Need some help with comming up with a battle mage build

d0m1nusdrak3

With the recent addition of the wizard set not to long ago, I had an idea of wanting to create a battle mage from seeing the wizard staff in heavy weapons. I would love to be able to come up with a build that can combine heavy weapons and ranged magic type attacks together in a very effective all around hybrid build. However, I have no absolute idea what range powers can compliment heavy weapons in a way that it would make it a versitile build like the specialist AT. Anony got any ideas???

agentnx5

Would you be open toward considering combining fire & heavy weapons? Those two have excellent synergy because of thermal reverberation (an energy unlock).

You could either keep the fire on a realistic yellow-orange or a wickedly-awesome supernatural green hue.

Fireball with the unstable accelerant advantage is often underestimated. And while fireball only has a medium range currently (50 ft) it could be a decent opener before you lunge in and start your melee attacks.

Also would recommend adding guard as your block (for theme mostly) and you might want consider Flashfire with the Swealtering Heat advantage (base an instant ranged AoE movement slow effect, very helpful if you're trying to stay close for melee attacks).



But I'm getting ahead of myself, first things first:

1. How (within reason) do you want to play this character? Roughly speaking what did you have in mind? (note: the end result might necessitate different tactics than what you first envisioned)

2. If you are open to a fire & heavy weapons mix, which one (or possibly two) power(s) would you like to focus the build around? Keep in mind the more foci you have, the weaker the build tends to become overall. Specializing is stronger than generalizing in this game. (my main character is an example of an exception to this rule, and only because of AoPM's amazing versatility in bringing things that don't normally work together, together.)


My reason for the recommendations made above was based on using this as the focus power:
Brimstone R2 + Aftershock


It would actually look quite awesome with a staff, and most people tap-spam it. Less "by the power of Greyskull" and more "You. Shall. Not. Pass!" Give it a look and get back to me, I have a feeling you'll love the look and feel with that weapon model and in green effect hue/color. :-)

d0m1nusdrak3

Ohh, heavy weapons + fire powers does seem like a very fun and good synergized combination. With the build though, its would be combining up close and ranged attacks, so mostly I would be mostly focused on crowd control(PVE), I want to be able to do damage but not at the cost of alot of defence(being able to die easliy), what suggestions for this particular Hw/fire build would you have in mind power wise?

wtbcreativity

I'm also trying to create a "battlemage" (of sorts), though my first attempts have not gone quite so well. I've been playing around in PowerHouse while redesigning my other hybrid melee/magic build, and I started wondering if I should scrap my original concept and try something else. Since this (and other) posts had me considering Heavy Weapons as the melee component, I started tinkering with it and eventually started looking outside the obvious HW/Fire combination because I didn't feel like I could make my versions of the build work the way I wanted. As I started looking outside the other powersets and browsing the wiki, the thought occurred to me: "Does Wind have valid synergy with Heavy Weapons, as well?" Has anyone tried Heavy Weapons/Wind before? (I'm having a bit of trouble getting the forum search feature to use AND instead of OR for my searches: instead of Heavy AND Weapons AND Wind, I keep getting Heavy OR Weapons OR Wind and the results are a bit of mess.)

These are the observations I've made regarding the two:
1.) Most Wind powers innately deal only Crushing damage, with the exception of three: Hurricane and Typhoon innately deal Cold and Crushing damage, while Dust Devil has an advantage that makes it deal Cold and Electric damage in addition to Crushing damage. (Energy Storm deals Particle damage, but I'm not counting it as a strictly "Wind" power.) Most of the Heavy Weapon powers deal Crushing damage, with the exception of three: Earth Splitter innately deals Fire and Crushing damage, while Eruption and Brimstone have advantages that make them deal Fire damage additionally.

2.) Following from point one, the damage-type synergies mean that their slotted passives exclude powers from outside their respective powersets: Fiery Form and Unstoppable boost Elemental (Fire, Cold, Toxic) and Physical (Piercing, Slashing, Crushing), respectively. Therefore, choosing one will exclude out-of-set powers from receiving a damage boost. Wind does not introduce this exclusion, however: Unstoppable works as before and Stormbringer increases Wind, Cold, and Crushing damage; both Wind and Heavy Weapons rely primarily on Crushing damage innately. [EDIT: However, Unstoppable grants a greater bonus to melee damage and a much lesser one to non-melee damage, including damage caused by Wind powers. Stormbringer's damage boost appears to be agnostic of melee or ranged sources.] The effects can be admittedly limited based on how heavily your build leans on one type or the other, and generally I notice that, in the Heavy Weapons/Fire hybrid, Fire is chosen largely for Thermal Reverberation and a few select other powers; therefore, Fire not receiving a damage type bonus from one's slotted passive doesn't seem to be particularly detrimental to the build. In the inversion of the build, where Fire is the primary focus and only a select number of Heavy Weapon powers are chosen, it may not be very detrimental if Crushing damage does not receive the damage bonus. (This further assumes that one stays within set for his or her slotted passive, which is not strictly necessary.)

3.) Fire and Heavy Weapon powers only have synergy as far as application of Clinging Flames, which makes them reliable for activating Thermal Reverberation. Wind and Heavy Weapons have synergy with both applying and exploiting Disorientation and Knock mechanics: Wind generally Repels but has Knock Up and Knock Down powers; Heavy Weapon powers generally Knock Back or Knock Down, but also can Knock Up. As a personal observation, I've noticed that Wind Reverberation will not return energy on a Knock but only on a Repel. To illustrate, Wind Reverberation will return power on the first pulse of Hurricane but not when the maintain is finished and the affected targets are Knocked Back. Gust, however, will trigger Wind Reverberation even if it causes a Knock Back due to striking a Disoriented target, presumably because both the Repel and the Knock are applied simultaneously. However, Unstoppable does return Energy on a Knock (applicable to both Fire and Wind hybrids, largely because Heavy Weapons is not wanting for Knock powers) and Wind has no lack of Repel powers. The simplicity of Thermal Reverberation is absent in a Heavy Weapons/Wind build, but theoretically there is no lack of Energy returns when they are needed: a tapped Gust will trigger Wind Reverberation, and a variety of powers from both sets will trigger an Energy return from Unstoppable. [EDIT: Both Reverberations scale with Endurance and Recovery, so I do not think choice of superstat will change dramatically between the two.]

4.) On the subject of Knocks, Enrage does not specify that the Knock needs to come from a physical power in the same way that Form of the Tempest does not specify the critical hit needs to be accomplished with a physical power. This may mean Wind lends itself better to maintaining Enrage, since Fire only has one Knock power that I am aware of - namely, Pyre with the Backdraft advantage - whereas Wind has four: Hurricane on a full maintain, Gust and Typhoon against Disoriented targets, and Updraft which can innately Knock one target but can, with the Dispersal advantage, Knock Up and Repel multiple targets. [EDIT: Outside of Enrage, I do not know if there will be a marked difference in uptime amongst other applicable forms that may be chosen, such as, perhaps, Concentration or the aforementioned Form of the Tempest.]

5.) Regarding Knock strength, I am not certain if I should trust the wiki here: Wind powers supposedly only scale their Knock strength with rank (and charge, where applicable), and only Typhoon makes explicit mention of scaling with Ego. I do not know if this is an omission on the part of the Wiki, in which all ranged knocks scale with Ego and Typhoon gains additional benefit in some way. I would rather err on the side of caution and assume Wind Knocks scale with Ego. Heavy Weapons naturally scale with Strength. I cannot say what this means for selecting Superstats (since I seem to have problems with that on my own): whether choosing Wind would then necessitate choosing Ego and Strength, or if one or the other could be ignored.

6.) As a final point, addressed to d0m1nusdrak3 presumably, Wind has one proper CC effect - Twister - which applies a Paralyze, in addition to the Knock Up and Knock Down effects which function effectively as CC. (Technically, Knock Back does as well, but it may be annoying for you or others to chase down targets that are knocked back instead of held relatively in place).

I highly doubt that I am the first person to have thought of this concept. As usual, I am operating entirely on observation and theory, on a fundamental lack of experience and knowledge. Given that there are only a limited number of powersets to choose from, I suspect that - between launch and now - someone will have attempted this in some form or another. I am curious if my observations are valid, or if perhaps there is something I am missing or misunderstanding. Perhaps the idea will not translate very well into reality. As a final note, I am only using Fire as a basis for comparison because it is the only other Heavy Weapons/ranged hybrid with which I am familiar. It obviously works well enough to be the first powerset thought of when planning a hybrid with Heavy Weapons.

secksegai

Enrage will proc on any knock, ranged or melee within cd limitations (something like 1 per sec)

For a battle mage, your biggest factor is probably going to be your passive. I would suggest taking a lesson from pvp and going the aopm route if you want to lean on the damage output side. Aopm allows you to cover so many holes, and the lack of an innate damage boost means you're no longer concerned by mixing damage types. Running protector mastery, masterful dodge, and resurgence with con as one of your stats (generally secondary) allows you amazing survivability all the same. Better stat distribution, better energy management, etc.

Defensive wise, I wouldn't recommend anything other than Invul, tho defiant is plausible if you're really hurting for rank points. With the new gear, you can easily reach worthwhile dodge/avoid on top of your invul.

Lightning arc is one of the most devastating single target maintains in the game, and its biggest drawback is the self root - which is far less of a problem in pve. It's also pretty mage-like.