Considering this Battlemage combo...

EramTheLiar · April 2014

So... I was playing on my (mostly) pure sorcerer today, and I noticed how high my armor rating shot up when I had Bound Armor and Lightning Form up... it was impressive. And it got me to thinking about trying out a "Battlemage" build that focused on that. And since I'm sure someone has already tried it, I figure I could throw out my very rough concept and get some feedback on what strengths (and weaknesses!) I will eventually run into.

So...

Melee-focused Battlemage in heavy armor
Breton, so the racial passives can partially offset the bonuses I'm not getting from Light Armor passives
Main skills: Mage's Fury (morphed to Endless Fury), Lightning Form (morphed to Thundering Form), Bound Armor (morphed, not sure to which yet), Dark Exchange (morphed to the one with the lowered stamina cost), Twin Slashes (morphed to the one that provides a self-heal during the DoT)
Sixth Skill I am Trying To Figure Out How to Work Into My Primary Skill Bar: Daedric curse (morphed to Velocious Curse)

So far, the advantages I see:

Heavy armor + Bound Armor + Thundering Form = very high armor rating. Actually, this also counts as a potential disadvantage since I'm wondering if the soft cap/hard cap will make this combination wasteful.

Thundering Form, along with impressive armor boost, is an 8 second AOE. The damage isn't as fast as some of the other AOEs but it is comparatively higher at the end of it, (Lightning Splash has the advantage of being targetable and being over in 2.5 seconds -- but overall TF is cheaper to cast and by the end of it it actually does more damage) and the idea is to be whittling away at the targets I'm not attacking so they'll be easier to handle when they're "next."

Twin Slashes is a pretty efficient attack. I can't tell if the DoT stacks with multiple attacks, but based on my Nightblade's experience it usually takes only two slashes or three slashes to whittle down a target to the "low health" zone, at which point I could (in theory) follow up with Endless Fury as a finisher. Twin Slashes is a low-cost stamina-based attack that I think will allow me to alternate between magika and stamina with relatively little pain.

The Twin Slashes morph (that I can't remember the name of) is also a self-heal. It's not the greatest one in the world, but it's there and it doesn't make using the skill more expensive.

Thundering Form looks really cool. Hey, I didn't say they were all game mechanic advantages. :-)

So far, the disadvantages that I see:

If I want to make use of the DoT in Thundering Form I need to boost up my magicka, since magic damage is based on your maximum magicka. But since this is primarily a melee build, I'm going to have to spread out my points between magicka, health, and stamina. At the Moment I'm thinking of a 3:2:1 ratio, which means the damage won't be at "specialist levels."

As touched on in advantages, the triple-layer of armor from heavy armor, Bound Armor, and Thundering Form may be overkill from a soft cap and hard cap perspective. In which case it may be utterly wasteful, and I'd be better off switching out some heavy armor with cloth in order to take advantage of those Light Armor passive bonuses.

Melee has it's own problems--namely, those jerks who keep backing up before they hit you with some kind of stun or encasement spell. Mage's Fury/Endless Fury is a ranged attack but it's most useful on targets at 20% health or below. Perhaps post-15 my alternate weapon should be a bow or a staff...

Anyway, like I said, those are my mostly speculative thoughts. Any supporting thoughts or counter-thoughts from people who have had more specific experience with these would be welcome.

Awacs_Tragedy · April 2014

I was thinking of making something similar

5 Medium/2 Heavy armour.
Either Nord, Breton or Imperial as my race.
Using 2hand as my main weapon and bow as my secondary weapon.
Using Stampede, Wrecking Blow, Rally (possible Forward Momentum instead), Critical Surge (possible Degeneration instead) and Bound Armaments as my main.
Using Magnum Shot, Focused Aim, Volcanic Rune, Deadric Tomb and Boundless storm as my secondary.

But as I am playing a different toon right now I don't feel like I should start a new one again (I already have 7 different

)

But I think you should consider either healing or bow as your secondary and I hope you can make it because then I might be able to do so too.

Best of luck.

EramTheLiar · April 2014

So I was testing a few things out with my (mostly pure) sorcerer and I discovered that the all heavy/bound armor/thunderous form combo is needlessly overkill.

The difference between wearing all heavy armor, stacked with bound armor, stacked with thunderous form, and wearing TWO pieces of heavy armor and FIVE pieces of cloth armor (thereby reaping the benefits of magicka regen and spell cost reduction from cloth passives) was...

FIFTEEN POINTS. Sheesh.

So going all heavy in physical armor is, I think, a waste of time. Go with the heavy armor for the breastplate, because that gives you the biggest boost, and then boots or leggings or pauldrons I guess, because they all give you the same boost in the end.

I also played around with dual weapons and the Twin Slashes morph that gives you the DoT/heal, and I discovered an interesting wrinkle... the Twin Slashes DoT is a "bleed" effect (makes sense), and some creatures (mostly undead/ghosts) are immune to bleed effects. The self-heal over time appears to be tied to the bleed, because I noticed when fighting undead I didn't get the self heal either! So... the secondary weapon is absolutely necessary for times when rooted encased, and in those situations there's no reason not to retool your skill bar to include something more useful, like Velocerious Curse which is a pretty useful debuff/damage combo with Endless Fury.

Research is ongoing...

Awacs_Tragedy · April 2014

I would advice you to take some stamina skills too, and maybe splitting ranged from melee abilities so you have a ranged weapon with ranged abilities you use to open up with. And a melee range weapon/skill set for when you close in or get closed in on.

Unless you use something like magelight isn't going for the 10 % magic crit from light armour working against your battlemage idea? - you could eg. get the medium bonus for boosted attack speed or make it a 3/4 light/heavy split for your armour.

EramTheLiar · April 2014

Well so far I have revised the concept, dropping from all heavy armor to 2 pieces of heavy/5 pieces of light, since the drop I saw with Bound Armor and Thundering Presence stacked was pretty negligible. That potentially opens up *all* the passive bonuses in the light armor line, and it lowers the cost of casting and speeds up the magicka regen pretty significantly, so my uptime is increased very nicely.

My only stamina skill at the moment is Twin Slashes but I'm not opposed to others. Currently my secondary weapon is an inferno staff because I figure I'm going to need access to fire at some point and sorcerer class skills are not fire based.

I'd like to use magelight but I'm not sure what to sacrifice for it. Endless Fury, Thundering Form, Bound Armor, Dark Exchange (eventually, not there yet) and Twin Slashes... that's five right there. On the alternate weapon I could swap out Twin Slashes, I guess.

The odd thing at this point is the more I experiment with various aspects of the build on my "almost pure sorcerer," the more it seems that with only a few tweaks (and no respecs!) I could just move him over into this role with minimal issues, though I'm not quite ready to give up my clannfear just yet.

Awacs_Tragedy · April 2014

Well I've started my own little 'battlemage' now and while it is the low level area and might not be much help I'll give you what I've liked about it so far.

Currently running a 2Hand mage using one of each starter skills and lightning form with Critical Charge being my only stamina ability. As it is the starter area I of course expected it to work as it have but I do feel like I could use more stamina abilities as melee range is my optimal range, until level 15 where I will probably get a bow as secondary.
I don't find I am using any of my ranged spells (Crystal Shard/Mage's Fury) as much else than opening strikes, therefore I believe it would be best to split the ranged abilities from the melee ones with your main/secondary weapon.

That way you could use 1 - 2 stamina abilities together with bound armour and lightning form and a 5th ability of your choice, and using velocious curse/mage's fury in your ranged setup and having a broader skill setup.

Also what kind of fighter do you envision your battlemage to be? - if my version of a mage using ranged abilities as an opener to finish it with melee isn't even close to what you want my ideas are probably not all that useful.

EramTheLiar · May 2014

Updating this thread to report on my research into "layering" various types of armor.

I was concerned that using Bound Armor AND Thundering Presence would be a waste of an active slot, and while I don't quite grasp the math involved, I do have numbers that essentially proves that theory.

At Level 36 (he's now 41) I did some testing.

Wearing one heavy and six cloth pieces of armor, his armor rating was 855.

Adding Bound Armor on top of that, it jumped up to 1301, which displayed as "overcharged" in my character window.

Using Thundering Presence INSTEAD of Bound Armor shot it up to 1408.

Using BOTH Bound Armor AND Thundering Presence bumped it up to 1519.

That doesn't take you to the hard cap (I also tested using all heavy armor, and it went up even further) but I found it interesting that:

- Thundering Presence gave me a bigger armor boost than Bound Armor did (I thought it would be the other way around, since Bound Armor is exclusively about protection. OTOH, it's also persistent...)
- The difference between Thundering Presence only and both Bound Armor and Thundering Presence was only about 100 points (you can definitely see diminishing returns at play in there).

I'm not sure how significant 100 points is at 36, but I don't think it's enough to have both spells on my skill bar.

I've been going with Thundering Presence because it a) boost my armor higher and b) also has a DoT component. It works pretty darn well. The trickiest part is keeping the armor active (it expires every 9 seconds) but for most fights the magicka cost is negligible if your recharge is high enough--the main concern is getting rooted or stunned.