[Assistance for a dragon mage elementalist build would be appreciated [CM 1.6/EE]]

An observation with elemental strike: the cleave proc from dragon's wrath applies to it as well, as well as ordinary weapon based CA effects such as %LL. I am curious how the Area of Effect mod for it would interact - would it have a sort of "proliferation" effect where cleave procs from wrath would spawn multiple Area of Effect's? I can't test on this char as I modded for damage but I could see that being pretty good in conjuction with %LL + the life leech mod, basically making it a ranged version of shadow warrior's infernal blow

[Assistance for a dragon mage elementalist build would be appreciated [CM 1.6/EE]]

An update to the build:

My Skill List is currently the following:

(Level 24 atm)

SKILLS

2 - Enhanced Perception. Notably, getting some money early and buying 3 relics and some gear with +perception on it let me get to 15-ish with 1 point invested, currently planned to master later on.

3 - Elementalist Lore. Dragon Magic Focus is a secondary skill, whoops! Still though, getting destroyers online even earlier doesnt hurt and the regen is not a huge deal considering I clump big groups together and oneshot them all - currently kept at character level, plan to be among first to master.

5 - Dragon Magic Focus. Rushed 9 points here, no plans on investing more points for the forseeable future.

8 - Armor Lore. Currently at level 1. Planned to be among first skills to master, currently holding off for now to dump points into elementalist focus at 25 but think I may level this a bit instead as I have high damage and managable cooldowns but am a little squishy

12 - Concentration, 1 point. If I master it it will be later on and not any time soon.

18 - Mentalist Focus. 9 points here for runes of protection, but I am considering mastering this soon after elementalist focus/lore and armor lore because combat trance and maelstrom seem to have super good mods + being able to afford more runes for the 3 skills I'm using in this tree ought to help out a lot.

25 - Elementalist Focus. Currently sitting on a heap of skill points and I've been spamming -regen time at blocksmith on my sockets to make destroyers and elemental bolt highly spammable. The crit stacking is also helpful I imagine, as from vanila crit damage multiplier was increased from 1.2x to 1.5x. As mentioned before, currently planned to be mastered ASAP, kept at character level.

35 - Toughness. At some point I would like to dump points here and have this mastered some time shortly after the first 3 skills for that sweet mitigation.

50 - Combat Discipline. I expect destroyer damage to hold up nicely without tons of support for a while with just the aspect skills so I'm currently considering this low-ish priority to master.

65 - Ancient Magic. Same as combat discipline, but I think the former is more beneficial earlier on while I'm still in lower difficulties so this is picked up last to make sure I can get through resistances without too much trouble at higher levels on higher difficulties.

Preliminary Mastery order is as follows: Elementalist Lore -> Elementalist Focus -> Armor Lore -> Toughness -> Mentalist Focus -> Enhanced Perception -> Combat Discipline -> Ancient Magic -> Dragon Magic Focus -> Concentration

Also working on CA mods. I haven't decided on everything yet. A few straightforward choices but sometimes both seem like equally good options.

COMBAT ART MODIFICATIONS

ELEMENTALIST ASPECT COMBAT ARTS

Destroyers:

BRONZE - Explosive (+68% base physical damage)

SILVER - Swarm (+2 destroyers summoned)

GOLD - Volatile (+68% base fire damage)

Elemental Bolt:

BRONZE - Devastation (Increases weapon damage dealt by 20% + 0.1% per level)

SILVER - Relentless (Bolt will seek out its target) - figured the LL option was mostly good if I modded bolt for Area of Effect, but this build already has a ton of Area of Effect and I suppose homing could help out vs. smaller elites and so forth

GOLD - Frostbite (additional frost damage over time - 3.0/s + 1.5/s per level) - my thought process for this mod is twofold: destroyers already do significant fire damage, so having higher frost on single target rather than higher fire could help a bit more getting around resistances. Also, freeze according to the wiki is a fixed 25% reduction in movement/attack speed. Not sure if the dot effect can actually proc secondary effects but either way it seems more useful than the fire variant as fire secondary effect seems to depend on the magnitude of the initial hit.

Tornado: (the hard one so far lol)

BRONZE - Storm Force (Increases base physical damage by 66%) - I am not too sure if I want to build tornado for damage or for utility. Silver will be the same as it seems like a no-brainer choice, but for bronze/gold pairs I was considering damage + crit or area + disarm, respectively. On one hand I hear you can stack +CA range on gear to give tornado (and maelstrom for that matter) a lot of coverage which would let me disarm more stuff, but from what I can tell tornado targeting is a little jank with groups and this strategy may wind up inconsistent (not to mention perhaps a bit overkill for hordes as maelstrom is already great cc and elementalists have great clear from what I can tell). On the other hand, damage maelstrom would be more boss focused - it's effectively a DoT when used like this and lasts a long time so it isn't very micromanagement-heavy. That, and 66% physical base damage and the strong crit mod make it sound very appealing for single targets.

SILVER - Unleashed (+0.25 activations per second)

GOLD - Critical (increases the chance for critical by 20% + 0.1% per level) 

Gust of Wind:

BRONZE - Stun (adds chance to stun enemies by 33.4% + 0.2% per level)

SILVER - Radius (Increased GoW angle to 240°) - honestly idk what to pick here, for now assuming radius may be more useful in the event im surrounded by enemies and I don't think simply spamming destroyers solves the problem for whatever reason

GOLD - Impact (Increased based physical damage by 33%)

MENTALIST ASPECT COMBAT ARTS

Runes of Protection:

BRONZE - Protection (Increased base physical resistance by 50%)

SILVER - Stone Skin (adds chance to block ranged attacks by 25% + 0.3% per level)

GOLD - Flux (Decreases runes of protection regen penalty by 25%) - from my pov -regen is premium and lets me compensate for the lost spell block by investing more runes, which also increases block chance on top of better physical mitigation. Could be completely wrong though, I guess I will find out when I get oneshot by a random bolt of lightning in niob assuming I ever make it there

Maelstrom:

BRONZE - Grind (decreases opponents' physical armor in the maelstrom by 50% + 2% per level)

SILVER - Extension (Increases the duration of maelstrom by 4.0s + 0.3s per level)

GOLD - Demoralize (Further decrease opponents' attributes by 5.5% + 0.1% per level)

Combat Trance:

BRONZE - Awareness (Increases the chance to block stun effects by 16.7% + 0.1% per level)

SILVER - Experienced (decreases the cooldown of combat trance by 20s) - tbh I am also strongly considering taking hardened here. Experience is obviously really good but hardened scales with CA level and could be a very solid layer of defense. Looking at the wiki secondary damage effects on platinum+ do like triple the damage of previous difficulties so outright preventing nasty dots getting inflicted on my character sounds very helpful

GOLD - Energy Flux (further decreases regeneration time of all combat arts by 15% + 0.3% per level)

DRAGON MAGIC ASPECT COMBAT ARTS

Draconic Ally:

BRONZE - Vitality (Increases dragon mage's hitpoint regeneration by +2.0/s + 1.5/s per level)

SILVER - Quick Mind (Increases dragon mage's attack and cast speed by 20% + 0.2% per level)

GOLD - Energy Flux (decreases the regeneration time of all combat arts while draconic ally is out by 20% + 0.1% per level)

Interested in hearing what people think. Liking it so far and if the build is good enough and I stick with it to niob I might consider helping my fellow noobs out by writing a guide given this character started from scratch 

[Assistance for a dragon mage elementalist build would be appreciated [CM 1.6/EE]]

3 minutes ago, Flix said:

Wow, great first post!  I'm glad to see people actively making EE builds.

My personal picks for the final three would probably be: Ancient Magic, Toughness and Enhanced Perception.  Toughness is so good for survival and Ancient Magic is basically a reverse-Toughness against enemies, very good to pierce resistances. The last skill could really be anything, but since you don't have a stash of gear EP might be the way to go.

Unless you're using the Dragon's Wrath buff (which make a left-click attack DM viable), I probably wouldn't bother using your weapon for anything other than the Elemental Strike CA.  The Pole Arms skill will only increase the attack value for Elemental Strike, and Tactics Lore won't do anything for it. So either skill wouldn't add much for an Elementalist.

Thank you for such a quick response Flix, wasn't expecting that! Those sound like good choices (assuming I take EP it will probably be the first skill I learn). Have you tried damage lore with elementalist by chance? It's a little hard to gauge its value given some spells are part-physical. GoW also has a poison damage mod which could possibly scale well at high CA levels, though my main consideration is ideally I'd have an elementalist that has both good clear and good single target and damage lore seems like it'd be a significant bonus to elemental strike upon mastering it unless I'm missing something (again, effectively a noob so this is purely hypothetical with virtually no experience to back it up  )

[Assistance for a dragon mage elementalist build would be appreciated [CM 1.6/EE]]

Hello,

I've started playing sacred 2 again since around 2009, so I have forgotten everything about this game so I have no idea what I'm doing lol. I never played dragon mage before given I played on console back in the day and they seem like they have pretty cool CA's. I am particularly interested in elementalist because it seems like they're more interactive than other DM aspects (namely, 3 good Area of Effect CA's that vary by use case, and in the case of using the alternate spells mod included in EE a single target focused CA which replaces the wall thingy). 

Also, for those who don't play with mods, some notable changes for elementalist is that destroyers + tornado now do split damage (physical + fire and physical + ice, respectively; the new elemental bolt CA does split damage between fire and ice IIRC) so I am considering the use of damage lore.

From lurking around here getting inspiration from various old posts I've cobbled together a preliminary selection of skills. Masteries and CA mods are currently undecided

SKILLS

2 - Dragon Magic Focus (9 points for 3 mods to familiar and dragon berserk seems kinda cracked at low levels lol)

3 - Elementalist Focus (Lower CDs of and modify destroyers early)

5 - Armor Lore

8 - Concentration (protectors apparently got buffed and use spells when they previously didn't so considering mastering concentration at some point)

12 - Mentalism Focus (Runes of Protection mods, more points later to modify maelstrom + combat trance)

18 - Elementalist Lore 

25 - Combat Discipline

Above are the skills that I think are non-negotiable. For the remaining 3 skill choices I have a few things in mind that I will list and my reasons for why they are potentially good choices (also note that CM 1.6/EE makes every lore available to every class in case you are confused by choices that may not normally be available to DM in vanilla)

Also note these are in no particular order of desirability

1. Enhanced Perception - As I used to play on console I will be starting from scratch, so getting more frequent and valuable loot drops helps me gear better and cover the costs of socketing that gear more easily. I know bargaining is very strong but honestly I don't find shopping to be super exciting whereas enemies exploding with loot is. Also, this apparently got buffed by 40% in EE.
2. Toughness - Base armor + damage mitigation is of course always useful, albeit it was reduced to 85% effectiveness in the mod (should still be very helpful). Strongly considering taking this.
3. Spell Resistance - I've read that in higher difficulties enemy spells start to become very dangerous, but between the high willpower boost of familiar + spell block from runes of protection and combat trance I am not sure if it's valuable enough to warrant taking a skill slot for DM specifically.
4. Damage Lore - From what I understand this does not affect physical damage but changes in CM/EE give tornado and destroyers some non-physical damage, and the new single target CA is purely non-physical from what I remember which could potentially make it a good boss killer.
5. Ancient Magic - From what I understand this affects basically everything I'd be using for damage as a DM as they have no weapon-based CAs. Upon mastery it also substantially lowers enemy resistances against all damage types. Strongly considering taking this.
6. Tactics Lore + Pole Arms - This is pretty low on my list because I don't like the idea of using 2 skill slots to make my left clicks strong (and, again, DM has zero weapon CAs so it's just a little uninteresting). I do recognize it's pretty good for bosses though, would like to hear what others think (atm im sorta just banking on elemental strike being a viable boss killer lol)
7. Constitution - Another nice generic survivability boost, albeit slightly less appealing to me than toughness on the basis I would think it's better to prioritize high mitigation rather than having a bigger health pool
8. Alchemy - I haven't really played with alchemy before but I feel like on paper it'd be very good later on for making sure my character doesn't die from spike damage, plus trophies seem kinda neat

That's about all I can think of for now as potential good options. Also keep in mind while I would like for this build to be capable of taking on niob eventually I am not overly concerned with creating a hyper minmax'ed build, just something that's fun to play, has good CA variety and doesn't fall super behind in damage/survivability