen Senses is a good 3+(more spellcrits and some stuff that is less important than spellcrits!), and Vision/Premonition are worth considering but not major.
See? Simple! Not really build specific at all. You can pick up Celestial/Light off an escort, or heavily invest in your racial category.
-Prodigies.
Aether Permeation is good (lets you turn Arcane Resistance into All Resist, which is nice if you find some decent Arcane resistance pieces, and also amounts to more ways to prevent yourself from getting suddenly ganked.), Meteoric is good(though, watch out, without Meta right now the Stun can sometimes Stun yourself. It's a bug, will be fixed next version), and Cauterize and Corrupted Shell are really good protection against sudden kills.
You can grab other stuff, too, but those are the ones that strike me as the best draws off the top of my head.
-tl;dr version for a single build:
If you're a new player that just got Archmage? And you want to try one?
Go Higher, go for Lightning 1/Manathrust 3/Flame 4/Lightning 3 in that order.
Work towards getting Aether and Meta going, so you don't blow yourself up with Aether-go for Aether first, though, you can use Breach and Avatar before that, you'll probably want ?(your call, experiment with the skill some to see how much you like it) in Arcane Beam, 5 in Breach, and probably 5 Aether Avatar/Pure Aether. For Meta, 5 Spellcraft, rest of the details is your call.
Keep an eye out for Arcane resistance stuff and take Aether Permeation at 30. Pick up Cauterize at 42 for sudden kill prevention.
For Generic, heavily build the Higher skill Born Into Magic so you have Arcane resistance and damage boosting. 4/1/5/(0 or 1) in Conveyance is my suggestion for new players, (3 to 5)/(4 or 5)/1/2 in Aegis is pretty good, and 1/5/0/0 is reasonable for Divination. Pick up Combat Training in Last Hope and get Thick Skin up and running as soon as possible, as well as L1 Armor Training.
Lategame, look at those support options for more options to work with-or decide on your own support skills.
I can't promise this is an exceptional build set overall-I've cleared an Archmage, but it was a while ago, before Aether, so I know mostly the code for this. But I'm pretty confident in it, and I've seen builds that looked fairly similar clear.
It's not necessarily the best build, but it doesn't require any of the special unlock categories-Aether and Meta are both starting on an Archmage, the moment you unlock the class. So it's probably the best "out of the box" setup, outside of Meta/Temporal. I don't suggest that due to Essence of Speed's huge Mana drain, it creates a weirder curve and tempts early players to grab Essence of Speed too early, which is easily fatal.
Last edited by SageAcrin on Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
SageAcrin: EPIC post! You really nailed the archmage. I have only one little trick to add for now: if you're running with Distruption Shield, screw up and it blows up on your face, cast time prison on yourself. This will remove your char from the board while all the enemies around take full damage from the mana storm. It also lowers your mana a hefty chunk, which is good in this situation.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Thank you all for the above replies!
It's an awesome lot of advices and I'll be reading them over and over again,
since most are implying experience I haven't gathered yet.
Of the unlocks, I only have Stone :/
So far, I managed to clear the Sher'Tul fortress, the 1st and 2nd Dreadfell levels
and also managed to clear the Ruined Dungeon packed with trios of Luminous Horrors
plus an abominable rare gigantic Sandworm Tunneler that wiped clean the layout of the walls,
turning the place in an unpleasant arena.
Afterwards, I don't know what possessed me, I went to check what the Mark of the Spellblaze is.
No problems until I met that Grand Corruptor and albeit lasted for some painfull turns, he eventually fearscaped me.
Had no knowledge of any of this, and in part I consider it a success since I never before been this far into the game...
My archmage has been rather unlucky with the finds, except maybe for the staff he's wielding which grants a nice +12% Crit. mult.
I still have to rely on Teleckinetic Core and a couple of rings for increased mana pool and the only decent belt around I had to buy it.
Heck, I'm actually swimming in gold but the shops only have crappier items than those I grabbed from drops...
Not sure how further ahead I can go with him. Dreadfell ain't exactly a stroll in the park
I'll be carefully studying all the remarks you all kindly shared and try to improve my next builds.
Cheers!
It's an awesome lot of advices and I'll be reading them over and over again,
since most are implying experience I haven't gathered yet.
Of the unlocks, I only have Stone :/
So far, I managed to clear the Sher'Tul fortress, the 1st and 2nd Dreadfell levels
and also managed to clear the Ruined Dungeon packed with trios of Luminous Horrors
plus an abominable rare gigantic Sandworm Tunneler that wiped clean the layout of the walls,
turning the place in an unpleasant arena.
Afterwards, I don't know what possessed me, I went to check what the Mark of the Spellblaze is.
No problems until I met that Grand Corruptor and albeit lasted for some painfull turns, he eventually fearscaped me.
Had no knowledge of any of this, and in part I consider it a success since I never before been this far into the game...
My archmage has been rather unlucky with the finds, except maybe for the staff he's wielding which grants a nice +12% Crit. mult.
I still have to rely on Teleckinetic Core and a couple of rings for increased mana pool and the only decent belt around I had to buy it.
Heck, I'm actually swimming in gold but the shops only have crappier items than those I grabbed from drops...
Not sure how further ahead I can go with him. Dreadfell ain't exactly a stroll in the park
I'll be carefully studying all the remarks you all kindly shared and try to improve my next builds.
Cheers!
-
johnnyzero
- Thalore
- Posts: 148
- Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2012 6:36 am
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Lies. You do have to raise con early though, otherwise you have a chance of getting instagibbed while autoexploring. With Yeek speed, essence of speed, and 50% spell cooldown reduction, things get a little silly.SageAcrin wrote: -Yeek Archmages don't exist.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
I won with a earth-specialist Dwarf Archmage (normal/roguelike)
Tips:
- Earth/Stone is lacking in offense. Branch into another element, preferably water. It has great synergy with earth spells.
- The strategy is simple: pile on a ton of damage-over-time until your enemies die. Ice Storm and Earthquake allow you to disable an entire room of enemies, while you spam earthen missiles at them.
- Stack on-hit(spell) equipment. Black robe, life drinker, etc. In the endgame, Earthen missiles can deal ridiculous amounts of damage with a 1 turn cooldown. I managed over 2000 damage, due to the spells activating repeatedly for every missile.
- Focus on survivability. Being an unkillable super tank is the geomancer's main gimmick! Stone wall gives you several turns of invulnerability, which is great.
I picked a dwarf, because I thought it was silly (same reason I played a geomancer). It wasn't a terrible choice, since I shrugged off most status effects. This was my easiest win, so archmages are completely ridiculous, even if you gimp yourself.
Tips:
- Earth/Stone is lacking in offense. Branch into another element, preferably water. It has great synergy with earth spells.
- The strategy is simple: pile on a ton of damage-over-time until your enemies die. Ice Storm and Earthquake allow you to disable an entire room of enemies, while you spam earthen missiles at them.
- Stack on-hit(spell) equipment. Black robe, life drinker, etc. In the endgame, Earthen missiles can deal ridiculous amounts of damage with a 1 turn cooldown. I managed over 2000 damage, due to the spells activating repeatedly for every missile.
- Focus on survivability. Being an unkillable super tank is the geomancer's main gimmick! Stone wall gives you several turns of invulnerability, which is great.
I picked a dwarf, because I thought it was silly (same reason I played a geomancer). It wasn't a terrible choice, since I shrugged off most status effects. This was my easiest win, so archmages are completely ridiculous, even if you gimp yourself.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
There are two Yeek Archmage winners in the vault(though that can be misleading, vault has had times where Yeek wins don't show up as a win).
One is you, johnny, who has more playtime than I do, and I have like 18 or 19 clears or something like that now. (I play Adventurer, so I rack up clears more easily than most dedicated players do, being a wuss and all.)
The other somehow has three lives and ten deaths.
That there's any Yeek Archmage winners at all is far and away more a testament to the power of the class than the combo being good-or, rather, the ability of the class to produce amazing durabiity on call, so that, if everything goes right, the terrible raw HP doesn't have to matter.
They're clearable, but pretty much any combination is, with enough luck and skill-there's only a few unwons left at all, even.
The issue is that sudden attacks you don't expect-an effect that is maximized by not knowing how things work, e.g. being a new player, e.g. needing a guide-tend to kill you, with Archmage. Minimizing that is important. In this case, it's sorta to the point of mostly being RNG luck, and their advantages are nowhere near payoff to that. It's a challenge run, through and through.
For more information on why you shouldn't Yeek Archmage, see this poor guy, whose final death was from getting hit by Spell Feedback, followed by a crit Sand Breath when they tried to heal after and failed.
Yeek Archmages don't exist.
One is you, johnny, who has more playtime than I do, and I have like 18 or 19 clears or something like that now. (I play Adventurer, so I rack up clears more easily than most dedicated players do, being a wuss and all.)
The other somehow has three lives and ten deaths.
That there's any Yeek Archmage winners at all is far and away more a testament to the power of the class than the combo being good-or, rather, the ability of the class to produce amazing durabiity on call, so that, if everything goes right, the terrible raw HP doesn't have to matter.
They're clearable, but pretty much any combination is, with enough luck and skill-there's only a few unwons left at all, even.
The issue is that sudden attacks you don't expect-an effect that is maximized by not knowing how things work, e.g. being a new player, e.g. needing a guide-tend to kill you, with Archmage. Minimizing that is important. In this case, it's sorta to the point of mostly being RNG luck, and their advantages are nowhere near payoff to that. It's a challenge run, through and through.
For more information on why you shouldn't Yeek Archmage, see this poor guy, whose final death was from getting hit by Spell Feedback, followed by a crit Sand Breath when they tried to heal after and failed.
Yeek Archmages don't exist.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Sage, that post was amazing, you should have just posted that as it's own thread, then we would finally have an archmage guide!
Which reminds me, we really could use more class guides. There are NO posts in the Celestials section, and only one thread in wilders. There's also nothing for bulwarks, despite that being a commonly suggested class for beginners, and nothing for mindslayers or arcane blades dispite being rather complex classes. We need more people like you to post some helpful guides!
Which reminds me, we really could use more class guides. There are NO posts in the Celestials section, and only one thread in wilders. There's also nothing for bulwarks, despite that being a commonly suggested class for beginners, and nothing for mindslayers or arcane blades dispite being rather complex classes. We need more people like you to post some helpful guides!
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
I'm afraid I don't know a few of those, like Anorithil.
But yeah, I should get around to posting some guides. Probably should have posted that post as one, too. Sorta intended it for one, but I didn't really think about it very much when I made it.
Oh well.
But yeah, I should get around to posting some guides. Probably should have posted that post as one, too. Sorta intended it for one, but I didn't really think about it very much when I made it.
Oh well.Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
It's worth noting that, despite not existing, Yeek Archmages make unlocking Mindslayers super easy.
Ghoul never existed, this never happened!
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
Oh, true.
I prefer Necromancers for that-controlled Phase Door over to Subject Z and your minions will do the rest, and it's amazingly easy to get through the starter dungeons for a Yeek Necromancer.
Then again, unlocking a Necromancer is a lot harder.
I prefer Necromancers for that-controlled Phase Door over to Subject Z and your minions will do the rest, and it's amazingly easy to get through the starter dungeons for a Yeek Necromancer.
Then again, unlocking a Necromancer is a lot harder.
Re: Archmage general guide anywhere?
IGNORE ME.-Yeek Archmages don't exist.
My first winner as an Arch, and the first one who didn't waste the blood of life (until the way pulled that dick move that is, and I was pretty sure I could take atha as well). Silence and more importantly confusion resistance more than make up for the HP hit since Arches can't afford to hang around and wait for status to clear. Quickened also comboes nicely with Essence of Speed and Elemental Harmony for an easy +100% before equipment. My greatest worry was having spells off cooldown and mana to cast them (albeit Tarelion solved that neatly). As a cherry on top Arch is relatively easy to get off the island.
Last edited by Infinitum on Sun Feb 24, 2013 1:22 pm, edited 3 times in total.