The Earth Mage

[muun]

Something I've not seen any chatter about is Earth Magic. GameBanshee scores it below the other schools, and I hadn't been willing to try it in my earlier games. Wanting to field a new party setup, though, I decided to include an Earth Mage in my current run. He's on dungeon level 8 at the moment, and doing a fine job. The party is 2 unarmed rogues in front, with a thrower and the mage in back.

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Poison cloud is a great spell. It's also easy to select (1 rune) and cheap to cast; and it suits the playstyle of my two unarmed guys. They hold the enemy in the poison cloud, and most fights are over in a round or two. Ogres last three rounds, I think, or maybe it's four. At any rate, it's going much better than I had feared it would ... one of my stronger parties, in fact.

Poison bolt works, too, but the problem there is that the bad guy rarely hangs around in the poison. I'm using the bolt only to draw the enemy into pummel range, then I dot him with a cloud and beat him up.

Finally, there seems no reason to go beyond 10 pts in spellcraft with this setup. Actually, I'm wondering now if ANY mage needs more than 10 pts in spellcraft. I'm putting all but that 10 into earth magic this run, but there's definitely room to experiment with a second school if that's of interest. Maybe I will on a future run.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that poison is apparently ineffective against the skeleton warriors. I let the mage use a spear when going against those guys in the early levels. They're cake, anyway .. certainly nothing to build a party around.

[Kurguz]

I tried the Earth Mage on one playthrough and he did good, but not as well as my ice/fire mages did, depends on the playstyle of the party and the player i guess. It's pretty good with the Shammans Staff though.

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What i found is that on the last levels, specially last boss, this DoT style is not that effective at least for me, compared to the CC of frost, the amazing damage of fire, or the damage/utility of air.

[Bardamu]

If you level it higher, the poison bolt comes with a poison cloud, which makes no sense, cause you dont get exp if a mob dies in the cloud.

[Arctor]

The Shaman's Staff is a fantastic upgrade for the Earth Mage. It has automatically upgraded my poison bolts with the poison cloud effect. Very nice. This has dramatically changed the dynamic of my party.

[muun]

If you level it higher, the poison bolt comes with a poison cloud, which makes no sense, cause you dont get exp if a mob dies in the cloud.

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Don't know about that. I ended the game with about the same experience as always, having made level 13 while on dungeon level 10, and I had many, many mobs die in the cloud. EDIT: That's the Poison Cloud spell. I didn't use Poison Bolt all that much, so don't know about the cloud associated with that.

The iron golems at the end are immune to poison, by the way, but I usually take them out with a ranged rogue or two anyway. Finished the game with only one wipe .. I got trapped, and the big guy rolled over me. The game was as much fun as any of them, and more so than some. I think next, I'll dual spec a fire/earth mage. If there IS a next. Sort of burnt out at the moment.

[Empyrean]

I haven't made an Earth Mage. They might be useful when dealing with the hordes of spiders by setting up poison clouds on the other side of doors, or boosting poison resistance if you can get enough points in Earth Magic to cast the poison shield by that stage of the game. Other than that... they don't look too impressive to me. A poison cloud needs a stationary enemy to be most effective, and most of the time a stationary enemy is only stationary because they're in the process of trying to maul you.

[Arctor]

The upgraded poison bolts (via Shaman Staff) are doing really good damage for me. If you play it right, and you have the room, everywhere you land a hit there's a cloud of poison. Easy to kite creatures into them while they last. The poison shield appears to be much improved when powered up with the Shaman Staff. Though that's only an impression. No real stats to back up the claim.

[muun]

forum madness .. ignore this post in favor of the next one

[muun]

I haven't made an Earth Mage. They might be useful when dealing with the hordes of spiders by setting up poison clouds on the other side of doors, or boosting poison resistance if you can get enough points in Earth Magic to cast the poison shield by that stage of the game. Other than that... they don't look too impressive to me. A poison cloud needs a stationary enemy to be most effective, and most of the time a stationary enemy is only stationary because they're in the process of trying to maul you.

SpoilerShow

As I said, I finished the game and the earth mage did quite well. Overall, he was as good as my previous ice and air mages, though it was a different play style. In any event, I hold most enemies stationary in melee combat. Exceptions include the two skeleton packs on level 2, the ogre on level 6, Gormorgs (until their shields are down), and the prison wardens. Even though I did the 2x2 melee dance with the ogre on level 6, it was the earth mage that got the death blow. Beyond that, the earth mage did noticably better in close combat against Uggardians, Gormorgs, herders, and the blue dinos than have my other mages. On the other hand, he got basically no ranged kills and was not useful against skeletons or the wardens. Certainly, he was a pleasant surprise, doing much better than I had anticipated.

My next game will have a dual spec earth/fire mage, probably with no more than 17 points in earth. I'm primarily interested in seeing if a low-skill earth mage can compensate for the fire mage's weakness (i.e., Uggardians). It if works well, then probably an earth/ice mage would also be good. We'll see.

[Kurguz]

For me the earth mage did well against Uggardians in therms of doing them damage but fire mages weakness against Uggardias? he just does not atack but Group Resistance + Fire Shield, you can almost laught at the Uggardians face while slashing (or smashing them, whatever suits you)

The only thing i did not like about the Earth Mage was the DoT system of his playstyle, you set up some clouds and lure mobs into them, but that kills them slowly, IMO that's good for some encounters but bad for the majority of them (have in mind that i prefer direct damage!)