What types of armed combat synergize best with what types of magic?

Im not that knowledgeable about different skill schools, and im starting to do my own testing with combining magic with different forms of combat, weapons and armor. Im trying to figure out what magic schools work best with armed combat. Oh, I should mention im not a very experienced SOTA player..I play off and on but havnt played very much (til now)

I'ts hard for me to gauge because not all my abilities are balanced, so im not sure if what im seeing is based on my skill level, or just that it doesnt work with the armor or weapons I'm using it with.

for instance, I have almost equal points spent in death magic and fire, but for some reason my fizzle rate in death is higher than fire when wearing something other than cloth. Is it because death magic just has a higher fizzle chance than fire? Or is it something to do with the skill points, or weapons..armor..etc?

Ideally I want to create a battle mage. I really like the idea of chaos magic and death magic and Id like to use this on a character wearing the heaviest armor possible and a 2h weapon. Ive tested chainmail which made me fizzle a majority of my spells. Im currently using supple leather , 2h sword, which seems to work well and has a decent amount of protection. I wish this were possible wearing plate, but a plate wearer using magic seems highly unlikely.

So, I'm curious if anyone could give me some knowledge on this. Its fun trying to figure this out, but I just cant find the resources for any of this online for such a specific discussion.
Thanks!

 

I think Earth Magic is the best school to go along with blades. Strength of earth and torpor are good buffs when spec'd, and earthquake will give you good stun capabilities. Not to mention the earth tree shield, which is very nice.
Now if you want to be a caster, I would suggest Fire Magic + Bludgeon.

 

There are a few ways to mitigate fizzle chance, most import of which is the skill Follow Through in the focus tree. There is also a wine that reduces fizzle further 2.5% as well as a devotional blessing for another 5%.

Having an implement, wand or an artifact dagger like the shard of night in your offhand is another good option as it will also lower your fizzle chance, while you can focus your main hand on your weapon of choice.

Bows just got a huge boost with being treated as a one handed weapon in terms of fizzle, so bow mages are much more mobile now.

Your choice of armor also affects the outcome, you can mix any kind of armor you want really, as what is on your chest is what determines what armor tree applies to you, so plate chest armor and cloth everything else is not unheard of, nor is chain chest and leather everything else.

 

Hey Grimsley, this was actually one of the very first things I researched when I started getting interested in magic in this game, I'll TRY to make this as simple as possible, but feel free to ask for precisions if anything isn't clear!

So first off, all your spells have a base fizzle chance, what is the number? Not sure, but it mostly is dependent on the spells 'tier' (as in which row in the tree, the lower it is, the higher the base fizzle chance). You can reduce this number simply by training the skill up, as every lv reduces the fizzle chance by a decimal or 2.

Then you have your gear, each piece of equipment has a fizzle chance modifier, the lower the better, Cloth giving none, leather and bone, then chain, then plate. The heavier your armor, the worse it gets. Usually, pieces have the most fizzle in this order : Chest, Gloves, Legs, Helm, Boots. This means that you will want to chance your pieces to play with fizzle in that order, do not forget that only the chest piece affects your armor skills, so if you want to use heavy armor skills, you only need a Heavy armor chest piece, everything else can be light armor, which helps reduce fizzle.

Next is the 'Fizzle chance from equipment' line on the tool tip, which is different from school to school (and sometimes even between some spells, looking at you shooting star!). This is where your confusion is kicking in. What this modifier says is how much fizzle you need to add to your armor if you are casting this spell, let's take Stone fist, Flame fist and Death touch as examples :

Stone fist has a -45% modifier
Flame fist has a +35% modifier
Death Touch has a +45% modifier

If you add up all your fizzle chance your equipment gives you, let's say that number is 10%, this means :

Stone fist gains 5.5% fizzle chance from your armor, not 10 (10 from your armor - 45% from the modifier)

Flame fist would gain 13.5% fizzle from your armor (10 + 35%)

Death Touch would gain 14.5% fizzle from your armor (10 + 45%).

So the heavier your armor, and the further left you go in the magic schools, the worse the impact will be! Hope this helps you understand this part a bit more!

*Please note that Death Magic specialization reduces the fizzle chance of death magic, allowing users to cast more consistently with heavier armor than others, so if your numbers seem off, that might be why.

 

As for this part.

1st off I want to say, going this direction will often be unrecommended by most players, and especially if you want to reach the later stages of the game, as you should focus on one damage source (spells OR weapons, not both). For more RP purposes, or for a more casual player, you can still do it, and here is a tip for you :

Death Magic specialization : death Magic spec will allow you to wear chain + a weapon and still not fizzle much with death magic. I would recommend using chain rather than plate, and change your gloves for cloth to give yourself as much chance to cast as possible. In this case, I've usually like Death + polearms (there a nice scythe patterns for them too, grim reaper style), but all the weapons should be fine here.

 

Death isn't too bad of a spec for melee, just not for spell damage. It takes a lot of attunement and int to do much damage with life taps, and while it's possible with weapons, it will just take away at least as much from your weapon damage by cutting your str, weapon damage, etc.

That being said, where's what you can get with death spec for melee:

-huge -fizzle% bonus that makes the whole tree accessible at high level, even in heavy gear
-super long duration death shield
-decent summoned pet
-efficient life to focus conversion

That's not going to be as good for all melee builds as their weapon tree, heavy armor, tactics, or earth, but it's pretty useful, especially solo.

As far as chaos goes, it can boost melee damage quite a bit, but as a melee, you probably get a lot more mileage out of stuns, regen, low focus cost skills, etc, than death magic with feedback.

 

All of these posts are spot on...My contribution is more overarching philosophy than detail specific build guidance. At the end of the day, you can make anything work with enough experience. Yes, going with an unusual build will require more xp and perhaps higher tier equipment. Obsidian plate provides more casting capabilities but that armor requires very costly components, but based on your post that appears to be a route you might be interested in. As indicated in the other posts and well explained by them, going into a "hybrid" build will reduce your overall effective raw power versus someone who decides to go full in 1 melee type or magic school. I have a friend of mine that has gone Death/2H sword. He wears chain and he can handle alot of the upper end content now that he found the playstyle that works best for him.

You can make your Chaos magic and Death magic thing work...like I said you just have to find your playstyle as you experiment with both of them. Let me throw out just my experiences with the unusual builds I have.

I have a pure air mage. This is by far my most powerful character as he is over lev 120 and can kill dragons. By upper tier players comparison, I'm still roughly mid level as my unaltered level is 123. Where I do well against dragons, I struggle against Trolls/Trollkin as I cannot stun them. So your hybrid build will have some expected and unexpected weaknesses and advantages.

My second character started out as an archer with air magic. The most powerful meta for bow users I imagine is the archer/tamer. The air/archer is good for pure archer damage as the dex buff with specialization provides a critical chance increase. Other archers go with Earth and heavy Tactics if they are looking for a max strength build. Both will work very well. So ultimately it is a playstyle choice. I changed from archery to air/swords which is far from the normal meta and its more of an attack speed/critical chance build experiment that seems to be working for me. Once again i'm incorporating alot of damage avoidance/evasion/parry mechanics since I am using light armor.

And finally I'm working on a Moon mage. This is just a pure fun character that i'm trying to make viable with Shooting Star and Meteor Shower. Right now I'm using Water magic as support, but I may need to incorporate another magic school instead if those 2 abilities aren't strong enough to allow end game content. It's too early to tell if I can make it work effectively at the end game. It is working against standard content and the toon is lev 90.

I will only mention 2 key details as it relates to magic. The average of the top 10 skills in your preferred school is your attunement number to that school minus your equipment. And secondly, attunement to a magic school will decide your overall power in that school for each specific skill. It becomes even more important than INT for power at the high end.

That means that raising Death Field from 100 to 120 will be less effective than raising 4 other skills that are at 60 skill as it relates to increasing attunement (average of top 10 skills in the tree) to 80. It will also use less experience...

Knowing that, it makes getting death attunement equipment PARAMOUNT if you want your magic to be effective...even more so than adding INT.

Just my 2 cents....

 

I have been working in this direction for awhile with heavy armor and I am using four pieces of obsidian plate and an acara chest. It has half the fizzle of any other plate chest. I do not use air magic. I can swap out a shield for an orb to further reduce fizzle. This is not an easy build and uses a lot of exp.