Please rate my reaver build ideas

[Marec]

Having thought a bit about possible builds, I have a few that I would like your opinion on.
How viable are they / how can they be improved?

Druidic Reavers
Free Society Choice, maybe Fabled Hunters, wonder architects, etc.
Roots-> Zeal/Pyromancy-> Faith/Fertility-> Glades-> Cycles-> Cleansing Flames-> Paradise-> Prosperity-> Goddes of Nature

Dark/ Undead themed build:
Free Choice with Reaper/ Cult of Personality + Cannibals/Raiders without
Horde->Zeal/Discipline/Pyromancy->Souls->Doomherald->Great Transformation->Cleansing Flame->Calamity->Reaper/Chaos Channeling->Eternal Lord

Demon Reavers
Mana Addicts + Ruthless Raiders/ Ritual Cannibals (with zeal otherwise free choice)
Zeal/Horde-> Evocation-> Revelry-> Artificing-> Amplification-> Devastation-> Demon Gate-> Calamity -> Chaos Lord

Materium Reavers
Mana Addicts + Free Choice
Enchantment-> Warding/Evocation-> Revelry-> Artificing-> Amplification-> Transmutation-> crucible-> Dragons-> Creator

Industrial Wizzards
Mana Addicts + Ritual Cannibals
Warding-> Evocation-> Revelry-> Summoning-> Amplification-> Pandemonium-> Astral Convergence-> Calamity-> Archmage

[✧Starshadow Melody✧]

Naturey stuff isn't the first thing people would usually think of when they think of firearms- that's exactly why I like that one!

[Blanch Warren]

Faith may be t1, but it isn't usually considered a starting Tome. It requires a lot of farms and stability to pay off it's research for one thing.

Tome of Souls is largely beginning or nothing. Materium reavers has a pretty reasonable startup, but I don't personally understand what you're trying to do with it.

Tome of enchantment does nothing for mana addicts. It has no combat spells, and reavers are pretty strapped for mana anyway.

[Marec]

Originally posted by ✧Starshadow Melody✧:

Naturey stuff isn't the first thing people would usually think of when they think of firearms- that's exactly why I like that one!

Me neither, it took me a while to consider it. But it shouldn't be a bad build. You have early summons to help with map clearing, a healthy amount of ranged dmg buffs, a good support unit with Cleansing and Pyre Templars to complement the Reavers lacking frontline.

[TirAsleen]

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=F,31,25,d0,58,50,19d,b5:a4:aa:f0:bd:b9:b0:150:af,000000,s,a,h,n:r

You can use the faction builder.

I would never take mana addicts for any faction, there are better society traits.

I'd like to play Reaver as agressive as humanly possible, for this i go deep into the Chaos Tomes and Empire Tree. The tree does not care about your city managment, but uses skills that help you while into enemy territory and conquering.

Tome of the Horde is usually not as amazing as it was in vanilla, but still is a good choice, if you want to attack other factions immediatly at the first 5 turns. Might clear some guard nodes before doing that, though but not too many.

Summon Irregular is especially useful to summon your T1 units on the fly, they are actually pretty good and have stats of a T2. Profilic Swarmer and structures to rank up your units are also needed, and build a smith's guild, so you produce T1 with legendary rank and summon T1 at elite/champion rank.

Fury of the Horde + chaos amplifier gives all your -hopefully- legendary rank units +4 strength in combat.

Some few shadow and astral tomes are taken to improve your empire trees and because they also have nice spells and enchantments to support the reaver culture.

Its important to build some support T2 and the white witch battlemage of tome of cyromancy to benefit from siege magic and other enchantments that debuff your enemies.

Mass Dragoons and later if you have enough imperium Warbreeds, the siege breaker is essential on very big maps when you cannot field as many heroes at once with siege breaker trinkets to attack multiple cities and construct devastator sphere + flame burst weapons, that likes to be combined with both chaos affinity hero skills for stacking 10% crit rating and artisan armaments

Demon Gate for the demonkin transformation, its the only one that does a good deal of damage and increase your mobility.

Demonic onslaught and call Avatar of Chaos(your ruler) should finish the job, make sure our Ruler is the strongest unit on the map with the best possible gear and summon him in the back of enemy armies.

Its thematic and effective and thast how i play.

[IlluminaZero]

Mana Addicts can be fun with Dark and/or Shadow Infinity. Basically - Cull the Weak + Mana Addicts == 10-25 healing per attack. Which can further be stacked by turning your race into Undead. (Addendum: Or perhaps not - This is one of my future faction concepts TBH but... on double checking... Both "Undead" and "Mana Addicts" give "Life steal." Which implies it won't stack...?)

Shadow affinity is so you can use Death Magic to assure you basically have infinite combat casting.

Oddly enough in this scenario going Champion might actually be better. Particularly if you are using auto battle. To PREVENT channeling allowing the AI to exhaust your combat casting too fast.

But as before I think this is more a Dark or Industrial (with Shadow) thing.

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Spawnkin is actually amazing with Magelocks early on. Focused Aggression + 20% damage from Spawnkin is REALLY notable. The Mercenaries aren't half bad either and; if you go Golems or something like that, then the malus of Spawnkin for the frontline is completely irrelevant.

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I think the fundamentals of Reaver is basically:

1) Have a means of reliably applying Marked
2) Have good ranged units to benefit from "Focused Aggression"
3) Have a plan to both maintain a front line and/or move away from aggressive melee (flying will always be a thing after all...)

If anything its a bit annoying that Glade Runner is such a perfect unit for the Reaver culture design lol. Having more Steampunk theme Tome units that AREN'T Golems might be nice.

[TirAsleen]

You could even use tome of scrying for mental mark, but this urge to maximize the use of marked for reavers quickly falls off in later stages of the game.

I would only care about mobility and damage some cc in the earlier stages which reavers have + some synergy with Tome of Cyromancy.

[Marec]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Faith may be t1, but it isn't usually considered a starting Tome. It requires a lot of farms and stability to pay off it's research for one thing.

Yes, you really should not start with Faith. But if you pick it later you can, as you said, get a decent value out of it with its empowered research post/additional research building. Mostly I would build it if I need a good support unit with purification.

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Tome of Souls is largely beginning or nothing.

As for Tome of Souls, it's mostly there for its Shadow affinity and as a way to cleanse your troops. Occasionally, you can also fill casualties with Bone Horrors.
Shadow Reavers are more about empowered flank attacks and undead sustain.

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Materium reavers has a pretty reasonable startup, but I don't personally understand what you're trying to do with it.

The Materium Reaver build revolves heavily around Dragoons, and almost every tome will buff them in some way.
Revelry for Skald to replace Wardens and Bloodfury Weapons Artificing for Iron Golems as a frontline option and Artisan Armaments, Amplification for Research and Amplified Arrows, Crucible for Meteor Arrows and Dragons for more Sustain and Purify.
Incidentally, Amplified Arrow is the reason for Mana Addict, as each lightning bounce also heals your unit.

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Tome of enchantment does nothing for mana addicts. It has no combat spells, and reavers are pretty strapped for mana anyway.

Yes, it is a bit awkward, but Reaver spells can get around that. Early mana forge can help with mana and production.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Marec:

As for Tome of Souls, it's mostly there for its Shadow affinity and as a way to cleanse your troops. Occasionally, you can also fill casualties with Bone Horrors.
Shadow Reavers are more about empowered flank attacks and undead sustain.

Tome of Souls is included in every Battlemage build, as soulbinders give 20% more damage to them, its a mandatory Battlemage and Necromancer Tome. Granted you plan on doing any kind of damage. It also provides 2 good T3 undead units and enables souls to collect to get cheap reanimations on heroes, a few souls compared to about 1000 mana resurrection is quite the difference.

Its one of the best T2 Tomes in the game for multilple purposes. Just make sure your Reavers are using some Battlemages, White Witch's frozen has synergy with the Overseers subdue.
But, to be fair, if i see a lot of shadow and nature rulers on the map, i'd rather build Pyromancers and let Harriers handle the gimmick with subdue.

[Marec]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Mana Addicts can be fun with Dark and/or Shadow Infinity. Basically - Cull the Weak + Mana Addicts == 10-25 healing per attack. Which can further be stacked by turning your race into Undead. (Addendum: Or perhaps not - This is one of my future faction concepts TBH but... on double checking... Both "Undead" and "Mana Addicts" give "Life steal." Which implies it won't stack...?)

I suppose not, but I haven't tried it yet.

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Spawnkin is actually amazing with Magelocks early on. Focused Aggression + 20% damage from Spawnkin is REALLY notable. The Mercenaries aren't half bad either and; if you go Golems or something like that, then the malus of Spawnkin for the frontline is completely irrelevant.

Oh, you nailed it with Spawnkin, those % increases can add up to a LOT.
A legendary (+20%) undead magelock with spawnkin (+20%) led by a mortal champion with unholy leader (+10%) and offensive formation (+10%) hitting a flanking shot (25%) with the sneaky race trait (+25%) against an enemy with 5 marked stacks (50%) is going to hurt. A lot! Even better when the shot crits (+25%).

This was sort of the idea behind the Shadow Undead build.
Assuming I go for Sneaky and Strong as Race traits, and fulfil all the conditions above, and have Zeal, Infernal Might and Cursed Missiles Enchantment active:
A magelock 34 base dmg + 4 zeal dmg + 4 strong dmg + 8 cursed projectile + 10 infernal might + 12 shadow flanking --> a casual 72 base dmg with a 160% increase --> 230 dmg without a crit and 287dmg with a crit. Obviously without taking mitigation into account, but magelocks already ignore half of that.

Edit: forgot an additional +50% if you gain +5 Strengthened

[Marec]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

Tome of Souls is included in every Battlemage build, as soulbinders give 20% more damage to them, its a mandatory Battlemage and Necromancer Tome. Granted you plan on doing any kind of damage. It also provides 2 good T3 undead units and enables souls to collect to get cheap reanimations on heroes, a few souls compared to about 1000 mana resurrection is quite the difference.

Its one of the best T2 Tomes in the game for multilple purposes. Just make sure your Reavers are using some Battlemages

Well I totally forgot about soulbinders.
What do you think about this reaver battlemage build ?
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=20:146:1f,2d,a,183,58,e9,f6,a4:a3:9a:b3:a2:b2:150:9e:9c,000000,s,a,h,n:r

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Marec:

Well I totally forgot about soulbinders.
What do you think about this reaver battlemage build ?
https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=20:146:1f,2d,a,183,58,e9,f6,a4:a3:9a:b3:a2:b2:150:9e:9c,000000,s,a,h,n:r

I would include Tome of Artificing, or you lack siege magic for your battlemages and you do not have any useful siege projects.

If you try that on a large map with about 50 cities all with 155 points in walls, it will be hard to make any progress before you are falling asleep.

And why inner lightning is this some roleplay flavor? :)

I am playing unknown realms with unknown rulers and brutal difficulty, combat A.I. Major advantage so something static like inner lightning won't do much, if nobody is weak to it or uses it.

My society traits with my game settings must work in all situations not just niche ones.

So before i tell you if your build is nice, i need to know what its made for?

Its allright, if you wanted to roleplay some asian themed thunder gods, like in big trouble in little china, but would be pointless in my game settings, cause its possible, no rulers are even using lightning damage or are weak against it.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by IlluminaZero:

Both "Undead" and "Mana Addicts" give "Life steal." Which implies it won't stack...?)

Indeed, these do not stack. In fact, nothing in this game stacks unless specified (like Strengthen / Fortune / Regeneration etc).

TBH i already wanted to make a thread about redundant sources for abilities, currently there are tons of duplicate+ effects which simply don't stack.

[Marec]

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

And why inner lightning is this some roleplay flavor? :)

Not really, I wanted to diversify the traits I chose, but it's actually there to counter the ethereal weakness against lightning for my racial units.

Originally posted by TirAsleen:

So before i tell you if your build is nice, i need to know what its made for?

I'm unsure about it myself. In the beginning, I was just going to build around the Archmage's Tome and its Timestop spell, but then I got ambitious and wanted to make a really well-rounded/powerful build with a focus on battle mages instead of the more classic magelock units.