Battlemage - First character

[Haldir]

Alright...so a little over a week ago I bought the TQ and IT bundle and started a warfare character. Around level 20 I decided to make him a Battlemage. So far I think I'm almost halfway through IT on normal mode and I've accumulated 37 deaths lol (mostly from just learning the game). Thought I would post up my character's gear and build and see if anyone would give me some ideas on how to make my BM better. I went with a pure melee build...I started to mix magic and decided that diving my stat points between all 3 stats would end up being detrimental. So far I'm enjoying the game quite a lot...been a long time since I've really sat down and played a game like this since Diablo 1 lol.



And my build:

http://www.titancalc.com/TitanCalc.a...-0-0-0-6-6-0-0

I think my gear could use some work...not sure what I should be getting my first time through on normal. Do purples drop at all in normal? I've killed Typhon around 8 times and I've gotten 2 blues from him...a sword (one of the 2 Juque swords I'm using now) and a ice shield (name eludes me atm). Thanks

[Shadowshire]

A Little suggestion would be to get Dodge Attacks and Heat Sheild very soon. This will likely double your defences. I would personally put some points into earth mastery itself to get more health and dexterity and also bring out the coredweller. Beside that your build is ok. My build would look like: Battlemage build

Your damage though is horrible, sorry. Find some green axes or clubs in shops and put some attack speed or % damage relics in them. Also look for green fire boosting weapons, since you are a battlemage. You can always try them on and if they do not raise your damage, sell them back without loosing money. Just as an example, my level 8 assassin deals 243 in dps at spartan war camp normal, no cheats or twinking except 2 achilles relics in 2 green swords. So i would say that your damage at a minimum should be 500-800 on start of Epic. I know this aint easy since Battlemages aren't good damage dealers, compared to other builds.

A battlemage gains very little fire damage from earth enchanment. 85% fire damage and 5-8 burn damage over 3.0 seconds and 21% damage and 98 burn damage over 3.0 seconds is still only 35 extra burn damage in dps, since % fire damage do not boost burn damage. Monster has fire resistance aswell so this number if likely a lot lower. Without fire dealing weapons you get 0 extra damage from % fire damage, so unless you have weapons with high flat fire damage, Earth Enchantment is totally worthless. Just 1 point it to get Brimstone.

Purples can drop as soon as Helos in Epic, but never in normal. Just move on to next difficulty and go farm Nessus outside Spartan war camp. If you do it a few times you should have a good chance of getting some purples.

[linksu]

yep your damage output is horrible. get good green weapons with fire damage. heat shield is 1 pointer. i think i would use shield/weapon at this level that i can max both masteries asap.

but that's just me.

[Haldir]

Thanks for the good advice people. I'll change my gear up some and post how it's doing. Thanks again

[Matseb2611]

Do not disregard intelligence attribute. Your Earth skills rely on elemental damage, which is boosted by INT. So put the attribute points at the ratio of 2:1:1 in str:int:dex, but you have a lot in strength now so concentrate a bit on int. Just make sure you have about twice as much str as int and dex and you'll be fine.

[Strills]

My first character was also a battlemage, and I've actually finished legendary with it now. It was really hard in the end.

You should spend some points in Dodge attack, warhorn and heat shield. One point in heat shield is enough for the 15% damage resistance.
You should also get stone form and one point in molten rock, for the extra two seconds. This one is a real life saver, must have.

Also you should get core dweller when you've got the skills I mentioned before, as you won't have many skills worth investing in.

[Matseb2611]

Yeah I know what you mean. You get to cruise all the way till legendary act 4. That is when I discarded dual wield and decided to concentrate on resistances. That gimped my DPS however. But still, survivability is more important on legendary than DPS. My Core Dweller right now is excellent at surviving and holding aggro. Just get him to lvl 16 with full metamorphosis and inner fire and cast heat shield on him.
A good technique that I like to do is to cast eruption and war horn. Weakens enemies pretty well (even with my overly low points in intelligence ~250).

[Haldir]

I finally beat TQ and IT on normal mode. By the end I had around 630 or so dps after changing my gear up some to improve fire based damage. I started Epic last night and within an hour I found 2 Doxa Kola swords lol. I think I'll save those for a next character after I'm done using them on this one. Hopefully I'll be able to get a couple of those Pyro Lops.



edit: lol just saw I have 2 stat points =/

Also...should I sell all of my banked items going from normal to epic? I've a ton of relics and charms and formulas...

[Cicciro]

Don't sell them. I usually make a mule called Normal, Epic, Legendary and Artifacts. I pump each one with their respective charms and relics, or artifacts and formulae.

[Strills]

Originally Posted by Cicciro

Don't sell them. I usually make a mule called Normal, Epic, Legendary and Artifacts. I pump each one with their respective charms and relics, or artifacts and formulae.

....or get vault.