1.7 Archmage Zippy Zappy Insane Guide

[Uniporpoise]

Welcome to my Lightning Archmage guide! This build probably has the most simple rotation of damage in the game, you only really have to press about 10 non-sustain buttons, including items, but you have around 100 buttons you COULD, but probably won't press. The gist of it is that this build is very tanky, but also very very item dependant due to the necessity of silence immunity. Prepare to lose to something which you have no hope of countering, but the bright side is once you can counter it and get that 100% silence immunity its life down easy street, I think there was a total of 1 or 2 bosses post dreadfall that caused by disruption shield to break via damage before post-game.

Classes:
1. Higher
2. Shalore
3. Anything!
3. Skeleton(?)

One of the things I want to make clear in this guide is that archmage is very very diverse, and even within this build you can take a couple of different equally valid directions. My winner was particularly bad, and I made several pretty huge mistakes in that game, but the good thing is with its huge effective HP archmage is very forgiven. So with classes you can pretty much take anything, I chose higher because there are some mana issues with this build, and 30% all damage res / + is pretty good, but I can also see shalore and to a lesser extent skeleton.

Itemizatation:
I am going to split the items you want into three categories, defensive, offensive, and actives and a time split between early game and late game. You need to find the mix between these 3 that you need to most, but when in doubt its never bad to go more defensive.
Early Game
Defensive Priorities:

1. Max or Negative Health
2. Armor
3. Stun Immunity
4. Silence Immunity
Early game Stun/silence immunity are rare, and extreme luxuries, but you should start stockpiling stun/silencer immunity rings if you can find them, and look around in shops for them.

Offensive Priorities:

1. Lightning % + Damage
2. Crit Chance
3. Crit % Damage
4. Lightning Damage Res Pen
You aren't very likely to get very many good early game damage items, so prioritize just pumping as much lightning damage as you can and maybe see if you can up your crit rate.

Active Priorities:

Before talking about what items to get in the active item slot, the best thing to understand is using it to help stop you from dying. Understand what you need for the moment is very important, a teleport item could save your life, so could a torque of clear mind, or so could a torque of galewind, or maybe a shielding toque. I think any of these are good, but for my win I mostly used a galewind and a shielding, but I would have switched them for anything else in that slot with silencer immunity.
1. Shielding
2. Galewind
3. Clearmind

Late Game

Defensive Priorities :

1. Silence Immunity
2. Stun Immunity
3. Damage Shield Power
4. Resistance
5. Other Immunities
6. Armor

100% silence and stun immunity is not a luxury late game, it is a necessity. You will not win if you don't have ways to prevent being silenced, in particular, saw butchers are the enemies to watch out for, you cannot clear their silence with a clear mind torque. Damage shield power makes you die less, as it makes you have more effective HP, so its very good. After the top 3 things, just fill in what you can and have a good mix, confusion immunity is always nice to have, so is having a fair amount of armor, and resistance is something you will likely naturally get from robes.

Offensive Priorities:

1. Lightning % + Damage
1. Crit Chance
1. Crit % Damage
1. Spell On Hit
2. Lightning Damage Res Pen
2. Spell CD reduction


This doesn't change much to late game, and unlike defensive priorities, it pretty much stayed the same. if you find Stormbringers Gauntlets be aware they are pretty much your best in slot the entire game, which is nice. Try to get 100% crit, with high crit damage, a spell on hit or two, and lots of lightning damage and res pen by end game.

Active Priorities:

1. ????
This slot becomes less relevant as the game goes on, look for something that makes you killier or less likely to be killed, probably the best way to use it is to pick up something with a decent active and has silence immunity to free up another possibly more important slot.

Gameplay Loop:
You just want to spam out your lightning spells, this is about as simple as it gets. I kept my temporal shield on auto cast, same with highborns bloom, and just rotated through lightning spells and the level 1 arcane beam. If something didn't die before my cd's reset, I would run away and try again. If possible find something that can stop or reduce regen to help with tanky warrior enemies.

Prodigies
Your first prodigy should probably be Ethereal form, it makes you more killer and less dieier and you can get it exactly at 24. For your second prodigy its your pick, a suggestion with be Aether Permutation if you can be asked to the Archmage stater zone. I went Master of Disasters, and that just felt like it did nothing, so I would suggest a more defensive prodigy or maybe even the new evolution. So, in list form,

1. Ethereal Form
2. Aether Permutation
3. Spine of the World / Unbreakable Will
4. Master of Disasters
5. Corrupted Shell
6. Adept

Runes/Infusions


Archmage doesn't have much choice in this regard outside of the 5th rune slot sadly, you NEED Shielding, Manasurge, Shatter Afflications, and a Movement infusion. Get the strongest shield, mana surge, and movement you can but go for the shortest cd Shatter Afflicationrune. For the 5th slot, I am not going to lie I forgot about it on my winner, but a dissipation, shatter, or shielding are all very good choices.

Cat Points

Inscription, Storm, Meta, Dealers Choice

The first 3 are pretty bog standard, you really need that 4th inscription slot at 10 and you can the daze and extra damage storm provides at 20, and you start needing the free disapation rune from meta at around 34. After that, the world is yours, find a good escort tree? Use it on that. Find a good rune, get a 5th inscription. Bored? just put it on storm or something.

Class Points

Arcane ASAP 1-1-1-4+
Disruption shield IS archmage, this is going to be an easy 1k+ shield late game, always one, and automatically regenerates. This is what you go down this tree for 100%. Try to balance putting points in disruption shield with chain lightning, temporal shield, featherwind, and lightning

Fire 0-0-0-0
You ain't no fire mage
Earth 0-0-0-0
You ain't no earth mage
Water 0-0-0-0
You ain't no ice mage

Air ASAP: 4-4-5-0 Late: 4+-4+-5-4
You ARE a Lightning mage, this tree, in particular, the first 2 skills are almost all of your damage. Then the feather wind gives 50(!) stun res, which is just absolutely incredible max this ASAP. Lightning storm, however, is not as good, it gets better later when you have storm unlocked and it gives it a chance to daze and activate hurricane, but until then leave it untouched as you have better ways to spend points.
Temporal ASAP 1-4-1-0 -> Late: 1-4+-1-4+
Temporal shield is another staple spell of Archmage, you love it and you need it. I set it to auto-cast and just forget about it, it's part of your large array of active defenses. A sleeper here is time prison, if you use it during the final fight you can save a certain suicidal paladin from preventing you from accessing postgame content. Then there is also Essence of Speed, a very good late-game, pick it up when you have points and mana to spare.

Phantasm Early: 0-0-0-0 ->LATE 1-X-1-X
DON"T go to this tree early, this is done in the 40-50 range. Phantasmal Shield is another late-game layer of defense, it's alright nothing amazing but still can help. Getting Mirror Image is pretty good, makes you able to pump out absurd damage with chain lightning and lightning.

Storm ASAP 1-1-1-5 -> Next 1-1-4-5 -> Next X-X-4+-5
Storm is what makes this build work. It just absolutely pumps out the 2 D's, Daze and Damage. The two active abilities, Nova and Shock, are alright. If you feel like it pump some more points into them for damage. But the real stars of the show are Hurricane and Tempest, providing huge DOTs, a crippling debuff, damage, and res pen these two have everything. They are 100 mana combined to sustain, but well worth it. Once you get to this point, the run is pretty close to done,

Meta ASAP 3+-5-1-X
Meta is another powerhouse for this build, getting the free rune of dissipation with this tree is fantastic. Disperse Magic is great against magical enemies, use this and watch for choke on his own tears. Spellcraft is even better, giving you spell CD reduction which is absolutely needed along with shellshock, which is decent. Energy altercation is a point tax. Metaflow is really good, I didn't get it but if I did I probably wouldn't have lost to Mrs. Master Mage herself, get it if you want to get a Round 2. to your fights, instead of just having to run away like a little baby coward.

Generic Points
Here we are at generics, there isn't too much to say here so the guide is almost done!

Higher 1-1-5-4
More damage is more good is the basis of this build, and higher does this in spades. At level 50 you are going to be getting +50% damage in from born into magic and wrath. I set highborns bloom on autocast, and just forgot about it. It helps with mana management for disruption shield.

Divination Late:1-X-0-0 OR 1-X-0-X
Keen Senses is the reason you are here, get it for spell crit once you have mana and run out of good things to put points in

Aegis ASAP 1-4+-0-0 -> Late 1-4+-1-1+
Come here for Shielding stay for Aegis. Shielding is ASAP max, you want as much shield power as you can get your hands on. I never sustained Arcane Shield, it's just bad and takes up too much mana to act as a sustain strip sponge. Aegis is nice to have a shield reload for fights against tougher uniques.

Combat training 5-1+-1+-0-0-0
Upgrade Armor training ASAP, Max thick skin when you can, and if you wear a robe consider put a point into light armor. Nothing else is of interest here.

Staff Combat Possible 0-0-0-0 OR LATE 1-1-5-0

Late game I got 23 armor from defensive posture, which is pretty bad. BUT I had nothing else to spend points on, so it was better then putting it into the even hotter garbage options. I wouldn't recommend doing what I did, but you do you.



So that's the guide! Here https://te4.org/characters/205858/tome/ ... 3e894a8f11 is my winner for anyone interested. This is pretty boring gameplay to be honest, it doesn't use the new fancy tools Archmage gets (Sorry!) but I feel like you can probably mix and max to fit them in. If you are looking for a relatively easy way to learn your way around the game this is it!

[sir]

what would you recommend on the stat points since you didnt go over them.
I mean the logical thing would just be to Max spell and then put points into dex and cunning put i dont know

[saka-rauka1]

what would you recommend on the stat points since you didnt go over them.
I mean the logical thing would just be to Max spell and then put points into dex and cunning put i dont know

Max out MAG and WIL first, then CUN then DEX.

MAG gives you dmg and shield power, WIL gives you the mana you need for your sustains, CUN for extra crit chance, and finally DEX for crit shrug.

[tonywiz]

Hi Thanks for taking the time to put this together

What points are you putting into conveyance tree?

[Tradewind_Rider]

What points are you putting into conveyance tree?

Hi!

Conveyance is a very strong tree.

Archmage do not have many generic trees, where they need to put many ponts, so they have plenty to spend.

Phase Door is a 4/5, becasue you would like to have the full control here.
I like to level up Phase Door really early.

Teleport is also a 4/5 for me (while many players just leave it at 1 and never use it).
With 4/5, you can cast Teleport on the ENEMY, so do not use this on yourself.
Basically this is a "get rid of a strong enemy if i am in danger" button.

Displacement Shield is a nice talent imo, you either can have it at level 1 (just to unlock Probability Travel)
or max it to 5/5 if you want to use it. Due to your Aegis tree and combined with other shield talents, this is a nice addition
of defense layer imo.

Probability Travel is a really strong talent, but the sustain mana cost is a bit high, so it's not that early game talent.
I advise to have it at least 1/5 and even if you do not sustain it continously, you can activate it when you need it and step into a wall.
Still, I like to max it and continously sustain it, when i have the mana.

[Powderhound522]

What a wild ride! This guy was insanely OP on Normal mode, I basically strolled up High Peak.

Tons of fun, though things dragged a little bit around the time I went to the far east. I was strong enough at that point I mostly wasn’t even bothering to use skills against white enemies, I just walked past them and let Tempest and Hurricane kill them off.

Almost all of my escorts offered to buff MAG, so between that and a very nice short staff (+22% spell crit, +77% crit mult) I bought from Urthol in Last Hope I was doing 2k+ damage with Lightning and Chain Lightning. Fun stuff!

Here’s my winner!