[Spellweaving] Spellweaving Spawns

[SouthPaw]

In the past I've solo'd spawns with my necromage tamer. Wither works very well for the first 2-3 rounds.

I have a new tamer with spellweaving and I'm wondering if anyone has worked the first few rounds of a spawn using wild fire, thunderstorm, or essence of wind in a similar way that people use wither. Not sure if it would work as well.

 

[Xris]

It doesn't work as well

 

[Draza]

Have to have high Sdi, as well as fast cast2 at least. Works well with the first couple levels, sucks afyter that.

 

[Draza]

I have 130 sdi on my suit, and i do about 30-45 on thunderstorm-wind

 

[SouthPaw]

My suit doesn't have that much SDI, so maybe good for the first round only for me. Thanks for your replies.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

I have a wraith weaver mage using 4/6 casting and it works great. Huge range and faster spells.

 

[Max Blackoak]

I have a wraith weaver mage using 4/6 casting and it works great. Huge range and faster spells.

same here, works great!

@SouthPaw don't listen to the naysayers. It does work even with less sdi. Here's what I used to do with a 4/6 casting, low sdi suit (nothing fancy, even works with imbued gear - I did this on Siege!):
Template: 120 magery (with mageweapon), weaving, necro, spirit speak, music, disco.
Using the necro mastery I went to the rat dungeon, commanded two skeletal dragons and went to despise. Got in Wraith form and let the dragons kill stuff by themselves. All you do now is teleport around and thunderstorm lvl 1 and 2 to death.

Once lvl 3 is about to pop go find your skeletal dragons and tell them to follow you and guard you. Now you keep casting thunderstorm to get the lvl 3 spawn to target you which will automatically trigger the guarding skeletal dragons and they will one hit kill one rat mage each, cast thunderstorm again and another two mages are gone, do this over and over, cure/heal up if necessary and move on.

Lvl 4 you just send in the dragons and let them do their thing. Stand back and maybe speed things up with wildfire, thunderstorm or essence of wind - up to you.

Once the champ is up have the dragons attack him, discord him and cast animate corpse on 3 rat archer or silver serpent corpses to have 3 Liches attack the champ on top of the dragons. Keep the dragons healed, cast necro spells to further damage the champ and use WoD to finish him off when he's low enough.

A rat spawn shouldn't take longer than about 30 minutes from start to champ dead with this set up - depending on your level of experience with this template it can be completed even faster.

Good luck!

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

I think people largely rate spellweaving based on WOD, however, I think that's missing it's best purposes which are defence and area attacks.

It's a stand alone skill. Which alone is worthy of a mention because you can chuck it on literally any template.

On the defensive side you've got gift of life, attunement, renewal and mana shield. You could sort of include nature's fury and reaper summons as distractions.

Then area damage from thunderstorm, wind, wildfire.

Play to those strengths or a combination of and you will have a better character than some schmoe waiting for it to hit 30% so you can cast WOD twice before it dies.

 

[Max Blackoak]

especially thunderstorm is completely underrated. People seem to prefer essence of wind because it does more damage per hit - they never realized that thunderstorm's strength is not only medium damage in short intervals but where it really outperforms any other form of area damage is it's ability to completely ignore terrain features (ledges, walls, etc.) and line of sight. That's what really speeds things up during spawns. No difficult maneuvering your character in position or teleporting on ledges, running around walls etc. to do damage - no, you just stand there and cast and everything in range dies. This can even be used to completely avoid monsters damaging you while you're in an area inaccessable to them spamming thunderstorm away in wraithform until they're all dead.

 

[Lord GOD(GOD)]

Yeah that's what made that last event in blood dungeon so easy to farm.

 

[Innoxicated]

Man make sure you get the lvl 6 focus, if you have to make a cpl SW'ers on EJ accounts, and go try it out. Sdi definitely doesn't hurt, but you can put on a high sdi spellbook and run prot if you need. 4/6 is one of the best things about SW (especially since it retains that cap, even with other caster skills in the template), and in protection you'll still be at 2/6.

I always used wither and neglected SW, but after seeing a post recommending it I can honestly say I use that more than wither now. The range is just too awesome and wither can hardly compete. Running wraith form and leeching from everything in sight for 10 tiles at 30-40 damage makes it very easy to get over the longer cast time. On a tamer also consider the impact the swing speed debuff has on all the mobs your pet has clustered around it.

Thunderstorm has the same range as max focus EoW, I believe, and the range is not dependant on focus level. It's hard for me to consider any other AoE doing as well as my new favorite, but given the recommendations by the very knowledgeable members in the above posts, I may have to give it a shot as well... I imagine a static spawn in a dungeon with the walls, hallways, and doors might be the perfect place

 

[Innoxicated]

Wither costs 23 mana and affects a 16 tile area, with a 1s cast delay. Wither's damage may also enhanced by the targets karma level.

Essence of Wind costs 40 mana and affects a maximum of 121 tiles, an impressive 11 tile radius, with a 3s delay, at approximately (very) half the damage. The scale of that radius is even more impressive when you see low 30's pop up *all* over your screen. EoW also imparts a swing speed debuff, which may be negated by high resist spells.

So for twice the mana and twice the cast time (with FC), at half the damage, you hit almost 8 times as many targets. I guess that makes them about equal in potency mathematically, until you consider nearly all wave 1 targets will die in one hit. Wave 2 might take a couple casts. The real beauty is not having to herd the mobs to have a big impact, I've even found myself casting EoW on 2 or 3 targets just due to laziness. Try it though, it's killer.

 

[SouthPaw]

Wither costs 23 mana and affects a 16 tile area, with a 1s cast delay. Wither's damage may also enhanced by the targets karma level.

Essence of Wind costs 40 mana and affects a maximum of 121 tiles, an impressive 11 tile radius, with a 3s delay, at approximately (very) half the damage. The scale of that radius is even more impressive when you see low 30's pop up *all* over your screen. EoW also imparts a swing speed debuff, which may be negated by high resist spells.

So for twice the mana and twice the cast time (with FC), at half the damage, you hit almost 8 times as many targets. I guess that makes them about equal in potency mathematically, until you consider nearly all wave 1 targets will die in one hit. Wave 2 might take a couple casts. The real beauty is not having to herd the mobs to have a big impact, I've even found myself casting EoW on 2 or 3 targets just due to laziness. Try it though, it's killer.

Thanks for the tips! I'll definitely try that out.