my enchanter has become a serious burden

[Deepest Blue]

I made Lohse an enchanter, so as to get a variety of magic, but as of the marshes outside of Fort Joy, she has become a severe burden. she can not move far at all in order to attack, barely has any damage in any of her skills or basic attack, zapping 'rain' surfaces she makes doesn't seem to affect the people in the water, and the hail strike ability seems to kinda suck. i'm really at a loss as to what to do. all my other characters can down an enemy in a few good hits, but with lohse she's lucky to even hurt one. any advice?

[Deepest Blue]

after some research, i'm thinking wands might be my best bet? apparently staves are just not as good given how close you need to be. but i'm not sure where to buy some good weapons on Joy isle, so any help with that too would be greatly appreciated.

[OntologicalWeevil]

swap her spells out for support spells. consider wand and shield combo. Staves are best for mages who are going to melee.

[Senki]

Yeah wands are always better than staves unless you go for a ''battlemage'' build. I usually use dual wands in act 1 and then change to wand and shield later on. Hydro is also a pretty weak build on it's own, doesn't have any combined damage spells or good damaging source spells like other mages. It's mostly based on healing and support stuff but you'll end up dealing decent damage later on.

[Chaoslink]

Mages really shouldn’t be attacking with weapons anyway. They perform much better with just spells

[Yojo0o]

The aero/hydro combo is my favorite in the game. I can confirm that they have TONS of power potential.

Assuming you've been leveling up your intelligence, there's no reason skills like Electric Discharge should do any less damage than your other characters' attacks. As others have said, you shouldn't be attacking with weapons anyway.

You're basically a damage/utility beast. Hail Strike is a somewhat janky spell, but it's also a triple-hitting chilling spell, which means you can center it on an enemy with little-to-no Magic Armor and instantly chill -> freeze them with a single ability. Rain makes everybody Wet, which makes them more vulnerable to cold and electric skills. You aren't supposed to then zap the puddle, you should still zap the enemies inflicted by the debuff, the electrified puddles are just a bonus.

Note that, if the other three characters are dealing physical damage, you've set Lohse up to fail. Parties should be either an even split of magical/physical damage, or else focused entirely towards one or the other. If Lohse is the only one able to get through magical armor, then it is no surprise that the other three, working together, are more efficient at taking down enemies than she is.

[Mettle]

Some big pointers you are missing:

1) If you are using staves at all, you are very very misinformed about spell caster weapons. Staves have not been viable for some time. THE SINGLE BEST weapon slot ANY AND EVERY basic caster build can add is actually an offhand SHIELD. With a shield the most natural pairing is wand. Dual wand is not terrible in lower difficulty but if you ever run dual wand you'll have to take special precautions on almost all the big fights to stop your casters from being targeted by assassins and 1-shot.

Keeping the highest level shield equipped absolutely flips this problem on its head. You'll have plenty of magic armor from caster gear and then physical armor AND the ability to restore armor from that active ability shields give you. HUGE for casters. If your shield is big enough assassins that would otherwise 1-shot your caster will sometimes even focus other people entirely instead. very very OP.

2) The absolute best spell you can get early on for any enchanter is Teleport and then Nether swap in the next tier after that. It's a good way to use AP early in a fight while you wait for enemies to bunch up. IF POSSIBLE you should absolutely have a 2nd teleport in the group at all times. 2 teleports allows you to either always make the enemy melee waste a bunch of AP moving back into range or else to move casters/archers forward and stack them on melee allies so you can do massive AOE damage&CC combos.

The second best is Magic shell or a similar magic restore ability. With magic shell you can cure magic CC on allies and undo enemy burn/freeze/shock/etc. At level 4 you should also have the hydrophist's restoration ability to restore health. Both are a big help for your other DPS.

3) A little STR and const on an enchanter goes a long way. NOT A LOT but 1-2 points as needed so that your enchanter can keep up the requirements to wear higher level armor and shields. Besides that small allocation pretty much every other point should go into int and then ofc a moderate amount of memory as needed.

4) If you REALLY want to do more damage (and you're running a proper 50/50 magic-physical split), make sure to balance points in Aerothage as well as Hydrophist. Hydro does decent damage but mostly serves to set up chill/shock/freeze combos or else set up frozen ground to force the AI to turn around and path around, or else to make melees slip and lose their turn.

Aero has much higher direct damage so that's the one you really want to pump up for DPS. I find the best way to do this is to specifically stacking +aero gear ASAP while still spending most your skill points on hydro.

5) It's not just water that can be electrified. Shocking blood, steam, and even doing the reverse and raining on shocked enemies can all cause the shocking ground effect... but you should always be shocking WET enemies STANDING IN PUDDLES and not the puddles themselves. Gotta strip that magic resist ASAP and do the most direct damage possible.

Overall, aero and hydro are VERY strong specs in a 50/50 party once you've started to figure them out. They can do VERY good damage from the start with a couple lucky +aero drops BUT like most spell casters really benefit from the level 8 spells more than anything.
Early on there can just be too few spells to effectively use your caster AP ... which is why having a wand, shield wall, and/or teleport spells to dump AP in to can really help them along early on.

... one of my favorite classes overall tho so strongly suggest you stick with it. Best of luck and hope this helps :)

[Mettle]

As for equipment suggestions ... In the burning pigs area of the swamp, tucked behind the fallen bridge there is a very good Hydro/aero chest piece that will help. Requires 12 str though so you'll need to boost her stats a little for that.

As for wands, early on your best bet is probably to check the vendors. Wands drop often enough but tend to be RNG drops from bosses or chests.

[Pyromus]

If you're just starting out, you might not have realized where to get more aero skillbooks at the stage of the game you're describing. Gawin, the guy who wanted the teleport gloves, sells aero books inside fort joy. If you gave him the gloves, found him, and did his quest, all without buying from him, you're severely limited on aero skills early on. You'd be missing teleport, dazing bolt, and potentially shocking touch and blinding radiance for melee use.

If you are using hail strike and the staff, I'm guessing you haven't gone past the default starting enchanter loadout very much. At this stage, especially since you sound like you're lacking spells, find her two at level wands, preferably electric damage in the main hand. Once you get to the next trader hub, swap out a wand for a shield. You should start most encounters with her by casting rain in an area where the enemies are wet, and she is standing in the water from it, to get the debuff AND to get elemental affinity. From there, ice fan and winter blast work great for some grouped up aoe damage. Similar to the lack of aero spells, it sounds like you might not have bought any new hydro spells either. The blue lizard just next to Griff's area sells hydro books. Stealing is likely to net you more though. Restoration and Armor of Frost are also going to be good ones to have.

But, as stated above, if she is the ONLY person dealing magic damage on the team, you're going to struggle. If you have any strength based characters on the team, I'd suggest getting a point into pyro so you can use sparking swings with them, and potentially grab a point in scoundrel and geo on someone to get venom coating, which works on all physical weapons to add poison damage.

[General Malaise]

I believe it's the hardest class.

I can direct you to Manthro playing it solo, without Lone Wolf, but then he's quite a genius. I don't think he enjoys it much though.

[bli-nk]

Not much advice for enchanter- not really sure what this class is supposed to do really.

Aero-Hydro is very strong once you get some spells though dazing bolt and blind are really the only early damage spells and both are in Aero. Hydro freeze is great BUT... has to overcome magic armor first which vs many of the silent monks and other enemies in Act 1 is fairly easy- later because most Hydro lack damage you really need to pair Hydro with another school- Aero is usually considered the best fit.

Hydro pairs well with Aero, Necro, and somewhat with Geo but can't see it working well with Pyro or Summons outside of only a couple combo which waste much of the potential of the full spell allotment.

[General Malaise]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrZCQ4uY0tw&t=86s

[Mettle]

I just remembered a really good boss for wands in Act 1 -- At about level 7 or so you can attempt to fight Radeca as she drops almost exclusively cast gear. To find her you're going to want to look for an ice dragon on the east-central coast of the swamp map.

At a slightly lower level (5-6) you can alternatively attempt to fight the lady witch in the NW corner of the map, on that little island up top left. There's also a magister shield in the sand on the beach there which is decent for lv 4-5. With this option I also believe there's a second chance at a wand drop if you investigate the beach to the east and discover a secret teleport spot to the east-northeast of there.

[General Malaise]

Originally posted by Leth:

I just remembered a really good boss for wands in Act 1 -- At about level 7 or so you can attempt to fight Radeca as she drops almost exclusively cast gear. To find her you're going to want to look for an ice dragon on the east-central coast of the swamp map.

At a slightly lower level (5-6) you can alternatively attempt to fight the lady witch in the NW corner of the map, on that little island up top left. There's also a magister shield in the sand on the beach there which is decent for lv 4-5. With this option I also believe there's a second chance at a wand drop if you investigate the beach to the east and discover a secret teleport spot to the east-northeast of there.

I found out by watching videos, that you can steal The Blood Rose from her in stealth, right at the start of act 2.

Not only that, but if you change one of your Talents to 5 Star Diner, while you take the potion, you get double benefit.

[Deepest Blue]

Thanks for the input, guys! my only issue now is how low mobility she is, but i'm sure i'll figure something out.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Hadalnaut:

Thanks for the input, guys! my only issue now is how low mobility she is, but i'm sure i'll figure something out.

All mages can benefit from a point in Scoundrel for adrenaline and chloroform, Tactical retreat from huntsman is an option and Spread Wings is alright from Poly. I’d usually lean to Cloak and Dagger from Scoundrel though, if you position out of combat and need to avoid sight cones, no other ability is quite as useful. Though cloaking is entertaining when you cast it and sprint through combat while invisible so it doesn’t draw you in.