Arcane Wonders Forum
Mage Wars => Mages => Topic started by: silverclawgrizzly on February 11, 2014, 11:53:29 PM
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Noticing that every mage plays differently I was wondering which Mage folks have the most trouble getting going at a functional level? Functional being described as running the way you want it to.
I've been tinkering with a Druid lately and just haven't been able to make her click.
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Functional being described as running the way you want it to.
Going by that definition I'd have to say my Priest. I want him to be unbeatable and he's just not there yet.
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He seems like he'd be a tough one to get down. What obstacles are you running into? I've only tried him once and I got slaughtered.
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Mostly speed. Honestly I haven't had a chance to actually play in awhile, but I just want him to be faster than he is. I'm currently thinking my opening should be sprinting to center and cast battle forge. Then round two get out a holy avenger knight of westlock. That only leaves me 2 mana (plus one on the forge) to work with. I'm thinking I may deploy enchanter's ring and cast something on either myself or the knight. Bear strength on me mage goes a long way before I can get my staff out. Or cheetah speed to get in my opponent's face.
I seem to run into the most trouble though when my opponent is able to get a lot out on the board. So applying pressure early and often is my goal before they can get an advantage.
To be honest, I don't really understand the concept of tempo very well, but I think that is where I struggle. I don't think the holy school is very good at generating tempo while applying pressure.
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Tempo is something I had a bit of trouble grasping for a bit too. Couple of things made me notice it though so that's at least a start:
1. Towards the end tail end of a long fought fight against a Wizard with my Beast Master my opponent put down Mana Siphon dead in the center of the board. Threw me totally off and led to a VERY narrow victory on their part. I was super impressed.
2. Again late in the game against a hyper aggressive Warlord while using my Priestess. I'm nearly out of it and so is my opponent but he's in a better position than me. I sacrifice a Grey Angel and heal for 9 damage! The entire game turns on a dime as suddenly I'm on offense and I win the match.
The problem I'm having with the Druid is I end up nearly soloing the battle as my creatures either get taken out or I don't summon them to begin with as I'm too aggressive. I can't do anything against a turtling team. I'm getting better with the Druid, I think it's really a cool character but it comes down to timing and that has to be perfect.
I'm getting pretty good with the Priestess lately. I'm finding that getting out the holy spawn point early is the way to go for me. I Harmonize it and as soon as I can I give it an Asyrian Cleric. That way I'm able to get out nasty creatures at a fairly decent pace.
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The problem I'm having with the Druid is I end up nearly soloing the battle as my creatures either get taken out or I don't summon them to begin with as I'm too aggressive. I can't do anything against a turtling team. I'm getting better with the Druid, I think it's really a cool character but it comes down to timing and that has to be perfect.
The key to the druid is learning when to switch gears She is one of the most modal mages you can build and play but the only way to be good with her is to learn when each play style is best for her., and when to change modes between attack and defense. This can only be obtained through lots of practice.
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The problem I'm having with the Druid is I end up nearly soloing the battle as my creatures either get taken out or I don't summon them to begin with as I'm too aggressive. I can't do anything against a turtling team. I'm getting better with the Druid, I think it's really a cool character but it comes down to timing and that has to be perfect.
The key to the druid is learning when to switch gears She is one of the most modal mages you can build and play but the only way to be good with her is to learn when each play style is best for her., and when to change modes between attack and defense. This can only be obtained through lots of practice.
Yeah that's kind of how I feel about her. I'm just going to have to really really study her and get the timing down. I suspect that if I can get it down then the sudden change of pace may throw my opponent off. I nearly won with her once but then my opponent literally rolled 12 damage on 6 dice.....but anyway I see Acid Ball and Surging Wave being friends of hers. Also the Dissolve game she basically auto wins in that she has a built in suit of armor and Regrowth Belt on a cantrip. I'm really digging playing her, very fun mage to play.
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It took me 3 different spell book builds with the druid before I got it how I wanted it to play. I normally find spend 2 rounds prepping, dropping mana crystals, lairs, ect. then by round 3 you should be able to cast a high lvl spell or big creature.
Or you can do what my warlock build does and mana starve yourself round 1 so round 2 you can bring at adramalech.
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Hardest mage to get working? Warlord.
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Not to say she's the hardest, but ever since my group has gotten DvN I've found the forcemaster difficult to get working. Quickly built zombie swarms with infinite armor and thornlasher assembly lines can both be difficult for a creature-light mage to deal with.
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That's why you don't deal with them unless you really have to, and go for the enemy mage. Forcemaster is one of the most aggro mages in the game, but she plays very differently from all the mages except for the warlock and Malakai priest, and even then she's quite unique. Most zombies have pest or lumbering, so if you pack a cheetah speed they might find it difficult to catch you when they need to most.
As for the Druid, you need to move across the board to her zone as soon as you can, or she'll start hindering you with vine markers that elusive won't help you with. Alternatively, you can rely on Thoughtspore to move you around, but that means you need to be able to cope and recover well from the death of a Thoughtspore. That might be tricky, but I'm sure it's quite doable.
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With the forcemaster against zombies, take a couple thought spores, give them forcebash and push zombies away. As for the hardest, I would say that the warlord is because EVERYTHING is expensive and my opponent attacks right away. My easiest is the wizard, with rock training
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I am having trouble making a warlord build that I like.
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Forcemaster is pretty easy, just plop down one piece of decent equipment or a mana crystal each turn while sticking back. When you are ready to move? Teleport right into the opponent mage's zone for a quick cast action and then beat them silly. Work a ridiculous number of times to be honest. A couple of walls hinders it greatly if you wait too long.
Throwing down a watch tower in one of the corners and then a few walls to block yourself off to build up defensive creatures, and spam long distance attacks is a great tactic not many can counter too, but if both are turtling it makes the game kind of endless.
The hardest mage for me though was playing as the Warlord the way the expansion recommended I play with him. It is darn near unwinnable to play that way, it is really easy to win with him a lot of the time by simply summoning up some higher cost stuff like a couple of iron golems and then walking across the map with your crew and beating the opponent down with the Warlord throwing down some buffs and swinging his big ol' hammer of hurt.
Forged in Fire's new Warlord seems to bring a much better mix to the table, but I just got the expansion yesterday so I haven't had a chance to mess with it yet to know for sure.
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Forcemaster is pretty easy, just plop down one piece of decent equipment or a mana crystal each turn while sticking back. When you are ready to move? Teleport right into the opponent mage's zone for a quick cast action and then beat them silly. Work a ridiculous number of times to be honest. A couple of walls hinders it greatly if you wait too long.
Speaking as a lover of the Forcemaster, this is probably the worst thing you can do. You want to be in the opponents face ASAP, not hang back. Forcemaster is all about Speed, speed and more speed. Perhaps you are using teleport wrong since you can only teleport 2 zones away from your current location, not anywhere you want. If I saw you hanging back as the forcemaster, I would jump for joy, hang back as well and spam creatures, build up my defenses and now wait for you to enter the gauntlet or just send my creatures to finish you off in your "base". I am really interested to know who you are playing (class-wise) that this works against.
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I love the Druid. Here is my basic strategy with her.
First get out that Vine tree and tree bond it in your corner. Next get out some blood spine walls to protect yourself.
Then get out some mana flowers and Tartaree to put mana on your tree. (also harmonize tree)
Get your Vine-whip staff and meditation amulet
After this stay in your corner with your tree and deploy the 3 vine markers for 2 mana each turn. Then keep the conjuration flowers with attacks and other vine creatures popping up from your vine markers many zones away from you. Use blood spine walls and use your meditation amulet every full action.
There should be no shortage of mana for you. Channeling of 10 plus a couple mana flowers to 12, using meditation amulet every round now were at 15 channeling. Your tree has channeling of 2 now plus your tartaree mana drops.
This gives you a base of 18 mana a turn minus 2 for deploying 3 vines (you can counter this with moon glow amulet and harmonize). Your tree will deploy all your creatures and conjurations, you can add more during your quick cast if needed, but here is the next strategy to use with the Druid.
I cannot tell you how cool her burst thorns incantation is. If you are deploying 3 vines a turn the range on that attack is incredible. Plus it offers a good chance to cause bleed conditions. This just helps keep all your vines dangerous to the enemy mage. use this during her quick casts via mage wand.
OR- you can use her quick cast to cause her vine markers to burst and give creatures the stuck condition. Great when all your creatures are rooted. This is done with vine whip staff.
OR- you can use renewing rain to heal your creatures and remove burns (handy when fighting warlock but why would you use Druid vs Warlock?) again mage wand works great here.
As for some creature tactics. Raptor Vines can be uprooted which is nice to chase enemies down and get a vampiric bite. Vine snatchers are great when behind bloodspine walls because you have a great chance to pull them through it giving them an additional attack and possibly bleed conditions. Your conjurations can attack too which is good because you basically get two actions per action phase here plus putting creatures to sleep or dissolving your opponents armor is awesome. Lastly use your level six Ent of Destruction. He is costly to move around, but I prefer to keep him in my corner because of his Intercept ability.
Basically to wrap it up. The druid has one of the greatest span points (no not that stupid samara tree) because it can also cast conjurations and it can use the vine markers to get ranged spawning. Get up a good channeling through the strategies I listed and deploy vines and creatures everywhere!
I wouldn't call it swarm strategy because most of the creatures are rooted (Great for fighting force master) but rather its a strategy of board domination. Your druid (when equipped with bark skin) can basically heal 4 damage every turn thanks to Life Bond +2. Mana conservation and constant deployment. Your mage will be safe and secure while your opponent will be forced to trudge through your jungle of death...
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I cannot tell you how cool her burst thorns incantation is. If you are deploying 3 vines a turn the range on that attack is incredible.
I too love the druid. Minor note: the range on burst of thorns is always 0-2; it cannot be extended using vine markers, as it is not a spell with the vine subtype. Still a good spell, though.
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Woops played it a little wrong then, but usually I get out there and hurl acid balls because I get bored.
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After this stay in your corner with your tree and deploy the 3 vine markers for 2 mana each turn.
How are you playing 3 markers per turn?
Druid only can play one. The tree allows an additional 1, for 2 markers per turn.
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[mwcard=DNQ08]Vinewhip Staff[/mwcard]
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yeah.... i never use that card
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That card is great because again get another vine market but also giving your enemy the stuck condition is great. Especially when your creatures are rooted
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It took me 3 different spell book builds with the druid before I got it how I wanted it to play. I normally find spend 2 rounds prepping, dropping mana crystals, lairs, ect. then by round 3 you should be able to cast a high lvl spell or big creature.
Or you can do what my warlock build does and mana starve yourself round 1 so round 2 you can bring at adramalech.
Mmmm, tasty druids. Galvitar hungers!! ;D
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Btw, speaking of what zuberi said in regards to the priest, I suspect he plays a bit less offensively than that. He has a lot of access to healing spells, a low dice attack with a chance of daze, and the ability to burn things that get damaged by his light attacks. His holy avenger ability activates when a friendly creature or holy conjuration gets attacked. That means you want your opponent to be the one aggressing. Holy avenger punishes them for attacking your stuff. The priest dazes the enemy to make them less likely to land a successful attack. Every time they hurt you, you hurt them back worse. Every time they fail to hurt you they're still taking some burn damage. And every time they manage to do more damage to you than you do to them, you use healing spells.
I recently played against a really awesome priest that used 2 guardian angels and an asyran defender as the holy avenger. If I tried to attack the angels, they'd defend and guard again really fast. If I tried to attack the asyran cleric, I couldn't because angels have intercept and were guarding. And I couldn't attack the mage either for the same reason. I should have cast tanglevine on the angels while they were guarding, but I forgot to, lol. Was playing a johktari beastmaster.
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Of course, I think the johktari beastmaster is the hardest mage to get right in general. It's really hard to figure out how her abilities synergize with each other. As far as I know, Schwenkgott was the first person to figure her out, and he didn't start playing her on OCTGN and talking about how good she is on the forums until recently, even though she was released about two years ago. Before then, very few people were able to successfully play her how she was designed to be played, if anyone.
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I tried a Johktari Beastmaster Lair build over a year ago. I don't know if that build met your criteria for a Johktari Beastmaster that plays the way she was designed to be played. I didn't talk about it as much as I could have on here, and the thread started with a Straywood Beastmaster build that I transitioned into a Johktari Beastmaster build.
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I tried a Johktari Beastmaster Lair build over a year ago. I don't know if that build met your criteria for a Johktari Beastmaster that plays the way she was designed to be played. I didn't talk about it as much as I could have on here, and the thread started with a Straywood Beastmaster build that I transitioned into a Johktari Beastmaster build.
I don't think I've ever seen it, and if I have I totally forgot. It was over a year ago, after all. Maybe you can play it next time we duel.