Advice for creature/items for Evoker (before game-end content, gods and crazy things)

[Fedup]

I am playing an evoker and I have fun and all. My team is working well so far. I am at depth levels 50-55 at this point (I don't remember exactly, at the medows) and I have grinded for fun and resources.

That kinda lengthy introduction out of the way, here is my question:
Without taking in the late-game content (for this discussion, assume late game content is everything after you end the main storyline which I know for many of you is considered very early) I would like advice on how to better optimize my evoker.

Long story short, I would like to know:
- nice combinations of pre-story-end traits and fusions
- spells that work well with said traits
- item properties, including traits and tricks that work well with certain strategies / traits
- Perks that work well with certain strategies/ traits.

For example, here are some things I have that work well in my opinion:

A: I have the perk that casts spells an extra time and I got a spell property that casts again.
I have the spider occultist trait in my team, where she casts magic missile (twice because of the perk) after a spell. And I also have the centaur that attacks an extra time for each spell cast before he acts.
Spellcaster goes first, casts spell (x3), Occultist intervenes and casts magic missile (x2) and the centaur attacks 5 times with a weapon that does heavy splash damage (70%).
Cave-at: At the levels I am now, there are some #$#@ing creatures that deal to the entire party 30% of the damage they got if attacked. If I press E for turbo and don't stop on time, I am wiped out. Seriously, it has happened to me three times as I get complacent, in battles I could very well win if I attacked a different enemy or if the centar cast a spell.

B: I have a salamander (creature that dies casts spell) fused with a maniac (creature that provokes, dies) and a unicorn (resurrects).
So, when a crippled by debuffs creature provokes, it dies and casts a spell a bunch of times (and the occultist casts magic missile twice).
This ... may seem nice on paper but I have used that less than 5 times. It has saved me once or twice, but I am pretty sure another combo could have saved me more times.



Soooo... any advice for PRE-end-story players?

[Corence]

Djinn Pyromancer (when you cast a spell deal damage to all enemies equal to 30% of Intelligence) fused with Baffle (from a Watcher; all damage deals bonus damage based on Intelligence differential) is available pretty early and one-shot encounters through the story for me. Naturally put a Staff and slot pure Intelligence into it.

Then you pretty much just need a unit with high Speed to go first and cast any spell. If you've grinded for a Mimic that would be a good candidate but otherwise Boots artifact with Speed slotted will probably get you to the top of the timeline since the level differential isn't that big yet.

[{GFG} Kage]

I'm surprised you went a week w/o replies. Regarding the Sparktail Courier's trait, the best advice I can give is to get a Phase Knight on your team. That one is standard even on my end game builds. You can get that from the Refuge of the Magi. It will reduce the damage caused by traits, realm modifiers, and/or debuffs by 70%. 30% of reflected damage reduced by 70% leaves you with a remaining 9%. The retaliatory damage from the Courier (and so many other things) gets a lot more manageable with that on your team.

Instead of holding E for turbo, you set ultra-turbo so you don't need to hold anything for the turbo mode to run, thus the game stops automatically when ever one of your creatures can take a turn. That will give you a better opportunity to respond to threats you notice during the battle w/o risking skipping things because you didn't notice the retaliatory damage.

Arcane Fortitude and a mastery perk or two can do a lot for an evoker. You use the masteries to ensure all of your creatures can equip spells not of their own classes, then stack as many as you can. If you can hit 9 spell gems equipped this way, that's a 90% damage reduction. Evoker can be very tanky because the enemy won't be able to stop you from equipping the spells, or be able to remove them, so the 90% damage reduction is effectively permanent.

You have a clever workaround for clearing debuffs, but there are a number of spells that do the job w/o needing to inch toward your resurrection limit. Dispel (sorcery) for single target removal of debuffs and buffs, Absolute Corruption (death) turns all debuffs on a target into random buffs. Spreading Plague transfers your debuffs to enemy creatures. Mass Dispel (sorcery), and Greater Dispel (sorcery) are spells that hit all creatures, and do the best job. The former strips buffs and debuffs on everything, but the latter only removes debuffs on your team, and only removes buffs on the enemy team. There are other spells of course, but that should give you some options. If you don't have any of those, you can always open the codex, get the spell gem list, and search for the word "debuff" and see what other options come up.

[Radiowavehero]

Haven't seen it mentioned yet so I'll throw in my two cents, "Terra Vulpes" the green foxes from blood grove have pallida "your characters first 3 non-ethereal damaging gems have a 20 % chance to be cast at the start of battle" They are available from the very start so good for early game and late.

That trait plus Mirror image evoker perk and Echo perk can work very well as a first strike to possibly kill some enemies before they have a chance to do anything.

it counts the first 3 spells starting from the top of the list so put the ones you want it to cast above the ones you don't want cast,

Spells like Cyclone strike that do damage to all enemies but split between enemies are good because they are still potent even if only a few enemies are left,

Spells that do damage and debuff the enemy or lower their stats can also be useful (like shattering ice) but I usually go for spells with lots of damage that don't require any specific target. (Steel Storm for example is all around good wheres as scourge spells wouldn't be so great being cast randomly)

Carbuncle (the rabbit monsters) can also work well , giving you a chance to do something based on how many spells have been cast in the current battle.

With your first 3 slots taken up by damaging spells you might need more spells ,an ashmouth cerberus can share 6 spells with everyone else but can't manually cast his own spells, you can consider fusing it with a centaur ranger and making him your spell carrier/melee attacker,

Imp shamans have some useful traits , casting nature spells an extra time or a 50% chance to cast a single target spell on all enemies can be very useful with the powerful nature spells. I forget if this works with cyclone but it would be very good if it did.

[Fedup]

About Terra Vulpes, I used her in the beginning, but she was slowing down everything since I had a bunch of gems and the perk to double-cast. I was also concerned that spamming spells would make some bosses or combos more powerful.


But thank you all for your answers! You gave me a lot to think of! Please keep them coming.

[Radiowavehero]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2190265173 this guide might give you some ideas, or let you see what class you might want to switch to.

Remember to go to the options and turn on turbo mode and then the second turbo mode option so things go faster.

If you get some lucky drops on the spell gems you can get some powerful all enemy hitting gems, then with the terra vulpes and sources of extra spell casts you can steam roll enemies before they even get their turn and if it doesn't finish them off your Centaurs will now attack 4 or 5 times on their first turn.

If you kill everything before the turns even start you don't need to worry about defenses.

The spider occultist pinging things with magic missile slows things down but if you can find a way to make those low damage spells trigger something else it might be more useful.

If you don't like auto casting with vulpes try looking for monsters who grant spells and improve the spells, like the lich class enemies or imps that I mentioned previously.

Djinn types have a lot of spell based traits aswell.

You can also try looking at it differently , instead of trying to make your spells hit hard and kill things you can try to make your spells debuff enemies or buff yourself and then have monsters fused with the centaur to get the extra attacks from spells cast, turning the centuars into your main damage source.

Also don't forget to enchant the gems themselves , you can make them more powerful , have a chance to cast twice , change their type or what stat scales their damage.

Take a look at your evoker class perks and try to plan around them. Mirror image , echo , efficiency , burst , all of these work together to make you cast more spells , and do more damage from the multicasts.

The evoker has a lot of passives that a simple "allows you to equip life/chaos/nature spells" etc etc, ignore those and "arcane power/arcane fortitude" until later get the main perks that boost your multi casting first.

If you really aren't into the whole multi casting spells don't feel bad about switching classes/starting a new game.