How do you kill a boss solo as an Archmage?

[Deathdefy]

I finally hit 20 with my Illusionist Archmage - don't stop reading here!

I'm happy with his performance apart from on red and orange names. At this point I've only been running EH since I want to hit 24 or 25 before trying to tackle EE on a build with which I'm still largely in the experimental phase.

Here's what I do:
-Waves of Fatigue once at the start (Guaranteed -1 reflex save from -2 Str/-2 Dex is probably actually not worth doing when solo, but whatever).

-Bestow Curse until it lands (I assume the -4 saves helps the Force SLA)

-DoT: single unmaximized/unempowered first 2 stacks, then maximized 3rd stack and every stack thereafter. I have enhancements in Cold, and items that enhance both cold and electric (mostly just Spider silk Robes + Iron Cloak (To be upgraded) of the Dragon).
EDIT: Reading this I realise I should have scepters to swap to hey!

-The AM Force SLA (not the evocation enhancement line that gives magic missiles, etc. just the generic one that does 1d6 per level of force damage with a reflex save for half). I also at the moment have the AoE SLA, but it seems just awful (due to the combination of a huge cooldown and abysmal damage.) at a price tag of 100SP, so I'm going to swap it out when I can.

-Maximized Ice Storm on bosses that stand still-ish.

That's about all I can afford without feeling like I'm burning too much SP for too little gain (e.g. Maximized Polar Rays, Frost Lances, etc); and it just takes too darn long.

For reference, it took me a little over 5 minutes to kill the EH bosses of Bargain of Blood solo just dotting and SLAing with the occasional Maximized Polar Ray toward the end once I realised I was going to be able to avoid drinking a pot.


I'd like advice on:

What sort of enhancement lines do other Archmages (particularly Necromancy Archmages since I assume our problems are similar), take re: elemental damage and force?
-I'm sitting at 7/1/1 force, 4/1/1 Cold. I have basically 0 discretionary points beyond that with everything tied up in SLAs or Spell Pen.

Is the force SLA worth taking?

Are there spells I should be adding to or removing from my rotation?

[akash]

Greetings, about soloing the boss the first thing I want to know do you have GSConOpp item+GSConOpp weapon+torc? These items help a lot while soloing and you can easily solo epic hard with WF AM without drinking any pot. Just start hitting the boss with your GS ConOpp weapon while low on SP, if you have good HP (500+) and some DR to protect yourself it refills really quick.

Now about the spell options, if lowering enemy reflex save is your target then use Solid Fog instead of Waves of Fatigue. -5 no fail enemy reflex saves helps great landing the damaging spells. If you have 1/1/7 force mastery you should start using Disintegrate it works against almost all types of mobs. If you are keeping 1/1/7 force line, I suggest keep both of your AM SLAs. Otherwise, I would drop the AoE one and instead take a secondary AM line of evocation and take Evocation I - Magic Missile SLA, that will save me 25 SP but will cost another feat slot. Unlike generic AM force SLAs the evocation focused AM SLAs have no saving throw, so they are more effective against the bosses.

The Necromancy spells are not considered as untyped damage, so they don't get benefited by force enchantment lines. The spells which get benefited from force are two generic AM SLAs, magic missiles, chain missiles, disintegration etc.

Lastly I want to say, for an Illusion based AM it's much easy to kill the trash but there's no easy button against the bosses, you need spell regen items and keep on nuking the boss under the Solid Fog until its dead.

[sirgog]

Double-DOTting should get everything with <50000hp down without spending overly much SP. For ~25k HP bosses add Acid Rain, Polar Ray, Black Dragon Bolt and whatever else to speed it up. For 100k+ ones, be very careful with DOT restacking, make sure you never have a stack fall off due to concentration or facing issues.

Edit: Oh and I advise against Disintegrate except for a minority of bosses. The big crits are memorable which makes the spell seem awesome, but the actual damage per casting is very low unless the boss has a low enough Fort save to fail on a 16 or 17, and most bosses have pretty solid Fort saves unless they are undead.

[MRMechMan]

Curse is nearly useless. Ditto on waves most of the time. The force SLAs don't have saves. Neither do the stackable DOTs. Neither do ice storm/acid rain after the initial tick.

Sounds like you are doing things right. That boss...or bosses, rather...have a pretty good amount of hp. Luckily he/they don't really pack much of an offensive punch, but it CAN take a while to nuke down.

Would not recommend disint, it is LOWER damage/sp than the DOTs and bosses WILL save against it putting it from bad to useless waste of sp. Even if going all out dps, disint is generally a poor choice. Only use if there is a good reason for it...ie, liches, perhaps golems.

Consider shiradi if you take the force SLAs, I have heard good things about that combination. But, they were nerfed a few updates ago. I TRed my archmage because of it.

Last thing is, when stacking DOTs, don't restack it as soon as the 10s cooldown ends. You can get somewhere between 50%+ to nearly double as much damage for your sp used if you wait till it is nearly expired...just don't let it drop cause then you've wasted a lot of potential damage.

Torc/concops work well...EN/EH melee/ranged damage is low enough that you can easily "torc up" if your sp pool doesn't go the distance. Just to clear something up that the other poster wrote, hitting the boss with a concop wep does nothing, both item and accessory work on getting hit.

[Rawrargh]

I wouldn't bother with arcane bolt/blast as they are what? level 2 and 3 spells that can't be heightened?
Double dots, BDB and polar ray did it for me. That said, the end boss in BoB has a lot more HP than most other bosses since you have to kill both the general and the manager.

[voodoogroves]

The magic level 5 dots, black dragon bolt and an AOE if you can get them to stand still. Some, like the dude at the end of Devil's Assault likes to jump and/or teleport around. I generally don't bother with the necrotic or arcane SLA blasts on bosses, but rather I turtle up behind a nice big shield usually. If I am running and jumping around or chasing, I will zap with the SLAs.

I usually pick one element and go 7/1/1 in it, then at least 1/1/1 in the others - more if I can afford it.

Always tag the orange w/ Energy Drain / Enervation early if you can


Back in the day, I used to debuff the bosses heavily. Not so much anymore.

[Deathdefy]

Glad I posted! Lots of good thoughts.

Main changes:
I'm going to ditch the Force line and go 7/1/1 Cold, 1/1/1 Elec, 1/1/1 Acid and spend the AoE SLA's enhancement point on just 1/0/0 Force. I'll still keep the first Force SLA since it's 1 SP for about 100 damage with a quick cooldown: basically what to do when the situation doesn't warrant doing much at all.

I think everyone's right and there's no point in using the debuffs I am if I change to the better spell line up of:
Black Dragon Bolt, Polar Ray, double DoTs, with Acid Rain if I think they'll stay still for long enough.


Other thoughts:
Solid Fog's -5 reflex is a revelation to me! That would also go well with web.

Having tried them last life, I have a very low opinion of the Evocation line SLAs. Magic Missile, Max-Emp, with full force lines, still just doesn't do real damage; with the 6 second cooldown on the SLA it's rubbish except for Shiradi builds.

I do have GS ConcOpp item + Torc, but am a fleshie, so static tanking is difficult on things that attack even semi-frequently.

Lastly, I'm very pleased that Bargain of Blood's end bosses take a while for everyone. I felt gimpy, but thought (numbers are from memory but correct I think; I'll try it again with the new spell line-up soon) 51k + 28k HP was objectively pretty high.

[Kinerd]

What hand items do you normally carry? Because a Thaumaturgy staff could prove to be a huge help for your DPS woes. I use one that matches Glaciation 102 with Superior Cold Lore, which is nice. The Spell Power isn't that much of an increase over your robes, but going from no Lore to Superior could help quite a bit.

[Wipey]

7/1/1 cold and lightning. 120 and superior lore dual scepters. Quicken off, use cove dagger clickies, keep 3 stack up.
Polars, necrotic ray, dragon bolt or meteor ( depending on your enhancements and items of course ) if you think you have sp to spare.

If it's not dead yet, I don't think you can do much more :-D

[MeliCat]

Black Dragon Bolt, Polar Ray, double DoTs, with Acid Rain if I think they'll stay still for long enough.

What about Craetos?

I can only think of icestorm and DBF. Curious how others do that miniboss.

[Kinerd]

His resistances aren't that strong against cold and electricity. The power DoTs are only ruled out in cases of outright immunity. (I seem to remember him not being resistant to electricity at all, but that could be wrong.)

[sirgog]

What about Craetos?

I can only think of icestorm and DBF. Curious how others do that miniboss.

U9 changed him from blanket immune to elemental damage to 100% susceptable. Anything works, just don't try to solo him on EE as his HP are obscene there. (He's immune to negative energy still).

EH a Pale Master can just endure his swings and stand still, a fleshy AM will need to kite but the box moves slowly. Beware the lightning traps!

[MeliCat]

U9 changed him from blanket immune to elemental damage to 100% susceptable. Anything works, just don't try to solo him on EE as his HP are obscene there. (He's immune to negative energy still).

EH a Pale Master can just endure his swings and stand still, a fleshy AM will need to kite but the box moves slowly. Beware the lightning traps!

Ah. I must admit I haven't tried him since then on a caster.

[sirgog]

Ah. I must admit I haven't tried him since then on a caster.

He's a joke. I could solo him comfortably on Myrmidral on old epic even before I had a Conc-Opp item made, EH is a lot easier than that. (Myrmidral couldn't solo Garos on old epic without luck because of the Flesh to Stone issue).

He had just under 100k HP at the time, not tested new epic settings but would assume it's something like 40k/75k/225k for a 4 player group (then modified by scaling).