Archmage Support

Archmage is still quite undertuned and there is no reason to play it.

The added damage is just inferior to Awakened Added Lightning Damage support, and even though normally I would say it also allows you to build defense through Mind over Matter and The Agnostic, this is simply not the case in the current meta as you have to sacrifice auras in order to play Archmage and as a result, you lose defenses by building mana.

Even with the new blessing supports, it doesn't do much but allow you to save a ring slot for Essence Worm. Divine blessing is especially bad because with increasing your mana costs you are essentially using up all of your mana when you cast it which on top of its clunky playstyle makes you vulnerable during that period because you rely so much on MoM.

But this doesn't matter either way because by using Awakened Added Light instead of Archmage, you get to run multiple defense Auras (such as Determination, Grace, Defiance banner) and possibly an offense aura or more. And you still do the same damage and even more because you don't waste passives points and gear on Mana and instead can invest more into auras, defense and damage.

Pledge of Hands nerf was good IMO because it was forcing most archmage builds into using it, but the rest went too far and it's been a while it's about time to give Archmage back some strength and make it at least "decent".

TLDR;
1. Archmage gives you less damage than Awakened Added Light
2. Archmage gives you less defenses even if you have MoM + Agnostic due to not being able to stack defensive auras
3. Archmage requires you to invest a LOT of passives and gear into mana for no damage or defensive benefit

🌀🌀🌀🌪️

Could you please make it support attack skills as well?
Any reason to restrict it to spells in the first place?

It would be great to see some melee mana tanks.
"Mana Leech Support" would become interesting.

The whole Archmage change is bad.

The system is simplified for sure BUT

It was Archmage after all, not some "Novice" or "Moronic".

Supports spell skills that deal damage with hits and have no reservation. Cannot support Arcane skills, Brand, Orb Skills, Vaal skills, or skills used by totems, traps, mines. Cannot modify the skills of minions.

I think this wall of restrictions missing one important line

Cannot support skills that have letter D in the name

I think archmage should be able to support Vaal skills now, maybe at a lowered damage effectiveness. There is no more conflict related to mana cost anymore.
I was planning to play a (Vaal) ice nova hierophant because of the high AoE boni (even before the Ziz video) and realized that the Vaal skill will be completele ineffective because archmage is most of the damage.

Otherwise i think the gem change was necessary, because now reduced/less mana cost modifiers will no longer brick the damage.

have been playing over a dozen ice nova chars since closed beta btw :P