[b38] Hilariously overpowered Archmage

[donkatsu]

Presenting Cinderbones, the Skeleton Archmage

Took the Fire/Wildfire route because it is clearly the best one. The race was technically "Skeleton" but I never once used my Skeleton racial talents, so basically the only Skeleton-y part that mattered was the poison immunity and bonus health. The one death was from a High Peak guardian that had level 53 Bow Mastery and level 28 Steady Shot, which managed to kill me because until then I hadn't been bothering to check their talent levels. Upon returning from the Eidolon Plane I blinded it first, THEN killed it as usual. And now, some feats!

-Got tired of putting my Cloak of Deception on in towns. Solution? Kill literally everything that can be killed.
-Killed Atamathon while only taking health damage once
-Fireflash could one-shot every non-unique, non-boss orc except for orc corruptors with Bone Shield. You know how each level of each Pride except for Grushnak has that little greeting party? With its massive radius, one Fireflash killed the entire party instantly, again with the exception of corruptors.
-Once I had 100% stun immunity, I could survive indefinitely against any boss/unique except the Gluttonous guy, because eventually his Mana Clash would shut down my sustains. I say "eventually" because 21 mana/turn from Manaflow makes it so that even Mana Clash would seldom shut off my sustains as long as I knew it was coming.
-Just for kicks, after I beat the game I turned on cheat mode, went back to High Peak and summoned Elandar and Argoniel to see if I could kill them with just Displacement Shield and no other attacks. Argoniel went down easily, but Elandar kept healing himself. So I stopped using Disperse Magic so he wouldn't waste time turning his sustains back on, and I also stripped off all of my resistance equipment so he would do more damage. I then spammed the wait key, making sure to re-apply Displacement Shield once in a while, and after about five minutes of this I realized that he wouldn't be able to outdamage his own healing.

This guy was the best at everything, with no weaknesses. Deals 1000-2000 damage per turn in a massive area. Doesn't even need LOS to kill stuff. Doesn't even notice when something is fire immune. Never runs out of mana, even with Mana Clash. Survives indefinitely against almost anything short of random bosses, without even using crowd control. Not that crowd control wasn't available to me: Illuminate blinds everything in LOS for 8 out of 9 turns, Flameshock stuns in a gigantic cone for 7 out of 12 turns, and I could knockback every 4 turns if for whatever reason I got tired of all these melee guys flailing helplessly against my 3000 damage shield. And if I wanted to sit down and clip my nails in the middle of combat I could call an 11 turn time-out with Stone Wall. And yeah, part of being OP was the nice equipment, but I didn't pick up a lot of it until High Peak and I was stomping everything without it anyway.

Fire, Wildfire, Meta, and Aegis trees all need to be looked at for some serious balancing. As does the Black Robe, and the Lost Staff of Archmage Tarelion.

[jenx]

This is why I don't play archmages. No challenge. But fun for a occasional spin.

Congratulations too!

[Predawn]

If you want to see how mortal this character is, lead it into the Infinite Dungeon, then try to survive the challenges.

[faction55]

The unlock trees are really that powerful huh? My beam-spec AM had to do a ton of line of sighting and phase door kiting. Glad I didn't go aoe spec

[peacedog]

donkatsu, do you unlock wildfire before Meta? Do you beeline for Spellcraft as soon as you unlock the tree (that what I was trying to do with fire/wildfire archmages)? What order do you max fire spells in?

[donkatsu]

Wildfire before Meta, but that was only so that I could kill fire immune enemies faster. It wouldn't really have mattered if you switched the order; there would just be a couple of levels where you'd be annoyed whenever you ran into fire drakes. I maxed Flame first to turn it into a beam, and then after that I just threw class points around willy nilly.