The Slormancer: Scholar Mage Build (Arcane Missiles-only)

Build for the Mage strongly focusing on Big Fury and Savagery to buff up Arcane Missiles to Wrath 10 screen clearing levels. You do not need to use your other skill slot, but I recommend Arcane Breach, though not for the reason you may be expecting. Can fully clear a W10 floor in under 3 minutes, and still has room to grow with item levels.

Playstyle:
Enter filled room. Set up Wall of Omen. Shoot Arcane Missiles. Room becomes empty. Run through Wall of Omen to run to the next room.

Savagery’s 45 Greater Trait:

Big Fury:

Every point of mana gives 1 max damage from Savagery. That one max damage is multiplied by 6.8 due to the +580% Max Raw Damage from Primordial Benediction. Then multiplied again by 2.45 due to the +145% Raw Damage Multiplier.

The result is every point of mana is 17.15 max raw damage. A lvl 155 Staff would give 7.2 * 2.55 = 18.36 damage per mana. While adding 0 – 17.15 damage is only an average of ~8.5, the Skill Damages are Lucky adds an effective 33% boost to the average, making it 11.3 average damage per point of mana.

The catch to all this damage? It’s the mana missing, not the mana you have. You want to be at low mana, but your skills also cost mana. There are 2 ways to work around this, but both center around the Ancestral skill Flashing Darts:

Now, once we get to low mana, we can stay there, making this damage number reliable.

The catch on getting to that mana is that you start every expedition at full mana, and it absolutely takes some time to get down to ~10% or so. Arcane Breach has Tier 2 – Multi-Breaches which quadruples the mana cost. So all mention below will be about getting the mana cost up to make it faster to get to around 10% mana. Why 10%? We want to keep some mana around to use Wall of Omen.

If you ever hit 0 mana, turn Flashing Darts off for a little and then turn it back on when you get pehaps 1000 back, which should last a floor or so.

As the title mentions, we’ll be focusing on Arcane Missiles, and as Devoted Scholar. Find the trees to each below:

Tier 1: Endless Stocks – Mana is our damage. Take the extra mana.
Tier 2: Speed Gate – This is our movement support, pretty much eliminating the need to get movement speed on gear.
Tier 3: Nothing at this tier really matters; Temporal Enhancer will hurt slightly and not provide much benefit.
Tier 4: Immaterial Body – Don’t need the other two on this tier, and this is a huge amount of defenses
Tier 5: Nothing on this tier really matters
Tier 6: Wall of Termination – *Incredible* defenses; play around the Wall and you don’t need to fear archers or mages
Tier 7: Bouncing Magic – This is mandatory for Arcane Missiles
Tier 8: Emblematic Caster – The reason for this over Temporal Split is non-intuitive. With only using Arcane Missiles, we will always have 3 Arcanic Emblems. This is important for Wall of Omen, as it brings the mana cost down to nearly nothing, allowing us to mostly ignore the low-mana situation for longer.

Tier 1: Arcane Funding – Key to staying at low mana without issue. Strongly recommend keeping at level 1 to maximize the missing mana.
Tier 2: Remnants Wingmen – Solid damage boost. Conflux is a trap, additional damage is not increased by Big Fury multipliers
Tier 3: Evolve and Overcome – Key to simplifying the playstyle. We have Bouncing Magic from Scholar, which is a good start to having incredible spread.
Tier 4: Arcane Phalanx – This will always be recommended because it allows you to hit a single target with multiple projectiles without being up close.
Tier 5: Nothing on this tier really matters – do *not* take Arcane Sovereign except to see how big your crits can get

Traits:

Savagery – 45 is mandatory
Fury – Recommended to get at least 10 points, for +10% crit chance
Willpower – Recommended to get at least 10 points, for +32% mana
Zeal – There are enough points to get to 5 here, but it’s unnecessary

Arcane Breach:
As mentioned in the introduction, we only want to increase the mana cost to burn mana. For that reason alone:
Tier 1: Reap What You Sow
Tier 2: Multi-Breaches
Tier 3: Double Slip Knot

With just the above and 3 Arcanic Emblems, the mana cost is 1924, so only 10 casts. If your Arcane Breach is at a higher level, then feel free to use additional upgrades to reduce the number of casts at the beginning of your expeditions.

Offensive Gear focuses:

• + Mana – Helm, Chest, Cape, Rings, Boots
• + Mana% – Note that Flat Mana will be superior whenever available, due to having +52% mana from Scholar and Willpower Traits
• + Rebound Chance – Helm, Rings – At least 2 items should have this
• + Attack Speed – Bracers, Shoulders, Gloves, Cape
• + Critical Strike Chance – Gloves, Bracers, Belt, Necklace,
• + Critical Strike Damage – Gloves, Belt, Rings, Boots

Defensive Gear focuses:

• Projectile Damage Reduction – Gloves, Rings, Chest
• Elite Damage Reduction
• Life Leech% – Gloves
• + Life
• + Evasion

The above are not quite priorities due to certain stats being available only on certain tiers of each item slot.

Legendaries:

• Helm – Slormandrite-Infused Diadem – 25% Mana Multiplier
• Shoulder – Ethereal Cloning Pads – +1 Projectile

What your stats might look like at some mid-tier gear:
60% Critical Strike Chance
250% Critical Strike Damage
60% Rebound
17k mana
6k life
30% projectile damage reduction

Since Breach isn’t used during combat at all, it’s possible to change the skill out at the beginning with Chrono-Puncture to get some additional boosts. This variant is a good option before your damage and/or rebound is high enough, or you don’t have the shoulder legendary. It’s a little riskier to play as far as survivability, but the damage is excellent. There is a downside that Time Lock prevents an enemy from dying, meaning you’re locked in by Breaches until it wears off.

Time Lock:
Tier 1: Critical Time – Mandatory to proc Time Lock. Best used on Elites as a form of crowd control.
Tier 2: Chrono-Manamorphosis
Tier 3: Blank or Puncturing Nightmare
Tier 4: Blank.
Tier 5: Superior Chrono-Upgrade

Tier 4 is left blank specifically to keep the mana cost low, and Temporal Sentence is Elemental damage, which we have none of.

Adjustments to other Arcane Missiles:
Tier 3: Arcanic Tempo – If you don’t have the shoulder legendary and don’t yet have rebound on gear, this is a great alternative
Tier 5: Not So Lost – Can now be used to get obscene numbers. Talking about 100 million damage numbers.

Adjustments to Devoted Scholar:
Tier 3: Safety Bolt – For a *big* damage boost on Time Locked enemies

The key with this Time Lock variant is to aim the missiles at a Time Locked enemy. When you do, you’re almost guaranteed to wipe out everything in the area surrounding it.