[X] My Assistant

Hi, so 10 years ago I stopped playing a lvl256 1h mage build with high agi and evasion and minimal burden and interference shade armor. Through a combination of stats and a highly upgraded illithid weapon it allowed trivial recovery of MP and allowed me to spam supportive and deprecating spells with no limit. Even though the play style was slower, it was reliable and I was able to do feats like 250 arena at 10x difficulty, or item world 500 rounds deep.

This character now drains 3 MP once every 5 attacks and can just barely sustain the protection and regen spells. He has a full skillbar of fancy max tier spells but can't afford to use any of them. Even doing arena 70 on nightmare is a struggle. I tried out isekai mode and after a few days I already have a lvl125 basic plate mail 2h bruiser that just chops through things in spirit stance. He has a similar issue in that he can't even sustain regen and has to chug a potion every now and then, but he clears rounds many times faster with just basic attacks. Though this character also seems to no longer be able to progress with this build as-is.

Is there a way to fix my character or is the build dead due to balance updates? Or am I completely misremembering and there was no such time where MP was easily sustainable?

This post has been edited by ultramage: Today, 13:33

...

1-handed Tower Mage This might help.

Although, currently (to my understanding) the issue is, that Mage is considered...inconvenient until around level 310 (Imperil at the very least) or level(s) 400~+ for a higher supply of available equipment. Until then, people play either One-Handed plus shield and Power armour or Dual-Wield plus Shade of the Shadowdancer. Check the Rental Store in my Signature if you wish to switch to a different build due to being unable to "fix" the one you are using now. Hopefully, this will be of some service.

This post has been edited by Ramaki: Today, 13:58

Oh! I might have forgotten how to play and your post reminded me. Maybe the key was not the mp drain weapon (though I'm fairly sure the efect wasn't as shitty back then) but in the use of Focus to rapidly regain MP near the end of a round. I'm not sure if ether theft also came into play, wiki says Drain is not very useful. I'll try this and see if things get any better.
EDIT: I'm starting to remember that this is kinda like it felt like before. I also remembered that you can chain a cheap debuff spell into Channeling into an expensive buff for free.

This post has been edited by ultramage: Today, 15:03