YAWP: Open Sorcerer XIV, Arcane Archmage

[evouga]

http://te4.org/characters/3476/tome/28b ... a814a3a96b

Some comments:

- Aether Beam and Aether Breach are amazing, tearing through crowds and bosses alike. However, you absolutely need Meta to use these safely, so going Arcane requires a 2 cat-point investment.

- Aether Avatar is... cute, but too dangerous to be practical. You're expected to use Disruption Shield to stay alive, of course, and that works fine against regular enemies. But activating Avatar + D. Shield in boss situations / hard fights leaves you open to being very, very screwed if you get hit by too many nukes. It doesn't help that your best "heal," Aether Breach, only drains 75 mana at a time. Maybe you're suppose to stack a lot of massive armor to crank up fatigue? In any case I avoided using the Avatar in the late game, due to danger of being left out of options (although it's still useful in extreme emergencies if you need to activate the Disruption Shield and have too much mana). Maybe buff Avatar a bit, or at least give the avatar form immunity to your own aether attacks? I don't know.

- Aether Permeation seems awfully weak. I went specifically looking for +arcane resist items and only found Aetherwalk and the Hat of Arcane Understanding; despite being, presumably, the ideal character to want it, I was never tempted to spend a prodigy point on Aether Permeation, even with the nice +25% class resistance bonus.

- Overseer of Nations is useful but also annoying, since none of your spells can reach to the full extent of your LoS. Also, is there anything that can be done to shrink the tiles? It's frustrating to always have to go looking for the off-screen but visible enemies.

[cttw]

Graphics options, I think, then change tile size from 64 to 48 or 32. I play with 48.

[phantomglider]

The big arcane resist item is the Crystal Heart, which gives +35% arcane resist. Paired with Born into Magic, you're already at +60%, and Thick Skin will take you most of the rest of the way.

[tylor]

Can you tell how Aether Beam and Breach work, exactly? Description is very vague.

[attila]

Can you tell how Aether Beam and Breach work, exactly? Description is very vague.

Aether Beam creates a user-placed node that fires radial beams of arcane rays over several turns, hits foes around it causing arcane damage and has a 25% chance of silencing them. However when foes walk into the node, it gets "dispelled" and disappears. Best to place the node in a wall or otherwise unwalkable location where enemies cannot walk into it. If placed on the caster or another unit, the caster/unit takes 10% damage each shot of the rays but without the silencing effect.

Aether Breach causes arcane energy explosions that occur at random locations in a 2x2 area, over a period of several turns. 1 explosion per turn. Each explosion has a radius 2 damage area.

To give you an idea of the damage potential, each of these 2 spells when maxed, with spellpower about 80ish, cause 400-500 damage per blast for enemies with no arcane resists, for a total of about 5-6 blasts each cast. With spell crit it can go even higher. Aether Beam causes slightly lower damage.

[evouga]

And of course, you have plenty of +arcane %, from both items and Pure Aether.

[attila]

And of course, you have plenty of +arcane %, from both items and Pure Aether.

Erm yah..Evouga is right. Sorry for the misleading statement about damage potential. Forgot my archmage had about +60%-80% arcane damage on...

[lukep]

What's dangerous about Aether Avatar? if you get in a situation where you need to heal, cure, or teleport, you can just cancel it early, can't you?

[Camcolit]

Yeah, I think aether avatar is awesome and have it on autocast at sight.

Also agree with OP that overseer of nations is really, really annoying. I never play higher for that reason, wish you could just disable it.

[Earwicker]

It would be quite trivial to write an addon to make Overseer of Nations a sustain if you don't like it.

Myself, I think it's one of the best tactical talents in the game and I often pick Higher just for that. Even if you're out of fire range, you can see them while they (usually) can't see you, what's not to like? At least it gives all those shields/buffs that take a turn to cast a use.

[kazak]

Myself, I think it's one of the best tactical talents in the game and I often pick Higher just for that.

.

It also couples cheesily well with Inferno, which doesn't otherwise get a lot of love (though I realize this is an arcane-only build).