Looking for variant with strong endgame mages

[Derakon]

Therem: could be, though I really thought I remembered seeing someone with ridiculous wands of Manathrust and Fireflash. After all, who wants to be constrained by their mana supply?

[Amnekian]

Well, given enough experience(Somewhere in the range of 2 billion, I garner) and a few potions of speed, an alchemy character could conceivably make a ring of +200 attacks, if not more. When you get to that point, the quality of your weapon doesn't even matter, nor does your 2000+ SP.

What about the sorceror's fire power?

[AnonymousHero]

What about the sorceror's fire power?

Sorcerors are very powerful, but their HP is reduced by 50%, so you're looking at ~700ish (IIRC) HP at level 50. They are also very restricted on some of the special levels. I think the latter is just papering over bad design of some the spells that make the special levels trivial, and eventually I'd also like to fix that.

(As a comparion an Alchemist can get up to 32K HP... one just has to be very careful to avoid wrap-around and go negative. Thinking about it, this is actually undefined behavior according to the C/C++ standards, so wrapping around might cause demons to come out of the player's nose. Hmm...)

[Amnekian]

Talk about a glass cannon...

[Estie]

Therem: could be, though I really thought I remembered seeing someone with ridiculous wands of Manathrust and Fireflash. After all, who wants to be constrained by their mana supply?

Constrained ? With 32k mana, its virtually impossible to go oom

[Estie]

Talk about a glass cannon...

It is indeed a glass cannon, and play revolves around killing things out of LoS.
Nevertheless its the most powerful class, beating alchemists, posessors, thaumaturgs and summoners with elegance; easiest winner by far.

If glasscannon is not your thing, alchmist mages take longer to get going (very grindy) but the result is an all but immortal mage who 1-shots everything.

Take a look at dumps for ideas.

[Derakon]

Thaumaturgists can be hilariously overpowered; it really depends on if they get any good Area spells and a Blast - Wall spell. "Area" means "fire a large number of ball spells at random tiles near the player"; Blast - Wall means "fill every open tile within a radius of the player with a granite wall". So you spot your target, cast Blast - Wall, then dig your way towards him. Let him into LOS, do another Blast - Wall, and he's embedded in the wall with you in the only open tile. Then you spam Area spells and hit him with upwards of fifty ball spells.

If you're lucky, you'll get Area - Inertia, Area - Sound, or Area - Force, which will slow, stun, or stun+knockback the target, respectively. The knockback doesn't actually move them because they're surrounded by walls, but it piles on even more damage. Even with those, though, there's a ton of elements that basically no monsters resist like disenchantment, holy fire, time, etc., and each ball can deal, if I recall correctly, up to 50d10 damage. I killed Morgoth in 3 castings, once.

Not to say that sorcerors can't be hilariously overpowered too, but they require a lot more work to get up to the "can one-shot practically everything" range, and they're more fragile. And a Thaumaturge will easily have the spare skillpoints needed to invest in whatever normal magical realms they want.

[Amnekian]

Care to explain why you say "if you are lucky you will get x spells"?

[Therem Harth]

Thaumaturgists have been severely nerfed in the AH version. Area spells are decorative now. OTOH ball spells are usable now instead of being limited to 100d1 damage maximum.

Personally I was rather fond of the old, broken Area spells though. Leveling up as a Thaumaturgist was cool; you never knew if the next batch of spells would be great or sucky...

As for the wand-alchemist, if that's possible I'll have to try it. :P

Edit: @Amnekian, Thaumaturgist spells are randomized.

[Estie]

Not to say that sorcerors can't be hilariously overpowered too, but they require a lot more work to get up to the "can one-shot practically everything" range, and they're more fragile. And a Thaumaturge will easily have the spare skillpoints needed to invest in whatever normal magical realms they want.

The forte of the sorceror isnt big damage; while they are exceptionally good early and mid game, they fall off in lategame compared to various other silly combos. The reason they are so good is their versatility. Given any problem, the sorceror probably has at least 3 different ways to solve it.

While other classes can get utility spells as well, the sorceror has _everything_ and boosted by sorcery, so detect traps covers half a level, recall can lift a plate mail, essence of speed gives...i forget, like +40 speed or so (well beyond the point of usefullness), etc etc, its pure luxury.

[Derakon]

Care to explain why you say "if you are lucky you will get x spells"?

Every time you increase Thaumaturgy skill, you automatically learn two more spells. Every spell takes the form of "hit a certain area type with a specific element", where the different area types are things like bolt, beam, ball, etc., and the elements can be literally any damaging element in the game, plus wall creation. Thus the utility of the Thaumaturgy spells depends heavily on a) what elements you get, and b) what areas of effect they have. Spells with the Inertia element, for example, are incredibly good because they apply stacking slow effects to your targets and practically nothing resists it; plain Fire damage is pretty useless in comparison. If you get a Force Beam spell, then its damage is effectively massively multiplied, because Force knocks its targets backwards, which means the same beam can hit a given target many times in a row (and you get bonus damage if you smash them into walls!).

But the real kicker is the Area spell, since it, as described, can hit the same target over and over again for massive unresistable damage. If you got a high-level Area - Inertia spell, them even if your target survives the first cast, they'll be at like -60 speed and won't be able to do anything.