Archmage: much improved water category UPDATE

[Delmuir]

The earth/stone category has been improved recently but is still not viable as a primary focus.

Air/Lightning finally had some its sustain costs reduced and while it takes the longest to get useful, it's pretty decent.

Fire/Wildfire is clearly the best.

Arcane/Aether is my favorite and pretty beastly in terms of damage output.

Water/ice category... the most frustrating category, in my opinion. It's almost really good but it ultimately sucks. Thus, I'd like to make a few general suggestions:

1. Stone skin... resistance AND resistance caps for fire, lightning, and physical +15% and flat damage reduction of up to 20 instead of armor bonus.

This would have a nice synergy with Aether Permeation prodigy and is thematically coherent.

2. Water... this entire category is mostly terrible. The "wet" effect is unnecessarily clumsy, hard to apply, and boring. My suggestion is to improve wet and make the water category actually be a water category

1. Wet effect... wet now has a 50% chance per turn to cancel the burning status effect on a character or enemy AND to cancel burning wake on tiles. Thus it can be used in a defensive capacity.

2. Replace the execrable Glacial Vapors with a similar ability that applies wet, namely "Rainstorm."

3. Replace Freeze with "Douse" which applies wet, reduces resistance to stun/freeze on a single target just like Freeze BUT...

4. When in Shivgoroth form, "Douse" is replaced with Freeze and Rainstorm is replaced by "Hailstorm" and Tidal Wave is replaced with Avalanche. More so, as soon as you cast Shivgoroth, Freeze and Hailstorm aren't on cooldown even if Douse and Rainstorm are.

5. Hailstorm would just be the same skill except instead of applying wet, it does increased cold and physical damage.

6. Avalanche would also cause cold and physical damage as well as pushing back enemies but it would also reduce movement speed across affected tiles by up to 50%.

7. All of the Shivgoroth versions of the water spells would also have some chance to freeze if the enemy is wet.

I believe that this would make the Cryomancer archmage actually viable but it would also make the category more interesting and potentially compete with Fire and Aether by essentially having extra abilites as well easier application of "wet."

Thoughts?

UPDATE: See fifth post with new water ideas largely stolen from Planetus, Razakai, and HousePet.

[HousePet]

Rainstorm still sounds 'execrable'. As a caster character, you generally need something that does good quick damage in your first talent slot.

[Delmuir]

The general idea is that you'd be able to cast three spells in a row that cause wet, and then cast Shivgoroth and then follow that up with four spells that can "freeze." As a mage you'd be getting aether beam anyway (probably) and probably lightning so I figure you'd be in the clear on early damage. By level 12, you'd have a very powerful category even if took some sacrifice or extra effort to get there.

I like it but...

Another idea is to switch the first and second skill and then tack on a chance to cause "slow" on "Douse" in addition to the "wet" effect.

[Arcvasti]

The water category is fine in general, but glacial vapours in particular is bad. If that was replaced by an actually usable ability then it'd be in a good place. Tidal wave and ice storm should also probably have longer ranges so you don't have to stand as close to enemies but that's mostly a convenient thing.

Where cold archmages really suffer is that their advanced category is hot(cold?) trash compared to the others and especially to wildfire. Removing cleansing flames and having shatter gain bonus crit multi instead of crit chance would do a lot fo equalize that but ice might still need some buffs anyways.

Also let hurricane crit please.

[Delmuir]

I saw this older post:

http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=46655

In it, Planetus described an idea that I really like, namely the water snake. Razakai also had some good ideas. As a result, I'm stealing them to re-imagine the water/cold thusly:

I like my idea about water spells being able to be used defensively to shot the "burning" status effect so I'll keep that.

Water

1. Rainstorm... this is akin to Glacial Vapors but inflicts "wet" and then "slow" at higher levels.

2. Drown... single target spell like Freeze but inflicts "wet" and attempts to "pin" the enemy. This spell doesn't target an enemy but instead targets a location. Through whatever means necessary, if you keep the enemy on that tile long enough, they risk losing air and drowning (obviously not those that don't need to breathe). As such, it'd have to have a long duration.

3. Tidal Wave... same.

4. Water Shield... sustain that provides fire, lightning, and acid resistance and resistance cap. It also inflicts "wet" and "slow" on attackers.

Ice

1. Frozen Ground... unchanged except it'd freeze wet targets.

2. Shatter... unchanged.

3. Shivgoroth Form... basically the same EXCEPT that it now transforms "rainstorm" into "hailstorm" which does cold/physical damage with chance to cause bleeding. More so, if Rainstorm is on cool-down, it resets it. It does similar with "Drown," turning it into "Freeze" and "Tidal Wave" into "Avalanche." All of these secondary spells would have a chance to freeze.

Water Shield would become Ice Shield but you wouldn't have to reactivate it. It would merely transform.

Ice Shield would have a flat damage reduction in addition to the resistance increase, gain physical resistance bonus, and instead of apply "wet" and "slow," it'd have a chance to freeze ALL enemies that attack you, even ranged enemies.

4. UtterCold... unchanged.

[bta]

Wet status should reduce lightning resistance and raise fire resistance. Water category needs an ice missile that becomes a beam at level 4 or 5. Water high end effects should also include "dry" that could kill with dessicate and temporary slow or freeze effect. And, dry status would reduce fire resistance and raise lightning resistance.