"Best" Mage Throughout Game?

[Lomerin]

Hi friends! I'm about to wrap up my dual dagger solo tactician run, and wanna do a solo mage next.

(NOTE: not looking for necro recommendations since necro skills were a big component in my first build)

My understanding is that fire/geo is pretty much the be all end all for end game damage, but does it struggle until then?

Essentially, while I like the idea of being a beast for act 4, I don't want acts 1 and 2 to be a brutal slog, since they're so much of the game.

A lot of you seem more experienced than me so I'm curious if you have mage build / element combo recs that you found fun throughout the entire game, start to finish.. I'd prefer to avoid respec builds, but am not outright against them.

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated!!

[Chaoslink]

It doesn’t get much more complicated than just Aero/Hydro or Pyro/Geo. Those combos synergize best with one another, so it isn’t really worth mixing more into it. If it wasn’t solo, Geo/Necro can be decent though. You just need to be able to invest Warfare and even lone wolf you’d struggle if you try keeping Pyro going too.

[Senki]

Doesn't matter, you're gonna use all of them if you will play solo because of resistances. Either that or you skip every enemy that has resistances against your element I guess.

Pyro/geo does way more damage though and pyroclastic eruption is overpowered and will make everything past lvl 16 a joke.

Overall if you hate having to respec you should stick to physical classes for solo runs.

[Yojo0o]

Aero/Hydro, with a heavy focus on Aero, is a great way to solo the game. As you said, the apocalyptic damage doesn't really kick in with pyro/geo until late game. Early on, i fyou're going to solo, you want crowd control abilities, which Aero/Hydro provides. And there's plenty of high-end damage to go around later on, too.

[AquaPrime]

^

[Spagetwin]

Something that can be usefull :

pyro ( for burn effect ) + geo ( for poison effect ) + torturer talent

Give you a reasonable edge early and tames a bit with progression.

[Senki]

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

As you said, the apocalyptic damage doesn't really kick in with pyro/geo until late game. .

Actually you get it as soon as you craft mass trap deployment. It's the second best magic source ability when it comes to damage and you only need 1 source point for it.
The only thing stopping pyro mages after that are resistances.

On another note, pyro/geo has a way better early game than aero/hydro as well and you get all the cc you need with torturer and worm tremor.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Senki:

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

As you said, the apocalyptic damage doesn't really kick in with pyro/geo until late game. .

Actually you get it as soon as you craft mass trap deployment. It's the second best magic source ability when it comes to damage and you only need 1 source point for it.
The only thing stopping pyro mages after that are resistances.

On another note, pyro/geo has a way better early game than aero/hydro as well and you get all the cc you need with torturer and worm tremor.

Not to mention you also get Dust Blast, a miniature Pyroclastic with blinds. Even if it doesn’t kill all your Worm Tremored targets, they’ll have no sight to actually see and attack anyway. It’s a hard CC without being real hard CC. Just need to bunch the enemy up.

[Pyromus]

If you're going lone wolf, I'd suggest a point/2 with LW into aero for teleport/netherswap so you can maximize worm tremor and the aforementioned dust/trap skills. tactical retreat will likely be in your build, and moving yourself into a spot you want an enemy, then swapping with the enemy is essentially teleportation+haste for the cost of just teleportation.

[cl656]

Full hydro/Aero is the most powerful wizard in this game, with a necromancer wizard being right behind it. With Hydro/Aero, you get great damage, great cc, great support with heals and buffs, and utility spells like teleportation.

Necromancy is right behind hydro/aero, because it offers great damage because it scales with warfare due to being physical damage, has excellent debuffs, some cc, its attack spells have low cooldowns, and it has excellent self heals( based on percentage of damage done to enemy. They are also immune to decay, meaning their self healing from necro doesn't hurt them; necro heals also work with living armor

pyro/geo suck in my opinion, because it will only provide damage and a decent armor spell so long as you are buffing geo. Though, f you are undead, geo will provide good healing, until you get hit with decay.

In my opinion though, wizards, especially when you go solo, need to be able to do more than just damage. Aero/Hydro or a necromancer are what I would bring into a lone wolf playthrough.

[Senki]

I don't get why everyone acts like geo doesn't have any cc when they have the best cc spell in the game( until lvl 16 anyway but after 16 you don't even need cc anymore because they just die).

Necromancers are also leagues ahead of hydro/aero in every part of the game other than act 1.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by cool-dude:

Full hydro/Aero is the most powerful wizard in this game, with a necromancer wizard being right behind it. With Hydro/Aero, you get great damage, great cc, great support with heals and buffs, and utility spells like teleportation.

Necromancy is right behind hydro/aero, because it offers great damage because it scales with warfare due to being physical damage, has excellent debuffs, some cc, its attack spells have low cooldowns, and it has excellent self heals( based on percentage of damage done to enemy. They are also immune to decay, meaning their self healing from necro doesn't hurt them; necro heals also work with living armor

pyro/geo suck in my opinion, because it will only provide damage and a decent armor spell so long as you are buffing geo. Though, f you are undead, geo will provide good healing, until you get hit with decay.

In my opinion though, wizards, especially when you go solo, need to be able to do more than just damage. Aero/Hydro or a necromancer are what I would bring into a lone wolf playthrough.

Eh, death is the best CC and Pyro/Geo has the best means of killing things quickly. Aero/Hydro was probably the best pre-DE, but with the DE changes, Geo is honestly the best period and Pyro just makes it that much stronger. Though you do struggle with fire immune enemies.

[Songbird]

Hydro/aero is very nice early for crowd control. Rain is an absolutely amazing spell to have right out of the gate. But ultimately the best build is the one with the best toolkit for handling any situation, and that means getting level 2 in each element along with Polymorph (Medusa Head is absolutely completely bonkers and it leads to the utterly broken Skin Graft and Apotheosis) and sneaking in Tactical Retreat, Adrenaline and Executioner when you can. Only pump levels into elements beyond these first two when you have access to more spells that need it, as a small additive damage bonus isn't going to do as much as having better tools.

This means you go first with pre-cast Clear-Minded, you have access to Haste, Frost Armor, etc, and between Tactical Retreat, Teleportation, and Nether Swap, you have tons of ways to group enemies for huge AoE spells (which you cast from high ground with your crazy mobility).

Lategame you just group everything so Pyroclastic Eruption one-hits all the big bosses (including skipping the final fight by one-hitting the pre-fight).

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Songbird:

Hydro/aero is very nice early for crowd control. Rain is an absolutely amazing spell to have right out of the gate. But ultimately the best build is the one with the best toolkit for handling any situation, and that means getting level 2 in each element along with Polymorph (Medusa Head is absolutely completely bonkers and it leads to the utterly broken Skin Graft and Apotheosis) and sneaking in Tactical Retreat, Adrenaline and Executioner when you can. Only pump levels into elements beyond these first two when you have access to more spells that need it, as a small additive damage bonus isn't going to do as much as having better tools.

This means you go first with pre-cast Clear-Minded, you have access to Haste, Frost Armor, etc, and between Tactical Retreat, Teleportation, and Nether Swap, you have tons of ways to group enemies for huge AoE spells (which you cast from high ground with your crazy mobility).

Lategame you just group everything so Pyroclastic Eruption one-hits all the big bosses (including skipping the final fight by one-hitting the pre-fight).

Maybe, but that all gets really memory heavy very quickly. You also don't need to have points in Pyro just for Clear mind and all that either. Most spells like Armor of Frost or Fortify should be used sparingly anyway and having access to them only through scrolls should work plenty good enough. Having good access to different tools is one thing, but minimalizing the tools you're investing in is important too. Medusa Head might be good, but with the kind of CC you can get with Aero/Hydro, you shouldn't need it. A Pyro/Geo build might be able to justify it, but you might still be able to get by without. Same as with any build, taking too much memory can be detrimental and wince you're already forgoing the element investment damage, losing out on that INT for memory is going to hurt too. It could work, but it might be better to get more from your spells rather than having more spells to begin with.

[Songbird]

I disagree. The memory translates into additional AP (by giving abilities that directly give you AP as well as giving more mobility and elemental effects that allow you to trigger Elemental Affinity more often). Simply casting more damage spells that hit more targets from better positions and with bigger multipliers (from wet, frozen, warm, burning, etc.) tends to be better than just making your spells hit slightly harder. When you start to have 40, 50, even 70+ int, the effects of a point of int are negligible, while you're easily using 30+ slots of memory with an Apotheosis build. Also, I was literally seeing demand for Armor of Frost more than once per combat (as a debuff removal) up until tier 3 source skills started coming into play and encounters just started blowing up. Note that this is not a Lone Wolf build; it was designed for a co-op game, hence the use of Haste (and Nether Swap becoming even more of a top-tier ability).

I generally leveled 2 int per 1 memory on average (varying slightly based on how important memory was at a given time) for the first ten levels or so and took Pet Pal, Mnemonic and Elemental Affinity as my first three talents.

[Senki]

Originally posted by Songbird:

Note that this is not a Lone Wolf build; it was designed for a co-op game

And that's exactly why it will only be better in co-op. Co-op is messy most of the time because everyone has different ideas on what they want to do in combat and a lot of mistakes happen.

In single player you don't need any of that on a mage because you get to build your entire party and control it, you will have everything you need.

And when it comes to lone wolf solo builds(which is what the OP wants) you need as much damage as you can get.