Practitioner builds?

[MHC]

Anyone get a good feel for practitioners yet? Thus far rogue supported by a fighter seems like an absolute powerhouse with a bard for occasional support, but I haven't been that impressed by practitioners thus far. I'm only 6th level so it could be that they really come into their own later on, but the damage output of a practitioner seems worse than a rogue and it feels like their positioning requirements are more fiddly too. Being able to magic missile without using opportunities is handy but that mainly relegates the practitioner to broom to sweep up the crumbs of enemies left behind after the rogue goes ham.

I will say the levitation spell sounds useful though since I've been abusing the everloving hell out of the fire horn and taunt. Doesn't wipe out entire encounters in one use but it's still really satisfying.

[Silver]

Practitioners seem obscenely powerful. I started as one, got the +3 armor while meditating and the bought the +2 armor compass trinket from the guys at the trow camp and literally solo'd everything until I had a party of 4 as you are literally unkillable with 5 armor at that point spamming fire for AoE and the single targets.

Eventually the armor part got weaker, but by then you want to rush Grand Conjurer (after you get the 2nd meditate so you can get 2 pts per meditate). What this does is relegate your entire party to armor destruction (warriors and rogues) (healing / support for bards) and then your mages just destroy everyone without armor using insane AoE between grand conjure, the basic fire spell, and spamming the initial rapid fire spell to proc grand conjurer even more for cheap. The 2 cost spell magnars mind jab is also really useful, but its way less efficient for damage on unarmored targets.

With a second mage they become more support for the first (levitate to line up better fire spells etc) and with the fighters taunt you get some pretty great movement.

Eventually once you get the + opportunity classes your rogue / fighter can start doing more work (besides cleaning up when he can get free oppurtunity), but its still the mage show for damage as its been from level 1 to my current level 15.

[MHC]

Interesting. Since there's no cooldown on meditation (Unless you take that quick thinking skill) you can try to just keep your mage always meditating and armored up in the front, eh? I'll have to keep that in mind since that sounds like a hoot. Thanks for mentioning it!

[Silver]

Originally posted by MHC:

Interesting. Since there's no cooldown on meditation (Unless you take that quick thinking skill) you can try to just keep your mage always meditating and armored up in the front, eh? I'll have to keep that in mind since that sounds like a hoot. Thanks for mentioning it!

Yep, basically early on your mage is the best tank as they meditate every turn since its a channel of 1 so have 5 armor (with the trinket I mentioned) and a boatload of mental protecting them from everything. That does go down as enemies do more physical damage, but even at level 15 my starting mage is on the frontlines with my fighter and bard.

As things stand I am probably going to end up with a 2 fighter, 1 bard, 2 mage, 1 rogue combo as mages are powerful damage with some decent support options for a 2nd mage, rogues are great at finishing thanks to being able to hit almost anywhere (also trow so its free once per round), while fighters provide a lot of general protection, enemy movement, and armor destruction (I am sort of shocked by how required the 2h armor destruction ability is rogues and warriors can get).