anyone playing tank mage?

[imperterritus]

From the threads here, "sampire" would seem to be the current flavor of the month. I remember a long time ago when the tank mage was a popular template, and I'm thinking of building one now. His skills would be something like:

Race: Human
120: Swords, Parry, Resisting Spells
100: Tactics, Magery,
80: Eval Int, Meditate

He'd primarily be a fighter, but magery would offer a lot of flexibility for general adventuring. Carrying a shield would allow an extra slot for various enhancements. Both the shield and weapon would of course have the spell channeling and faster casting properties (FC to cancel out the FC-1 of spell channeling items).

Any suggestions or ideas?

 

[Zalan]

Lets get this out of the way. UO is a wonderful thing that you can play whaevert you want.

Now to the point. Alot of poster go with Sampires, Whammies, Paladins, & ABC archers for one reason PVM wise. & that single reason is performance. In the realm of PvM any of those 4 templates are going to out perform you, & tear through the high end content.

PVP wise a classic tank mage template work like any other standard template.

How to manage your stats?
Carefull with mana its your only way to heal.
Eval Int is to low to be of real use.

 

[Eyes of Origin]

considering you only need the magery hopefully for healing and maybe some smaller spells, the eval shouldnt be too bad... if its combined with bushido or chiv you have alternate ways of healing.. I dunno... I am going to try the template anyway, but replacing resist with something else.

 

[Chaosy]

120 weapon
120 magery
120 eval
90 tac

Are all musts for any sort of tank mage template.

80 eval isn't going to do any sort of useful damage, though I guess you can squeek by with 100 magery if you don't plan on casting anything big.

 

[Zhao_Yun]

I use to use 120 magery,resist,evalint 100 med 90 fencing,tactics 80 poisoning

 

[Kafka72]

I played one long ago, before spell channeling weapons and AoS. I was tempted to make one after AoS came out but ended up taking a 2 and 1/2 year break. I always thought to somehow fit this on a template, probably take a lot of skill items:

Swordsmanship/Tactics/Anatomy/Magery/Meditation/Evaluating Intelligence/Resisting Spells

With this template if you get disarmed you still have the defensive Anatomy/Eval combo for protection. I never got around to making another tank mage and probably never will. I'm having too much fun with other templates and don't really PvP.

 

[imperterritus]

It occurred to me that if I switched him to Archery, that would free up the points from Parry. Plus it seems better suited to have 2 ranged attack forms, rather than one ranged and one melee. So for an archer/mage:

120: Archery, Tactics, Resist Spells
120: Magery, Eval Int, Meditate

The only downsides I see are:

1) pay full mana price for any weapon specials
2) no strong means of stamina recovery
3) since neither Inscription nor Anatomy, won't have strongest possible damage on attacks

But 120 Meditate should mitigate #1, and refresh pots should be able to handle #2 -- right? He's human, so JoaT will give him 20 Focus, for two points of stamina recovery, and an extra point of mana regen. JoaT should also give minor damage buffs via the 20 points of Inscription and Anatomy.

I half remember the archer/mage being nerfed years ago, but I don't remember what was done to make it less effective. Does anyone?

 

[Connor_Graham]

I half remember the archer/mage being nerfed years ago, but I don't remember what was done to make it less effective. Does anyone?

Mana leech on bows was killed.

 

[Stupid Miner]

From the threads here, "sampire" would seem to be the current flavor of the month. I remember a long time ago when the tank mage was a popular template, and I'm thinking of building one now. His skills would be something like:

Race: Human
120: Swords, Parry, Resisting Spells
100: Tactics, Magery,
80: Eval Int, Meditate

He'd primarily be a fighter, but magery would offer a lot of flexibility for general adventuring. Carrying a shield would allow an extra slot for various enhancements. Both the shield and weapon would of course have the spell channeling and faster casting properties (FC to cancel out the FC-1 of spell channeling items).

Any suggestions or ideas?

Seems to me you'd be better off with Necromancy and/or Spellweaving, since they don't require Spell Channeling. Having Necromancy in there would be best since you can leech whatever mana you need with wraith form.

 

[northwoodschopper]

the big issues are the reagents and spell channeling. spell channeling with no penalites is 2 properties less on both weapons and shields (although with shields it hardly matters). if going archer, it means you'll only get about 2 properties on your bow in conjunction with spell channelling, fast cast, and damage increase. going full LRC can be a burden for a warrior build too, if you're planning on using warrior type artifacts.

PvM would be easily manageable, though damage output won't be anything near paladins, or samurai. i question what you intend to focus with eval int. for spell damage? bless/curse? mana drain/vamp? curous because archery already would provide you with superb ranged damage, and if it's elemental damage you need, there's quivers to swap. the other utility spells don't require eval int, along with summons.

 

[Connor_Graham]

spell channeling with no penalites is 2 properties less on both weapons and shields (although with shields it hardly matters).

You might want to recheck that. *hint hint*

 

[northwoodschopper]

You might want to recheck that. *hint hint*

sorry, i'm not following you. which part? shields hardly matter since artifact shields are so much better than what most can craft, given there's only 6 or so properties to choose from for runic shields, of which most valuable properties is defense chance and spell channelling w/ no penalty. i suppose you can make frostwood shield for spell channeling, though blacksmith shields give better resists.

for weaponry, i'm not sure there's any bow or melee weapon recipes to help with obtaining spell channelling with no cast penalty, is there? unless you mean stacking a lot of FC items to compensate, which it probably doable nowadays with all of the FC items available.

 

[Connor_Graham]

spell channeling with no penalites is 2 properties

This is what you need to recheck.

 

[northwoodschopper]

really? interesting. guess i haven't been paying too close of attention to spell channelling shields and weapons of late. that makes spell channelling equipment a little more attractive.