How would you build a battlemage?

[Quadsword]

It seems like a battlemage build would contradict itself at a lot of points.

Weapon of choice would obviously be staves since they're the only melee weapon that scales with intelligence. But then what do you do for armor? If you're a melee fighter, you're going to be up close and personal with heavy hitting melee attackers for most of the game. Intelligence armor gives lots of magic armor but gives a pitiful amount of physical armor, and without any real way to do physical damage and no warfare skills, you're going to a) be very limited in your ability to CC enemies and b) be highly susceptible to CC yourself because of your weak physical armor.

Would the solution be to just drop a few points into strength so you can equip some armor with good physical defense? I know there's fortify, but that seems like a waste to always have to spend 1 AP at the start of combat just to ensure you won't immediately get put on your back by someone with CC skills.

[gregfromthepeg]

FIN points would be better for multiole armour options IMO. Finesse armour is fairly balanced.

You could do a spark striker. Dual wield swords for two sparks or use a staff for big magic damage.

[--Phantom--]

i would prefer to go with the dual wield swords for more damage while the spells i choose mostly for debuff combo like stun, frozen, etc.

[Godwoken Dovahkiin]

Depends on the battlemage tbh, only Pyro and Geo (earth/poison staves are rare) are good candidates for it, Aero should also work but they lack any elemental damage increase on hit like the others, but since a lot of their spells are close range it kinda works (also Vacuum Aura), Pyro being the best due to spark damage increase IMO. Either put some points in STR/FIN to get that balance (Should only matter if you can find any STR/FIN gear with desired bonuses) or use Uncanny Evasion with another character.

The most important thing is buffs that increase on hit damage and skills that have AOE to proc more sparks:

Sparking Swings (Damage increased by Pyro and INT iirc, can crit with Savage Sortilege)
Venom Coat (Poison damage can crit with backstab, damage increased with Geo only)
Enrage
Siphon Poison

Whirlwind
Bull Horns
Battering Ram
Battle Stomp

Onslaught looks cool AF with staves.

As far as Dual Wield Sparks go, I like daggers, Backlash procs Sparks and gets you close for 1 AP and Venom Coat crits with backstab. Also Daggers Drawn can backstab + Venom Coat, unlike Onslaught. You may have to change that later in the game when you get Divine Spark.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Godwoken Dovahkiin:

Depends on the battlemage tbh, only Pyro and Geo (earth/poison staves are rare) are good candidates for it, Aero should also work but they lack any elemental damage increase on hit like the others, but since a lot of their spells are close range it kinda works (also Vacuum Aura), Pyro being the best due to spark damage increase IMO. Either put some points in STR/FIN to get that balance (Should only matter if you can find any STR/FIN gear with desired bonuses) or use Uncanny Evasion with another character.

The most important thing is buffs that increase on hit damage and skills that have AOE to proc more sparks:

Sparking Swings (Damage increased by Pyro and INT iirc)
Venom Coat (Poison damage can crit with backstab, damage increased with Geo only)
Enrage
Siphon Poison

Whirlwind
Bull Horns
Battering Ram
Battle Stomp

Onslaught looks cool AF with staves.

As far as Dual Wield Sparks go, I like daggers, Backlash procs Sparks and gets you close for 1 AP and Venom Coat crits with backstab. Also Daggers Drawn can backstab + Venom Coat, unlike Onslaught.

Pretty much everything here. Uncanny Evasion alone (in my opinion of course) makes STR armor borderline worthless. If you control your enemy well using roots, slows and other effects you can choose who can attack your characters. By keeping a character in melee/shooting range who will only be targeted by attacks you can dodge and keeping uncanny evasion up on them, while preventing the enemy from moving to reach your other characters, they're forced to attack the evading character. With high magic armor, that character can absorb attacks they can't dodge and with just a little extra dodge on gear you can evade 100% of the others. Its literally to the point that STR armor having high physical I see as a weakness to STR builds. Just about every finesse build has a STR counterpart and the finesse builds are objectively the better choice in every case.

Also... Sparking swings is great with cleave on your weapon. Each target hit makes extra sparks. Its why I didn't say ALL finesse builds are superior. The one STR build I could see outperforming the Finesse counterpart is a dual wield warrior with two cleave 1H weapons using sparks and performing a hybrid physical/magic build. Just attacking 3 targets with 3 attacks (assuming saves AP or adrenaline) creates 18 sparks versus a dagger rogue creating 6. Teleporting things into piles and sparking them down would be crazy powerful like this. The only issue is maintaining two 1H weapons with cleave, quite the rare trait on such weapons.

[Stabbey]

Originally posted by Quadsword:

It seems like a battlemage build would contradict itself at a lot of points.

Weapon of choice would obviously be staves since they're the only melee weapon that scales with intelligence. But then what do you do for armor? If you're a melee fighter, you're going to be up close and personal with heavy hitting melee attackers for most of the game. Intelligence armor gives lots of magic armor but gives a pitiful amount of physical armor, and without any real way to do physical damage and no warfare skills, you're going to a) be very limited in your ability to CC enemies and b) be highly susceptible to CC yourself because of your weak physical armor.

Would the solution be to just drop a few points into strength so you can equip some armor with good physical defense? I know there's fortify, but that seems like a waste to always have to spend 1 AP at the start of combat just to ensure you won't immediately get put on your back by someone with CC skills.

There are two general types of Battlemage:

1) STR-Based melee fighter who uses elemental school buffs
2) INT-Based melee mage who uses Staves and Warfare skills.


Type one is basically a fighter who maxes out Warfare and splashes into other schools for all the buffs, and some Memory to use said buffs. They don't bother using magic damage.

Type two makes use of a Staff so they can use Warfare skills (but only enough points for the skills they want to use) and uses the melee-range attack skills from the elemental schools. They don't worry about dealing physical damage (other than MAYBE some Necromancy skills).

You CAN put points into STR to wear armor to help even out your physical armor, it doesn't cost a lot of points, only 4 by the end-game, so that's a very feasible option. Generally replacing the chest piece will be most of what you need.