Battlemage questions

[Ambroas]

For anyone willing to give me info on the class or advice, I'll be posting questions here as I go as well.

1) Reflective shield- Is this ever even used?  I literally can't see anything good about it.  Let's weigh it vs Force Field since I have to pick.  Force Field: Can safely use meteors, decreases bashing on me.  Reflective Shield: Reflects mundane damage which from what I can see no one is ever going to use on me.  I literally haven't fought a single person yet that has, pretty sure they'll use a much weaker magic weapon over a physical damage one.  I never keep this up unless I'm killing a npc that I know does physical damage and doesn't bash.

2) What are the chances of landing blind really?  I spend most of my time just trying this just to watch them flee and come back with it removed, almost to the point where I don't even try to use flashfire in pvp.  It's mastered but I try now to just use sear when I can and if it blinds great if it doesn't then I still do good damage.  Pretty sure this is an issue with saves and me not having a way to boost the chances that the spell will land vs high saves.

3) Damage- I'm severly lacking in this department and don't know what to do.  I've mastered blades, dancing weapons, currently I dance a withering scythe.  I haven't pvp'd much but when I have I'm always on the short end of percentage lost in combat.  If I dispel them they'll immediately flee and reapply or if not blinded reapply right then on the spot.  With all my spells up facing any opponent with me casting I have yet to out damage anyone.  Maybe this is because as a melee they can keep adding to hit/dam at the cost of defense where I'm stuck with my spells being where they are and can't boost the damage of my blades/dance?  

I'll come up with more as I go, for now I'm going to keep pushing on to master this class!

[Trick]

I wish I could weigh in.. I know how to fight a battlemage pretty decently, but I'm not much of a battlemage player.. The people that can probably give you some solid tips are Chesta or Egreir. They both have played a multitude of very successful BMGs and know the tips and tricks. 

[Chesta6384]

Battlemages don't rely on burst damage to win.  You beat your opponents with attrition.  Your damage is fairly consistent.  Personally, I used sharp metal mostly and sear as more of a finisher.  As far as a dancer if you are neutral/evil use the voulge for a magic dancer and the carpenters hammer for mundane.  Focus on very high as mixed with high saves.  You need no hit/dam.  Adding spell level will help.  

Slow is your friend.  Attrition as a battle mage is great.  Catching ticks while slowed will give you an edge.   If flashfire is landing keep using it.  Nobody has unlimited gyvels. Be sure to have all spells up.  Reflective shield has been made useless.  

[Ambroas]

I'm an Elf so good, tried getting divine reckoning but got lost in the last part of Mahn-Tor's dungeon ;(.  I tried to sort of attrition when I first started the character, this basically was I'd get beat up and run to heal, go back to get beat up again, run to heal and so on until I either quit or they did.  So I got tired of it and went more aggressive which backfired on me honestly.  What would you consider very high ac? Is -450 enough or should I go higher?  My saves right now are horrible as well sadly.  No idea how to add spell levels. 

I must have read things wrong before, really thought that Invokers and Battlemages were both burst damage.  That all an Invoker needed was a charged staff and all a BMG needed was a good dancing.  I'm still trying but I'm finding it difficult to fight against people that deal so much damage to me in a round even with my spells up, gonna try a different approach in my next few battles and to try and finding people that aren't decked to the heavens so the fight lasts longer for experience.

[Pali]

21 minutes ago, Ambroas said:

That all an Invoker needed was a charged staff and all a BMG needed was a good dancing.

Somewhat, but that's a matter of what your most important piece of eq is, and how much more important it is than any other individual piece of gear.  An otherwise naked invoker with a fully charged staff is not QUITE at his offensive peak, but he's close enough to it that he can possibly capitalize on a mistake to win the day through suddenly bursting a ton of damage against an equipped foe.  An otherwise naked bmg with the right dancer is, again, not QUITE at her offensive peak, but she's going to consistently output enough that proper use of attrition tactics and seizing upon enemy mistakes can still get her the day against an equipped foe.  For the most part, an invoker or bmg only has and only requires one or two of these weapons, so the general concept is that once you've got a good one, you're fairly ready to rock even if the rest of your eq is crap.

[Mali]

The trick to flashfire is to use it in an enclosed space. Fleeing and curing blind sucks when you can follow very quickly. Fight in a room with limited exits and hit them hard on the flee.

[Cephirus]

Divine Reckoning can be a trick to get, I personally still have a hard time with Mahn-Tor's Dungeon.

 

You may want to consider grabbing the Notched Axe from the Benevolent Minotaur in the Cloud Kingdom for your mundane damage (unless you can get your hands on the Carpenter's Hammer in the Asylum). Maybe use the Bastard Sword from Fredrick otherwise, maybe someone with more experience playing a goodie BMG can offer more suggestions for a magic damage dancing blade as an alternative to the Divine Reckoning.

 

Like it has been mentioned, BMG's are an attrition class, so it would seem you are already kinda getting the feel for it by having to flee after a bit. As Chesta mentioned, keep up slow and hit them with the flashfire, catch ticks where you can and keep pressing when you see yourself getting the advantage. No body has unlimited gyvels, and especially on hand, I like to do a locate and see how many they have. Especially if they are a giant class, they can only hold so many before having to dig into their bags, which is a great opportunity to come back and flash them again and really punish them.

[Zoichan]

Playing a battlemage now is much more of an uphill battle than it was years ago. People have adapted, new gear has been put in, more consumables to access. All of those factors make playing one with success a bit trickier.

Tips:

Use flashfire fighting against classes with multiple charmies. Necros, Rangers, ect. Flashfire should land on their pets fairly easily.

Use SEAR to blind the character you are fighting. The blind will land more reliably, AND be harder to cure. Get the iridescent shield. For real. Always..always...always have the iridescent shield.

Thunderclap is your friend, when trying to chase and land a kill, or trying to escape and heal up.

Reflective field was very useful before people realized they could use magical weapons and negate it. So, unless you're fighting someone who has NO magical weapons, use forcefield. Epecially if they can bash/bodyslam or have a charmie that does.

Use localize gravity. It's an awesome spell. One round lag to disarm a weapon, shield, or held item? Yes please.

 

[sarduarkar]

Reflective shield is not completely useless IMO...
Can do a good amount of damage under certain circumstances. I've seen some people charge it against mobs and surprise an opponent with some decent damage. Also it can charge rather well against people who have mundane attacking charmies.

In general, it is nice to have a swiss army knife of skills. Based on the circumstances, you may use a different array of spells. Against an ogre ranger with low saves, flashfire blind may be gold. Against a duergar or highly -saves decked opponent and you notice it never landing, maybe forgo it for other spells.

As stated before, slow is an awesome attrition spell. Can make your mana pool feel limitness and your hp heal like an ogre.

 

[Zoichan]

28 minutes ago, sarduarkar said:

As stated before, slow is an awesome attrition spell. Can make your mana pool feel limitness and your hp heal like an ogre.

 

And your movement points feel like a level 4 invoker.

[egreir]

I vote for battlemage buffs

[mya]

Reflective shield is god like vs any mob that uses phisical damage. You can cast charge it up a bit by spaming the spell, but such is very mana intensive.  You could mix charge it with a mob and mana but it's very tricky. Just don't use it except vs some classes like rangers and stuff.

100% enlarge on.

Rust, don't forget to use rust vs meeles.

Slow is for you, or vs pets, not for casting vs people who can dirt kick you and take advantage of sleep-regen. Also get a way to poison.

Request the Axe Lux Ethernal from commander in Blackwatch. It's good.

Aulian says the best time to blind is on water, because they can't dirt kick you.

Strategy, unless you can chase and dance in PK very well, your BMG will get kills by burst damage. Noon sear or Meteors.

Do not underestimate Meteors. It mostly rolls bad damage, so people never expect to get hammered by it. Probably the most damage capable spell in the game, and that is excluding the Asteroid.

Mvs, get 500 - 600 mvs. You gonna burn them all with slow. As new to the class you probabbly want to be slowed 100%.

Pets, get pets.

Get a way to cure poison and plague.

Played right a BMG will hardly die. It's hard to kill with one, but easy to stay alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[f0xx]

21 hours ago, mya said:

Aulian says the best time to blind is on water, because they can't dirt kick you.

 

That's a trap.