Ritualist vs Mage

[Puggly the Grey]

Henlo frens, so I’m tryin’ to make a dark lord necromancer type build, but I’m unsure of which class to go wif.

On le one hand, Ritualist has some built in necromancy abilities dat one can unlock, but on le other hand, le actual Staff of Necromancy is only fir mages.

Last but not least, most of le flavour fir a necromancer build comes from le tomes anyways, rather den hero type.

So which class do chu lovely peeps fink I should go wif?

[cernodan]

Yes, exactly, that's the one.

[MattStriker]

Remedial english, possibly?

[TirAsleen]

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Short disclaimer:

If you don't play mystic summoner or better potential you do it wrong, Dark Culture is not the best necromancer culture its mystic, by a very big margin also consider Tome of the Archmage over Tome of the Eternal as your T5 tome, if you play a big and long game - nowdays i play shorter ones so hard to even reach T4 tomes and make much use of them, but if you do, Archmage it is.
All your undead Tome units are considered summons as long as this is the case, mystic culture and Tome of the Archmage will be the best choice here.

Dark is better for melee builds with draft + some chaos and materium tomes.

But you can role play whatever, i just tell you what's effective.
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You can't go wrong with this WK mage build:

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/HeroBuilder.html?u=Wizard,Mage,8:8:a1:a0:96:a2:9c:8e:8d:8c:8b:89:8a:b:a:9:5:4:3,c1:c0:bf:be,166:19b,My%20Build,


With this one you deal max damage early with lightning evocation + channel power.

The rest of the skills will give that evocation dozens of debuffs crippling everyone, so even, if some units survive this they are basicly useless after this hits them.

Wizard King III for spell channelling for cheap combat spells a mystic T2 soother should add this to his spell channeling.

Ritualist is at a bad place, it tries to be too many things and so it excells in none. - the undead tree is too small and underwhelming, you certainly do not need a zombie or bone wyvern, when you command legions of undeads, thats overkilling it. What you need is some battlemages and ranged units in the backline supporting your undead and you need to maximize on damage.

Why heal undeads, if you can just raise them again or just reanimate new ones? They are all expendable, rather protect your Ruler + Heroes, this can be done with items alone and just using abilities with some range.

I would only consider conjure wildgrowth with the ritualist and take all the healing skills coming along with it and go for battlefield restoration.

Personally i do not think this is worth it. Just cast a cheap Blossom of Life spell its in a nature T2 Tome, necromancers can provide haste if you use them.

The elementals can be nice, but last time i used them they were bugged did not start with full ap and were only usable for 2 turns i don't like that.

You have plenty of units anyways with necromancy + some combat summons.

Be smart, be a mage.

[Ananym]

I'm usually taking ritualist. It's safer - ritualists don't have to get in magic bolts range. If you lose your ruler in midgame it puts you three whole turns behind on research, which is almost surrender-worthy. Bone wyvern is great for early clear. Ritualist scales harder with the higher level signatures, and your ruler is always gonna be your highest level leader, so you want to make the most of that.

I would consider taking mage if I'm going seafaring because lightning evo makes mincemeat of sea monsters and it's tons of easy early exp.

Only real downside of ritualist is starting without a mount due to no orb start - is that still true in the beta?

^ this guy is forgetting the absolutely silly battlefield-wide buffs ritualist can apply using the signatures. In terms of endgame value it's much bigger than the dps of a mage, even after the beta mage buffs. Plus, raise undead protects your reapers, which is a big deal.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Ananym:

^ this guy is forgetting the absolutely silly battlefield-wide buffs ritualist can apply using the signatures. In terms of endgame value it's much bigger than the dps of a mage, even after the beta mage buffs. Plus, raise undead protects your reapers, which is a big deal.

I really wonder what difficulty settings you play? Certainly not random realms, medium size + brutal difficulty and major combat advantage?

Mage is the strongest class in the game by a landslide, it snowballs real hard and only needs like 5 skill points to start to be effective.

The endgame is ruled by T4/T5 Tomes, you don't need necromancers or healing of singature abilities, spellcasting takes over entirely. You can even solo with a mage if you got tome of the archmage to surpress unit enchantments with disruption wave and use astral travel. You can summon 2 T3 combat summons per turn and still do damage with explosive manifestation so why drag some weak units with you as a Ritualist and invest precious skill points into that?

Just get your early game good and if you are on a large map, also consider to pump up your research rate to 2k+ before turn 60.

As i said, i am bored with large maps as its always dominated by T4/T5 tome spells.

Endgame for a necromancer is difficult to role play, with these kinds of spells around, it just becomes obsolete. Even the Reapers with cosmic overdrive are just for show...but at least have some impact on the game.

Unlike T2 Necromancer support, quickly replaced by Greater Reanimation Tome spells, in the rare case you lose an unit.

Dealing damage is the best way to keep your units alive in AoW4 and all previous AoW games.
(except you play vs Noctus with major combat advantage, better cast some Blossom of Life spells)

[Ananym]

I play exclusively multiplayer. In my experience players are fully aware that magic is the big boy damage, and therefore will focus hard on resistance on all their units. It's rare to see a mage making much of a dent into the typical pyre templar stack. Players with flying will also make absolutely sure your mage is zoned every turn.

On the other hand, applying half a dozen positive stacks per unit constantly in an 18 unit fight with a ritualist is an almost insurmountable force-multiplier. I agree, the ritualist summons are junk, the bone wyvern is just lovely free clear a few turns in. The plants is useful only as another way to apply your signature buff stack, and Raise Reaper is just a nice necro bonus.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Ananym:

I play exclusively multiplayer. In my experience players are fully aware that magic is the big boy damage, and therefore will focus hard on resistance on all their units. It's rare to see a mage making much of a dent into the typical pyre templar stack. Players with flying will also make absolutely sure your mage is zoned every turn.

On the other hand, applying half a dozen positive stacks per unit constantly in an 18 unit fight with a ritualist is an almost insurmountable force-multiplier. I agree, the ritualist summons are junk, the bone wyvern is just lovely free clear a few turns in. The plants is useful only as another way to apply your signature buff stack, and Raise Reaper is just a nice necro bonus.

Yeah, i only use melees in PvP, but AoW4 has some good mages, the other AoWs never had them. The problem just is Battlemages only really are excellent in tactical combat.

And of course i am talking SP, because im sure as heck Puggly plays only that.

Ritualist simply is not very enjoyable, i am sure there is a build that makes him good, but i don't like the necromancy and summon branch, its underwhelming, more a healer and buffer, i use Ritualist on a Eldritch Sovereign, cause he is stacked with debuffs and damage spells allready.

Some regen stuff can be useful vs decay.

But if any class needs more polish, its the Ritualist. Maybe make more classes to put summons and necromancy skills into.

[Puggly the Grey]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

And of course i am talking SP, because im sure as heck Puggly plays only that.

https://youtu.be/nlsL1ab0_gI?si=KrpUrh7v_ypC1GTd

Nah but chu got me dead to rights doh, I only play le single stuff, mainly cause I’m really bad at dis game, I can barely scrape by against le npcs, so I’d has no chance against actual peeps.

I’m actually…jus kinda bad at games in general, heck I’m bad at stuff in general, my incompetence nearly begs belief.

[TirAsleen]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UImFKFAWFZ8

I won't fall for your deception.