Strongest mage build + gameplay

[Incocknito]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-GXpP1DbrM

Sometimes it's annoying to get the Necro dot on enemies, but when it's on them - total annihilation!
For necro immune enemies get bleed on them and spam Ice Blast.
Bosses die in a few minutes or even seconds

have fun :D

Edit: holy...., I didnt saw the armor Researcher's Coat leech effect.
With that and the black city maw ring, you can just forget about the necro dot and skill crit node. Just spam all day from everywhere!
But exchange the "The Last Restort" ring with something different. At higher stacks the dmg you get from the black city maw ring increases and can kill you.
The dmg increase doesnt seem to be high as it appears anyway - so whatever

Thanks for the hint fsarfawer from youtube :D

[Water Shaper John]

I wanted clean mage playthrough on first go so i went evoker, it's extremaly satisfying, now will try spellblade on second. I dunno about third go, because i am not fan of necromancy, but we will see

[MadDjinn]

Originally posted by Water Shaper John:

I wanted clean mage playthrough on first go so i went evoker, it's extremaly satisfying, now will try spellblade on second. I dunno about third go, because i am not fan of necromancy, but we will see

The necro side focuses on the 'ranged' attack laser beam usage with very few actual necro abilities. You can leech with the beam, and also generate mana at will (vs via attacks). There's also a late game unique staff that splits the beam to hit three enemies at the same time.

So it's nice that there are three options for mage play, using different mechanics. Not so nice that 'elements' got tied to specific things.

[Incocknito]

"small" update

[mutantbeth]

I did a complete necromancy leech build with the special staff that nulls health options and the belt that grants ult charge instead of health on potion use. really fun

[=DeadShot=]

Originally posted by Water Shaper John:

I play as evoker, my build is basing on getting as much mana regen and total mana from items as possible, then i get frost resistance and use rune to add my resistance % to damage. maw of black city to make all my abilites hit crit. Coral blade dagger to froze enemies after bomb trigger. Rune to add +300% mana regen, so i basically spamm all ice abilities really fast, and In this built i deal 500 - 1500 dmg with entropic orb AoE, 300 - 900 with shadow whirl AoE, and 500 - 900 with basic staff attack and 2500 - 6500 with loaded staff attack. So pretty much like in video. Ends fights on hardest difficulty really fast. The only problem i had with dragons resistant to ice, but then i just changed staff and abilites to fire, and was fine, just a little more effort.

What is the name of the rune?

[Kaedys]

Originally posted by =DeadShot=:

What is the name of the rune?

Surge. Passive effect is +10% mana regen, active effect triples mana regen (so x3, ie. +200%, not +300%).

That said, why stack so much mana regen and depend on a rune when Death Caller literally doesn't care about mana at all, and in fact, benefits from their mana being empty (Enchanted Athame dagger)?

[Fitness Lauch]

I regret picking mage to be honest, the class is completely broken. I have enough mana to constantly spam something which gives me perma iframes, heals me and deals several thousand aoe damage per action. Playing on nightmare and while the start was fun it turned into smashing two buttons, ignore weapon attacks completely and facetanking everything.

Just use that spellblade perk that explosion spells cost only 50% mana, get that crit ring, the medium armor which heals when you get an advantage and the amulet which restores mana on a crit whenever you use an explosion spell. Then bind one explsion spell of your choice to 1 and another one of your choice to 2, smash these buttons and never press something else again.

[Kiya]

Originally posted by SpockEndil:

Originally posted by crispy:

Shield throw warrior is also great. 5-10k damage per bounce (you hit the weakpoint a lot for some reason).
You can also make a warrior build that can spam a lot of are abilites.
Traditional 2h sucks big time though.

Interesting. The one thing I didn't like about trying to play a shield throwing warrior is that I couldn't figure out how to aim at weak points. I never paid attention to whether it was automatically hitting them.

I'll have to try a Captain America playthrough next time.

I am loving the shield throwing so far - as long as I manage to hit something with it anyway.

I also find kicking enemies halfway across the map or off ledges extremely satisfying for some reason.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Originally posted by Fitness Lauch:

I regret picking mage to be honest, the class is completely broken. I have enough mana to constantly spam something which gives me perma iframes, heals me and deals several thousand aoe damage per action. Playing on nightmare and while the start was fun it turned into smashing two buttons, ignore weapon attacks completely and facetanking everything.

Seems to be a common assessment. From what I gather, mages are a pain to play in the early game but are super-strong late game.

I played a melee-happy duelist rogue. In the late game, most basic foes were little threat as I could reliably inflict AoE critical hit + necrosis via a skill followed by a guaranteed critical hit + freeze with a charged attack, but certain highly mobile enemies (e.g. the final boss, the possessed candlehop) were tedious to deal with.