Some classes and their strength's and weaknesses.

[CondoSlime]

I've fully beaten the game with a couple classes. I'll post some information about them how well they do in the game

Heavy combat warrior

Early game (lvl 1-20): Probably the strongest of the bunch, I'm only using 2H weapons since I feel like those are a lot stronger than single handed weapons and shields, in the early game a heavy combat arts hero is able to deal a lot of damage in a short time period while up close while resisting a lot of damage.

Mid game (lvl 20 - 35): As your damage and health increase you can beat up quite some enemies. War cry and benefactions go a long way and getting berserk/blessing from light combat arts helps even more, you should have no problem taking out large groups of enemies at your own. Just don't bite of more than you can chew

Late game (lvl 35-50): The rampage of strong punches to your enemy continues. With even more health and damage you can beat your way out of even the most hopeless situations with sheer force and kiting, on top of this you can permastun most single enemies using the hirinstaff if you're lucky and have some dex.

Heavy combat arts seems to be the best class for dealing with enemies without support and is darn good at it.

White mage

Early game (lvl 1-20) white mage has a lot of potential. You can minimize your losses in an army by healing preventing you from spending more resources than needed. Also that one +17% attack speed is quite useful to have. Just beware that there's barely any ways to efficiently defeat enemies while alone.

Mid game (lvl 20-35) There's quite some usefull white spells to use, you could heal up your entire army with area healing or buff up a small group with many different auras and there's some summons to help defend yourself. Also aura of fast walking/fighting speed up your progress a lot. You are still very fragile yourself though and your summons are also not quite so strong.

Late game (lvl 35-50) white mage macerates through the end game. Your aura spells will be so powerful at this point that they double the stats of anyone affected with it. Also there's an aura of eternity which is basically a lot of auras into one. You could put aura of eternity, aura of strength and thorn shield on your heavy combat arts hero and see him deal 300 damage while enemies hitting him take 600. Good luck getting through that enemies.

Mind mage

Early game (lvl 1-20) I'll tell you already that mind mage is the worst class, the shock is low damage compared to any other damage spell. In the early game you'll need to rely a lot on help from others to get through, you can get quite far though by charming/dominating enemies and have them fight themselves to progress.

Mid game (lvl 20-35) at this point enemies start to become such high level that your charm/dominate/hypnotize spells stop working and you need to force your way through which the mind mage is REALLY BAD at. I had to kite litchking anktahar for 5+ minutes draining his mana and casting shock just so I didn't die. I never got past the midgame

Elemental mage

Early game (lvl 1-20) one of the more fun classes. Rock bullet is a cheap damaging spell, ice burst stalls enemies and fireburts does nice damage, eventually you get fireballs for more damage and maybe some other insignificant spells.

Mid game (lvl 20-35) I'm having a blast exploding enemies by hurling balls of fire at them from the sky. Wave/rain of fire/ice make a great addition to your arsenal and a lot of enemies die to its sheer power, In the onyx shores there's a bunch of hazims and 17 fireball casting elves which I beat single-handedly for the first time with a ice/fire rain combo. Sweet

btw wave/rain of rocks sucks. its powerlevel is lower than fire and ice but its mana cost is the same.

Late game (lvl 35-50) my playthrough is still at the mid game but if I had to gamble how it goes, it would be similar to the mid game. Help your army out by destroying/freezing a bunch of enemies with your wave spells and sow chaos through your foes with chain fireballs and rains.

That's about it, I haven't done the rest of the classes but I have done quite some.

[mltnschroeder]

I think the MM mage is tough unless you have BOTH the right build AND you play the right way. Firstly, you need to power-level so as to stay on top of the charming/dominating game. Usually the spell succeeds if your own spell level is at least 1/2 the level of the enemy you want to charm/dominate (ie. you can charm lvl 8 enemies if your charm spell lvl is 4 or higher). If you start to solo maps with your avatar, you are going to screw up your XP gain, and as a result you will lose the ability to charm enemies because your spell levels will be too low and you'll never catch up.

Secondly, the MM illusions don't do damage, but they can inflict magic weapon effects (freeze, poison, manatap, etc) when they hit. So you want an avatar with decent DEX so your illusions hit their targets with magic weapons held in both hands. Some weapons can do multi-effects for even greater results. Also, you want decent STR, since while your illusions are absorbing enemy attacks, your avatar is doing the ACTUAL damage with his/her weapons (or Shockwave). So you want an avatar build that can double-wield melee weapons with helpful magical effects, and tailor your weapon choice to the type of enemy you are fighting (ie. maybe it is better to freeze some types of enemies while manatapping others, etc).

Shockwave is ok against high-INT enemies like briar wolves and dark elves and bosses. Plus you also have an AoE shockwave which is kinda cool too against massed enemies.

Thirdly, your invisibility spell is quite unique in letting your avatar aggro/kite enemies before disappearing (and they forget who their other targets were or where they went). You can pull all sorts of unique fun stunts with this tactic that other classes simply can't do.

Also, the Mana Sacrifice spell is cool if you have your Rune helpers along, since your avatar probably has an insane mana regen rate and can thus donate mana to a friendly Runemage so THEIR spells can be used more often. Use hotkeys to transfer mana where it is needed. So check out those spells your rune helpers have, and start using 'em on steroids.

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by mltnschroeder:

I think the MM mage is tough unless you have BOTH the right build AND you play the right way. Firstly, you need to power-level so as to stay on top of the charming/dominating game. Usually the spell succeeds if your own spell level is at least 1/2 the level of the enemy you want to charm/dominate (ie. you can charm lvl 8 enemies if your charm spell lvl is 4 or higher). If you start to solo maps with your avatar, you are going to screw up your XP gain, and as a result you will lose the ability to charm enemies because your spell levels will be too low and you'll never catch up.

Secondly, the MM illusions don't do damage, but they can inflict magic weapon effects (freeze, poison, manatap, etc) when they hit. So you want an avatar with decent DEX so your illusions hit their targets with magic weapons held in both hands. Some weapons can do multi-effects for even greater results. Also, you want decent STR, since while your illusions are absorbing enemy attacks, your avatar is doing the ACTUAL damage with his/her weapons (or Shockwave). So you want an avatar build that can double-wield melee weapons with helpful magical effects, and tailor your weapon choice to the type of enemy you are fighting (ie. maybe it is better to freeze some types of enemies while manatapping others, etc).

Shockwave is ok against high-INT enemies like briar wolves and dark elves and bosses. Plus you also have an AoE shockwave which is kinda cool too against massed enemies.

Thirdly, your invisibility spell is quite unique in letting your avatar aggro/kite enemies before disappearing (and they forget who their other targets were or where they went). You can pull all sorts of unique fun stunts with this tactic that other classes simply can't do.

Also, the Mana Sacrifice spell is cool if you have your Rune helpers along, since your avatar probably has an insane mana regen rate and can thus donate mana to a friendly Runemage so THEIR spells can be used more often. Use hotkeys to transfer mana where it is needed. So check out those spells your rune helpers have, and start using 'em on steroids.

Cool. I never knew about the magic effects on my illusions. I may then try to get a mind/white mage combo going for buffing my illusions with fast fighting and eternity (for dex and agi)

Also in my playthrough I almost never did maps on my own unless there were no monuments and that one case in the second to last zone in normal campaign with the white kithars which were too high level to charm, I guess I just had to wait longer and defeat more enemies before destroying camps to charm them.

Thanks for the advice

[distantdream]

There is a dark elf monument in the north eastern part of the breathing forest. You have to go through a couple of kithar camps to get there. Every single map in the first campaign has a monument in it.

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by distantdream:

There is a dark elf monument in the north eastern part of the breathing forest. You have to go through a couple of kithar camps to get there. Every single map in the first campaign has a monument in it.

Even with the help of the darkelves I still couldn't beat the kithars. Even just the white ones were enough to destroy my whole army with a mind mage.

[oinkeboink der Schweinekaiser]

Mind magic as well as White magic are more usefull as support abilities, hence your units will be more useful with other units by enhancing their abilities or heal. I really like Mind Magic, because it is challenging and not in a bad way. The obvious use for mind magic is antimagic, crippeling enemy mages and dealing very high damge to them as well as mana recovery. Mind Magic is a good supplement for other magic types especially summoning (you can summon and sustain around 20 units with defensive mind magic 12).
If you go for a full mind magic build I think it challenges your creativity. It offers a variety of tricks, which are indeed very situational, but effective, if you use them right. As even low white magic levels profit from the high charisma you need for Mind magic, it combines really well.

The great problem I often have with mind magic however is, that if you have bad luck, you don´t get the spells you desperatly need. Without a strong charm/dominate spell, one of your best tricks won´t work :/

[distantdream]

Originally posted by pimhazeveld:

Originally posted by distantdream:

There is a dark elf monument in the north eastern part of the breathing forest. You have to go through a couple of kithar camps to get there. Every single map in the first campaign has a monument in it.

Even with the help of the darkelves I still couldn't beat the kithars. Even just the white ones were enough to destroy my whole army with a mind mage.

'The Breathing Forest' in my opinion is by far the hardest map in the TOOD campaign but it is still doable even with a mind mage without the dominate/charm spell.

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

A lot of players decide to just take out most of the camps before activationg the monument but I always feel like doing this ruins the RTS experience. Something that does make life easier is killing all the Kithars in the camp in the North West and then looting the chest. It contains plans for lvl 15 Darkelves which means they can use level 7 spells.

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by mltnschroeder:

Secondly, the MM illusions don't do damage, but they can inflict magic weapon effects (freeze, poison, manatap, etc) when they hit. So you want an avatar with decent DEX so your illusions hit their targets with magic weapons held in both hands.)

I've noticed that you do not actually need to hit your enemies to inflict magic effects. So getting high DEX is optional.

[Blaze]

I tried light weapons warrior. Daggers, specifically. You essentially play for interruption, which is great on a 1v1 as long as you have berseker on. The enemies grunt and their attacks are interrupted because yours are faster. But at the end of the day, the heavy weapons warrior does a way better job by just one-hitting enemies with the high damage and resistance.

I also tried black mage although for only 1 map. It has some crazy damage, but it's hit or miss and costing a lot of mana, unlike the elemental mage where some spells are guaranteed to hit.

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by Blaze:

I tried light weapons warrior. Daggers, specifically. You essentially play for interruption, which is great on a 1v1 as long as you have berseker on. The enemies grunt and their attacks are interrupted because yours are faster. But at the end of the day, the heavy weapons warrior does a way better job by just one-hitting enemies with the high damage and resistance.

I also tried black mage although for only 1 map. It has some crazy damage, but it's hit or miss and costing a lot of mana, unlike the elemental mage where some spells are guaranteed to hit.

There's a spell called area darkness which reduces black resistance in an area. You could use that to get more sucessfull spells.

Also suicide death and canniballize can help conserve mana.

[Gilbere]

Enchanting enemies can be very potent with a mind mage. At the end of TOOD I managed to dominate level 25 blade defenders with the spell charisma making it ridiculously easy to kill the soulforger. The Kithars in breathing wood should be able to control with a 10 dominate or charm so I'm guessing you just didn't level enough or didn't roll spells to get them.
Note, rolling spells is to quicksave and quickload (F7 and F9) until you get the spells you want.
I tend to combine it with white magic since both mind magic and white magic depend on charisma and you can max it. Boons for buffing small groups, life to keep an army alive and enchantment while solo charming lots of enemies, something good for every situation.
Pretty weird avatar though since you have almost no good direct damage capabilities whatsoever except against undead.

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by Gilbere:

Enchanting enemies can be very potent with a mind mage. At the end of TOOD I managed to dominate level 25 blade defenders with the spell charisma making it ridiculously easy to kill the soulforger. The Kithars in breathing wood should be able to control with a 10 dominate or charm so I'm guessing you just didn't level enough or didn't roll spells to get them.
Note, rolling spells is to quicksave and quickload (F7 and F9) until you get the spells you want.
I tend to combine it with white magic since both mind magic and white magic depend on charisma and you can max it. Boons for buffing small groups, life to keep an army alive and enchantment while solo charming lots of enemies, something good for every situation.
Pretty weird avatar though since you have almost no good direct damage capabilities whatsoever except against undead.

So the charisma spell makes it easier to dominate enemies? good to know. In my personal run I just used mind magic and no other types to see how it would preform on its own. Progress rapidly came to a standstill once I couldnt dominate enemies anymore.

[janthailand]

the charisma requirement is very steep initially, so you would have to cripple the mind mage in every other way, but eventually it levels off, so dominate a lv 25 monster requires 140 charisma,
(gear + allocated points combined)
and a lv 42 monster also require 140 charisma, just higher spell lv

[Leonidar]

Well I use MM most of the time in PvP because in PvP the MM is OP when it comes to army against army fight. The MM is probably one of the most usefull skill set when it comes to PvP.
I always use zone of hypnosis lvl20 (I think this is how its called in english) and alone that spell is in PvP worth a ragequit cause its says that it will freeze the enemies unless they get hit then they will get unfreezed but somehow thats not the case. Sooo now that the whole enemie army is frozen you can spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of that AoE Shockwave and you have already won the game ^^.

If the enemie has also a mage you can use the spell confusion (I think its called that) and the mage is unable to use magic for a while ^^

[CondoSlime]

Originally posted by Leonidar141:

Well I use MM most of the time in PvP because in PvP the MM is OP when it comes to army against army fight. The MM is probably one of the most usefull skill set when it comes to PvP.
I always use zone of hypnosis lvl20 (I think this is how its called in english) and alone that spell is in PvP worth a ragequit cause its says that it will freeze the enemies unless they get hit then they will get unfreezed but somehow thats not the case. Sooo now that the whole enemie army is frozen you can spam the ♥♥♥♥ out of that AoE Shockwave and you have already won the game ^^.

If the enemie has also a mage you can use the spell confusion (I think its called that) and the mage is unable to use magic for a while ^^

I think you're talking about area hypnotize and yes. That spell is broken. Instead of applying hypnotize, it applies a different buff with the area hypnotize icon which behaves similar to hypnotize... Kinda, it doesn't get cleared when the affected unit gets hit and when the affected unit dies. Their death animation wont play and you'll see their corpses glitch while standing upwards if you move the camera around.