Blindsniper11's Fire Embermage Guide

Blindsniper11's Fire Embermage Guide - Torchlight II Wiki Guide - IGN

Torchlight II

Blindsniper11’s Guide to the Fire Embermage

A few things to take note of with regards to this guide:

This guide is for single player. This guide should allow you to create and maintain a character that can survive without a tank, yet still deal enough damage to get the job done.

This guide is for normal difficulty. I have only played on normal difficulty, and am sure that playing on veteran or casual will require a different build than what I am about to propose.

I will not delve into the skill allotment in a level-by-level format. I will simply give what I think is the best spread for my build, and you can allocate the points at rates that work for you.

This guide will only rigorously recommend somewhere around 100-110 skill points allocation. You get 133 possible skill points in the game. There is flexibility outside the core of this guide that can certainly open up new avenues of use. Some of these I will cover, some hopefully others will find out and let me know. I’m always willing to learn.

One of the things I like about the embermage that I haven’t seen in spell casting characters in other games is the fact that embermage can be made into an excellent tanker without sacrificing from DPS. This doesn’t mean that you will necessarily be going in and melee fighting your way through the game (although there is a very limited build that might allow you to do such a thing, one which we will not cover here), but it does mean that you can get into the thick of the fray and unleash spells instead of having to sit on the perimeter constantly. 

            My build of the Fire embermage can excel at either of the play styles, wreaking havoc from afar as well as dominating from up close. This, to me, provides some big advantages over builds that focus on one style more than the other:

I can start inflicting heavy damage from afar, getting hits in before the enemy reacts, and continue doing so until the enemy gets close.

When the enemy gets close, I don’t have to run away in order to keep a safe distance. Rather, I can just unleash skills built for closer combat that will more than likely finish the opponent off.

My build excels at destroying big groups as well as big bosses.

So without further ado, let’s get into the skills that you will be investing in. I will list the skill, give a brief/long description of it and why I like/dislike it, and then give the recommended point allotment you should invest. I will also explain what each tier does (every 5 points allotted into a skill opens up a new tier, or aspect to that skill), and how it alters the dynamics of the skill.

On a separate note, disregard anything I said about brief in the preceding paragraph. I want you to know my exact thoughts on the skill, and why I don’t think it will work for my build. Instead of just leaving you in the dark, hopefully I can educate you on the skills. Maybe even give you an idea for a different build, because after all, this game is about finding unique ways to have fun.

INFERNO

Magma Spear (Level 1): Your basic fire bolt spell, on steroids. This will be your bread and butter spell. While at first glance, a maxed out spell that only does 51% of your dps isn’t going to do a ton of damage, the place where this spell really shines is the burn damage, which gets in the thousands. In fact, a lot of times you can hit an enemy once with this spell and focus on the next enemy, knowing that the burn damage will finish the job. Of all the spells, the tiers on this spell change the dynamics of it the most. The first tier allows you to hit enemies on the very edge of your screen, giving you at least 1-2 more hits before they reach you, and making this one of your two long range skills. The second tier increases the burn time. Wait, you’re saying my 4k burn damage just got spaced out from 3 to 6 seconds? How is this a good thing? This tier synchronizes beautifully with Fire Brand, which we will cover later. The third tier causes the “spear” to ricochet upon impact, which suddenly makes this a crowd control weapon. This spell, above any other, should be maxed out as soon as possible. Recommended points: 15/15

Magma Mace (Level 7): You know that one skill on melee characters that is basically just a sweep of the weapon that hits multiple enemies? The tiers on this weapon make it a good crowd control weapon, and open up your enemies to quicker deaths from your other spells. This skill is really more for the staff wielder, and as I’ll explain later, we won’t be using staves for this build. Moreover, this skill promotes a melee styled build, and although our build is suited for close range, melee and close range are two very different things. Don’t be tempted to put points into this in an attempt to change things up from magma spear. Just trust me on this one. Recommended points: 0/15

Firebombs (Level 14): For lack of a better term, this is the firewall spell from Diablo/Diablo 2. You shoot out a few “firebombs” which then create a pool of fire that enemies have to walk through in order to reach you. The bombs themselves don’t do the damage per say, but rather the pool afterwards. This spell seems really cool. It is THE spell that bridges that long-short distance attack gap. It’s a middle ranged weapon. Enemies have a chance to actually flee, making them long range targets again. You would think that this would be an awesome skill to use. However, a few problems arise with this skill. First off, enemies in this game cover distance very quickly, so there really isn’t much of a middle ground at all between the enemy being on the other side of the screen and them being right next to you. Secondly, the skill animation takes a second to follow through, meaning you either have to sacrifice using a longer ranged skill or you overshoot the target and they’re already knocking at your door. A middle ranged weapon that takes too long to cast was not meant for this game. It was meant as your run away skill, but it simply doesn’t work. (side note, it took me putting 8 points into this skill to realize that I did not want to use it. This is because, until the other skills were available, I had only this and magma spear because I smartly avoided magma mace, so trust me, you won’t be using this skill long term) Recommended points: 0/15

Blazing Pillar (Level 21): Ladies and gentleman, the ultimate crowd control spell. Upon casting this spell, pillars of fire branch out from you and they follow and stay with enemies until they are killed or the spell wears off. The reason why this is so beautiful is because it works with the two types of crowds: bunches and stragglers. When a bunch of enemies are clustered around you, you can cast this spell and suddenly the enemies are dead. If you have enemies around you that are spaced out, these bad boys seek them out. This is pretty much your short range spell; use this whenever you feel suffocated by enemies. Oh, and the burn duration for this spell is constantly 7 SECONDS, meaning that this synergies with Fire Brand amazingly well. What about the tiers? Each tier adds another pillar, meaning better crowd control. You can easily kill an entire group of enemies using only this spell only once. It’s amazing, and you will grow to use this almost as much as magma spear. Recommended points: 15/15

Infernal Collapse (Level 28): Think of it as the meteor spell (Diablo/Diablo 2 again, I’ll reference these games a lot, either directly or in concept), just without the animation and after burn. You click on any area, and that area gets smashed with fire, knocking back the enemies and doing a good chunk of damage. At first glance, this skill isn’t really good. It doesn’t have the damage output of blazing pillar, and it’s cool down is a joke compared to magma spear. It takes a split second for the animation, meaning that if you have a moving enemy you have to lead it. It doesn’t even affect a very large area, meaning you pretty much have to be spot on with it. However, as you put more and more points into the skill, it really starts to shine. The damage really begins to ramp up, and the cool down for it also decreases (at .2 seconds per skill, it doesn’t seem much, but at less than 1 second cool down at max level, you can use this rapidly). It also gets a big boost from the tiers. Each tier increases the area of impact by a sizeable amount, and by max level you are pretty much taking out a big chunk of enemies and you don’t have to be so accurate. Oh, and one more thing. You’ll find in Torchlight 2, more than any other game, elevation for once does matter. Most spells don’t hit from one elevation level to another, meaning magma spear can’t hit that guy that is two inches away from you but on the other side of a cliff. This spell allows you to hit enemies regardless of where they are in relation to you, so long as you can click on their area. This becomes huge in later difficulties, when getting hits in when the enemy can’t hit you becomes essential. This also makes it the second of your long range spells. Of all the spells, this shows the biggest change in usefulness between level 1 and 15. Recommended points: 15/15

Immolation Aura (Level 35): In every RPG game that has a mage class, that mage has a skill available that acts as a shield of some sort. For our build, this is that shield. When casted, you have a ring of fire surrounding you that damages enemies that come too close, as well as negating a certain percentage of damage inflicted upon you. The dynamics of this spell, however, are much different than other shield spells from other games. The damage this shield absorbs isn’t capped, as in the shield won’t disappear after a certain amount of damage has been inflicted. It absorbs damage for the entirety of the duration of the spell. Also, unlike other spell shields, the damage output on this spell is really meant as a convenience aspect (cover that in a bit). This spell requires you to put in a lot of points for it to shine, and when it shines it shines pretty brightly. Tier one absorbs 5%, tier two 10%, and tier 3 15% of all incoming damage. You might think that 15% damage absorption for a maxed out skill is really not worth it, but considering that (every skill point increases the duration of the spell), by the time the skill is maxed out, you have a full minute of gameplay where you take 15% less damage, that’s a lot, especially for a class that doesn’t emphasize heavy armor. Also, one nifty thing about the skill is that the cool down timer is shorter than the spell duration, so you could theoretically keep this spell running constantly. In short, this spell really helps make our build last longer in single player where you don’t have the tank to, well, tank all the damage for you. Recommended points: 15/15

Firestorm (Level 42): This spell is pretty literal; fire rains down on the enemies. They become more susceptible to fire damage, and the spell has a constant 15 meter radius. The first tier causes enemies to do less fire damage to you, the second tier causes enemies to splinter when they are killed by this spell (think grenade shrapnel), and the third tier doubles the range that said shrapnel travels. You would think that this skill would be awesome, but unfortunately, for our build, the ultimate skill in the inferno tree simply doesn’t have a place. The damage output on this skill simply isn’t enough to make it a very worthwhile dps standalone skill, and the fact that the damage is spread out over 6 seconds means that it won’t even pack a big first punch. And we’ve already established our bread and butter skills for long and short range, meaning we really don’t need another one (too much of a good thing). What does this skill bring to the table then? Well the fact that it makes bad guys more susceptible to fire damage is impressive, but in reality, only 30% more fire damage taken isn’t enough to merit using this spell over another one, unless you’re fighting a boss, which in case this MIGHT help. The tiers look better than they actually are at first glance. The first tier hopes that my enemies use fire attacks. The second and third tiers only activate when these enemies are killed while under that 6 second duration of damage. This is another attempt at crowd control, but unfortunately, we have that perfectly covered with blazing pillar. Could we use this? Sure, but we won’t. Put in a skill point if you want, just to make bosses a tiny bit easier. Recommended points: 0-1/15

Charge Mastery (Level 1) Passive: If you’re reading this guide, you have a basic understanding already of how each character has some sort of charge meter. When this meter gets maxed out, it glows, giving you some variation of fighting bonus for a short period of time. For the embermage, that bonus is mana-free spell casting, and a 25% damage increase on all spells cast. Charge mastery allows you to gain charge faster (fewer hits required to reach max) and allows you to retain the charge longer. For me, I’m not sure how to view this spell. This spell really helps if you are having a hard time keeping your mana level high enough to cast a lot of spells. However, because of the fact that the only really useful socketables are ones that give to mana/life regeneration or mana/life steal (besides experience gain, magic find, and gold find, but that’s another thought entirely), you’ll probably have a high level of mana regeneration from your items (or at least you should, but we will cover this more later). However, it really doesn’t hurt to have some points allocated in this. This is one of those “up to you” skills. I personally only plan to put about 5 points into this skill, but you could max it out or leave it untouched based on your need to be constantly fully charged. Recommended points: 0-15/15

Elemental Attunement (Level 7) Passive: Remember how I said this guide allows you to be flexible and how we were going to cover some of those avenues? This is one of them. Each skill point added to this skill increases the chance that the enemy hit will either be burned, poisoned, frozen, or shocked, and each skill point added increases the duration of said effect by 1 second. This skill has the potential to do a lot of sneaky damage if you use it correctly. The possibility of increased burn duration doesn’t help too much with most of the fire skills, because generally you’re using either Magma Spear or Blazing Pillar, which have considerable burn times, but it does help make the burn duration of Immolation Aura much more useful in regards to causing the Fire Brand effects to occur. So in the case of the burn time/chance, this skill is very “take it or leave it”. You don’t need to get your burn chance from this skill. However, the potential to freeze or shock an enemy opens up avenues for putting a point or several into Ice Brand or Lightning Brand. This is where you can do some sneaky damage without having to press any hotkeys. If you have a decent chance to shock an enemy, and you have point(s) in Lightning Brand, you can then do extra lightning damage to said enemy for a few seconds. Don’t rely on this though; this is more to help augment the main damage we’re already hoping to inflict through our main spells. I’ve got about 5 points in this skill, and plan to get to 15 (just because I need to find a place to deposit all these skill points). However, this is another “up to you” skill. You could max it out, not touch it, or somewhere in between. Recommended points: 15/15

Fire Brand (Level 14) Passive: We’ve heard this term now several times. What does this mythical skill do? Simple, whenever you hit a burned enemy, you do extra damage. How much? Well one skill point adds at minimum 1k damage to any hit on a burn victim. For a spell that activates at level 14, that’s a lot of damage (realistically though, you won’t have a lot of times at this level where you have constant burn victims). Considering that our bread and butter short range attack, Blazing Pillar, and our bread and butter long range attack, Magma Spear, both add considerable burn times to their damage output, this spell suddenly becomes a must-have. Max this out. Recommended points: 15/15

So after we’ve covered the inferno tree, we have 75 skill points in 6 maxed out skills, with 2 skills left empty, and 3 skills each potentially getting points. I would put 1 in Firestorm and 3 in Charge Mastery. This brings us up to a 89 skill points, meaning we have 44 skill points still left to distribute. While I do have my plans to use these skill points, remember that this is where you can get creative. Just make sure you have a plan with these points. For the frost and storm skill trees, I’ll only cover the skills I plan to use. The rest is up to you to figure out. After all, this is a fire mage guide.

FROST

Astral Ally (Level 42): In every RPG game now, one class has one skill that summons a clone-type decoy that either helps dish out damage or just acts as a meat shield. This is that spell for the embermage. You summon a clone that does damage for you and helps take some of the attention/hits away from you. It’s essential for the tank aspect of our build, especially once you start fighting monsters around levels 50. At this point in the game, they can do a lot of damage and fast, so you’ll want to defer that damage in any way you can. You’ll want to max this skill out, but not until you’ve maxed out the more important skills first (I’ll cover that in a bit). But again, max this out. Recommended points: 15/15

Frozen Fate (Level 7) Passive: Whenever you kill an enemy, you have a chance to freeze a few enemies around said killed enemy. It doesn’t really help that much, but you should put a point into it, which will give you a 20% chance to freeze others for 3 seconds (increment increases by .2 seconds at a 4% chance rate). 1 out of 5 isn’t too bad for one skill point. Also, this leads us to our next skill, Ice Brand, which we mentioned before. Recommended points: 1/15

Ice Brand (Level 14) Passive: Just like Fire Brand, this skill adds damage to whenever you hit an enemy that is frozen. Considering we just put a decent chunk of points into Elemental Attunement, and we just put a point into Frozen Fate, it makes sense that we should get some damage out of freezing these bad boys (instead of just slowing them down, which in and of itself is a pretty underrated perk). Just a point in this one should suffice. There’s no need to load this skill up because you won’t be freezing enemies nearly as often as you will be burning them. Recommended points: 1/15

STORM

Prismatic Rift (Level 1) Passive: Whenever an enemy hits you, they are teleported away from you, and every so often they will either be burned, frozen, shocked, or poisoned. This is pretty nifty because it helps you avoid further damage from an enemy that just hit you, as well as giving you more time to get hits in while they lumber back to you. Also, the chance increments jump at a nice 5% rate, starting at 15%. Also, the extra chance to burn, shock, or freeze an enemy just increases the chance of doing extra damage with our brand skills. Put 3 points into this, and you should be ok. Remember, we do want our enemies close to us, and we do plan to tank some damage as a result, so constantly pushing them away isn’t the way to do this. Recommended points: 3/15

Wand Chaos (Level 7) Passive: Whenever you cast certain spells or attacks using a wand, you have a chance to cause some random effect to occur. It could be a whirlwind, poison damage, a bolt of lightning, or even a meteor (you’ll know when the meteor is coming, the screen shakes), among other things. A few things to consider: you have to be wielding at least one wand, it only comes into effect when the standard wand attack is used, or when Magma Spear, Magma Mace, Icy Blast, or Shockbolts are used. Since our character will be using wand(s) primarily, and since we established Magma Spear as our bread and butter, this skill is one we will see triggering often if we invest in it. And that’s exactly what we’ll do. Max this out. Recommended points: 15/15

Lightning Brand (Level 14) Passive: At this point, we know what this skill does. It adds lightning damage to any enemy who is hit while shocked. Considering all the opportunities (created mostly by our other passive skills) to shock enemies, this skill is again a no brainer. 1 point should be all you need. Recommended points: 1/15

So after all of this, you have 5 points extra. Where to put them? I would encourage you to put them somewhere in the passive skills area, because you have your 6 skills that will be hot keyed. Put them into either Charge Mastery or Prismatic Rift, depending on if you need more mana or more space. That’s pretty much it for the skill allocation. Now we’ll go into stats quick and then what items and item qualities you will want to look for.

STATS

From the get go, put points into focus and vitality, at a 4-1 ratio. This doesn’t mean you have to put 4 points into focus and 1 in vitality every level, or all in focus for 4 levels and all in vitality every 5th level. It just means try to ratio your points out as you see fit. In the early stages of the game, you won’t be (shouldn’t be) getting hit too often, so investing a lot in vitality doesn’t make much sense when your big early problem is not enough mana. Later on, you’ll find you never run out of mana, but are either taking too many hard hits or keep dying. So put more into vitality. That’s pretty much it. Don’t bother with strength or dexterity.

ITEMS

First off, get at least a wand. I prefer two (higher overall dps, and more opportunities to get the attack value of enchantments and socketables) wands, or double-wielding, but if you find you prefer a shield with a wand, feel free to do so. After that, try to focus on getting items that have these qualities (in order from most preferable to least):

Mana regeneration: you’re using a mage, casting lots of spells, enough said

Magic-finding luck: really opens the door for cooler, better items

Health recovery: this might save you in the thick of battle, but more useful for in between fights when you don’t necessarily want to use a potion or even have one available

Experience gained: helps us reach our build’s full potential faster!

Mana steal: not as important as regeneration, but still up there

Health steal: again, not as important as recovery, but certainly helps

Increase in gold found: having lots of gold helps a lot when you find a master enchanter, or want to buy that certain item, or want to gamble on a bunch of rings, etc.

Focus attribute: more focus means more mana and more damage from magic attacks

Vitality attribute: more vitality means more health and more armor

Attack speed: higher dps

Attack damage with wand/gun/bow: again, higher dps

That’s it for the items. Try to get an item build that provides plenty of the first 3, with generous amounts of the others if you’re lucky.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY TIPS

These are just things I like to do/keep in mind as I play.

Sets can be helpful if you have a decent amount of the items in a set, but don’t hinder yourself by using a crappy item over a good one because the crappy item benefits from being in a set.

Always, ALWAYS explore every nook and cranny of a map. I’ve found that my level exceeds the recommended level for certain areas, meaning that I have an advantage in that given area.

Save up your money. You never know when you’ll find a master enchanter.

Treat your “shared stash” as simply an extension of your own personal stash.

Always stuff socketables into items when you get them. If you find a socketable later on that you really want to use, or if you find a better item but want to keep said socketable, there are NPC’s in town that can help you with that.

Hold onto unique items and spells, even if you have no intent to use them. You can transmute them into new items and spells that you might have use for.

Regarding spells, give yourself spells that are passive. You already have enough spells you plan to use, so having up to four more doesn’t make much sense.

Give your pet spells that summon things. My pet is a panther-necromancer, because he can summon skeletons, zombies, skeleton archers, and blood golems. Again, the more meat shields you have, the better.