Mage Tactics - General 2

In this topic, we'll finally cover some of those useful combos I've glossed over before. Many of them are fairly obvious, but give it a once-over anyway. You may find one or two you've never thought of.

Lethal Poison: Evil Omen > Poison.
- You can create a hotkey for this one, with a delay only .03 seconds; so long as you're within three tiles, you're almost certain to Lethal anything that isn't immune or incredibly resistant. This assumes you also have high Poisoning; without that, it's a waste of time as the best you could pull even with Legendary Magery is 2nd; [0 Poisoning + 120 Magery]/2 = 60. It takes 65.1 to get even base 2nd level poison. So at 120/0, your base poison is still 1st level, bumped to 2nd by EO; ultimately pointless.

Strangle: Corpse Skin > Strangle
- Strangle depends on low stamina to do it's best damage, but the damage is still poison based, which makes a Corpse Skin lead a good choice.

Two-step Cold: Mind Blast > Harm
- Both of these spells hit Cold, but Mind Blast has a short delay to it that will give you time to land at least one, maybe two, Harms on a target, depending on how sqishy your target can make you. If you have high defensive skill and Bushido/Parry, you'll likely be able to roll the dice and come out a winner more often than not.

Two-step Energy: Energy Bolt > Lightning
- Energy Bolt doesn't have a delay, per se, but these two often strike together thanks to Lightning's instant hit and Energy Bolt taking time to fly to it's target.

Flame Strike +: Corpse Skin > Evil Omen > Flame Strike
- I routinely use this one on White Wyrms and Arctic Ogre Lords. At my level, it's a one-hitter. My record so far on Wyrms is in the 580 area, while I've hit Arctic Ogre Lords for 720s. It's another combo that can handle a short delay, assuming you have your FC/R right.

The four-step: Explode > Mind Blast > Energy Bolt > Lightning
- Another combo that takes advantage of spell delays. With high FC/R, the delay on Explode is actually fast enough that it should hit just after you have the Energy Bolt sailing. Mind Blast will be roughly in the same spot. Energy Bolt doesn't deal it's damage until the bolt actually strikes, and with proper distance from the target you'll be able to land the Lightning at the same time; four different spells landing at roughly the same instance is going to slow down all but the biggest creatures. The biggest flaw here is the mixed damage types; Fire, to Cold, to dual energy. Mind Blast also has somewhat pathetic damage unless your Int and Magery are very high.

Incendiary: Curse > Explosion > Corpse Skin > Evil Omen > Flame Strike
- This one also needs high FC/R, but it's a dozy when you get there. The Curse reduces a target's stats by a percent, damage that can't be healed away. Explode's delay will be plenty long enough for the CS>EO>FS to land; both Explode and Flame Strike will benefit from -15 Fire resist on the target, and the Flame Strike will take the 25% damage boost from Evil Omen. If you're hitting something already weak to fire, it's very likely a corpse after this one.

There are also two worthwhile combos I use that make use of the Music skills. These also make good lead-ins to any other combo I listed above.

Musical Curse: Discord > Evil Omen > Curse
- Discord burns 20% of a target's stats and skills (half that if they have 160 bard difficulty). The Evil Omen may not strictly be necessary, but it makes me feel better to have it lead in for my Curse; the stat reduction check from Curse doesn't benefit from Evil Omen reducing the target's resist to 50, but it does, near as I can tell, help the Curse land in the first place.

Musical Death: Peacemaking > Word of Death
- This one is generally reserved for Toxic Elementals, who are immune to Magery. Peacemaking works as a Paralyze to keep them off me while that long casting time for WoD is at play. Death ignores their magic immunity and often pulls around 160 damage; two or three of those and the Toxic is down. Peacemaking is very nice here since WoD also takes a high Spellweaving skill to use; at 110 Spellweaving, I still fail casting pretty often.