ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

http://te4.org/characters/8893/tome/810 ... 03212cf589
Kiiinda ridiculous, and I still think archmages are pretty overpowered. This was my second serious attempt at a Nightmare Roguelike win after my solipsist which Elandar killed in one turn. This archmage, on the other hand, could tank Elandar indefinitely without even stunning him. 4000 hp worth of shields every ~10 turns will do that for you, it seems. Didn't bother closing portals because there was no need. Cauterize never kicked in except when I was deliberately testing it out, and once during autoexplore against an orc master assassin.

Then I tried Atamathon and sure enough, he barely put in a dent in my shields and I killed him in like 11 turns.

Spellblaze Echoes giving +53 spellpower by itself is crazy. I could have easily hit ** spellpower if I wanted to.

The Aegis duration nerf didn't affect me at all except making autoexplore dangerous until I got Cauterize. It only adds tedium without actually weakening the character. It would have been better off keeping its duration and lowering the boost instead.

Spell Feedback was still a threat because it could disrupt my sustains, but that was it. Eventually I picked up Draconic Will just to deal with it. Disperse Magic and Manaclash theoretically could have been a threat if anything ever managed to use it on me, but I only got hit by Manaclash once and it wasn't enough to shut down my sustains.

Thalore is a good race (maybe the best race right now) but the racials ended up not mattering. This could have been done with any race except maybe Ghoul.

Wow! Impressive, but also shows that nerfing is needed.

Archmage is extremely powerful in the hands of experienced players, who can avoid sudden deaths. They have an incredible selection of powerful options, but require a lot of experience in knowing when to use them. Blowing your 3000 barrier at the first sight of danger means that Aegis and your Shielding Rune are on cooldown, and then you quietly explode to any later threats, for example.

They're only absurdly powerful in the hands of someone that, well, can already beat Nightmare, or at least, clears the game repeatedly. Someone who knows the game.

Thinking on, maybe Nightmare inflates Archmage in general, due to the fact that most classes in general will die on base concrete durability, if that's all they have to rely on. So, reactive defenses are that much stronger.

672/8 turns/12 CD Shielding is, also, ridiculous. I've only seen a Shielding that good one other time on any run(I'm currently up to 18 clears, I think, so that's not too minor of a statement...). 4/5 turns and 300/400 are much more normal. Granted, I think Nightmare coughs up better runes and infusions due to the higher levels, so that's probably why, but I still doubt it's consistent enough to cough up that every run.

Also, I have absolutely no idea where your 94%/70% allres is coming from. That's just weird, I didn't know any of those temp effects broke the allres barrier, and the amount doesn't add up for any of them that I can see. Go figure.

Regardless, no, that character doesn't show that nerfing is needed, in my opinion.

I'm not someone who could already clear Nightmare, though, at least not with my playstyle which makes liberal use of autoexplore. I'm a diehard autoexplorer; I just don't have the patience to scout everything out manually. Blowing my 3000 damage shield at the first sight of danger? That is exactly what I did, shamelessly and indiscriminately. Like I said, I tried with what I previously thought to be the strongest class, Solipsist, failed miserably (3 deaths), then tried again with this Archmage. Some of that was because of the experience I gained in my first attempt, but I'd say most of it was because of the Aegis and Meta trees. Sure, it's possible to build an Archmage poorly (not unlocking Meta, or using an offensive branch other than fire or arcane), but that doesn't seem like a good excuse to allow the stronger trees to go unchecked.

The duration of my shielding rune was irrelevant because the one from Arcane Shielding + Arcane Reconstruction was my real defense. 3336 shielding for 4 turns on a 11-turn cooldown means there's only 6 turns of downtime (it's actually 5 turns duration but since casting Reconstruction takes a turn it looks like 4). That means the shielding rune that you use only has to last 4 turns (4 + 1 because it's instant cast and +1 from Shielding). The 8 turn duration was nice but in any serious fight I found myself canceling it early to make room for Arcane Reconstruction's damage shield. The low cooldown on the rune was thanks to Quicken Spells. This is all layered over ~2000 points of Displacement Shield anyway, mind you, and that lasts longer than any fight will ever last.

The res all was just me having fun. 41% from a wild infusion, 30% from the racials, 15% from Thick Skin, and 8% from Frozen Shroud. It's still capped at 70% regardless of the display.

The 3336 shield (goes up to 6802 with Aegis) that was up for 5 out of 11 turns was the truly crazy part and it had nothing to do with drop luck. It just scales with too many things: every single generic point in the Aegis tree, spellpower on all four talents, heal mod, and crit multiplier. That's a lot of numbers multiplied together. I will admit that it's not as impressive early game, but Flame + Flameshock carries you nicely through the entire early to mid phases anyway.

The only real issue that Archmages have is a lack of passive defense which makes them vulnerable to getting killed out of autoexplore, but that is easily solved by

1.) Not using autoexplore
2.) Getting Cauterize

plus it's not a particularly fun balancing factor, especially if you end up using the first solution to get around it.

Archmages were a powerhouse last I played one, but clearing one on nightmare roguelike is still impressive.

3k shields for 4 turns every 10 turns is on par with constant 200 hp/turn fungus regen (that costs no turn to use), on classes that have other defensive options.

You dismissal of lightning as a good tree ensaddens me. :c

I did seriously consider 5/5 Feather Wind, I just decided to go with Stone Wall instead. Since you mentioned that though, I think the Storm tree needs to be able to do something to stun-immune enemies. Just being good at killing not-stun-immune stuff is useless. Wildfire gets protection from 2/3 of all statuses, plus dispelling, plus extra damage to everything, plus mini-Spellcrafting, plus knockback, plus like a dozen fire-specific artifacts. Aether gets silence and a huge offensive/defensive buff. Stone gets resistances, immunities, and saves. Ice at least gets a pin (obsolete once you get Spydric Poison but it's there). What does Storm get? Extra damage that doesn't work on things that aren't stun-immune. Zero useful lightning-oriented artifacts. Low damage all around. It looks to me like the damage values were balanced using the max instead of average damage. I mean yes no matter what you still have Meta/Aegis to roll over the game, but the hierarchy of archmage elements is pretty clear to me and Storm comes dead last.

I have actually never seen anyone declare storm worse than earth or ice before, since they're both clunky as heck to play where storm just plays like a more +damage efficient beamer. Guess that means yer no fan of beamers either . In it's defence, TStorm fire spellprocs nearly as well as an anorithil.

I definitely see why fire was go for nightmare, surely even the briefest of status ailments could end you. But i'm confused. I just did a normal clear and didn't notice ... anything... that i could not thunderstorm pretty consistently. Stair guardian, bosses, room fo death, atamathon...anything got sparky. Does nightmare change the mobs resistance/immunities somehow or was it just steamrolling normal so thoroughly that i was crediting the wrong things with the kills? Oo

Thunderstorm isn't in the storm tree >_>

Storm's got a daze bolt, a daze self-centered AoE, hurricane (which only lands on things you daze), and the mastery talent. It's largely useless on anything stun immune. Now, mind you, teleport + hurricane will let you DoT pretty much anything not stun-immune to death pretty much with impunity, but there's plenty that's completely or mostly stun immune and it's not very reliable.

Storm's pretty much definitely the worst advanced elemental tree, yeah. Wildfire and stone are solid and ice at least isn't quite so one-dimensional. Storm's a one-trick pony and without that trick just doesn't do much damage.

I'm saying i didn't notice a single scenario in the entire playthrough where the gimmick failed, though. 'it fails' doesn't illuminate what i was missing. (though im offtopic on your much more interesting victory Donk, sorry).

Edit: now i see i typed the wrong damn variant on bad weather because it's late. Mostly i turned thunderstorm off to have more mana for beamspam. Hurricane never failed me that i noticed.