Tank Mages?

[Arcades]

Are Tank mages still viable??

Ever since they kept putting restrictions on skills and special moves, I've noticed that there are very few tank mages left...if any of you are out there, can you help me with template advice??

I'm looking at something with:

120 Wep
90 Tact
110 Mage
120 Eval
GM Med
120 Resist
60 Chiv??

OR

80 Poison
80 Meditation


Use a non-mage weapon, 2/6 casting with 100% LRC, 40 LMC, high hci/dci, and a fast weapon like a cleaver or butcher knife for bleed/disarm/poison

 

[Farsight]

It seems there's a lot of tank mage questions lately. Or maybe it's just me.

There are two reasons that tank mages aren't used as much as other sorts of mages or tanks. The first is the skill restrictions on special moves really restricts your skill choices. Why do a little bit of damage with a bunch of spread out skills when you can concentrate your skills and do a lot of damage?

The second reason is suit building. A few attributes are well geared toward all templates, like resists, LMC and DCI, but a mage also needs LRC, SDI, FC/FCR and a melee fighter needs HCI and DI. It gets very time consuming and expensive to make a suit that hits on all of your needs, and then you still have to sacrifice other very nice to have mods like HPR, SR, HPI or stats increases.

I'm not saying it can't be done. It's just a lot more convenient, and often more powerful, to do it one way or the other.

That being said, one of the more effective defensive templates I've seen is:
120 mace, 120 bushido, 120 parry, 120 magery, 120 EI, and one other skill I forget. It could have been either resist or meditation. He wasn't able to use weapons specials and his offense was almost non existant, but killing him was very hard for most people.

Anyhow, I don't run a template similar to what you are looking at, so I can't advise about the numbers except to mention that with 110 magery, you need 90 poisoning to be most effective. And even then, the utility of poison isn't great since a cure potion will still cure it most of the time.

 

[RichDC]

Sounds like a nice template to run, i myself have been thinking of it as well.

The disarm bleed of a warfork with mini spells can be a mages nightmare i imagine!!I would think more along the lines of chiv, i run a nox necro mage and unless i use evil omen poison you rarely get Spasm uncontrolably poison...(dunno levels) so with a nox tank i wouldnt see it as that effective.

Take note that if you go chiv your chiv spells will be capped at 2/6 casting (altho the remove curse and divine fury are so quick anyway!)

 

[Turdnugget]

I love hybrid mages. Sucks that everything else has become more useful/powerful to use as it's easier to build those templates and easier to make suits for them.

Like Farsight said, it takes a lot to get the right set up for a tank mage.

It's easier to build a necro/mage and worry about less suit attributes and be able to dish out a lot of damage.

I love hybrids for the unique template, difficulty of play, and the plethera of specials you can use. The downfall is it's hard to get the right stats in order to swing fast enough to be effective, and weapons w/out -1 casting are a little harder to find. I don't like using -1 SC weapons since you gotta make it up with a shield/helm/ring thus limiting your options.

 

[Chaosy]

120 Weapon
90 Tac
120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Resist
100 Med
50 Chiv

I wouldn't bother with poison currently since everyone is using cure pots, but if they do nerf cure pots then poisoning is going to make a big comeback as a skill.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

120 Weapon
90 Tac
120 Magery
120 Eval
120 Resist
100 Med
50 Chiv

I wouldn't bother with poison currently since everyone is using cure pots, but if they do nerf cure pots then poisoning is going to make a big comeback as a skill.

That's why I keep the skill stoned. Inevitably, it is going to happen. Otherwise, might as well just go ahead and erase poisoning from the skills list.

 

[Turdnugget]

You could even drop 50 chiv from Chaosy's idea for something else... get a little skill jewelry and add 60+ SW so you can summon pixies. Be even more of a tank =)

As a hybrid you only need 90 tactics so you can use all weapon specials. The damage bonus isn't too important at GM, as a hybrid you're only using specials pretty much anyways. The occasional melee hit...but no need to take it to GM.

If poisoning does get a bonus if they implement the pot stuff, you could drop tactics and still be able to use the poison special, just not AI with a kryss. But then that's not a true tank build =)

 

[Arcades]

What about parry instead of the med?

120 Weapon
120 Parry
120 Eval
120 Mage
120 Resist
90 Tact
30 Med or SW

I have the gear to run 44/59 hci/dci, 100LRC, 40 LMC, 13MR, 60+ resists

Not sure if having so little med would be a huge hinderance? Any ideas?

 

[Diomedes Artega]

What about parry instead of the med?

120 Weapon
120 Parry
120 Eval
120 Mage
120 Resist
90 Tact
30 Med or SW

I have the gear to run 44/59 hci/dci, 100LRC, 40 LMC, 13MR, 60+ resists

Not sure if having so little med would be a huge hinderance? Any ideas?

Well if you are wanting the template as it stands, you might as well just have 120 tactics for the additional 30% damage bonus. I run right around 15 MR or so and have no problems. Better than stacking meditation and then having diminishing returns. Sorry I cannot say at the moment what all of those figures are. The formula was posted though in a recent FoF.

 

[Chaosy]

Noxin has a nice mana regen calculator. To be honest, you really need med for mage templates or you're going to run out of mana really fast. For an open field fight you should be okay, but anything else and you're pretty much a sitting duck.

Also, to parry effectively you're going to need 80 dex, which means you're either going to have to lower your str (and thus hp) or your int/mana, in which case you're even going to be hurting for mana even more.

I would also advise against getting more than 40 spellweaving, because then you can't circle with human JAoT weavers. I honestly don't know many others who run between 40-80 weaving to be able to circle with you.