Itemization still needs work My grey wizard has a significantly decrease chance to be hit by melee weapons n chance to ignore blow blue armor. No orange armor I have seen for grey wizard can compete at all.
His MAX damage certainly is low, but against hard to hit enemies, especially Skaven, he can actually do more average damage than most non-casters if you set him up to auto-hit as many enemies as possible. He would compete even against enemies that don't have such high dodge ratios too, but his loot table is just too weak compared to other heroes. Much of his loot and skills boost his ability to take hits, which unfortunately amounts to little as he is limited in his capacity to actually draw agro. Were he to get loot that boosted his damage output, combined with his ability to auto-hit, he would be one of, if not the, most reliable melee character.
Shadow Mages Cape: +3 Power, +1 Toughness, Significantly decreased chance to be hit with a melee weapon.
I have an orange Shadow Mage's Cape you might like: +3 Power, +1 Toughness, significantly decreased chance to be hit by melee weapons (we need an abbreviation for that ) My point exactly. Some of the rewards look like they are at least worth giving them a try, especially when you want to make things a little different. Which is why they should have made them green items, so people actually use them. Where do you get the Rabbitfoot again, can anyone remember?
Chance to ignore blow >> 1 toughness by a big margin. 5% damage reduction is negligible + power is gravy but has little impact. 15% chance to ignore blow still wins Most importantly you are wasting a orange slot. Better off using the orange slot for the 30% dodge boots
Rabbits foot if I recall correctly is on the first map. Halfling town? I bought both the acorn with + hit n the rabbit foot, Orange slots should be weapons + greater ring of striking for +30% hit for melee and pieces which offer plenty of stats. In the ideal world, I would like green rings to be sold on npc. I would swop my melee character green scrolls for ring regen n put multiple chance to ignore blow rings in the blue slots. Quite sad they don't sell blue RMG of striking. I have 1 on my iron breaker. 2 ring of striking + 1 greater ring of striking will cover for his miss rate penalty. Hammer of sigmar makes him a decent killing machine. It's a pipe dream for me.
Not really wasting an orange slot when you get the 30% dodge, the 5% damage reduction, AND the 3 power. Generally with casters power is always the go-to boost for equipment. More dodge is fine, but what's even better is when it isn't necessary because the other members of the team are still alive, the attacker is dead, you have teleported away, or you have cast a buff that gives a better boost/boost to the whole group. The primary purpose of casters is to cast spells, dramatically improving that ability has a significant impact, much more so than making them better tanks.
U haven't considered that the orange slot can go to something better. the blue slot armor is the best option. you can dump another orange ring or the orange boots with 30% dodge. you are looking at 1 slot. but reality is 2 slots are taken into account. the blue armor. 30% reduce chance to be hit by melee + 15% ignore blow. + orange boots 30% chance to dodge is way better. orange armor 30% chance to reduce hit. 5% damage reduction and + 3 power and 1 blue item? which blue item would you choose? 15% chance to ignore hit? +2 regen? you need to do the math.
You can use items like Shadow Staff, Chalice of Fate, Talisman of Power heck even Chalice of Battle. I think your "math" is a bit off as you have tunnel vision on what you consider the ideal. The Shadow Mage's Cape may well not fit your personal play style, but it is an excellent item, offering multiple benefits for a single slot. Power itself is an extremely popular caster boost as you can see on this forum, and gaining +3 allows for a more reliable and larger range of casting potential from turn to turn. The simple fact is, defensive abilities are good, but if casters are able to do their job to the fullest effect in terms of healing, debuffing, crowd control, buffing, and high auto-hit damage, the need to dodge a lot of attacks is going to be lessened.
Fully agree with Kirenx: Power is very important for casters. If you use all slots on your Gray for defensive items, you have nothing left to boost his magic power. A while back I posted that even with a heavy focus on magic, my Gray had the most Wounds - with 50+ - of my party at some point. That definitely was enough to survive the occasional ambush. I went offense all the way, and it works very well: with my core group I *never* get even remotely close to a wipeout. Maybe once in 10 dungeons (yes, dungeons; not battles) someone goes down because I was too lazy to use a Healing scroll or two; only to get healed right back next round. And I actually had the Chalice of Battle, but almost never used it (even with great weapons my mages are not good at melee), so I threw it away
Chalice of fate is crappy to me. With talisman of power. I never need any power boosting item ever. I use 1 caster n keeping him alive is a priority. The irony is u stoop to accusing me of tunnel vision when your basis to support your idea is what is popular.j When you are fully geared, crowd control is never a problem cos most mobs are cleared in 1 or 2 turns. Maybe it's bad luck for me. Or maybe just cure small wounds can clear poison in hardcore. Wasn't able to remove it from my attempts so far. Your priority is to boost power, my priority is to make sure my grey wizard will never die in an encounter because only he can revive. I never lacked power to do what I want and the only few times I use magic dps is against casters n archers who are too far away on the other side of the Map. I disagree with your assessment I use math. U are free to present math to me. Don't have to make it personal. Aim for the ball not the player.
I don't see how pointing out multiple users on this forum find a certain boost powerful is tunnel vision. I also allowed for the concept that your play style may find different item sets better. Certainly many of the heroes can be played a variety of ways. The way it sounded from your posts, however, was that you believed your way was the only way and I was simply pointing out that different builds are not universally inferior. That wasn't my assessment of you, rather it was in response to your comment in your own previous post: I was responding to your post that was directed towards me, it certainly wasn't my original intent to make it personal and it may be a language barrier. I will say that because in print, intent is often difficult to discern, neutral language is often best. When you say things like "U haven't considered" you come off as making an assumption about another's mindset rather than simply presenting your view on the subject. In addition, in some of your earlier posts you responded to comments with statements like "I suppose you don't have Brutal Tribe" and "I suppose you don't play hardcore" which again are assumptions and can sound like you are stating that anyone that doesn't agree with your views must not have played what you have or as much as you have. I'll grant this may well not be your intent, and am simply pointing out how the language you've used so far can be interpreted.
Not wanting to crash the party, but I would appreciate it if both of you kept things on a calmer level. No need to get personal, right? Speedweed found one approach that works extremely well, and Kirenx and I found another. And there are more out there: e.g. some folks here like the Ogre, where I cannot warm up to him at all; to the point that I did not even buy him to give him a shot. We can be happy that there is not just one optimal build, but several. Not many games offer that.
My response is based on my math. Talisman of power is brutal tribe only. Yes no? Once I got it I never had reason to use + power items. Unless you are telling me I can obtain it without brutal tribes, then I stand corrected. I think its fair to question if one has access to the item. Not everyone bought brutal tribes. Hardcore has made me change my style. I lost a full set of Archmage gear due to multiple webs n poison. It wasn't pretty. I rerolled my grey wizard to get the revive dead spell specifically and geared him for better survivability because of that experience. Twilight translocation really saves him from tough spots. And I began to rely heavily on my marauder ironbreaker and shadow warrior for damage. I tried healing with 12 green scrolls of healing. Doesn't remove poison. I think some posts ago someone said cure small wounds removed his poison status in hardcore. I don't have it on my grey wizard so my experience is such, I actually asked if it was true, if yes I may reroll again. Again telling me something is popular is pointless. History has shown that popularity and acceptance by the masses are not necessary correct or right. Slavery and Nazis anyone? I mean no umbrage. I base my gaming on number crunching thru my experience. If you show me numbers or some misinformation that I have based on my numbers on. I have no problem. Just don't come tell me I have tunnel vision because you don't agree.
+ power on grey wizard potentially gives u sufficient power to cast 2 x orkam razor with 4 melee attacks while using relic blade every turn. Potential 110 damage output. But I like to store winds whenever possible. Storing 100 or more winds has been an obsession cos I can usually clear a map alone with 15 casts of orkam razor. My objection to + power stems from turns where u get zero winds. My rule is my grey wizard must never die or get hit whenever possible. I liked Irongut concept until I found he has only 1 attack n his abilities are all once per turn. Big QQ for me. The meta changed for me once I got the talisman of power. N honestly I bought the IAP sword for marauder. It sucked cos I kept killing myself cos I rely heavily on marauder attack.
I got all the IAP weapons. The orange weapons in game are all better IAP weapons should be on par with the best orange items in game. Relic blade, dragon blade, hammer of sigmar, shadow dancer bow are all better. Though I admit hammer of sigmar should be the strongest. Interesting enough the dragon blade has the highest 1h weapon attack 17-19 ignore weapon skill. The staff was good before talisman of power.
I'm only to level 3 so far and still figuring it out so I can't contribute to the discussion. However I did want to say I'm very happy with the game so far. It feels like more of a complete game than the Hunters games do. Graphically it looks amazing on my ipad 4. My only gripe is with the sound. In battle about half the time I don't hear any battle noises other than the coins hitting the ground. Other times I can hear the hit of the blade and the cry of the target. Seems inconsistent and buggy. I also wish you could see the people, objects in the dungeon you encounter or have to rescue. Seems like they took the easy way out and just describe what you see in text. I also wish the cost to train wasn't so high. I find myself saving all my money for training instead of buying some cool new gear.
Don't be in a hurry to level up. I find it better to stay at a level finding better gear before I pay for training. The game keeps count of XP even if you need to train so you don't waste XP.
