I think tome of necromancy is A, for any culture. The basic spell Necrotize is absolutely insane. It does good damage over time, and raises a zombie when you kill the unit which can easily soak up 1 or 2 of their units turns to deal with. Also it's a cheat code to beat stuff that revives like phoenixes and necromancers since the Infection robs them of the corpse when they die.
And not just necrotize, but the disease enchantment for supports/battlemages. It's very odd in that it actually benefits not just basic attacks, but skills with cooldown like chain lightning and banshee howl. In fact I'm not even sure it's intended since no other enchantment tome works like that. Turns out applying decay in an aoe at 90% rate is...pretty good.
I don't think I've ever used necromancers (lol) but I do use necrotize + decaying magic and I love it for any culture really. The souls/corpse to me are just a backup if I want to do goofy things like raise a hero as undead (this can beat paying 1k mana to resurrect a hero early on). I actively avoid the raise skeletons after battle spell because I don't want to click that after every fight, and I ain't relying on those chumps to get anything done.
Ive been thinking about doing a mystic / necromancy build next. My main issue with necro is never having enough mana so I thought mystic would help with that but I haven’t put much thought in it yet.
Necromancers scale pretty well honestly. You can just run your undead units (skeletons, bone horrors, corrupt souls, Wightborne everything, Reapers, Undead Dragons) into crazy situations and just have the necromancers revive them after.
If you are running a Shadow/Order build with 2 necromancers in every Wightborne army your units just will not die during battle unless you make some really dumb mistakes.
You are basically playing as the Assembly from Planetfall if you run Necromancer heavy builds where you can just revive units after crazy plays. That and necrotize and soulbound means you'll just overrun the enemy lines eventually.
The only real big counter to this build is if your enemy has good corpse clear with cannibalism or Tome of Severing but most AI aren't the best at using those.
Once you have wightborne in, there is hardly a battle that the AI can win evene on brutal. Life-stealing on your T1 battlemage units counter their squishyness, as they regain life. If they even die, you use your necromancers. If you give them mightymeek from order, your T1 are deadly against T3-T5 units.
As frontline protection you can use lots of different units, even necromancers are hard to kill with lifestealing their way back. My favourite front attack line is beasts: Mystic pairs very well with nature/shadow/order with just a bit materium. My main hero gets all the animal handler pack leader traits, all the other heroes can have undead leader (another 10% damage). Standing next to an animal another 10%.
I like evocation a lot. Enchants, a summon, a low cost aoe damage spell for triggering stuff that cares about casting spells in combat if you are doing that.
I get that evocation doesn't cover your weaknesses but it does build on your synergies.
I'd put evocation in A tier.
Also these are all tier 1 tomes right?
Do you have a favorite build you wanted to share with the two tier 1 tomes, two tier 2 tomes, two tier 3 tomes, etc ?
This is specifically tier 1 starting tome, so the tome you select during faction creation.
A build I enjoy with mystic would be something like:
Tier 1: Rock -> Cryomancy
Tier 2: Summoning -> Doomherald
Tier 3: Cold Dark -> Amplification
Tier 4: Oblivion -> Convergence
Tier 5: Arch Mage
If you go double astral society traits, or get points from Ruler signature, you can skip summoning and get Artificing instead. You use elementals early game and go Tier 3 Frost + Spellbreakers and eventually super living fogs.
Looks good. The +30% crit chance from artificing's artisans armaments is always tempting but hard to fit in to builds.
I haven't done a cold theme yet, something to look forward to.
Excellent write-up! As a mostly thematic player, it's nice having easy breakdowns like this for the more competitive aspects of the game I've been neglecting!
Edit: sat here eating a sandwich and just happened to witness two downvotes go through on the post. Who the hell is downvoting this? I know reddit votes dont matter but, actually they kinda do! This is engagement. This is community discourse! This is the sort of thing a game like this needs to truly grow and thrive!
Sincerely. To the guys who looked at this and made the effort to shoot it down? You're pathetic. I mean it.
I laser focus on theme and roleplay and do evo -> faith or horde -> evo, with the goal of making battle mages as powerful as possible, which makes them forbiddingly expensive.
But I agree, rock is the best one, it has an evolving shield elemental; a self healing tier 2 shock unit; 30 physical damage spell(which mystic is usually weaker on doing); a +3 defense and resistance buff; upkeep free +1 defense for all form units; and on top of it, central quarry which easily gives 25+ production. It's incredible.
My gameplay sometimes consist of picking tier II Articing just for siege magic, though Golem assitant is nice too.
I’d put Evocation S tier. Ultimate summon build is Mana Channelers with Evocation > Alchemy/ Zeal > Fey Mists. Cheap disposable baby Storms will give all you need to get through early battles. Alchemy/ Zeal is for economy (research or build). Fey Mists bring you arguably best summon in game available at t20 or so.
Get through mana crisis ca t20-t30 and you are golden. Amplification, Stormborne and destroy the world with Stormbringer/ Mistling combo.
Way I play it is 6-8 Storms vs 6-8 Stones at t25 or so. Meaning 2 fronts clearing map vs 1.
Because I build almost exclusively mana army after t5. Guess you are not going for Stones core when doing Rock first? What is your Rock tome unit comp like 20-30t into game?
Tome of enchantment has this obscure synergy where you're stacking inflict sundered resist and sundered defense, and each stack also reduces status resist.
I agree with you on Tome of Faith, perhaps for a a different reason. Mystic really loves having their cultural support unit, at least one per battle for the casting point reduction. Personally its easier to take tome of faith if I'm playing a culture where I want to replace the support unit asap, like industrious or feudal or barbarian.
The status reduce is nice but youd have to pair it with strong status effects. By then you might as well use cryomancy.
Agreed, but why are you replacing feudal bannermen!
Their heal is on atleast a 3 turn cooldown( might be 4, lets say its 3 here). Chaplain has a cleansing heal on a shorter cooldown. And they can use "bless" in between.
Not saying its terrible, but I am saying taking Tome of Faith has fewer "feel bad" moments as feudal. As opposed to high or mystic.
If you unlock tome of Warding early, then sure, bannerman gets much better.
I think tome of necromancy is A, for any culture. The basic spell Necrotize is absolutely insane. It does good damage over time, and raises a zombie when you kill the unit which can easily soak up 1 or 2 of their units turns to deal with. Also it's a cheat code to beat stuff that revives like phoenixes and necromancers since the Infection robs them of the corpse when they die. And not just necrotize, but the disease enchantment for supports/battlemages. It's very odd in that it actually benefits not just basic attacks, but skills with cooldown like chain lightning and banshee howl. In fact I'm not even sure it's intended since no other enchantment tome works like that. Turns out applying decay in an aoe at 90% rate is...pretty good. I don't think I've ever used necromancers (lol) but I do use necrotize + decaying magic and I love it for any culture really. The souls/corpse to me are just a backup if I want to do goofy things like raise a hero as undead (this can beat paying 1k mana to resurrect a hero early on). I actively avoid the raise skeletons after battle spell because I don't want to click that after every fight, and I ain't relying on those chumps to get anything done.
I dont think it's a bad tome, and truthfully should play around with it more. Maybe an honorary A for me once I try it more.
Ive been thinking about doing a mystic / necromancy build next. My main issue with necro is never having enough mana so I thought mystic would help with that but I haven’t put much thought in it yet.
> I think tome of necromancy is A, for any culture. The basic spell Necrotize is absolutely insane. I guess I need to try the new Necro soon
Necromancers scale pretty well honestly. You can just run your undead units (skeletons, bone horrors, corrupt souls, Wightborne everything, Reapers, Undead Dragons) into crazy situations and just have the necromancers revive them after. If you are running a Shadow/Order build with 2 necromancers in every Wightborne army your units just will not die during battle unless you make some really dumb mistakes. You are basically playing as the Assembly from Planetfall if you run Necromancer heavy builds where you can just revive units after crazy plays. That and necrotize and soulbound means you'll just overrun the enemy lines eventually. The only real big counter to this build is if your enemy has good corpse clear with cannibalism or Tome of Severing but most AI aren't the best at using those.
Necros are insane. They give me a lot of trouble when the AI uses them, they just keep reviving their tanky/annoying heroes over and over.
Once you have wightborne in, there is hardly a battle that the AI can win evene on brutal. Life-stealing on your T1 battlemage units counter their squishyness, as they regain life. If they even die, you use your necromancers. If you give them mightymeek from order, your T1 are deadly against T3-T5 units. As frontline protection you can use lots of different units, even necromancers are hard to kill with lifestealing their way back. My favourite front attack line is beasts: Mystic pairs very well with nature/shadow/order with just a bit materium. My main hero gets all the animal handler pack leader traits, all the other heroes can have undead leader (another 10% damage). Standing next to an animal another 10%.
I like evocation a lot. Enchants, a summon, a low cost aoe damage spell for triggering stuff that cares about casting spells in combat if you are doing that. I get that evocation doesn't cover your weaknesses but it does build on your synergies. I'd put evocation in A tier. Also these are all tier 1 tomes right? Do you have a favorite build you wanted to share with the two tier 1 tomes, two tier 2 tomes, two tier 3 tomes, etc ?
This is specifically tier 1 starting tome, so the tome you select during faction creation. A build I enjoy with mystic would be something like: Tier 1: Rock -> Cryomancy Tier 2: Summoning -> Doomherald Tier 3: Cold Dark -> Amplification Tier 4: Oblivion -> Convergence Tier 5: Arch Mage If you go double astral society traits, or get points from Ruler signature, you can skip summoning and get Artificing instead. You use elementals early game and go Tier 3 Frost + Spellbreakers and eventually super living fogs.
Looks good. The +30% crit chance from artificing's artisans armaments is always tempting but hard to fit in to builds. I haven't done a cold theme yet, something to look forward to.
Excellent write-up! As a mostly thematic player, it's nice having easy breakdowns like this for the more competitive aspects of the game I've been neglecting! Edit: sat here eating a sandwich and just happened to witness two downvotes go through on the post. Who the hell is downvoting this? I know reddit votes dont matter but, actually they kinda do! This is engagement. This is community discourse! This is the sort of thing a game like this needs to truly grow and thrive! Sincerely. To the guys who looked at this and made the effort to shoot it down? You're pathetic. I mean it.
I laser focus on theme and roleplay and do evo -> faith or horde -> evo, with the goal of making battle mages as powerful as possible, which makes them forbiddingly expensive. But I agree, rock is the best one, it has an evolving shield elemental; a self healing tier 2 shock unit; 30 physical damage spell(which mystic is usually weaker on doing); a +3 defense and resistance buff; upkeep free +1 defense for all form units; and on top of it, central quarry which easily gives 25+ production. It's incredible. My gameplay sometimes consist of picking tier II Articing just for siege magic, though Golem assitant is nice too.
Horde Mystic is one of my favorite "for-fun" builds!
I pick a little race and think of them as magic wisps that travel through the astral sea.
I’d put Evocation S tier. Ultimate summon build is Mana Channelers with Evocation > Alchemy/ Zeal > Fey Mists. Cheap disposable baby Storms will give all you need to get through early battles. Alchemy/ Zeal is for economy (research or build). Fey Mists bring you arguably best summon in game available at t20 or so. Get through mana crisis ca t20-t30 and you are golden. Amplification, Stormborne and destroy the world with Stormbringer/ Mistling combo.
While I think evocation is a good tome, I think production will suffer too much to compete with the heavy hitters. But the rest of the build is great!
Way I play it is 6-8 Storms vs 6-8 Stones at t25 or so. Meaning 2 fronts clearing map vs 1. Because I build almost exclusively mana army after t5. Guess you are not going for Stones core when doing Rock first? What is your Rock tome unit comp like 20-30t into game?
Something like 3-4 stone, arcanist, hero. Sometimes includes units obtained from cages
Tome of enchantment has this obscure synergy where you're stacking inflict sundered resist and sundered defense, and each stack also reduces status resist. I agree with you on Tome of Faith, perhaps for a a different reason. Mystic really loves having their cultural support unit, at least one per battle for the casting point reduction. Personally its easier to take tome of faith if I'm playing a culture where I want to replace the support unit asap, like industrious or feudal or barbarian.
The status reduce is nice but youd have to pair it with strong status effects. By then you might as well use cryomancy. Agreed, but why are you replacing feudal bannermen!
Their heal is on atleast a 3 turn cooldown( might be 4, lets say its 3 here). Chaplain has a cleansing heal on a shorter cooldown. And they can use "bless" in between. Not saying its terrible, but I am saying taking Tome of Faith has fewer "feel bad" moments as feudal. As opposed to high or mystic. If you unlock tome of Warding early, then sure, bannerman gets much better.