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A complete guide to a mentalist Dragon Mage


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Great work.

If you have the Community Patch there are a lot of good Pole Arm choices to round out the rather meager vanilla selection. 

Definitely look for Danse Macabre, this was built with a Dragon Mage in mind.

Danse_macabre.jpg    Danse_macabre_stats.gif

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7 hours ago, Flix said:

Great work.

If you have the Community Patch there are a lot of good Pole Arm choices to round out the rather meager vanilla selection. 

Definitely look for Danse Macabre, this was built with a Dragon Mage in mind.

Danse_macabre.jpg    Danse_macabre_stats.gif

Yeah, I do have the Community Patch installed but no Pole Arms examples came into my mind when I wrote the guide. I'll edit it soon and post more examples of Community Patch Pole Arms that can work with the build :D 

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Nice Guide

Bosses

A decade ago a dragon mage with mentalism was my very first character in the then new AddOn.

Boss killing was a problem, so I opted for the polearm skill to have a weapon with x% Lifeleech. I called the build a Sohei. The first Soheo was more or less a testbed for the possibilities of the AddOn: new dragon mage, regeneration per hit now working....

 

Early Levels

If you have CM-patch or extended edition installed, starting with dragon magic focus and pushing it to level 9 at level 9 solves some problems. Play as a dragon berzerker for the first levels. You could do it in vanilla do, but you have to avoid champions and bosses. The vanilla dragon berzerker lacks a good life leech and resistances.

Approaching Level 200

Gear will have better stats, emptying some slot for other stuff or re-ordering. At higher levels the elementalists set is a better option because of +CA-Range for example. The only hardcore character I ever played to level 200 was a pure mentalist.

Normal_CA-Range.jpg

Full_CA-Range.jpg

Boosting intelligence with items like this can be quite useful at higher levels

DraligansTunic.jpg

My level 200 one:

 

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4 minutes ago, chattius said:

Nice Guide

Bosses

A decade ago a dragon mage with mentalism was my very first character in the then new AddOn.

Boss killing was a problem, so I opted for the polearm skill to have a weapon with x% Lifeleech. I called the build a Sohei. The first Soheo was more or less a testbed for the possibilities of the AddOn: new dragon mage, regeneration per hit now working....

 

Early Levels

If you have CM-patch or extended edition installed, choosing dragon magic focus and pushing it to level 9 at level 9 solves some problems. Play as a dragon berzerker for the first levels. You could do it in vanilla do, but you have to avoid champions and bosses. The vanilla dragon berzerker lacks a good life leech and resistances.

Approaching Level 200

Gear will have better stats, emptying some slot for other stuff or re-ordering. At higher levels the elementalists set is a better option because of +CA-Range for example. The only hardcore character I ever played to level 200 was a pure mentalist.

Normal_CA-Range.jpg

Full_CA-Range.jpg

Boosting intelligence with items like this can be quite useful at higher levels

DraligansTunic.jpg

My level 200 one:

 

Your guide is great as well, Chattius! About the Sohei name (and Jubei for mine), since the first preview and release of this character I had the feeling that his appearance and story is somehow (or at least it can be) related to the asian traditional culture, like martial arts fighters, battle monks as you mentioned, and so on.

Level related, well, you got me. I rarely get my characters above level 100-120 because I always think and create new builds and strategies and I am eager to try them out so I forget about my old toons :D 

Also, related to the hardcore mode, I never risked playing it since sometimes I admit I can be lazy and not careful enough and I stupidly die (it was painful to lose a 75% survival bonus Seraphim on standard mode too :D)

Anyway, thanks for replying to my build! Any feedback supports me greatly! :)

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5 minutes ago, Dax said:

Jubei? Smells like Ninja Scroll.

It's actually a Warcraft III reference since a lot of Blademasters from the game are usually named Jubei (most of them Jubei + a secondary name, like Jubei'Thos) :D 

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1 minute ago, lacr said:

 

"As with Haomarush, Genjuros, and Khanzo, Jubei'Thos is named after a character from the Samurai Shodown fighting game series, Jubei Yagyu"(c)wow wiki

:D

To be honest, I never searched deep enough to check where these video games names come from :D I knew it had to do with Samurai theme though. Thanks for the feedback, Lacr! :bye:

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I was never into fighting games, especially I was never able to get into MK, but I have remebered samurai shodown 4 quite well ,due to its outstanding characters, most of all Ukyo and...Jubei(who was looking like a bandit or Ronin from a very great game Battle Realms:D)!

1_charactersShodown_NS.png

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Let me add a puzzle piece to the list.

Yagyu is a quite famous and often used surname after the lone wolf and cub series came out. The hideous, treacherous Yagyu clan vs Okami Itto, the murderer for hire.

 

 

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@RavenLight

again, another beautiful manuscript/guide ... love this energy! you know, actually the mentallist was the only build I got to try out with HardCore for the game when it came out...and I was able to get it all the way up to Niobium, but finally gave up as my own build just wasnt able to make it into the higher levels... wish I'd had a guide ^^

:)

 

gogo

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2 minutes ago, gogoblender said:

@RavenLight

again, another beautiful manuscript/guide ... love this energy! you know, actually the mentallist was the only build I got to try out with HardCore for the game when it came out...and I was able to get it all the way up to Niobium, but finally gave up as my own build just wasnt able to make it into the higher levels... wish I'd had a guide ^^

:)

 

gogo

Thanks for your kind words and your feedback, Gogo! My personal opinion as well is that the Mentalism (combined with a bit of Dragon Magic aspect) build is the most efficient one for the Dragon Mage since it enables him to do all he need to do: high damage, very high resistance, huge area of effect crowd control. Also adding the fact that Familiar grants such nice bonuses as well. I usually find Elemental Magic to be the least entertaining one, if I can say that just because I don't find any particular reason that Protector buff is more useful that the Runes of Protection one and the rest of combat arts from the aspect are a bit inferior to the other aspect combat arts. Although I never played a Elemental Magic focused Dragon Mage so I might be wrong :D 

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12 minutes ago, gogoblender said:

but finally gave up as my own build just wasnt able to make it into the higher levels

Probably, he should have attended a swordsmanship school alongside with Jubei:D

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48 minutes ago, lacr said:

I was never into fighting games

Well, I have to admit this as well. Fighting and shooter-type games never caught my attention. I usually love the open-world RPG games or games that require a solid strategy in order to be successful, such examples can be both Sacred 1 and 2, Warcraft III, The Elder Scrolls series or even Dota 2 :D 

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1 minute ago, lacr said:

Probably, he should have attended a swordsmanship school alongside with Jubei:D

Actually, our Jubei is a grand mage and a pole arms master, he was never into sword weapons since he learnt fighting using a bamboo in his childhood :3lmao:

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3 hours ago, RavenLight said:

Level related, well, you got me. I rarely get my characters above level 100-120 because I always think and create new builds and strategies and I am eager to try them out so I forget about my old toons :D

The interesting part of a Mentalist is that it is able to do a metamorphosis. I don't know if I would have played to level 200 if not for the 3 in 1 build.

Level 0-25(?)

You are a berzerking drakeling. Your mental powers are not developed, pure instinctiv fighting machine. Trying to stay in berzerk mode as long as possible. (But for opening doors and such you have to be human.)

level 26-100(?)

You are a polearm fighter who just learned to use mental powers. But your focus and reflexes are still on physical combat so your mental powers take time. Luckily you learned to focus on them in a fight. ( Character charges his mental energies with weapon hits. A typical hybrid character like the common fighter mage.)

Level 101-160(?)

Doing the full metamorphosis. You can kill with your mind alone. (Weapon hits are not needed anymore. Half regeneration time is at 100%, combat discipline mastered, lot of +CA-range items, not the fastest killer at a single enemy but a safe one fighting whole groups.)

Level 161-200

You are a wandering monk offering help to others to spread your faith. (The point when quest experience does the most of a level.)

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56 minutes ago, chattius said:

The interesting part of a Mentalist is that it is able to do a metamorphosis. I don't know if I would have played to level 200 if not for the 3 in 1 build.

Level 0-25(?)

You are a berzerking drakeling. Your mental powers are not developed, pure instinctiv fighting machine. Trying to stay in berzerk mode as long as possible. (But for opening doors and such you have to be human.)

level 26-100(?)

You are a polearm fighter who just learned to use mental powers. But your focus and reflexes are still on physical combat so your mental powers take time. Luckily you learned to focus on them in a fight. ( Character charges his mental energies with weapon hits. A typical hybrid character like the common fighter mage.)

Level 101-160(?)

Doing the full metamorphosis. You can kill with your mind alone. (Weapon hits are not needed anymore. Half regeneration time is at 100%, combat discipline mastered, lot of +CA-range items, not the fastest killer at a single enemy but a safe one fighting whole groups.)

Level 161-200

You are a wandering monk offering help to others to spread your faith. (The point when quest experience does the most of a level.)

Very detailed and helpful tips, Chattius! Thanks for the informations! To be honest I rarely used the transformation spells (Dragon Berserk and Dragon Form) in the vanilla versions of the game because I found them too buggy (unable to access inventory, potion bar, use merchants etc.). After the Community Patch I rarely played a shapeshifter Dragon Mage and I wasn't sure if the things mentioned were fixed (at least the potion bar and inventory disable cons).

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1 hour ago, chattius said:

Alchemy is working in CM-patch1.6, modifiers from inventory not. A fully modded dragon berzerker with runes kept at a high level is a terrible beast if he has demontooth trophies to recharge the berzerker special ca's quickly. I used to put trophies in the shared chest for my characters with alchemy - and yes the drtagon berzerker has a buildin alchemy skill, even the main character has not.

My advice is: play as a berzerker early on when the standard dragon mage is slow to play.

Thanks for the info! For sure will try out a pure Dragon Magic build with a deadly Berserker shapeshifter someday \m/ :D 

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