Thag the Smash Mage

[Snow]

Thag began his life as the idea of, "You know, Earth and Stone are considered pretty poor, as far as builds go." That thought met the idea of an archmage who didn't quite... 'get it'.

Thag's talents at the time of his death:

Arcane: 4 / 1 / 1 / 5
Earth: 5 / 4 / 5 / 5
Stone: 4 / 5 / 1 / 3
Meta: 3 / 3 / 5 / 4

Ogre: 1 / 5 / 1
Conveyance: 4 / 1 / 3 / 0
Divination: 0 / 0 / 1 / 0
Aegis: 1 / 5 / 0 / 0
Combat Training: 5 / 5 / 0 // 1 / 1 / 0
Staff Combat (mastery 1.3): 1 / 5 / 1 / 4

Prodigies: Draconic Will, I Can Carry The World

He made it to level 43 and only died because I was less than faithful with cycling damage shields in Vor Pride when I didn't have any meaningful cold resist. I died to Freeze once, which crit for 950, and after ressing from blood of life in the same dungeon, I died to two cryomancers casting it at once while disruption shield was broken, so it was pretty much my fault.

As far as the mechanics went... Well, I had an armor hardiness of 100% for most of the game due to a lucky escort and a fortuitous helm, and an armor value of 100+ to match. Fatigue management was difficult and was really blocking me from wearing some of the nicer heavier armor I had found (and nuked) or seen in shops, so I took ICCTW, which also helped my ogrewielding penalty. Cauterize probably would have saved my life both times, but up until that point I had never really taken spike damage high enough to pierce my disruption shield AND chunk my healthbar all in the same go. My biggest problem were... other archmages. No, not even the anti-magic assholes were as bad as another archmage or two. To point, the Grushnak pride boss had mana clash at like 12, silence, and all that fun jazz. I spent most of each fight at 0 mana, with no sustains. I took the staff I had, and between that and my shielding runes chunked his health by sheer virtue of dealing more damage in a fight than he could. I had to bolt and heal up once, given he had a few thousand hitpoints, but still... An archmage killed an orc warlord mage-hunter by beating him across the face with a stick. I consider the character a success, and I'm sure would have gone further if I had handled that dungeon better, or gone in with some serious cold resist (I had 40-70% fire).

Notable features:
Pulverizing Auger ended with a cooldown of 3-4 turns, dependent on if stone body was on at once, which meant that I could cast it every time I could take a turn if something could deal enough damage in a melee fight to trigger stoneskin. It also tended to hit for 4-600 per cast.

I took so little damage from just about everything but spellcasters that I had trouble charging my disruption shield.

Taking meta early let me shut down all kinds of nasty little sustains, which made fighting the master hilarious. No necrotic aura, no minions. (It's also worth noting that metaflow will refresh your own sustains).

Antimagic shield did nothing for anti-magic characters, in those levels where mana clash was weak or not present. Pulverizing Auger, Mudslide, Earthen Missiles, etc. all do purely physical damage, which does not incur arcane burn or damage reduction from anti-magic shield.