[1.1.0] Larisa the archmage sets the world on fire

[tylor]

http://te4.org/characters/38522/tome/4d ... 3d330da2e8

It was going to be "dance in fire and laugh maniacally" build, but I actually got to wildfire and burning wake very late.

Main reason for it was Disruption Shield. It's absolutely awesome thing for obvious reasons, though it requires a lot of sacrifices. Such as not using as much sustains as you would otherwise, pump willpower and Spellpower, avoid resting with "r", etc. But still, it completely worth it.

As I said, you will need to pump spellpower for it. Choose spellpower over crit chance, over damage bonus, etc. It makes a lot of difference. In the end, with 80+ spellpower, and with extra category point, conversion rate was 0.16 mp to damage. That's after Shielding bonus, before it is 0.5 mp to damage. I was pretty much invincible to anything, except those who dispell shield directly, or drain all the mana. It happened regularly, but not too often.

Some prefer to only cast this shield in the middle of battle, when they are out of mana. There are a lot of advantages of this option, but I prefer to go with shield always on, and mp at ~100. I had a good manasurge rune for when I'll need mana. Don't rely on enemy damage to replenish your mana when low - it's better to pop manasurge and keep some shielding layers on top of Disruption, then have your Disruption exploded by sudden damage spike.

I maxed up and used all other available shields - namely, time shield, reflection shield from rune and displacement shield. Sadly, I was not lucky with escorts, so I did not get celestial/light, or I'd max and use Barrier too.

Speaking of bad luck, I had it with item drops too. I had to wear solipsist and time mages gear most of the game. Even the Vor Armoury, that normally is a huge buff item-wise, had nothing interesting. I only got good gear at the very end - from Vor Pride (which I did last) and High Peak. And a Choker from Ifrit.

Fire skills. I maxed Flameshok early, because it scales with skill level best, and it was only good debuff I had. Then I unlocked Wildfire, but only got Blastwave from it, which essentially became third beam in three-beam with Flame and Manathrust. Then I maxed Inferno. I see a lot of people don't max it, or even skip it. But I like it a lot - mostly for huge area and range. You can kill things at range 14 with it, or 5 cells around the corner. I killed Sludgenest boss with it, before it even have seen me.

Wildfire I maxed and switched on very late - in the Prides. Burning Wake and Cleansing Flames even later. While totally cool and useful, those are not essential, if you have Elemental Fury, some stat removers and Inferno.

I got blur sight early - while physical attackers should rarely have a chance to hit you, their are still vast majority in the game, and it is good to make them hit you much, much less often. I leveled up Defensive Posture from Staff Combat for same reason, though bonuses from it was definitely too low.

I have not touched Illuminate until very late, mostly because I was hugely disappointed with it's damage scaling. But I probably should have dropped a couple of points into it to get blind debuff.

Another thing I probably would have do is to get Hex tree. I had a lot of "free" generic points, and very few disablers, so Pacification Hex would be great.

Now, race. Shalore. Was likely not the best choice for Archmage, but I still liked it. First skill (global speed) is definitely great, but physical attack class (or archmage with Meta) would probably use it more effectively. Second skill (crit chance and multiplier) is good, but bonuses are too little. Third (chance of invisibility when hit) - too unreliable, and I very rarely got hit through my layers of shields. And Timeless is a very good universal debuff remover, but that's it. I never used it to extend buff duration, and reduction of cooldowns is too small. Would be better as percentage. It's own cooldown is too big too.

Also, Shalore have low hp mod, which does not mix well with already small hp class, resulting in very high chance of early-game oneshots. So, it's more of a niche choice of race for Archmage.

Prodigies. Cauterize and Unbreakable Will. I only got them right before High peak. And I don't think they made much difference. But they are still very good for Archmage. Unbreakable Will saves you from Confusion and Spell feedback - but (like wilds) will not do much vs nasties that drops debuff on you in bulk. Thankfully, I had Timeless and Relentless Pursuit for such things. And Cleansing Flames too.