Is anti-magic too strong?

[doingwork]

Helping Zigur and going Anti-magic seems basically required if you aren't a class that has inherent spells built in. As someone with a lot of hours and a lot of wins on every difficulty (except for madness), spellcasters seem generally a bit weak compared to willpower based classes, mostly because they get to go into antimagic.

Now, I think non-antimagic could be made stronger instead of antimagic being weaker. It's just, you don't really get much in terms of rewards for NOT going antimagic if you can. The big thing is, you also get access to the Fungus tree (so you get 2 strong generic trees), which for willpower based classes is very powerful and IMO essential for insane runs. The character I have now (Doomed, insane roguelike) gets a ~400 health boost and 20 life per/second from the first talent in the fungus tree alone.

On the flip-side, doing the Derth saving quest as magic nets you a (IMO, generally useless) rune. The rewards are heavily skewed to antimagic's favor. Even the "initial" reward of having access to the ring-maker (which you can still do before going antimagic) is weak since anyone has access to it once they go to the far east.

I've been trying Insane Roguelike on many of the classes right now, and it feels like going antimagic is 100% required if you can.

[Mulzaro]

AM is strong but I have insane roguelike winning characters that didn't go AM even if they could and didn't have much problems. Dissipation rune is really strong, the main downside being the fact that it takes an inscription slot.

AM's main weaknesses are not being able to use arcane items and things like stormshield runes and shatter afflictions. I really hate not being able to use shatter, even if I have double status removing wild infusions.

[doingwork]

Originally posted by Mulzaro:

AM is strong but I have insane roguelike winning characters that didn't go AM even if they could and didn't have much problems. Dissipation rune is really strong, the main downside being the fact that it takes an inscription slot.

AM's main weaknesses are not being able to use arcane items and things like stormshield runes and shatter afflictions. I really hate not being able to use shatter, even if I have double status removing wild infusions.

True, not being able to use shatter afflic is a weakness, but if you get lucky and find a Primal Infusion fairly early it makes up for it. Its true runes are better than infusions most of the time, except for when you have the 2nd Fungus talent; with just 1 point my doomed doubles any regen infusions. So I basically have 200+ healing per second at all times since the cd is 11 and it lasts 11 seconds with just 1 point.

Still, not being able to use shatter afflic is a small price to pay for 60% increased resist in everything besides mind/physical. Resolve being able to mental crit is petty OP. For my Doomed its 31% baseline, but my mental crit is 83% so its basically 62% resist in 3 areas all the time, and a 105 flat DR from AM shield. Who needs stormshield runes when you have that?

[zoutzakje]

Antimagic is strong, but there's a couple of downsides to it. First and foremost it prevents the use of all runes and arcane powered items. Even if you don't like runes for whatever reason, there's a lot of good arcane powered gear out there. And secondly there are classes who are already kind of generic heavy. Adding both antimagic and fungus to them would spread the points very thin.
Sure you can go antimagic on every non-spell class and do fine, but it's not a must have. Some classes like solipsist have a natural synergy with antimagic. But I would think twice before going antimagic on a brawler for example.
Recently I played a Ghoul Doomed (because that's what the random button gave me), meaning I couldn't go psiblades or antimagic. I was still wrecking hard through the game until I messed up in the prides.
Spellcasters are not weak compared to willpower based classes, just different. Take Archmage for example. They don't care about fungus when they can stack 8-10k shields.

So in short, no I don't think antimagic is too strong. Better on willpower based classes than others, sure.

[voronin_mike]

While I am not a particularly strong player and AM too lazy, I have several wins on Insane without Antimagic, including a variety of non-spellcaster classes. So it is not "required" in any way. Zout summed up reasons quite well. And that exact small detail of "except mind" is what regularly kills antimagic players. ;PP

[doingwork]

I understand you can win without it, but the question is why not go AM if you can? The rewards for going AM outway the rewards for not. The arcane items are an OK reason I suppose but its usually not detrimental from my experience. Its rare that I play a class as AM and go dang, can't use that. On the flipside, you can use arcane-disrupting (albeit they are less common for sure) without worrying about runes failing.

Odd that Brawler was mentioned when they are amazing AM candidates. Just 2 generic points and you get free 20-30% resist to most things (assuming you have no mental crit). Having an AOE silence and some more flat DR for just a couple more points is great. The final talent stripping 4 spell sustains can cripple many uniques/bosses.

Required was maybe a poor choice of word here, (although I would argue it is for some classes), but its way too strong not to have. My doomed is going through the caster prides right now and my health doesn't even move because I have 70% resist everything with 105 flat DR before it even scratches me.

[ZirzoR]

Nah.

[IdealPoint]

Brawler is a bad choice for AM. They can't afford to invest in will to keep the shield up. That happens to be the case for a lot of classes that don't have spells. And antimagic rules out some of the better races as well. But it can be good, for a few specific situations. Not exactly what I would call too strong.

[doingwork]

Originally posted by IdealPoint:

Brawler is a bad choice for AM. They can't afford to invest in will to keep the shield up. That happens to be the case for a lot of classes that don't have spells. And antimagic rules out some of the better races as well. But it can be good, for a few specific situations. Not exactly what I would call too strong.

You don't need to invest much in Will. Resolve scales with physcial power too, so 2 generic points (+ the 1 you get for free) and you get 20-30% resist to 3 things all the time. With the super high defense of brawler, literally the only threat to you is mind damage if you go AM. AM Brawler is one of the strongest combo's IMO.

Race limitations sure; I mostly only play Cornac since cat points are way too important for alot of classes (like brawler). I see the "specific situations" are when you don't want to go AM, not the other way around. Like I could see maybe an Archer not going AM since defenses are a little less important, and maybe strong artifact bows/arrows are magic.

But Berserker, Bulwark, Brawler, Marauder, Skirmisher, Cursed, Doomed, Summoner, Wyrmic, really all get MUCH stronger if they go AM from my experience. I just don't see a reason to stay magic.

At the end of the day, I think the reward for saving Derth as magic should be improved; I'm not sure I've ever used the rune I got from that. That would make playing say, a Wyrmic, have some hesitation to not go AM.

[Mulzaro]

Almost every non AM win on roguelike insane has a dissipation rune so there's that.

Also if you almost exclusively play cornacs, AM feels stronger.

[IdealPoint]

I agree that the reward from saving dearth for the mages is generally worse than saving dearth for zigur, mostly because it takes a rune slot. But you don't have to save dearth if you don't want the rune or antimagic.
You playing cornac is your specific choice, and it's clouding your view. I guess antimagic is really good if all I play is cursed krog, right? You need to look at the general usage and utility instead of limiting your view.

Antimagic is a choice.

[voronin_mike]

Brawler is actually crippled by AM. For the same reason as Archer: there are quite a lot of good gauntlets which you lose going zigur. Actually, there is quite a distinct possibility that you won't find good gauntlets which you as AM can use till it is too late. Happened at several of my playthroughs. Cornac with his extra category AND more generic points finds it easier to be a competent AM character, yes. But at the same time you can use these points to take an escort spell category, etc. I don't usually do this but the option is here and can be quite useful for certain builds. And don't forget a possibility to get a Tinker escort - a thing which many people swear by! So, while AM is a strong option for, say, Doomed and impossible for spellcaster classes, it is not a be all end all for most fighter classes. The AM reward for the kill Tempest quest IS somewhat stronger than the mages' one but this is neutralized by more versatility you get with arcane items and neither reward is actually required to win the game in Insane anyway. Maybe on Madness. But neither of us has much experience on this so we can't actually say much about it. ;)

[doingwork]

Good points all around; playing Cornac limits my viewpoint a bit sure. It sucks that many class talent trees that are enjoyable (fears as doomed for example) are locked at lvl 1. I don't want to wait until 20 to unlock fears (or wait until 20 to unlock one with shadows which is crucial for survival).

I do still feel the dissapation rune is too weak but I'll have to give it another look. The removing 4 sustains is worse than the final AM talent since that also manaburns. The removing all magic debuffs from you is nice but not any better than a shatter afflic rune alot of the time, and the 20 sec cd is crazy long where you can often get 100+ shield shatter afflics on a 11-12 sec cd.

I think as well that being AM should limit you in terms of prodigies as a good way for it to feel non-essential. For example, I'm playing a AM summoner right now (finished the doomed) and I am pretty sure I can go Blighted Summoning still. It doesn't seem to restrict that although I haven't tried to actually take it yet. Restricting that so AM can't take that prodigy would make me consider not going AM on a summoner (although I probably still would lol), but as it stands there's no hesitation.

I agree that fighter/rogue based classes its not required but still feels better than not IMO. For the willpower-based classes, you are severely hindering yourself by not IMO. Not impossible to win sure, but still.

[Moasseman]

Dissipation removes 8 magical sustains from an enemy. This is a big deal about the primary targets (Vor & Elandar) who each have far more than 4 sustains on and hitting the "important" ones can mean the difference between living and dying

[Mulzaro]

For this reason dissipation is also a lot better against 10+ sustain random bosses with Fearscape. I actually recently got dunked by one even with the rune because the boss had like 12 sustains >_>

[doingwork]

Oh its more than 4? The wiki is wrong then it still says only 4. Yea that's pretty good then when you run into an archmage+necromancer boss or something.