Archmage heirophant next patch?

Me: I want Frozen Orb
Mom: We have Frozen Orb at home
At home: ...

Yeah, you're right, eye of winter doesn't make any sense...

...

How about this:
2x Crackling Lance of Disintegration w/ unleash & archmage,
both in their own 6-link
Annihilating Light staff, replica heatshiver, and the adorned jewel for uniques
2x 8-passive spell damage clusters w/ the unleash seal recovery & spell block nodes.

What other uniques can I use? Does the ivory tower fit in here somehow? Seems like it would be hard to get increased energy shield% high enough for that to be an improvement to defense.

Ivory tower is theoretically doable but its not really that great with hiero, if you want to go ivory tower es stack make an EB inq is my advice, for tanking up a ton on hiero I would recommend a doryani's glorious vanity, since that lets you split damage 25/25/50 between life, mana and es along with providing a giant chunk of extra es, which should make the build significantly more survivable. I honestly feel like unleash is very overhyped, it has its uses in nuking packs but for raw dps you would often be better just running another damage boosting support and especially if using disintegration running a spell totem + lightning conduit set up in some of the extra gem slots. Also doomstick on hiero puts a ton of pressure on your rings for resists, especially if you're talking about running multiple uniques like heatshiver/replica heatshiver or doppel's or similar. Also for mapping, inpulsas is decent, I find the explosion very overhyped because its aoe is kinda tiny but its a good league start chest. The really good unique chest for hiero in my experience is doppels guise, tankiness when you need it, a lot of extra crit the rest of the time.

If you run the glorious vanity it does lock you out of running a dominus militant unfortunately, so its a contest of damage vs survivability as to which you need more.

I've now tried a few different skills and... plain old vanilla Arc feels really, really smooth in this build. I did a practice campaign run and this definitely feels like the best for leveling. Just press one button and the whole pack of trash pack drops dead instantly. Too bad it doesn't have an AOE tag. DPS is lower than firestorm though. I think on league start, I will do 2x arc and 1x firestorm, each on their own unleash 4-link. Will have one non-archmage arc for clearing trash without spending mana, an archmage arc if its still alive, and an archmage firestorm for the things that truly refuse to die. I'll keep this setup at least until I find one of the trans-versions of crackling lance.

And what's not to like about unleash? Each spell has its own seals so you can just rotate between spells and never not have max-unleashes. You're basically trading gem slots for DPS, but I have extra gem slots since I'm only using one aura (eternal blessing). If I just cycle between different unleash spells, I'm doing way more damage than if I just spam the same spell, aren't I?

The downside is that I don't scale well with cast speed, but, really, I've got plenty of other stats to prioritize.

I've not played a caster in awhile, but been meaning to play a mana build for a long time, and this archmage rework looks like a good opportunity.

It actually seems to me that we can do a lot of work to mitigate mana costs now; can we play Mind over Matter etc, or use auras, since we're not actually burning through our mana every time?

Several people seem interested in using firestorm or ball lightning; is it just because those skills scale particularly well with added damage?

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Kruskader wrote:

I was considering already starting mana stacker Hiero, cuz I never played one, but this Archmage change sealed the deal.

I was actually thinking of using some channeled skill, like Lightning Tendrils, but Firestorm is definitely interesting option too, since it's one of the few duration skills that still work with Archmage.

Since damage and mana cost are untied now, you can stack "reduced mana cost" to get it down to zero:
39% from 20/20 inspiration
16% from Righteous Decree wheel
15% from Dreamer wheel
10% from Mana Mastery
10% from Insightfulness(only on full ES)

For total of 90% just from these. Insightfulness is unreliable, so realisticly 80%. I'm sure you could get remaining reduction from somewhere, tho idk from where, never where bothered by mana cost to know. Sanctuary of Thought gives LESS mana cost, so it won't exactly help us, but I still would pick it for AoE and ES.

Then for any effects that actually require you to spend mana(e.g. Sigil of Power) we would just use Arcane Cloak.

Downside of this approach is that we can't use Indigon, cuz it increases mana cost, but I think we'll be fine without it.

You overlooked another 15% from the Tireless Life wheel, located southwest of the Templar start.

"

Several people seem interested in using firestorm or ball lightning; is it just because those skills scale particularly well with added damage?

firestorm just has the highest added damage ratio -- much of the damage is in the first impact: 80% effectiveness of added damage with 100% + 325% "more" damage = 340% effective added damage ratio which is better than almost anything else, and that's not even accounting for the small meteors which can often hit the same target as the large one. The downside is that there's a delay on its damage and its sometimes hard to hit moving targets, although the AOE radius is decent, so the downside isn't huge.

For Ball Lightning... I'm not really sure how much damage this skill does, it's super confusing to me. I'd know a lot of people use this skill, so I'd love to have someone come in here and explain its upside. If I understand correctly, it does a lot of damage vs immobile, stationary targets because it will zap them every .15 seconds as the balls slowly pass over, and you want slower projectiles so they hit more often. So I guess its a good bossing skill? Do I need to find +projectile from somewhere other than gems to use this skill effectively?

Updates (will add this edit to OP):

FINAL THOUGHTS BEFORE LEAGUE START:

TL;DR:

At this point, after trying a bunch of things, I'm completely sold on the unleash variant of archmage heirophant.
I think there's no reason to use the same gems for mapping as for bossing. I will use the combo of Arc + firestorm + Armageddon brand for general mapping and also for the campaign, then temporarily switch to a frostbolt + frostnova of frostbolts setup for the pinnacle bosses. After trying a bunch of spells, these are the ones I liked the best.

____________________________________

Final thoughts on different skills I've tried out:

FROSTBOLT + FROSTNOVA OF FROSTBOLTS: This combo seems really solid for bossing. Works great with double unleash links: send an unleashed pack of frostbolts at the boss, then detonate them all and it just dies. Easy and clean one-two punch. A+ bossing skills. C- for mapping.

BALL LIGHTNING: This isn't bad but I just prefer the other skills. It isn't the greatest at clearing screens and it feels weaker than the above combo for bossing. Although it wasn't unplayable. Someone who likes this skill could do well with it, I'm sure. B+ bossing, C+ mapping.

ARC: This seems like the best mapping skill -- clears packs dead, leaves nothing alive. Also it can hit that one rare mob with multiple times -- with 3+ targets, it can chain back to something it already tagged. Single target DPS is not very good though. D bossing, A+ mapping.

CRACKLING LANCE OF BRANCHING: I don't care for this skill. It has great range but often misses stragglers up close or behind and I'd rather use Arc if I'm going to use something with such low single-target DPS. D bossing, B+ mapping.

CRACKLING LANCE OF DISINTEGRATION: Originally I was planning to run this, but I've decided against it. Its width is just so tiny. It's really only good for applying the 70% shock to bosses. Maybe someone can make this skill work, but I don't prefer it. C+ bossing, C- mapping.

FIRESTORM: I still like this skill as an all-purpose high DPS nuke. As a secondary attack, it complements Arc well for mapping and the campaign. B+ bossing, B- mapping.

ARMAGEDDON BRAND: This feels great on a tertiary link. It doesn't work with archmage anymore, but its cast speed is so fast that we barely lose any time dropping it down while waiting for unleash seals from our other skills. Its cast speed is so fast that we can easily cast it while waiting for our lightning warp to teleport us, so while warping through the campaign it might as well be an instant-cast free-exp-button. Its also nice to have a way of dealing damage that doesn't drain our mana, since I don't want to overinvest in cost reduction and mana is an important defensive layer. Also, we can precast this on the ground if we know that something dangerous is about to appear (essences, harvest, etc). I had an extra 3 gem slots in my final build, so I put this on the same link as frostblink with two supports. I think it pulls its weight as a tertiary source of damage.

"

MillardForce wrote:

For Ball Lightning... I'm not really sure how much damage this skill does, it's super confusing to me. I'd know a lot of people use this skill, so I'd love to have someone come in here and explain its upside. If I understand correctly, it does a lot of damage vs immobile, stationary targets because it will zap them every .15 seconds as the balls slowly pass over, and you want slower projectiles so they hit more often. So I guess its a good bossing skill? Do I need to find +projectile from somewhere other than gems to use this skill effectively?

This video may help

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRzgay9ekqo&ab_channel=Palsteron