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practical if you have something/someone tanking the boss
impractical on a warrior (the casting time is the limiting factor); for warriors it is better to stick with armor ignore or onslaught/double strike
even more practical if you run a high sdi suit in wraith form to leech mana, as most "nuke" spells are mana intensive
nice in combination with bard skills/masteries, taming, or mysticism (or any combination thereof)
impractical on a warrior (the casting time is the limiting factor); for warriors it is better to stick with armor ignore or onslaught/double strike
even more practical if you run a high sdi suit in wraith form to leech mana, as most "nuke" spells are mana intensive
nice in combination with bard skills/masteries, taming, or mysticism (or any combination thereof)
Necromage with spellweaving and scribe in wraith form. Suit with 100+ SDI. Use town bonus for additional SDI and party with a 4x legendary bard running the provoke mastery songs and discording your target. Cast arcane empowerment with a level 6 focus... should end up with 170+ SDI. Corpse skin and drop FS till its time for WOD, then finish it off.
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Necro/SS, Magery/Eval, SW - those should be your base casting related skills. It will give you good complement of Mage/Necro spells to use during the fight, and then at the end you can use Arcane Empowerment, Grapes of Wrath, SDI Fish pie before hitting your Word of Death. As you noted, maxing up with SDI would be helpful for all of this. You can also benefit from extra SDI in Reaper Form.
Depending on whether you use any jewels with skills, you can then add another one or two more. If you want 10% SDI bonus to Magery spells, go with Inscription. You can probably survive without Resist Spells, but you would probably need to throw whatever you have left into Meditation and make sure you have good Mana Regen on your suit.
Depending on whether you use any jewels with skills, you can then add another one or two more. If you want 10% SDI bonus to Magery spells, go with Inscription. You can probably survive without Resist Spells, but you would probably need to throw whatever you have left into Meditation and make sure you have good Mana Regen on your suit.
Lets assume that you're not going to pair up with someone else, because let's be honest, a bard running the some masteries will help a Sampire kill stuff faster/safer too.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that casters lack the ability to decide which damage they do with a spell... for instance, if some mob has 0 poison but 80 in the rest, it is gonna be pretty hard to kill for a mage. Not that I know of such a MOB.
Lets look at Rikktor- generally considered one of the easier bosses for a warrior to simply AI to death. All resists are 80-90, except cold, which is 60-70. Luckily, Necro has a good spell that does cold damage, as does magery... but both require you to stand right next to the MOB. I guess FS is still the best bet.
Ok, so you have a simple slayer book, so you get triple damage, plus all the SDI possible, what damage is a FS doing to Rikktor?
Also, even assuming you're in wraith, don't you eventually have the problem that you get Rikktor all the way down to 0 mana, and then you're not able to recoup anything when you hit him with spells?
Are there any boss types that are easier with a caster template than a melee one?
I have posted for a long time (usually to much resistance) that Necro/Mage (and most variations of) is the top caster template for this (or the opposite actually) very reason. On a Necro/Mage you cover all damage types. You can drop fire/poison. You can combo with Omen e.g. Flame Strike/Omen to bump damage.
Having run in many high level spawn/Fel/PvP guilds the best option has always been Harm spam but you do need to be with a fairly co-ordinated bunch of casters. Alternative Corpse/FS/Omen, or failing that Energy Bolt.
Eventually, though you will usually still regain something from the amount the monster regenerates.
That question is so... vast. Does easier mean safer? Or do you mean do more damage per hit? Does it include WOD/buffs/debuffs etc etc... In general I would say yes, I think there probably are, easier doesn't necessarily mean faster, and I would say there are definitely bosses you can do higher damage to with spells than a dexxer.
My current caster is:
100 Mage
100 Med
120 Eval
120 Weaving
60 Necro
60 SS
100 Anatomy
60 Parry
With the suit being Protection/Wraith/Corpse proof, 100 LRC, 40 LMC, 16 MR, 96 SDI (without town etc), 45 DCI, 4/7 casting, 8 HPR, 15 HP, 8 CF, +20 Mage, +20 Focus, +20 Parry, and a bunch of stats.
Wraith+Wind+4/6 = clear the screen.
Can obviously Corpse & Omen.
The OP did not ask for the most survivable template, he asked for the highest DPS caster. I stand by the Mage/Necro/Spellweaver as that template... though that does not mean it isnt survivable in most cases as well.
In many (most?) cases I would have to agree that against bosses a warrior is going to be the better solo template. Warriors better combine survivability (defense and healing) with high DPS (AI or double strike).
Well, safer, yes, but mainly I mean faster. Most bosses don't really pose much of a threat these days to any class if you're paying attention. Like how long, start to finish, does it take a solo caster to run a Fel champ? How about something like Paroxymus? I've never tried, so I'm just curious.
Though its not this way for all spawns, my necro/mage/weaver is faster at the Baracoon spawn (start to finish) than my sampire is. About 25 minutes for sampire, around 18 for caster. Most of that is the simple fact that EoW has a much wider radius than the hit AoE on my weapons.
In general I would say yes there are things a caster can do faster. However, as I alluded to in the previous post, on certain encounters it depends on other factors. With boss monsters that factor mainly being is there something/someone else tanking allowing the caster to dump freely, or is the caster having to field and/or heal as well as attack. In such instances faster probably not, but higher damage possibly, and safer possibly, the latter depending on the competency of the player (a factor generally not as prevalent for a typical sampire/dexxer).
For example Lady Melisande, I can by far out damage with my caster than any warrior template, with minimal setup (meaning I could do higher) comboing for over 700, until the final stretch then WOD'ing for close to 1000.