Archmage sustains - order of activation

[garth]

Ok, guys, started trying to play a Wildfire Archmage, and I have a question - what sustains do you prefer to keep on, when and at which levels? There's so many of them, I have yet to determine their primary usefulness.



Okay, editing as I go:

Agree with:
Chant of Fortitude - got it from an escort, the saves are pretty good at an early level. And it's free)
Keen Senses - I'll try to go with this, for the crit chance as well.
Premonition - is very costly, so... yeah, I'll look into it later, meanwhile a waste of an escort point
Arcane Power - 30 spell power for 50 sustain? Yes, a bit underwhelming.
Feather Wind - a lot of small gimmicks, not worth the point investment


What about:
Phantasmal Shield
Invisibility
Disruption Shield
Spellcraft
Quicken Spells?

For Future Reference: Stone Skin
Body of Stone
Crystalline Focus - Stone Archmage necessities?

Hurricane
Tempest
Thunderstorm - Air Archmage necessities?

Pure Aether - Arcane Archmage necessities?

[Doctornull]

Worth the Mana tier:
++ Burning Wake
++ Wildfire
++ Aegis / Shielding
++ Aegis / Arcane Shield
++ Essence of Speed <-- after level 30 or when I have over 500 mana in my pool AFTER the above sustains

Costs no Mana tier:
+ Chant of For-something
+ Elemental Harmony

Meh tier:
* Blur Sight
* Feather Wind <-- actually quite decent at 4/5 but I usually have a better use for those points

[Furey]

Don't forget Keen Senses. For 40 mana it is +10% crit and some other stuff.

I'm ready to run to High Peak and my sustains are:
++ Burning Wake
++ Wildfire
++ Aegis / Shielding
++ Aegis / Arcane Shield
++ Essence of Speed

Chant of Fortress
Keen Senses

This leaves me with 466 mana to play with. I was trying to keep premonition up, but its just too expensive. :/

[Doctornull]

Don't forget Keen Senses. For 40 mana it is +10% crit and some other stuff.

I prefer to ignore Keen Senses and not put any points in it. I'd much rather 5/5 Arcane Eye which 100% negates invisibility & stealth, over Keen Senses which less-than-100% negates those threats.

I also ignore Vision and Premonition, unless I'm playing a non-Mana class that uses Magic (like Paradox Mage). Premonition costs a lot of Mana, and it's absolutely great if you don't actually need Mana to fuel your powers.

Arcane Power's tier is HA HA HA no.

[PureQuestion]

Oh come on, Arcane Power is getting/got buffed

[Doctornull]

Oh come on, Arcane Power is getting/got buffed

The tier may change, but right now it's not buffed and still sucks.

Even after the change, it will still be pretty sucky for everyone except Arcane/Aether Highers who are interested in Aether Permeation. That is to say it will finally be useful for someone. It will still be useless for nearly everyone else.

[donkatsu]

I get Arcane Power at the very, very end of a run, if I got unlucky enough on my equipment for my spellpower not to be able to overcome the final boss's saves. Mostly only applies on Nightmare, where their saves are rather higher.

[Furey]

I prefer to ignore Keen Senses and not put any points in it. I'd much rather 5/5 Arcane Eye which 100% negates invisibility & stealth, over Keen Senses which less-than-100% negates those threats.

5/5 keen senses is 10% crit. The invis and stealth negation is a nice side effect, not much more :/

Having said that, with 5/5 in there, I've never not been able to see invisible monsters, and this is on nightmare difficulty. I've only ever put points into arcane eye on single target mages....with an archmage, even if they are invisible they are....over *there* somewhere, which is all you usually need

It's probably just preference, but on a caster with less than 100% crit I would prefer the 10% crit to "cast to negate invis" spell.

Course, you *could* get the best of both worlds and point swap when you need arcane eye.

[Doctornull]

It's probably just preference, but on a caster with less than 100% crit I would prefer the 10% crit to "cast to negate invis" spell.

I really like using Arcane Eye to look around corners & into vaults & stuff like that, so for me the first 4 points in Arcane Eye are more or less mandatory, and at that point I've got enough of what I want that Keen Senses is not necessary.

I agree with you that the +10% spell crit is really good, but the rest is too much overlap for me to justify those 5 points, especially on a Wildfire Archmage who wants Elemental Harmony.

[bpat]

Quicken Spells is definitely one of your best sustains. I'd argue that for its cost, it is better worth the category and class points than Essence of Speed. My endgame sustains included Wildfire, Burning Wake, Shielding, Arcane Shield, and Quicken Spells. If going Aether, I'd replace Wildfire and Burning Wake with Pure Aether and Spellcraft.

[Orangeflame]

You can really start to notice the power of Quicken Spells when you also have boots of spellbinding (rare) and a pickaxe of quickening (even rarer).

And then there's Zekemys's Broken Hourglass, for another -10%...
And Scale Mail of the Kar'Krul (which may or may not be from Arcanum, I'm not sure), for another -10%...
(all told, -70% spell cooldowns, if you really want to abuse it ).


But just Quicken Spells is excellent, too.

[Doctornull]

I'd argue that for its cost, it is better worth the category and class points than Essence of Speed.

Does that include the cost of not having an early Time Shield?

Or is Time Shield not that good at your level of play?

[Furey]

Or is Time Shield not that good at your level of play?

I cannot fathom a level of play in which time shield is *not* good. :/

Congeal time, time shield, the remove from time spell and Essence of speed are all top notch skills. That cat point is well spent. I spent the point, and then thought I had screwed up, as I didn't have another for elemental harmony, but I never even noticed it.

And global speed is far superior to quicken spell, since it affects...well...everything.

[donkatsu]

Essence of Speed and Quicken Spells have completely unrelated effects. One of them makes you faster, the other lowers your spell cooldowns. It's nonsensical to say one is superior to the other.

[bpat]

I'd argue that for its cost, it is better worth the category and class points than Essence of Speed.

Does that include the cost of not having an early Time Shield?

Or is Time Shield not that good at your level of play?

Time Shield is amazing but it falls off late since it can't crit. I've had Arcane Reconstruction shields of 4k after Aegis because that talent can crit and Healing Light can provide a good shield too at a lower cooldown for no mana.

Or is Time Shield not that good at your level of play?

I cannot fathom a level of play in which time shield is *not* good. :/

Congeal time, time shield, the remove from time spell and Essence of speed are all top notch skills. That cat point is well spent. I spent the point, and then thought I had screwed up, as I didn't have another for elemental harmony, but I never even noticed it.

And global speed is far superior to quicken spell, since it affects...well...everything.

Congeal Time is nice but too slow, most non-melee enemies won't actually get hit by it. Time Shield is amazing and Time Prison is great too. However, I still like Meta a bit more than Temporal late game (Temporal is obviously better early because Meta takes a very long time to shine and Temporal has Time Shield). Meta has Disperse Magic, which can delete about 6 sustains from an enemy mage making them much weaker (final bosses are a great example). Spellcraft is only good on some builds but it makes Aether Breach and Aether Beam more powerful than they already are. I like Quicken Spells a bit more than Essence of Speed because global speed isn't very good once everything useful you have is on cooldown. For example, once Inferno is used, a Wildfire Archmage's damage primarily comes from three talents: Flame, Fireflash, and Blastwave. Without any cooldown reduction, the cooldown of these talents are 3, 5, and 8. With 40% cooldown reduction (30% from Quicken Spells, 10% from boots or pickaxe) these cooldowns are reduced to 2, 3, and 5. This means I'll almost always have a very powerful spell off cooldown, while with Essence of Speed and no cooldown reduction I'd be reduced to using filler spells like Manathrust and Lightning for damage. It's also worth noting that Quicken Spells applies to Shalore racials and Runes, so a Shalore with 40% cooldown reduction and 5/5 Grace of the Eternals can have over 50% uptime and with Timeless, you could keep the buff up for 21 turns.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with getting both Meta and Temporal. I just like Meta a bit more than Temporal overall.