Looking for an Archmage Enchanter Build

[axel15810]

Looking for an archmage enchanter build. I asked this in another thread that I didn't start but didn't get many responses so I thought I'd make a new thread.

I'd like the character to be a CC Enchantment Wizard and I'm going Human for flavor. I'd like to have some fun holding/dancing/charming everything. Would need to be able to no fail (or close to no fail) heal scrolls. Also, this will be a first life character (32 point build).

Any tips and suggestions are appreciated as I don't know that much about building arcanes.

As far as feats I know I'll be taking SF - enchant, GSF - enchant, Heighten, Quicken, Spell Pen, Greater Spell Pen but I am not sure what to take beyond that. Will be running the character on Heroic Elites. And on epics likely will be running mostly Epic Hard but I would like the character to be able to CC Epic Elite eventually after some gearing if it will be possible for him to get a decent success rate on enchantment spells.

Thanks!

[Thalone]

There's a Pale Master guide (not exactly what you're looking for, but a lot of the information there is transferable) here.

On topic: by going fleshy and human, you have already resigned yourself to making DC casting that much more difficult in EE. Drow start with a +2 INT advantage over humans and additionally can put both racial enhancement stats into INT. While Humans can make some of that up with Action surges, you're a caster, and won't have very many boosts per rest to play with. Rank 3 of Drow (and I believe Elf) racial Enchantment Lore gives +1 Enchantment DC. And even if you go with Enchantment in your Archmage tree, the undead forms give DC bonuses (Vampire +2 Enchant directly--but you take serious damage form Light spells, Lich +2 to everything via 4 INT after tier 5 enhancements--though this precludes +1 from your Archmage tier 5). Note that charming does not work very well on epic difficulties (see the Wiki article for Epic Ward).

You can also debuff enemies' Will saves to help your Enchantments land. An unheightened Hypnotism or Crushing Despair (both can be scrolled if the target has no Spell Resistance) can help your spells stick, as can kiting through a Symbol of Death or leading with Enervation.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket: there's stuff that can't be Enchanted (e.g., undead). Web (Conjuration) and Greater Shout (Evocation) are alternatives, as are your Necromancy instakills.

If you do decide to stick with fleshy human, then your best bet for self-healing until Cocoon is to splash Rogue 2 (and take Insightful Reflexes as a feat) for Evasion/traps/UMD as a class skill. Self-healing using scrolls in EE is not pleasant, however. I say this from experience...

Other feats you could consider: things that up your Dodge (some DEX investment will be required to hit the Dodge requirement), Skill Focus: UMD for Heal scrolls until you get your UMD up high enough, Extend (yay long Haste), Maximise/Empower for nuking.

[Lanhelin]

Feats I'd recommend additionally:

Enlarge - take it as early as you can, because then it's easy to charm far away mobs like Archers and make them care about themselves while you get enough time to reach them without being hit.

Augment Summoning - makes your Hires, Summons and charmed mobs a little tougher. Sometimes you'll be able to kill the last standing mob just by releasing it, because it then loses the additional HP from AugS.

Insightful Reflexes - calculates your Int modifier instead your Dex modifier for Reflex saving rolls.

Mental Toughness - because in case a mob resists or saves successfully, nothing else happens besides that the spell reduced your sp pool (and in the first life this can happen easily).


Metamagics like Empower or Maximize are not necessary, especially not when you take the Arcane Supremacy enhancement.
Undead are "charmable" though not with spells from Enchantment school but Necromancy (command/control). Fortunately most Undead have low will saves (except the Blackbone ones in Haunted Library on elite), so the heightened spells are sufficient in most cases without the need to specialize in Necromancy or to take the related spell focus feat. In my second life as Enchantment Wiz (W17/Rogue2/Druid1) I could command all the shadows and umbral mobs even in epic High Road pretty often with heightened command only.
Extend I found rather useless, as unlike a melee or range dmg focused Wiz you let the others fight for you so the unextended Death Aura or Haste should be sufficient to heal yourself or haste your minions.

If you want to be able to charm Animals too, splash one Level of Druid. You'll lose the Wiz capstone, but the benefits outweigh the disadvantages imo. It's always better to have a hard-hitting melee Spider on your side, than all of them against you If you do so, raise Wis at character creation as high as you can. The spell will benefit from any +Wisdom item and Archmage spell school focus or general Caster Level raise from EDs, but not from PM Shrouds (except Vampire) as most of them just raise Int and Charm Animal is Wis based but an Enchantment School spell. Due to the low will saves of Animals like Undead it will be sufficient in most epic Normal and below content.

Even if you want to put most points into Archmage, put at least 11 AP in the PM Tree to get the Vampire shroud. In my first life as Enchantment Wiz (18/2), when I switched from Magister to level the Fatesinger ED, at Level 24 the Drow in King's Forest Wilderness weren't charmable out of Vampire shroud (DC to low).

Try to get the best scepters/clubs/daggers at level with Spell Penetration and Enchantment Focus. If you want to scroll-cast, make sure to put the Spell Pen weapon in your offhand, because a scroll would replace your main hand weapon and Spell Resistance is the bigger problem than the Enchant DC, at least in heroic content. In epic content it slowly swaps from Spell Pen to DC.

[unbongwah]

If you don't mind LRing +1 out of the first cleric lvl, sun elves make the best Enchanters: +4 INT, +3 Spell Pen, +1 Enchant DCs, and Feywild Tap for 18 APs, if I'm adding right. 41 APs into Palemaster or Archmage tree with 21 APs left over for the other. Otherwise it's a toss-up between drow (+4 INT) & elves (+3 Spell Pen & Feywild, but you have to spend 5 APs on filler first).

Beyond that, you're on the right track. I think an Enchanter / Pale Master combo can be quite fun, if not optimal; if you pick up Augment Summons, maybe invest in your Skeletal Knight as well for fun. I would also take at least Maximize, b/c sometimes there's no substitute for raw DPS.

[axel15810]

Thanks for all the tips.

I didn't think much into splashing palemaster for healing, but since I can get vampire shroud for only 11 AP plus get +2 enchant DCs from it I'll definitely be going that route.

Enlarge sounds like a definite...not too big on Mental Toughness I tend to be really stingy with SP anyways and will probably be spamming SLAs.

I know Human isn't optimal but I already have a WF sorc and didn't want to run another WF and I think I'll be fine using undead shroud for self healing. I don't want to go sun elf because I'd like to play lower levels and not buy an LR+1 so sun elf. Plus an extra feat never hurt anyone. If I really like the toon I will seriously considering TRing into sun elf for the extra DCs at that point.

[Lanhelin]

Mind that as Enchantment focused Wiz your AM Core SLA's won't do any dmg, only the ones in the tree - but these cannot be meta'ed and are pretty weak compaired to regular spells, both AM and PM ones. I made some good experiences with the heightened prismatic spells (T5 and T7), though they are Evocation ones, they have two Death effects that could proc. And on trash mobs even on epic Hard it procced pretty often and they lost their saving rolls. Combined with Mass Hold or Dancing Ball or both you can do insta-kills as Archmage Enchanter too.

If you take Human also keep an eye on your Will saves, because especially in early levels becoming holded really is annoying. And raise your UMD to be able to scroll-cast Heal. If you take "Half-Human" with Cleric Dilettante it saves a lot of UMD points. When you can (scroll-)cast cure/healing/repair spells and think to have enough sp then I recommend to use a melee Hire like Fighter/Paladin/Barbarian as most of them are very durable, do decent damage and make at least soloing a lot easier than with a Cleric Hire who has Divine Vitality (most important: A Cleric/FvS Hire if not set to passive will heal your charmed mobs too and pretty fast be out of sp) - for the price that you have to heal/repair them from time to time.

And some more general tips:

If it's possible always charm/command the caster mobs (Wiz type or Cleric type) - either they will AoE kill everything else or be killed by everything else. In both cases good for you^^

Skeleton Archers won't do any damage to other Skeletons, but just aggroing them.

If you charm a Skeleton Wizard and stay in Undead Shroud, you will be healed in its Aura. You can also get several buffs from different wiz/cleric mobs if you stay in their range like Haste, Mass Aid, Death Ward and so on.

Some mob types are immune to the one or the other form of CC, so make sure to have slotted dancing/hold/charm/suggest and command all the time. Eg. Drow Necromancers can be charmed in their normal form and commanded in their undead form.

Charmed mobs can be buffed and healed too. But buffs will remain on them if you release them. Whether they still do their effects or not, I do not know exactly.

Though the regular charm/suggestion spells state that the mob won't follow you, they will try to reach hostile enemies in their range and thus in some situations move pretty far.

Sleeping Lions are not targetable and not AoE harmable too, until you get close to them making them stand up.

Beholders are charmable.

[slarden]

If you don't mind LRing +1 out of the first cleric lvl, sun elves make the best Enchanters: +4 INT, +3 Spell Pen, +1 Enchant DCs, and Feywild Tap for 18 APs,

Definitely this, but like the OP I often choose flavor over optimization. My PM is a sun elf though

One thing I have been contemplating is that eVale could be like eGH where some good builds just stop working entirely. In the case of GH it was due to high DC requirements, but in the case of eVale it could be high spell penetration requirements. Based on the enemy spell resistance formula and the projected CR of eVale enemies - getting a workable spell penetration might be unobtainable against devils, fiendish, etc.

If new augments, gear, etc. make it obtainable 3 past lifes wizard + 3 past lifes fvs + 3 from racial tree + using all twists could be a must. At the present time most of the spell-resistant enemies are in lower level epics and with power creep a 2nd life wizard with 1 PL wizard can get a sufficiently high DC and spell penetration without the additional +8 spell pen from 2 more wiz past lifes and 3 more fvs lifes.

Of course this is all speculation based on the current gear and current SR formulas. Things can change and I am not even sure how long it will be before eVale is out.

[Micron]

(EDIT: Uhm, just noticed that this thread is a necro. Nevermind.)

I can give you the build for my main character who's a pure halfling enchanter wizard. I play halflings for flavour so feel free to replace the halfling enhancements with human ones and pick your bonus human feat.

My Enchantment DC isn't 100% maximised (race aside), my primary focus in the Archmage tree is actually Evocation for SLAs so that I can switch to DPS mode when CC is not needed that much - I run in Magister or Draconic when I want maximum Enchant DC and in Shiradi when DPS is more important. I don't like one-trick ponies and this versatility makes the character more fun to play for me. Even so, she usually does a pretty decent job at CCing up to EE Wheloon (I haven't played her in EE Stormhorns yet). When I see that mobs start saving a bit too much for comfort, I switch to vamp mode and pop an Int yugo pot for an extra +3 DC, that usually does the job.
For self-healing I twist Cocoon and use no-fail Heal scrolls - if you go this route, remember to pick up some Wand and Scroll Mastery and healing amplification (PDK gloves and Iron Mitts work well for me). Scrolls heal me for 345 hp.

The build below was "optimised" for running EE Underdark quests, for newer content the Epic Spell Penetration might not be needed and you could replace it with something else, eg. you could take Epic Enchant DC at 24 and Ruin at 27.

Abilities: Int and Con at 18, rest in Charisma for UMD. Dump everything else. (This is a 36pt build, drop a little Con if needed.)
Skills: Max UMD, Spellcraft, Heal, Concentration (for scrolls), rest in whatever you fancy, I like some Jump, Diplomacy, Tumble.

Character Plan by DDO Character Planner Version 04.23.01
DDO Character Planner Home Page

Level 28 True Neutral Halfling Female
(20 Wizard \ 8 Epic) 
Hit Points: 370
Spell Points: 1646 
BAB: 10\10\15\20
Fortitude: 12
Reflex: 15
Will: 13

Level 1 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Empower Spell
Feat: (Past Life) Past Life: Wizard
Feat: (Past Life) Past Life: Wizard
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Quicken Spell


Level 2 (Wizard)


Level 3 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Spell Penetration


Level 4 (Wizard)


Level 5 (Wizard)
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Maximize Spell


Level 6 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Penetration


Level 7 (Wizard)


Level 8 (Wizard)


Level 9 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Insightful Reflexes


Level 10 (Wizard)
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Heighten Spell


Level 11 (Wizard)


Level 12 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Spell Focus: Evocation


Level 13 (Wizard)


Level 14 (Wizard)


Level 15 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Evocation
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Spell Focus: Enchantment


Level 16 (Wizard)


Level 17 (Wizard)


Level 18 (Wizard)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Initiate


Level 19 (Wizard)


Level 20 (Wizard)
Feat: (Wizard Bonus) Mental Toughness


Level 21 (Epic)
Feat: (Selected) Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment


Level 22 (Epic)


Level 23 (Epic)


Level 24 (Epic)
Feat: (Selected) Epic: Epic Spell Penetration


Level 25 (Epic)


Level 26 (Epic)
Feat: (Epic Destiny) Toughness


Level 27 (Epic)
Feat: (Selected) Epic: Epic Spell Focus: Enchantment


Level 28 (Epic)
Feat: (Epic Destiny) Epic Destiny: Hellball

Enhancements: