Preface
Hi, originally this thread focused on spell-based Summoner template and Arcane variant. Unfortunately due to recent changes Summoner variant received undeserved nerfs - just because Arcane was deemed too strong. If you are a new player and you want to play as a mage then check out pet-damage summoner build - it's way more consistent and fun to play. I don't have enough experience to cover pet damage variant, so I'll focus on Arcane build. I hope that Luthius will fix spell damage builds soon.Update 24-DEC-2024 - removed Summoner variant, updated Arcane
Pros & Cons
+ Ultimate jack-of-the-all-trades build, you can do all content+ High burst damage, it's easy to secure your looting rights
+ Various utility abilities - teleport, healing, resurrecting, invisibility, walls and other useful Mage spells
+ Can be tanky in PvM if desired, while still maintaining high damage. Excellent for playing as a DPS or even solo in Time Dungeon/Level 4s
+ You can defend yourself against PK's or griefers
- Requires specific aspects and multiple links unlocked - it's a very poor choice for your first build
- Early game can be very rough, you can consider leveling up your aspects and codexes on a diffrent build, such as backstabber.
- Heavily depends on RNG - even with a maxed template you can face out-of mana situations
- Requires lot of micromanagement to squeeze most of your DPS - there is very high skill ceiling in order to play effectively.
Skill Choice
Starting template - Necromancy variant
- 100 Magery
- 100 Evaluating Intelligence
- 100 Arcane
- 80 Wrestling
- 80 Parrying or 80 Alchemy
- 80 Necromancy
- 100-120 Cooking
- 60-80 Meditation or Arms Lore or Focus
Starting template - Inscription variant
- 100 Magery
- 100 Evaluating Intelligence
- 80 Arcane
- 80 Wrestling
- 80 Parrying or 80 Alchemy
- 100-120 Cooking
- 40-60 Meditation or Arms Lore or Focus
- 120 Inscription (or 100 with Eldritch Armor)
Meditation seems to be the obvious choice, however it isn't that good on Arcane builds - you cannot use mana regen books, you cannot actively meditate during combat as well. It works well with Cooking passive regen boost. Unfortunately you need to use leather armor to get most out of it.
Arms Lore is also an option, it reduces cooldown of your Leyline ability, increases chance to Hex your target and gives a small swing speed bonus on top. I think it's only worth using on Blood aspect bone-type armor.
Focus does not increase mana refund anymore, however it helps with your accuracy. Additionally you get swing speed and small damage bonus.
For your defensive layer we are going to use either Parrying or Alchemy. If you don't get hit (for example in the Wilderness), then Alchemy should be enough. Explosion pots will give you extra damage boost, Panacea will save your from bleeds/diseases. If you often stay in melee range then parrying is superior. However you will have to automate drinking your buff potions every 2 minutes.
Both Necromancy and Inscription variants should output the same damage. Inscription requires you to sacrifice 2 link slots and 20 skillpoints (unless you use Eldritch Armor), Necromancy allows you to use damage to diseased links, however you lose long bless/protection spell
Endgame template - Inscription/Necromancy template
- 100 Magery
- 100 Evaluating Intelligence
- 80 Arcane
- 80 Wrestling
- 80 Parrying or 80 Alchemy
- 120 Inscription (or 100 with Eldritch Armor)
- 75 Necromancy
- 85 Cooking
Endgame template - Alchemy/Parrying template
- 100 Magery
- 100 Evaluating Intelligence
- 100 Arcane
- 80 Wrestling
- 80 Necromancy
- 100 Cooking
- 80 Alchemy
- 80 Parrying
Aspects
Book/Weapon:
- Arcane - the best and only viable option for staff users, high tier Arcane is the only thing saving the build from being unplayable mess. There is only one downside - you need to hit stuff to restore your mana. You need to keep killing stuff, so this template might not be the best choice for overfarmed spots. You need some time to trigger couple of procs in order to get that mana regen, if you stop for some reason you need to build up bonuses start from scratch.
Armor:
Recent updates reduced armor list to three, as you need some form of extra mana sustain. For actual armor set, I recommend leather for leveling up, and bone once you have high tier Aspects and fully leveled codexes. Bone does not inhibit mana regeneration that much and it's the cheapest to craft, so you can use more expensive materials. Plate can work too, but a bad mana refund streak might make you unable to even heal itself.- Void - the best option at the moment, you get guaranteed mana every 60 seconds - so you can basically spam Flamestrikes just as well as before the nerfs. Damage bonus isn't that high, but high mana sustain will offset that. Works well against targets with high magic resist, and you get extra healing and defensive bonuses on top. This aspect is definition of consistency, which counters RNG nature of mages.
- Eldritch - it has theoretically the best damage bonus, however the difference is not that high anymore. Refund bonus is too small to provide any sort of consistency. The only redeeming feature of that aspect is Inscription bonus. It still works, but other options are just more fun to play.
- Blood - Dexterity bonus increases your swing speed substantially so you will get more mana. Extra Intelligence offsets bad RNG rolls as you can store more mana. Extra Damage below 50% HP has a nice interaction with all that DoT effects, all you need is to reduce HP with Flamestrikes, and then your damage over time effects will do the rest. It's not bad for all-rounded template, however it truly shines while killing high hp targets, as bleeds need some time to resolve. In the end it feels just like Void Aspect, just a bit less consistent. Relies heavily on Mana Thief procs to function.
Links
- Spell Aspect Chance - it does not provide any substantial damage bonuses, but it substantialy helps with sustaining mana loop. 10 Silver or Gold links are basically build enabling.
- Damage to Bosses/Dungeon Damage links - best in slot but you have to change them for every dungeon.
- Damage to Diseased Creatures - another best in slot option, works well with all aspect combinations, however it requires Necromancy in your build.
- Spell Damage with no Followers - these are way worse than it seems as they scale additively - I will explain what does it mean in the next paragraph. The diffrence beetwen D2D links isn't that high now, but it doesn't pair well with Eldritch armor
- Spell Charged Chance/Damage - better than spell damage links if you can get a full gold or corrupted set. If you have only few slots free then Spell damage are better. Damage bonus is still additive, so it shouldn't be paired with Eldritch armor as well
- Resist Ignore Chance - these links are okay for Eldritch based templates which do not use Necromancy. However if you really want to fight against high MR targets then you can just use Void Aspect.
Additive vs Multiplicative damage scaling
It's very important to know how do the damage bonuses work. Most damage bonuses scale additivelyFor example - let's say that you have:
100 Eval Int - 50% increased spell damage
100 Arcane with T15 Arcane aspect - 105% increased spell damage
Enemy is cursed - 25% increased spell damage
Evil omen with 120 necromancy - 24% increased spell damage
T15 valewood staff - 58% increased spell damage
For example, you cast a spell which deal 100 damage if you don't have any bonuses
If you combine all of these bonuses you will deal:
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 1.05 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.58) = 100 * 3.62 = 362 damage
For example you want to upgrade your chain with 10 gold spell damage when no links. You will get another 67.5% increased spell damage, but with the all bonuses combined you will deal
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 1.05 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.58 + 0.675 ) = 100 * 4.295 = 429 damage
The difference between 362 and 429 damage is only 18.5% despite the fact that these links give you "67.5%" additional spell damage.
There are few bonuses which do stack multiplicatively though. The list includes guild favours, bard buffs, Damage to Poisoned/Barded creatures links and Dungeon/Boss damage links.
For example you want to upgrade your chain with 10 golden damage to diseased creatures links. You will get 37.5% more damage against diseased creatures
100 * (1 + 0.5 + 1.05 + 0.25 + 0.24 + 0.58) * 1.365 = 100 * 3.62 * 1.365 = 497 damage
Different damage multiplier links do add with each other, so there are diminishing returns when runing multiple sets of multi links. Void, Blood or Madness damage bonus are in a separate bucket, and put on top of chain links in terms of damage calculations.
Wizard's Grimoire Upgrades
Most important upgrades:Create Food - extra 25 mana every 60 seconds
Mana drain/vampire - you don't have to max this skill if your mana refund already exceeds 50% cap
Flamestrike - extra 35% damage as damage over time is way better than flat damage bonuses, even if some damage will be wasted while farming
Lightning - hinder is helpful, especially against these spectral marksmans which can one shot you
The rest is up to your personal preference:
Magic arrow/harm will help you finish monsters, Mind Blast upgrade is quite substantial, Greater Heal upgrade will keep your summons / friends / ship crewmates alive
Necromancy skills
The most important thing - DO NOT use Auto-Renew checkbox - it will burn all your symbols very quickly. You have to control these abilities manually, so you can use spell damage bonuses while you are spellcasting, and regenerate your symbols while meditating. You can replace your Flamestrike keybind with a script which will cast Flamestrike and then try to trigger abilities - I recommend setting Corpse Skin and Mind Rot as these two are the most important.- Vengeful Spirit - I wouldn't bother with Necro summons if you don't use Death Armor. I mean you can use Liches instead of Fire Elementals, but there is so little damage boost than you can just use Fire
- Poison Strike - perfect as a finisher, you can resolve up to 8 disease ticks - use this skill while the mob is on low health and has couple of disease stacks on it. It will deal more damage than a Pain Spike later on
- Evil Omen - while it's cheap it comes with a downside. Although health drain can be mitgated by Void or Arcane Armor, there might be some situations where you don't want to take any extra damage. I personally do not bother with that skill for regular farming and I use it mostly for bosses. Damage increase is additive so it falls off at later stages of progression. But if you do some easy content then you can add it to your Necro buff trigger script.
- Corpse Skin - your bread and butter, extra 30% as damage over time. Which is way better than anything else, as it effectively counts as damage multiplier.
- Vampiric Embrace - I don't use it anymore as liches lose maximum hp over time, so you have to resummon them eventually. You can use it with Death Armor, otherwise just do not bother
- Mind Rot - surprisingly, disease damage bonus adds up with Corpse Skin, so with 120 necromancy you will deal extra 54% damage as damage over time. Combined with the Flamestrike upgrade you will deal extra 89% damage, which will melt high HP targets. That's why it's worth to use these abilities all the time, even on regular dungeon monsters
- Blood Oath - It's basicaly only worth running with Death Armor, but even then there might be better options as summon damage is lackluster
- Strangle - I do not recommend using this skill unless you go with Death Armor - the damage bonus is tiny compared to Corpse Skin + Mind Rot. Delayed damage makes everyting worse though, so it's only useful on bosses where it doesn't matter.
- Wither - good for resummoning your elementals and liches/ when you are out of mana. There is a little use on an Arcane Mage, but still it's nice if you need to res someone and not burn half of your mana.
- Pain Spike - if you have a lot of symbols feel free to use this skill to finish the creatures in dungeons. It's good early on, but it doesn't scale that well with various progression systems.
I think that's all, if you do have some questions or ideas feel free to post it in this thread
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