help me plan my Magister

[Tobias Is Queen]

I'm starting to plan out my Magister, which may be premature since I am still learning the game. I have no practical experience with most (essentially all) of these skills, so I'm looking for advice from people who actually use them! If you think I'm way off target here, share your thoughts on what I should be doing.

For my first attempt, I'm trying to go full support/caster. He will probably suck at... well, pretty much everything that's not hiding behind the Darksouls and throwing around insults, orders and spells. Once I get some experience with the game, I'll be more comfortable with trying for a hybrid build, but I don't even know where I would begin at the moment.

Anyways, on to the metrics!

Physical Stats
Agility max, then Toughness. He's gonna be squishy and easy to hit because of my skill selection, but I might as well try to offset this as much as possible. Thoughts?

Mental Stats
15 Leadership & 15 Intelligence required for skills. I'll have 5 more points, but I'm not sure where to spend them.

Martial Stats
I really dunno here. I was thinking max Weapon Skill for the Melee Resistance? I guess I could give him a Long Bow and max Ballistic Skill instead. Advice would be appreciated.

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Spells

Weapons of Destruction (Master)
Chains of Chaos (Master)

Word of Pain -OR- Curse of Chaos?

Weapons and Chains seem like obvious choices for this type of character. I am leaning towards Curse over Word, but I'm unsure how effective the Curse will be. On the one hand, I could make the radius really big (up to 15m with Expert Casting mastered) and debuff their whole team... on the other hand, that's another skill that could go to something else, and also it's a random stat which means this only helps me if it hits one of their important stats. Word of Pain would be more for emergencies and/or opportunities to hit multiple targets... but it means moving my squishy, easy to hit Magister just outside of melee range. Yikes!

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Active Skills

Insult (Master)
War Cry (Master)
Order (Master)

These seemed like the best of the active support skills to me, but I've never used them so who knows? My team will be mostly melee oriented (unless the Dark Gods choose to bless me with a Mutant without arm mutations), hence the focus on boosting melee damage and hit rates. I guess I don't need Order to be mastered (+15% to hit, and double the skill range) if someone has a better suggestion.

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Passive Skills

Channeling (Master)
Improved Casting (Master)?

Channeling seems obvious to me, since I don't want my Magister to explode when he casts spells (or, at least to explode less often). Improved Casting seems like it could be important, but I dunno how often people resist spells. I feel like I don't ever want them to do that.

Final thoughts: the above actives and passives would use all my skill points (without books, dunno if I can really plan for that at this point). That means if I wanted to take, say Expert Casting I'd have to drop something else. The only skill that didn't seem totally worth mastering if you were already taking the basic was Order, which "only" boosts chance to hit by +15% and doubles the range. I'd love some perspective from players who have used any of the above skills/spells and can tell me if they are any good, if I'm on the right track here and/or if they have some better ideas. I'd hate to find out later that War Cry (or something) is actually terrible. Regardless, thanks for reading.

[Dwarfurious]

I think i'd take Acid Spit over either of those, at rank 10 you can cast that three times which will erase the armor values of most enemies as well as dealing good damage on all of them.
I have no experience with Vision of Torment, or what its stun chance is.. But that sounds like an amazing initiate skill, given your characters high initiative he could stun a couple enemies (the stun breaks on damage) which would cancel stances and let your Heroes land easy Mighty Charges on them.
He gets a passive skill to gain more spell points right? I'd take that, lets you master another spell.
Since spells cost OP i'd skip Order considering you'll be spending red points at range already. On a melee leader i took it because sometimes i cant reach an enemy, but a caster can always find something to throw a spell at.
People resist spells TOO often, mastering it will nullify the resistance of most units entirely.
Active skills that spend your SP will be useful, especially from far away.

[Tobias Is Queen]

Good advice, thanks! I'll probably skip Order as you suggest, and I'll give Acid Spit a try.

I was wondering about Veil of Torment as well. The wording of the description confused me, it says you either stun (unless they resist), or apply a debuff that lowers melee/ranged resistance. I was wondering if that means they are sequential (you always get the chance to stun and if they resist THEN they get the debuff) or if they were mutually exclusive (you either get the stun chance or the debuff). Either way, I'll consider it since an early stun could really swing the odds in my favor.

[MrMurLock]

Here's my current build on my Magister which is quite similar to what your planned build.

14/14 Agil, 9/12 Tough
16/18 Lead, 19/19 Int
12/12 Weap, 10/15 Acc

Warcry (M), Insult (M), Sidestep
Channeling (M), Improved Casting (M), Expert Casting, Avoid, Blood Sacrifice (M)
Weapons of Destruction (M), Acid Breath (M), Chains of Chaos (M)

My reasoning:
Max Int to deal maximum damage with Acid Breath if in mage-mode.
Max Agil, Avoid and Sidestep for dodge tanking.
Max Weap for resist + Blood Sacrifice
Warcry, Insult, Weapons of Destruction to support heroes / henchmen.
Chains of Chaos to shutdown enemy impressives / heroes.

[Tobias Is Queen]

Looks good. I should probably take SIdestep, since my agility will be high anyways.

[footpatrol2]

If your going for a mid-range/close magister insult is good to burn blue pills and importantly you can use it while in combat.

[hamstersandwich69]

FYI Veil of Torment hurts ( debuffs or stuns ) everyone in range, including your own guys, so unless you have screwed up and your Magister is surrounded by only enemies, it's pretty useless. You could potentially stun only your own teammates and leave the enemies with a minor debuff- why on earth would you risk that?

[Bror]

Have you thought about a melee resist magister, are playing with him now and he is working realy well. Better than than my darksouls at tanking and have ability to disengage, but only use him like backup if you see flaw in your defense, he is a caster after all. Use this build and I never hafto babysit him, quite nice actually :)

Unit profile: Magister

Attributes:
===========
Strength: 3
Toughness: 9
Agility: 14
Leadership: 12
Intelligence: 15
Alertness: 15
Weapon Skill: 12
Ballistic Skill: 5
Accuracy: 10

Skills:
=======
Blood Sacrifice Basic, Defensive Stance Mastery, Channeling Mastery, Improved Casting Mastery, Awareness Mastery, Shield Specialist Mastery

Spells:
=======
Weapons of Destruction Mastery, Chains of Chaos Mastery, Veil of Torment Mastery

Veil of torment is realy nice when you get the stun effect, but will also affect your units, so if anyone gets crown of bones let them partner up.

[Bror]

Originally posted by hamstersandwich69:

FYI Veil of Torment hurts ( debuffs or stuns ) everyone in range, including your own guys, so unless you have screwed up and your Magister is surrounded by only enemies, it's pretty useless. You could potentially stun only your own teammates and leave the enemies with a minor debuff- why on earth would you risk that?

Cause it can kick ass, and think mastery make chance for stun higher, no prof just a hunch. Dont let your teammates in the field of torment if they have low stun resist easy as pie :)

[Prince Kaine]

If you want to play a funny Mag you can also try that build, my secondary leader in my posses is that guy, I called him Mind Nuke.

phy : 3/15/11 (book of training + physical)
men : 8/16(20 with rune)/18
mar : 12//4/10

Passives:
Defensive stance mastery, awareness basic, shield specialist mastery (best defensive trio for me on nearly everything except maybe merc leaders and SoS leader)
Iimproved casting mastery (you WANT your spell to go through anything)
Knowledge Mordheim mastery (my warband is very VERY quick as I have warguards for henchmen and claw feet heroes, but if you try this build with standards cop team i d recomend heavy armour mastery instead)
Adrenaline rush mastery (3OP+9OP=12OP ..... 3 4 pills spells, that's perfect that's the tag on my spell list)

Spells:
Weapon of destruction basic (f*** buffing, he IS the freaking damage dealer)
Word of Pain mastery (your bread and butter skill. with the correct rune settings you will easily deal 70 dmg/spell. if they gang up 5 on you it's 350 dmg/spell, so 1050 a turn, or 700+an insane debuff that will ALSO protect you)
Chain of chaos mastery (protects your dude against the VERY big hitters, should only be used on main threats as it impairs strongly your dps)

Runes are +4 int on leather armor, spellbinding on a dagger (init purpose mainly, you WANT this guy to go 1st), heroism on the shield (price of the low morale and the necessity to be alone vs the enemy), true grit on the helmet.

CARRY POULTICE THEY WILL SAVE YOUR A**



+ of this build : your magister deals retarded dmg, has a decent defense ergo a good survivability, can do very VERY funny things if the Mordheim curse goes your way, and if the guy still goes OOA, well, he is not that impactant on your warband morale.

- of this build : PVE only (unless you can find a human retarded enough to gang up on a human time bomb), very weak curse resist(but is this really a drawback, not so sure when you see how this build handles it), very vulnerable to lost arm/concussion that will spell you are fire if they happen.





Funny to play, not quite able to solo a lvl 10 AI warband (could only do it with the merc leader), but at least able to blow up half of his warrior solo and walk away to let the crazies finish the job.

[Prince Kaine]

And Bror's comment can also helps you with the build, especially the part about pairing this guy with high stun resists buddies. I chose not to build my warband around this guy (I'm a possessed leader lover), but with the right buddies around him it should be even funnier.

[Tobias Is Queen]

Awesome, thanks for all the different ideas!

One thing I was wondering about was the merits of Defensive Stance over Sidestep or Web of Steel? With high base stats and master Awareness + Shield Specialist you can get Melee Resistance up into the 80s, and it doesn't have an activation limit (unlike Sidestep or Web). However, you could have a decent Melee Resistance AND one of those other stances which gives you a 2nd chance to avoid damage (first they have to hit, then you get a 100% chance to dodge)... so I am conflicted!

[Bror]

Melee resistance work like this, everyone have base chance 80 to hit, weapon skill gives you 2 per point, so lets say you have 80 and the attacker have 15 that gives him 30 to hit. If you activate defensive stance on top of that he only have 10 to hit, pretty nice and works until your round is over.

1 on 1 sidestep works realy well but you need high dodge, more than 100 cause every point in accuracy bypass your dodge chanse with 2. So impressive with 20 will make your 100 to 60, if its a maiden who is using dagger there you drop another 15 so know you are down to 45. But that is extrem case :)

Usually henchmen only have around 10 and heros around 15 in accuracy so think around 120 would be enuff if you wanto use dodge and melee resistance.

Parry works great against foes you can parry against cause give you cheap counter attacks on successful parry, but cant parry against units with armbands and bracers, Here strenght is your skill dropper, workes like accuracy.

Spear is pretty bad against both dodge and parry by the way :)

So advantage would be that you have one defensiv skill against all units that work against infinit attacks,

[footpatrol2]

Veil of Torment is a great spell. Its all about initiative order. Usually for cult the magister and mutant lead the warband in initiate order. Higher initiative characters can be set up to allow your lower initiative damage doers to counter their build weaknesses.

Example: You can build lower initiative glass cannons with low hit with the idea of higher initiative characters either crit stunning or straight stunning targets for your glass cannons, which means your glass cannons hit automatically because the target is stunned. Players build tanks around crit resistance and don't commonly build around stun resistance. Which makes straight stun checks very valuable.

There are warbands out there where a big strategy is to bunch up and defend/grind down. A classic warband that uses this is sisters. All warbands can use this strategy but sisters do it best. In MP a common sister build is a moving brick built to outlast you and grind you down. Its a very strong build and hard to break. Veil of Torment/Acid Breath/Word of Pain/Curse of Chaos/Fireball/Blinding Light/Dread of Aramar/Warp lightening/Warp mists/enshrouding mists are there to help crack that brick.

Building your warband around the same initiative order can be a very very strong strategy and allows you to set up pretty devasting combo's without being worried of interruption. At Least be aware of initiative orders importance. To get the most out of Veil you want your magister to be 1st or 2nd in initiative warband order. Be close enough that most of your lower initiative damage doers can engage the group. Run magister either into combat directly or just outside the brick so you can get max spell effect. Cast Veil of Torment. Ideally your warband is higher initiative then the opponent.

Veil of Torment Is a Can Opening/Shock spell and seems to me to not be used as a sustained combat situation. Again you see the importance of this spell in MP and not so much in SP.

Warbands grouping in MP is extremely common. Obviously the AI doesn't play like other players.

[Wendek]

About sidestep/defensive stance : my Mutant has 95% Dodge (15 Agi + clothing) so I gave him Sidestep since he already has 69% natural melee resist, figues the "second layer" would be pretty strong. The end result is what I think was a bad decision, his Dodge frequently gets dropped into the 60-70 range which is not reliable enough when the enemy hits you for 80+ per hit. In the end the rolls looks like something around this : enemy hit chance : 27 target 35 hit, Mutant dodge chance 78 target 71 fail. With Defensive Stance it would be : enemy hit chance : 27 target 15 fail. Of course there's nothing against very low rolls in that situation but it still looks to me like it would be better on average.

If I get another one with good mutations (i.e. not on the left arm) I'd definitely build him Defensive Stance... and I would pretty much apply the same thinking to the Magister. However, that's if you really want to build a melee resist Magister - I build mine as a pure caster/supporter personally (casts WoD and Chains, uses Order on the Spawn basically) Without a shield you can probably drop the idea of Defensive Stance as melee resist is a stat that only gets really useful if you get at least 55-60% of it.

[Tobias Is Queen]

Excellent information from you guys, thank for your responses. Not sure what direction I will take my Magister in regards to a defense skill, might skip it altogether and go pure support/casting. Enh, luckily I have plenty of time before I have to commit to something. I might take a risk and start building my Mutant towards Defensive Stance + Shield Mastery, since I want to try it out anyways. Here's to hoping the Dark Gods don't decide to bone him with a 2nd arm mutation lol