by shade_of_ox on Sun Sep 08, 2019 5:25 am
Magician is probably the simplest EE class to play aside from Bard, who is downright boring, so he's not a bad starting point to learn EE. He's actually quite good in the South, too, since the monsters there are pitiful but for their debuffs.
His core gameplay has already been said: use WEYTWUT to slow your target, refill your mana, then use your mana for BURNDAYRAZ. With just one fireball you max out burning stacks which is already half of your fireball damage anyway, so there's no need to use WEYTWUT again. I don't usually bother meleeing slow enemies as the +20% damage is truly pathetic compared to heavy fireballs.
For the record, heavy fireballs are the trait Avatar's Codex gives you, except since the enemies are slowed they obviously can't retaliate.
Don't forget that SMOKE AND MIRRORS can and should be used against any debuffer you're going to take a hit from. It also works on Curse Bearer, so if you're somehow running resists you can feel free to use it there as well. Aside from that, since EE brings with it Riposte, you'll find no shortage of debuffing targets you'll want to wipe traits from since otherwise you take the debuffs even through fireballs.
As for gods, all Magicians need is mana and health. With their free slows, it's not great to forsake melee fully, so I don't recommend Flames. The best gods are Mystera for Balance, JJ for a big mana bar, and EM for slows. Binlor isn't at all useful for the class's traits, but he does give you two extra glyphs for SMOKE AND MIRRORS, so starting with him and switching to a second god is a viable option too. Starting EM for IMAWAL (this class can do HUGE leveling kills with her) is also a very strong strat.
Don't worry too much about conserving your glyphs for the boss. Glyph conversions are worth at most +40 damage each at level 10. I like to use at least a few glyph conversions in the midgame for leveling, since with proper play (see below) they can rocket you up in levels. Also don't forget that you can slow magic resist enemies reliably with glyph conversions if need be.
More advanced play:
All Magicians need to pull off some really crazy stuff is a huge mana bar. Gnome of Jehora or Elf of anything can pull it off. SMOKE AND MIRRORS gives you a lot of options.
Position a group of good leveling targets near each other so you can slow all of them with each glyph conversion. The idea is that you level catapult repeatedly with fireballs to spare, using glyph conversions to finish off your latest target.
Something like:
- All targets are slowed
- Spend all your mana on each slowed monster for 6*level damage including burning stack pop each. Make sure you can get one monster down to a one shot melee kill. Fireball him last.
- Convert a glyph. Now you have something like 4-6 slowed and weakened targets, and one monster is slowed, burning, and about to level you up. Kill him.
- Now you've leveled up and have a bunch of weakened targets around you. With a bit of popcorn, you can probably level up again, and depending on how things go, you might finish them off with just WEYTWUT (if not, you can always convert another glyph).
Basically, positioning enemies close together and being able to slow multiple enemies at once allows for really strong plays if your mana bar can hold up. It can also work with a hybrid base damage build as Orc, using melee hits in place of fireballs, but isn't as efficient.