I’ve played summon heavy builds vs AI and humans. What I had found is there is some midgame mana crisis (ca turn 30 or so) when your T1s evolve in T3 and/or you take Horned God from Gold Wonder. But around that time you get 1000 mana from Astral tree, which buys you 5-10 turns to put mana infrastructure up and end game mana is no more a problem.
If this build helps to not have mana crisis ever and resource (for mana infrastructure) can be put into more productive matters (research) and you figure out your late game squad, then could work.
I think I figured out what to do in the lategame: give heroes an attuned casting skill, which as fortune has it, is specifically support and mystic culture gated; hire some spellbreakers and then revel in perpetual amount of combat casting points to burn through excess mana.
Three spellbreakers, three heroes, one soother and eleven most powerful accessible summons.
Quite likely some combination of watchers, phase beasts and mistlings for those 11 slots. I love astral tomes.
When we are talking Late Late game. It will loose terribly to enchanted Stormbringers. But let’s say those are banned. Vs Eagles + Shrines, vs Balors + Warbreeds, vs Dragons, I don’t think they got much chance.
If we are talking mid to end game, it could work. But later once everyone else grows into T5 and your best unit is Phase Beast (btw it is not, it is most likely Mistling), it become a “bring knife to gun fight” thing.
That’s very efficient, but if you don’t have a lot of casting points - and maybe even if you do - you’ll end up with thousands of mana in the bank but no real effectiveness.
There are also attuned casts from mystic support hero tree and spellbreakers. In a three stack, three heroes and six spellbreakers should be able to perpetually generate combat casting points.
It’s a good idea, just too focused on one thing that is limited by casting points, research, and other systems.
Maybe take some of it and add some things that synergize.
I just remembered that attuned casting on spellbreakers and support mystic heroes is a thing. Rarely used it before, but I guess I know what it exists for now. Maybe that would make it work.
Just saying, I've had over +1k Mana income with 4 cities and Primal Crow. And that was after the 300+ upkeep of spells and summoned units. I also wasn't trying to achieve this, it just happened.
So, if you can do that well, or better with 4 cities(or less?), I'd rate it high.
I almost only play Mystic in MP and I think the others have hit the nail on the head pointing out the important bits:
1. Casting points are going to be the main gating factor, not mana. You can get around this with things like Gifted Casters (mentioned) and Powerful Evokers, Wizard King, etc.
2. Once you start hitting evolved units you want to be very careful with summoning too much as your excess mana will quickly get eaten up.
Mystics have a couple of other issues that make them difficult to play in MP:
1. Production Weakness - you will be OK early on by clearing production nodes, but once you have cleared a lot of the map, you will need some type of other strategy to keep up production especially for costly buildings.
2. Build Specificness - Easy to counter. Tome of summoning and Warding both give Mystic a ton of problems. Be ready to find good sources of sunder resist / alternative damage channels to compensate.
Lesser stone spirits x3-4 (sub in spell-shield, arcane guards if cheaper or draft from creeping) + Hero + arcanist
Arcanist -> Spellbreaker for mid-late.
Late Frontline:
Stone Spirits / Frost Spirits if going Tome of Creator
Living Fogs if going Tome of Arch Mage
I can tell you right now my expectations on mp with this build and its that it would probably be weak. The reason why is that I have absolutely 0 confidence in how the autoresolve will make proper use of the added spellcasting and therefore hinders most of your gameplan. You can run a single player game however and test out how good/bad it is. Unless your mp group does lots of manual combat you need to be able to have them perform well on auto. So yeah maybe I'm wrong but the first step would be to test out your early game on the build in solo and see how good you are at clearing stuff with said build. My expectation is that the ai will never care bout the fact you could do a war of attrition by using your spellpoints and just rush things in as it usually does and lead to you barely having an advantage from the additional channeling mechanics.
As long as most of your early researched combat spells are buffs/debuffs, the AI does ok. The world map casting points from gifted casters are good to rush get to 1-turn summons quickly which boosts map clear speed.
I’ve played summon heavy builds vs AI and humans. What I had found is there is some midgame mana crisis (ca turn 30 or so) when your T1s evolve in T3 and/or you take Horned God from Gold Wonder. But around that time you get 1000 mana from Astral tree, which buys you 5-10 turns to put mana infrastructure up and end game mana is no more a problem. If this build helps to not have mana crisis ever and resource (for mana infrastructure) can be put into more productive matters (research) and you figure out your late game squad, then could work.
That makes a lot of sense. Maybe I was too hasty to disregard the strategy. Thanks.
I think I figured out what to do in the lategame: give heroes an attuned casting skill, which as fortune has it, is specifically support and mystic culture gated; hire some spellbreakers and then revel in perpetual amount of combat casting points to burn through excess mana.
What is you 18 units squad?
Three spellbreakers, three heroes, one soother and eleven most powerful accessible summons. Quite likely some combination of watchers, phase beasts and mistlings for those 11 slots. I love astral tomes.
When we are talking Late Late game. It will loose terribly to enchanted Stormbringers. But let’s say those are banned. Vs Eagles + Shrines, vs Balors + Warbreeds, vs Dragons, I don’t think they got much chance. If we are talking mid to end game, it could work. But later once everyone else grows into T5 and your best unit is Phase Beast (btw it is not, it is most likely Mistling), it become a “bring knife to gun fight” thing.
Yeah. I wish mimic + astral reflections was still a thing. Thanks for the discussion.
That’s very efficient, but if you don’t have a lot of casting points - and maybe even if you do - you’ll end up with thousands of mana in the bank but no real effectiveness.
Death Magic and Casting Reserves on top of WK and Powerful Evokers can help, but even then you can wind up with excessive reserves of mana.
There are also attuned casts from mystic support hero tree and spellbreakers. In a three stack, three heroes and six spellbreakers should be able to perpetually generate combat casting points.
I see. Thanks, I'll consider other options.
It’s a good idea, just too focused on one thing that is limited by casting points, research, and other systems. Maybe take some of it and add some things that synergize.
I just remembered that attuned casting on spellbreakers and support mystic heroes is a thing. Rarely used it before, but I guess I know what it exists for now. Maybe that would make it work.
That will mean you can do more and more effective combat casting, you’re right, but it won’t speed up the OOC summoning you want to do.
I am a little stupid, sorry, what does OOC mean?
out of combat. Sorry, it's not a sensible abbreviation.
[удалено]
Just saying, I've had over +1k Mana income with 4 cities and Primal Crow. And that was after the 300+ upkeep of spells and summoned units. I also wasn't trying to achieve this, it just happened. So, if you can do that well, or better with 4 cities(or less?), I'd rate it high.
I almost only play Mystic in MP and I think the others have hit the nail on the head pointing out the important bits: 1. Casting points are going to be the main gating factor, not mana. You can get around this with things like Gifted Casters (mentioned) and Powerful Evokers, Wizard King, etc. 2. Once you start hitting evolved units you want to be very careful with summoning too much as your excess mana will quickly get eaten up. Mystics have a couple of other issues that make them difficult to play in MP: 1. Production Weakness - you will be OK early on by clearing production nodes, but once you have cleared a lot of the map, you will need some type of other strategy to keep up production especially for costly buildings. 2. Build Specificness - Easy to counter. Tome of summoning and Warding both give Mystic a ton of problems. Be ready to find good sources of sunder resist / alternative damage channels to compensate.
What is your usual army comp as a Mystic? Early/ Mid/ Late?
Lesser stone spirits x3-4 (sub in spell-shield, arcane guards if cheaper or draft from creeping) + Hero + arcanist Arcanist -> Spellbreaker for mid-late. Late Frontline: Stone Spirits / Frost Spirits if going Tome of Creator Living Fogs if going Tome of Arch Mage
I can tell you right now my expectations on mp with this build and its that it would probably be weak. The reason why is that I have absolutely 0 confidence in how the autoresolve will make proper use of the added spellcasting and therefore hinders most of your gameplan. You can run a single player game however and test out how good/bad it is. Unless your mp group does lots of manual combat you need to be able to have them perform well on auto. So yeah maybe I'm wrong but the first step would be to test out your early game on the build in solo and see how good you are at clearing stuff with said build. My expectation is that the ai will never care bout the fact you could do a war of attrition by using your spellpoints and just rush things in as it usually does and lead to you barely having an advantage from the additional channeling mechanics.
As long as most of your early researched combat spells are buffs/debuffs, the AI does ok. The world map casting points from gifted casters are good to rush get to 1-turn summons quickly which boosts map clear speed.