Fightin them on their own plane

[Thesoulgazer]

How exactly do you best fight devils while on Shavarath? Banishment will not work due to the being on their own plane thing. Immune to fire, resistant to ice... what do u do? Is hoping they don save a fod ur only option? R u just a support role for the tanks? What?

[Fomori]

If you are talking specifically about a wizard, the best answer is "The only way to win is not to play."

Actually, thats sort of not true but I do enjoy Wargames quotes.

You'll pretty much need to FoD or Wail for max effect, though you might want to start those off with an Energy Drain, or Enervation first. The problem with Devils and Othons is that they tport... You can get swarmed over way to easily and those punks hit hard! Playing a wizzy in Amrath does require a different thought process than most wizzys are used to.

I had the same issues but I'm forward to trying it in a different approach when I get my freshly TR'ed wizards back up to that level.

[Trillea]

Gather them in a large group, hit the groups with waves of exhaustion, drop some webs, then hit the groups with max/emp/potencied Cone of Cold or Ball Lightnings. If you have the belt clickies this works wonders, even if you don't it works better than evervation/energy drain/FoD-Wail. Their fort saves are higher than their reflex ones, especially after being exhausted.

[Cylinwolf]

Their fort saves are absolutely insane. It's best to take the thought of instadeath spells clean out of your head when in Shavarath.

Their will and reflex saves are notably weaker.

Your basic method for dealing with groups of mobs (especially in groups) is going to be to get them trapped in a web. When your DC becomes much more reliable versus their will save (~34-36), Hold Monster, Mass can end a fight before it even begins. Moreso, if you take and drop a mindfog and the mobs inside it fail their will save, they take -10 to their save. This is a massive step towards keeping the enemy from making their recurring save against Hold Monster, Mass.

As said above, you can exhaust mobs in a cone infront of you for half movement speed and a -3 on their strength checks to get out of your web, aswell as a -3 on their reflex save to get caught by your web in the first place.

If you want to do damage, I know that for a sorcerer I could rearrange my enhancements to fit in the four enhancements for Acid/Lightning damage and took Chain Lightning. On groups of enemies (especially in small areas like the hallways in Sins) it or Ball Lightning can be pretty devastating, but you should usually focus on keeping the mobs trapped in web or Held foremost because if everything is up and cleaving at your group, you're going to take a hell of a lot more damage.

[vorpel]

Awesome ideas! Gonna have to go give some of these a try...!

[tinyelvis]

All of the techniques you should have developed as a low level sorcerer can now be put to real good use. However, instead of ripping foes apart with niacs and acid blast, you now can use Polar Ray and cone of cold. For super high reflex saves like lions and trog archers use just Polar ray. This approach kills in 1 to 3 blasts. The exact same techniques for damage mitigation, and super efficient attacks that you learned at low level will work great here.

If you're one of those who relies a lot on the slow dull killing style heavily dependent on wall of fire, you may have a rough go of it in the high level content. Good news for you is, game designers decided to resurrect this dull play style in epic content.

[tinyelvis]

meh buff the snot out of the melee, go make a sannich while they get you your loot. /pikemode on.

seriously though, you can waste a lot of spell points with little to no gain there. i concentrate mostly on buffing (keeping everyone hasted / displaced / raged) and pick and choose my places to strike. A cone here or there to soften things up, a little irresistable for kicks (do it to the melees too a la kormor's belt), most of the quests have great little spots for dumping sp, bide your time. let the melee have their fun, we been burning things up for a while now. time for a break

If you enjoy playing the buff bot, then that is fine. Don't expect anyone to ever ask for more than one of you. Me, I kill everything before the melee can put major dents in it (unless I am shrining). Sometimes after I quickly dispatch 4 devils at the same time, I will turn and polar ray the 5th that the monk was working on just for fun. Good melee intimidate to help speed up my killing even more. Against most all bosses, I do a lion's share of the damage. The devil's battlefield and quests were setup very well. You can DPS if you like. You can buff for melee if you like. You can do a combination of both. You can even super specialize and auto kill. Its a very fun place to play. Its too bad the designers don't seem to understand this at the moment.

[Thesoulgazer]

If you enjoy playing the buff bot, then that is fine. Don't expect anyone to ever ask for more than one of you. Me, I kill everything before the melee can put major dents in it (unless I am shrining). Sometimes after I quickly dispatch 4 devils at the same time, I will turn and polar ray the 5th that the monk was working on just for fun. Good melee intimidate to help speed up my killing even more. Against most all bosses, I do a lion's share of the damage. The devil's battlefield and quests were setup very well. You can DPS if you like. You can buff for melee if you like. You can do a combination of both. You can even super specialize and auto kill. Its a very fun place to play. Its too bad the designers don't seem to understand this at the moment.

sooo... immoblize through the dancingsphere or web and then open up with aoe spells like ball lightining and cone of cold?

[tinyelvis]

sooo... immoblize through the dancingsphere or web and then open up with aoe spells like ball lightining and cone of cold?

My suggestion in Savarath is play to your strengths. Your approach depends a lot on your spell DC's and which school you specialize in, and your ability to buff damage. If you have horrible damage and poor damage mitigation skills, then work on immobilizing foes first. If your damage is good or you have high bunny skills, just dodge attacks and respond with your best AOE and Ray spells. A mana intensive route is to energy drain and then insta kill. However, this as mentioned is mana intensive, slow, and won't work against warded foes. Some of the very best necromancers can get good results with super high DCs and eliminate the need to energy drain. It's also possible to combine melee with your casting well out there if you specialize in that form of attack.

For DC's at a minimum shoot for,
Enchantments, some conjuration 36
Evocation, some conjuration 38
Necromancy 40

The above numbers are just general guidelines, and IMO the minimum numbers for good casters. You can certainly get by with less. In all cases, of course, the higher the better. Focus on one area and become good at it. Usually a lot of practice is involved. A lot also depends on your play style.

No approach really is the best. The enchantment route can often be the easiest to achieve, and has the added benefit of being pretty useful in epic play (learn where enchantments won't work well (i.e. Bastion) and plan for a different approach there. I find evocation can be the funnest (especially with a WF) and least cerebral approach, . While necromancers can just blow thru things but takes the most knowledge, focus, and item farming.

The designer of Shavarath should get a medal. No other area is as open to so many play styles. The area is both challenging and fun (In contrast, epic play is dull and boring. Epic play is the great killer of countless play styles. The greedy designers of these shoddy, cheaply thrown together quests should be arrested for crimes against humanity and drawn and quartered in the public square).

[Thesoulgazer]

My suggestion in Savarath is play to your strengths. Your approach depends a lot on your spell DC's and which school you specialize in, and your ability to buff damage. If you have horrible damage and poor damage mitigation skills, then work on immobilizing foes first. If your damage is good or you have high bunny skills, just dodge attacks and respond with your best AOE and Ray spells. A mana intensive route is to energy drain and then insta kill. However, this as mentioned is mana intensive, slow, and won't work against warded foes. Some of the very best necromancers can get good results with super high DCs and eliminate the need to energy drain. It's also possible to combine melee with your casting well out there if you specialize in that form of attack.

For DC's at a minimum shoot for,
Enchantments, some conjuration 36
Evocation, some conjuration 38
Necromancy 40

The above numbers are just general guidelines, and IMO the minimum numbers for good casters. You can certainly get by with less. In all cases, of course, the higher the better. Focus on one area and become good at it. Usually a lot of practice is involved. A lot also depends on your play style.

No approach really is the best. The enchantment route can often be the easiest to achieve, and has the added benefit of being pretty useful in epic play (learn where enchantments won't work well (i.e. Bastion) and plan for a different approach there. I find evocation can be the funnest (especially with a WF) and least cerebral approach, . While necromancers can just blow thru things but takes the most knowledge, focus, and item farming.

The designer of Shavarath should get a medal. No other area is as open to so many play styles. The area is both challenging and fun (In contrast, epic play is dull and boring. Epic play is the great killer of countless play styles. The greedy designers of these shoddy, cheaply thrown together quests should be arrested for crimes against humanity and drawn and quartered in the public square).

Well, i wil not pretend to be anything but a noob, so the necromancer route is dead, im not going to go for evocation, so it looks like enchantment is my best bet. How would i go about making the dc as high as possible? Unfortuantly, i level noobed gh, and am now too high to be accepted for quests there. I wish i hadent and hadd went and raided for the dc item, but what else can i find to make my enchantment dc as high as possible?