DDO - Archmage Wizard is fun and really strong now - First Life Wizard Build

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[@tedsunnerton9801]

In defense of Abjurers, being able to hand out SLA Resists, Protects, and zero-component Stoneskins like candy is often appreciated while levelling.

[@MewmewGrrl]

I'm a newer player, but I found that it's a lot like what you mention, that I can just cast something to kill stuff for the same SP as it takes to enchant them, so haven't used enchantments a lot. They seem to be making the newer stuff based on people who have played for years and got to build up a lot of extra power through rebirth, books, etc, but we do have that difficulty select mechanic and hirelings which makes it so I can still do most stuff on my own. I wasn't going to party until I built up at least one rebirth, earned some extras like 32 point characters, and knew what I was doing more. I became interested in D&D by watching these people play a game of it here on KZbin (at Corridor Crew, and it was amazing) and that's why I went to play this. It's an MMORPG, but it is still role playing, so my character won't touch Necromancy as part of that. It doesn't matter how much stronger it might make my character, my character won't go near Necromancy. I do love to play with other people, but have learned that role playing stuff like that often isn't appreciated in MMORPGs, they want you to be as absolutely power efficient as you can. I'm not sure how people feel about that here yet. Hopefully it's not a huge deal and people understand, since it's D&D. The stories and way they're contained in modules and things are interesting. And I do love getting to be feline based, which is why I am playing this instead of the new single player D&D game, which doesn't have feline characters.

[@TexSilverFarmer]

Archmagi + Faydark Illusionist is a fantastic combo!

[@BloodyN1nja]

Especially with Shadowdancer in epics, since the epic strike also scales on illusion

[@garga2]

Enchantment? Enchantment!

[@darryllyle5250]

Thank you for this informative video. I would suggest talking and showing the options of the different built types you suggest.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

Been playing an Archmage for the past year.... love it ! Pure-wizard Archmage (Illusion), taking all the meta magic feats you can to abuse it all on the SLA's. In heroics you'll want to max Archmage (Capstone and T5), dig into Ek for core 2 and a few defensive SLA's, while getting 30 AP's in PM. Then in Epics, go Primal ACID with Magus as your secondary for all the spell penetration. Draconic is a nice splash but isn't really worth more that the Scales of the dragon unless your into casting Ruin. To be honest though, Ruin isn't very cost effective compared the the 6-7 SLA's you can chain cast. Gear wise, set your self up as a DC caster in cloth or light armor and you cant go wrong. Overall DPS is comparable to a Sorc as the force damage is largely unresisted by mobs, while being far more mana efficient. Combine this with all the insta-kills and you'll often out kill the rest of your party, while never needing to shrine.

[@denewst01]

Primal is a solid destiny; cocoon for healing including party members, carrion swarm when you have both acid & poison (shared with negative) has great damage & shard storm with it's auto-targeting shots plus temp HP... the mantle procs are nice & will be shared with your skelly friend as well as oozes & dino friends & you can get all that and still go tier 5 in magus for huge spell pen, the AoE damage thing & comet SLAs, high-stack arcane pulse for a steady DoT, time stop for the big boost & nullmagic aura for a well-timed hard no-sell on magic attacks.

[@4DCResinSmoker]

@@denewst01 But you don't need to take Magnus to T5 to get the spell penetration, just 21 AP's. Besides, the Magnus Cosmos SLA and Time-Stop are hot garbage. Beyond this, Feydark Illusionist isn't worth taking when your focusing on Archmage as the AP cost for the abilities are too high, the SLA's (Knives) costs too much per throw and have too long of a cooldown compared to Arcane bolt / blast. Ever the Fey Capstone is very lack luster compared to Archmage. Not to forget that by spending a large amount in Fey while taking Archmage to T5 would mean giving up PM and EK. Both of which are important for the overall survivability of the build. Sure you can do without EK and use spell failure augments and cloth armor but the PM regen and spell penetration is worth having. Oh and did i mention that my Skelly by level 32 has almost 3k in hitpoints when used with corpse crafter, enteral-furor, Magnus-Grand Summoner, Primal- Shared Mantle and Natural Shielding. Sure it won't kill anything but its job is to act as a meat-shield to keep the odd 1-2 mobs off of me long enough to hold or insta-kill them. Further more the Magus -Living Meteor Swarm has my spell power do to Shared Mantle. During a large fight I'll typicly drop one down and see it chain spam Comet / Meteor on large groups of held mobs.

[@denewst01]

I agree with you about illusionist, which is why I didn't even mention it. If I was warforged I'd probably use it instead of PM & go more heavily into EK but on a fleshy, PM is far preferable. I like magus though & for me it'd be a 50/50 split of whether I go tier 5 in that or primal avatar, but the other would be tier 4 & the active mantle use would be primal avatar regardless because of the way it boosts my meatshields.

[@chungjoe4650]

Currently I have a 2nd life wizard, T5 palemaster and points in archmage and grome. Archmage illusionist is great with those spells useful.

[@chrismcguinness5405]

Thank you sir!

[@ArngrimTV]

This is exactly what i wanted, finally a viable Archmage. Thanks for this. Can live out my fantasy as a Conjuration Wizard.

[@writz_]

Another absolute BANGER from the man known as Strimtom.

[@michaelspivey8896]

I am enjoying my first life archmage evoker. Strimtom, what spells would you choose to replace the core archmage spells?

[@Chaotician69]

So many years ago, I decided to build an archmage wizard, and after a bit, I lost interest because soloing was challenging. I revisited the character and rebuilt him using feydark illusionist, and the levels exploded from 20 to 32 in a few days of average play time. I haven't even respec'd yet since the archmage tree revision.

[@denispeda]

i used this tree on my first wizard life and it was a breeze, you can use a lot of different skills thanks to the sp reduce cost, spell pen and spell dc

[@tay-dor7147]

Would be nice if you showed the enhancement point expenditure if you did include Feydark illusionist...since its mentioned in the video and the build shown in the video doesn't match the written build.

[@navarone4031]

they really need to make playing Wizard (and magic book caster) less tedious, learning spells every life is dread.

[@Strimtom]

I agree, a change like this would be awesome

[@foji-video]

wizard archmage and.. well.. all sorcerer trees are pretty bad, except for a few passives. Yet both classes are fun and strong, thanks to the arcane spell selection imho, so "despite" the trees. I tried once doing a pure melee sorcerer only on elditch knight. Now, it sucked ass, but one thing I noticed: when it came to casting, if i put on casting gear, the difference in DC was minimal (3 DC) and damage was inferior but not that much (maybe 15%? At most 25), without spending a single point in the elemental trees. I should try a wizard the same way :)

[@peterkottke2570]

I've been fast leveling some deep gnome wizard lives so I could get some heroic wizard / deep gnome past lives. And I chose to play an illusionist. 41 feydark Illusionist 19 Deep Gnome 23 archmage. My primary DC focus is illusion with evocation as secondary. My evocation is about 10 DC lower than my illusion. And according to my tool tip the power bolt is using my illusion DC. But playing mostly r1 ..... ( because my PRR and MRR are bad ) Enemies almost never save against my Delayed Blast fireball or Meteor Swarm. Enemies save all the time against the archmage's power bolt. Even compared to Feydark's shadowblades it is supposed to be 2 DC higher. ( it displays that in the tool tip ) But the shadowblade easily out damages it. As it rarely does half damage while power bolt does half damage most the time( unless it is evaded ) I do not think power bolt is working properly.

[@GVS]

Ran an archmage life recently. GCS+arcane blast clears rooms for CHEAP!

[@sebastos-]

What a surprise to find you here! Cheers.

[@BloodyN1nja]

Speaking of bad build ideas, Drow Acolyte of the Skin using only alignment damage (except the fire from pact stuff, of course.) So grab the Utterdark Blast and chain, and then Darkfire from racial tree

[@Strimtom]

I wanted to do a chaos only build that only does chaos damage, getting double chaos hammer from cleric + stricken and consume from warlock. It's a bad idea but when monster die from chaos they poof into pink clouds and it's fun

[@BloodyN1nja]

@@Strimtom That does sound fun. Though, if anything about my idea is a bit better, it's that fewer things resist evil than chaos if I remember right

[@tonytouch072]

Looking forward to a new necromancer palemaster/archmage build. Please make one mate. U pure caster wizard specializing in necromancer.

[@Strimtom]

You can easily adapt the build I posted, just swap the illusion stuff for necromancy and then use necromancy items and epic destiny stuff

[@tonytouch072]

Thanks! will do that@@Strimtom

[@landontolbert5218]

Did they fully fix the smite evil for range? Thought I heard it was only semi fixed.

[@Strimtom]

Semi fixed; smite evil won't be working for a while, apparently it's a larger issue than expected.

[@tylerdalto6168]

Are you every going to post the fighter build? It seems like you have slowed down quite a bit on build videos and other KZbin vids. Hope you are alright

[@SicknessDDOEU]

Are you tumbling because it's a fun mechanic or because it increases your movement speed?

[@Strimtom]

In combat because it's fun, out of combat because movement speed

[@charlesbanian444]

I use to play the game, 2009-2023, it just went to end game content with solo to 20 in most cases. Add to that the micro transactions on everything. It's no longer a newbie friendly game.

[@attackfinch8397]

As good as druid?

[@Strimtom]

no

[@wowitsshit9734]

i literally can not be assed to log on.

[@Strimtom]

Thanks for letting me know

[@wowitsshit9734]

@@Strimtom no problem, I will keep you updated!

[@r8chlletters]

Always appreciated thanks Strim 🤍