Irene, battlemage

[noob]

I found battlemage very easy to build. Basically you just cram all battlemage sets and you get a good unit, with high damage, 100%+ block, heal, and even cover for allies. In comparison, martial artist has counterattack as the only selling point, from what I see.
Also, Irene's personal masteries seem to be a bit weak. If you forget about them you get a stronger build, which feels a bit off. Maybe some improvements on them?

[Sdric]

Irenes personal masteries want her to wander off and solo-tank / combat whole groups of enemies. I feel like both Alisa (due to strong damage reduction, status iummunity and access to immortality / revive) and Albus (access to Bleed based selfheal and decent Bluk via Wind) are better at this, though.

The role I think Irene fits best is cracking really tough enemies.

https://imgur.com/a/tdtkAU2

This build has ~2450 attack, 70% melee dmg bonus and 15% attack bonus - and thanks to the Combat Gloves special bonus it deals 30% extra damage when the enemies armor is lower than Irene's attack. With Flanking / Exposed bonus the crit rate is sufficient, so is the hit rate. She blocks all melee hits and most ranged hits. If you find the right gear you can sacrifice some block vs. ranged for higher speed while maintaining 100% block vs melees.

(6th form can be swapped for 2nd form to pick off weak enemies like snipers)

She makes a really strong frontline against Detrons and punishes them hard.

So as a conclusion:
I definetely disagree that Martial Artist only has counterattacks as its sole selling point. 100% Block vs melee and high block vs. ranged. Great synergistic gear. Flexible cooldown reduction. Additional damage leaver and good scaling make her a strong force to be reckoned with and a good teamplayer that benefits from a support more than Albus or Alisa.

[MayamSP]

Originally posted by Sdric:

This build has ~2450 attack, 70% melee dmg bonus and 15% attack bonus - and thanks to the Combat Gloves special bonus it deals 30% extra damage when the enemies armor is lower than Irene's attack. With Flanking / Exposed bonus the crit rate is sufficient, so is the hit rate. She blocks all melee hits and most ranged hits. If you find the right gear you can sacrifice some block vs. ranged for higher speed while maintaining 100% block vs melees.

Not sure how much exact crit rate you have but remember that flanking bonus doesn't really work against keen sense enemies. This will become very evident in later maps when more than half of the enemies have keen sense

Originally posted by Sdric:

She makes a really strong frontline against Detrons and punishes them hard.

So as a conclusion:
I definetely disagree that Martial Artist only has counterattacks as its sole selling point. 100% Block vs melee and high block vs. ranged. Great synergistic gear. Flexible cooldown reduction. Additional damage leaver and good scaling make her a strong force to be reckoned with and a good teamplayer that benefits from a support more than Albus or Alisa.

Battle mage has more than 100% block against both melee and ranged enemies so not sure how that's something martial artist can do over battle mage. Flexible cooldown reduction maybe. Great synergistic gear? Dunno what that means, there's good gear for battle mage too. Good scaling what? Battle mage has way better scaling due to support magic circuit. 70-85% damage boost is quite nice but a battle mage can get similar amounts of ESP damage. Also don't forget battle mages also has resistance shred and the absurd multiplier that is magic explosion.

If that might not be enough then battle mage also has insanely high bulk due to iron heart. A schwarz destron easily does 900-1000 damage to my martial artist irene on high risk high reward but only does 200-300 to a battle mage because of it. To further rub salt in the wound battle mage has self HEALING. It's not a pathetic heal like the fire masteries either she can literally full HP heal every turn.

TL;DR I like martial artist too but it's hard to defend that it has that many more advantages over battle mage. Counterattack is the most notable one still

[Starmachine24]

Originally posted by MayamSP:

Originally posted by Sdric:

This build has ~2450 attack, 70% melee dmg bonus and 15% attack bonus - and thanks to the Combat Gloves special bonus it deals 30% extra damage when the enemies armor is lower than Irene's attack. With Flanking / Exposed bonus the crit rate is sufficient, so is the hit rate. She blocks all melee hits and most ranged hits. If you find the right gear you can sacrifice some block vs. ranged for higher speed while maintaining 100% block vs melees.

Not sure how much exact crit rate you have but remember that flanking bonus doesn't really work against keen sense enemies. This will become very evident in later maps when more than half of the enemies have keen sense

Originally posted by Sdric:

She makes a really strong frontline against Detrons and punishes them hard.

So as a conclusion:
I definetely disagree that Martial Artist only has counterattacks as its sole selling point. 100% Block vs melee and high block vs. ranged. Great synergistic gear. Flexible cooldown reduction. Additional damage leaver and good scaling make her a strong force to be reckoned with and a good teamplayer that benefits from a support more than Albus or Alisa.

Battle mage has more than 100% block against both melee and ranged enemies so not sure how that's something martial artist can do over battle mage. Flexible cooldown reduction maybe. Great synergistic gear? Dunno what that means, there's good gear for battle mage too. Good scaling what? Battle mage has way better scaling due to support magic circuit. 70-85% damage boost is quite nice but a battle mage can get similar amounts of ESP damage. Also don't forget battle mages also has resistance shred and the absurd multiplier that is magic explosion.

If that might not be enough then battle mage also has insanely high bulk due to iron heart. A schwarz destron easily does 900-1000 damage to my martial artist irene on high risk high reward but only does 200-300 to a battle mage because of it. To further rub salt in the wound battle mage has self HEALING. It's not a pathetic heal like the fire masteries either she can literally full HP heal every turn.

TL;DR I like martial artist too but it's hard to defend that it has that many more advantages over battle mage. Counterattack is the most notable one still

Agree with everything you mentioned here. Also sure counterattack martial artist Irene can do some absurd damage, but she also tanks here AT incredibly fast as well due to all the counterattacking which doesn't help the class at all.

The two things i find that just makes battle mage better in most cases are
1) Much easier to get high block and damage reduction
2) Gets incredible bulk due to the Healing it has access to which just fully heals as soon as she does something

[ripxdarkness]

I won't really go into details too much, but if you just put a hero set and use Lonely Hero on Irene, as well as Wandering Brawler set and other wandering-type masteries and set Irene off on her own, she gets about 3-5 turns before everyone else and 30% of the map is done in by her alone. Basically, it takes 3-4 characters to equal 1 Irene as a fighter.

I've tried using her as a Battle Mage a few times and it honestly only works wonders if you use a similar build to Carter, but you get far less turns. In this case, you should use the Personal Mastery that increases her damage against criminal organizations- which is pointless in late game tbh. But either way, the battle mage doesn't really fit for either Sion nor Irene.

Usually I just rush ahead with Alisa, and have Albus/ Lenton fall right behind her supported by everyone else, and then have Irene flank 1 side of the map solo and she usually ends up at the other end of the map all by herself before the rest of my team, taking out any/ all elites by herself. Its really strange how broken of a character she is.

Also, the Lonely Hero is actually a really amazing personal Mastery as if you just send her off by herself with that Basic Mastery (The hero one, idr the name) You get a free buff every turn on top of dodging/ damage/ decreasing AT every time you end your turn/ put an enemy out of action/ Taking an action/ recieving damage. But only as a brawler. At best as a battle mage, self heal using Battle mage skills and fire recovery. ***AT BEST***. Don't count on recovering a lot of AT here, tbh. As a battle mage, you just gotta use her as a shield...but Alisa does that better


Also to the guy who uses Albus as a tank, show me how. Lenton is a far better tank imo. Albus, from what I can see, is just a really speedy character that hits decently and fills in the gaps inbetween the character's weaknesses, with no strengths of his own. Basically, no matter how you build him, he just remains a flexable character that is both replacable and irreplacable in every situation. A really strange character especially as the MC.

[MayamSP]

Originally posted by ripxdarkness:

I won't really go into details too much, but if you just put a hero set and use Lonely Hero on Irene, as well as Wandering Brawler set and other wandering-type masteries and set Irene off on her own, she gets about 3-5 turns before everyone else and 30% of the map is done in by her alone. Basically, it takes 3-4 characters to equal 1 Irene as a fighter.

I've tried using her as a Battle Mage a few times and it honestly only works wonders if you use a similar build to Carter, but you get far less turns. In this case, you should use the Personal Mastery that increases her damage against criminal organizations- which is pointless in late game tbh. But either way, the battle mage doesn't really fit for either Sion nor Irene.

Usually I just rush ahead with Alisa, and have Albus/ Lenton fall right behind her supported by everyone else, and then have Irene flank 1 side of the map solo and she usually ends up at the other end of the map all by herself before the rest of my team, taking out any/ all elites by herself. Its really strange how broken of a character she is.

Also, the Lonely Hero is actually a really amazing personal Mastery as if you just send her off by herself with that Basic Mastery (The hero one, idr the name) You get a free buff every turn on top of dodging/ damage/ decreasing AT every time you end your turn/ put an enemy out of action/ Taking an action/ recieving damage. But only as a brawler. At best as a battle mage, self heal using Battle mage skills and fire recovery. ***AT BEST***. Don't count on recovering a lot of AT here, tbh. As a battle mage, you just gotta use her as a shield...but Alisa does that better


Also to the guy who uses Albus as a tank, show me how. Lenton is a far better tank imo. Albus, from what I can see, is just a really speedy character that hits decently and fills in the gaps inbetween the character's weaknesses, with no strengths of his own. Basically, no matter how you build him, he just remains a flexable character that is both replacable and irreplacable in every situation. A really strange character especially as the MC.

I mean, battle mage can equip those brawler masteries too. Battle mage has even more -AT at the end of turn due to magic acceleration circuit. I am not sure what martial artist brings to the table exclusively there. Battle mage can get as fast as 4-10 AT between turns because of that. Unless there's something that martial artist can equip exclusively through the class masteries it doesn't really matter

[x_equals_speed]

I like Albus as a Magic Knight tank because the Blessing of Avalon set is so strong. If a hit would kill you and you have high vigor you spend a bunch of your vigor and cancel it. Combined with the mastery that recovers your vigor to full whenever you take a hit and some other tricks (the item that makes it your turn on taking a big hit, mastery sets to heal on attacking & impulse fields) can let him tank any hit no matter how hard, even if it's a unfair-challenge-highrisk-bosse doing a double attack, and then make it his turn so he can reset the combo by attacking any mook.

[x_equals_speed]

I found building for extreme speed martial artist worked better than battlemage because of the access to dance moves. Joy of Burning is a huge AT recoverer if you've started enough fires, being able to make your front flip that sets fire to everything cheaper in time by having it be the right sort of dance move (you have to leave a slot empty to achieve this) makes it possible to take lots of turns back to back.

0AT builds get boring to play fairly quickly though, I retired the build a while back.

[MayamSP]

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

I like Albus as a Magic Knight tank because the Blessing of Avalon set is so strong. If a hit would kill you and you have high vigor you spend a bunch of your vigor and cancel it. Combined with the mastery that recovers your vigor to full whenever you take a hit and some other tricks (the item that makes it your turn on taking a big hit, mastery sets to heal on attacking & impulse fields) can let him tank any hit no matter how hard, even if it's a unfair-challenge-highrisk-bosse doing a double attack, and then make it his turn so he can reset the combo by attacking any mook.

Recover vigor to full whenever taking a hit what? What's that? Albus taking a hit?

Originally posted by x_equals_speed:

I found building for extreme speed martial artist worked better than battlemage because of the access to dance moves. Joy of Burning is a huge AT recoverer if you've started enough fires, being able to make your front flip that sets fire to everything cheaper in time by having it be the right sort of dance move (you have to leave a slot empty to achieve this) makes it possible to take lots of turns back to back.

0AT builds get boring to play fairly quickly though, I retired the build a while back.

Sure but battle mage has tools to go fast as well is what I am trying to say. Battle mage can use flame explosion on quick succession too if that's what you mean by "cheaper in time". I personally tried berserker + joy of lunacy + berserker seal on battle mage and it is insanely strong. Auto switches to her turn in 4 hits and joy of lunacy clears all of the cooldown on flame explosion as well

[x_equals_speed]

Sorry, I meant recover full vigor on downing an enemy. The item makes it his go whenever he takes a hit, then he downs an enemy recovering his vigor rather than directly recovering it from the hit itself.

There's fast and there's fast. Irene built for speed will clear some maps before a single enemy gets a turn, there'd be no point auto switching when she takes four hits because the enemy won't make four attacks total. It's not much fun to play that way though, I'd recommend doing it once just to see, but I wouldn't use it as a normal build.

[MayamSP]

I know what build you are talking about. I just don't think martial artist has a big role in that tactic. If it's about spamming flame explosion then battle mage can do it even without the dancer stuff and joy of burning is a fire mastery not a martial artist mastery so battle mage can equip it too.

[x_equals_speed]

You can certainly make a very fast Irene using either class, because the core of it is fire, but I found the support for it in MA better than the support for it in BM purely in terms of doing it quickly enough to be able to go from flame explosion straight to your next turn.

Don't get me wrong, I think BM is great and use it most of the time in most practical situations. I'd be up for martial artist getting some sort of boost, but I didn't find it better in every possible way.

[Starmachine24]

I just find Martial Artist too squishy compared to Battle Mage, that is the biggest problem is see. But maybe I'm just bad at building a Martial Artist.