Mage Tank

Chapter 165: The Good, The Bad, and The Arousing

Having chosen my skills, I took the time everyone else was spending looking over their options to review my evolution choices. First up was Speed 20.

Speed! Chooseanevolutionbutdon’tthinkaboutittrustyourgut!

1) Bolt: Your sprinting speed is doubled, which also applies to flight. Whenever you move, you immediately begin moving at your full sprinting speed unless you choose otherwise.

2) Liquid Cooling: Choose one of your active skills with a cooldown. If that cooldown is 10 minutes or less, it no longer has a cooldown. Otherwise, the cooldown is either reduced by 10 minutes or halved, whichever is a greater reduction. If the cooldown is variable, apply this effect anytime a cooldown is determined. This cooldown reduction is applied after all other forms of cooldown reduction.

3) Lightning Blocks: You can block instantaneously and without thought. Whenever you use this ability, you spend stamina equal to the damage blocked.

All of the evolutions were useful, but none of them was an immediate standout. Being faster was always good, but my in-combat mobility primarily came from Shortcut. However, they were two different tools in the toolkit and could be used together.

I’d tested my freshly enhanced Speed of 22 during our week with Avarice, and my full sprint topped out at over 100 miles per hour. Bolt would put me well above 200 miles per hour, and eliminate any windup.

When using Shortcut with its lowest cooldown, I could move 256 feet per second, which was equivalent to 175 miles per hour. It cost mana, but if I needed to get somewhere in a hurry I could make it happen, so long as it was relatively close. Shortcut took a bit of concentration, however, whereas running and maneuvering were mostly automatic. If I were really in a hurry, I could also run during the 1-second cooldown period. If I were able to immediately run at my top speed, I could get from point A to point B at over 400 miles per hour.

Liquid Cooling would be a partial solution to one big problem I had, which was that Explosion! had too long of a cooldown. Even so, it wouldn’t completely eliminate that massive downside from the spell.

I currently got a 22 percent cooldown reduction to Physical spells from my first Physical Magic evolution. It was a waste of an evolution for now, although I’d had high hopes for it when I picked it up. If Physical Magic reached 100, all Physical spells would be cooldown-free, but it would take a long time to get there.

Liquid Cooling would cut the already reduced cooldown in half, taking the adjusted 47-minute cooldown to 23 minutes and change. That was a big reduction, but its utility was still limited since I couldn’t use it multiple times in the same fight unless the fight was dragging. Maybe if I were fighting in some kind of protracted battle or war it would be great. Then again, thinking about what Avarice had told us about Brae’ach and the Davahns, maybe that was something we’d soon encounter.

Since Liquid Cooling had a minimum flat reduction of 10 minutes, Explosion! would have zero cooldown once I got Physical to 83. Still a fair distance off, but skill levels above 70 were supposed to take a lot of time and effort to snag, so getting it 17 levels early was still big. It was an evolution that was an investment.

Or, I could slap it onto Reckless Shortcut and significantly increase my minimum teleport distance without incurring a large cooldown, but I didn’t need long-range teleports nearly as often as quick blinks around a fight. Still worth considering.

Lightning Blocks was… fine. I was honestly disappointed in the evo since it looked like the natural progression from Rapid Blocks. Rapid Blocks let me block twice as fast, along with being able to equip and stow my shield in a flash. It was core to my style and had no downsides. While the instantaneous block from the level 20 evo was awesome, the stamina cost was prohibitive.

It ultimately came down to how much I valued my stamina versus my health. My shield’s block value was somewhat nebulous, but the System gave me a base value of 31 from my Shields skill when blocking most things. Gracorvus had an armor rating of “high”, which meant something like 10 from what we knew. I could expect to block 41-ish damage, which would mean 41 stamina spent whenever I used Lightning Blocks, assuming the attack hit for the full block value. At our level, that wasn’t hard to do.

I had 520 stamina and 1898 health, which already made me prefer spending health if I could get away with it. What really sealed the deal on which resource I wanted to protect was my regen values. My current stamina regen was 104, whereas my health regen was a godly 864. Trading stamina for health might be great in a pinch, and blocking would prevent some on-hit effects and statuses, but it wasn’t a great trade since my health came back so much faster. The place where Lightning Blocks might come in most useful was if I blocked for someone else, which my Shields 10 evolution gave me a boost to. But that was only useful if an ally was nearby, which they often weren’t.

I engaged in my favorite form of procrastination–the excusable kind–and considered all my options before making any choices. Mystical Magic 20 was next.

Mystical Magic. Make mana your bibbity-bobbity-bitch.

1) Countermage: Whenever you successfully negate a magical effect, half the mana you spent to negate it is refunded and you gain 1 stack of Potency. You can have a maximum number of Potency stacks equal to twice the number of evolutions you have in Mystical Magic.

Whenever you would use a mana shape to alter a skill, you can spend 1 stack of Potency instead of increasing the skill’s cost, up to a maximum resource savings of 100% of the cost of the base skill. Further mana shapes increase the cost as normal unless you spend additional Potency stacks for those shapes.

2) Mirror Match: Once per hour, you can gain all of the buffs of one character you can perceive, and that character gains all of your debuffs. The duration of these buffs and debuffs is equal to the duration remaining when they were copied.

3)Twinned Skill: Whenever an ally you can perceive uses an active skill, you can react to activate that skill yourself by spending the same amount of mana and stamina the ally spent. You use the ally’s stats, intrinsics, and other modifiers instead of your own to determine the skill’s effectiveness.

If the skill has any requirements other than attunement, stats, or intrinsic skills, such as requiring a weapon or wearing a certain type of armor, you must meet those requirements to activate the skill.

This ability has a cooldown of 1 minute.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Mystical Magic gave me the opposite problem of Speed. All of them would give me something powerful to keep building around.

Countermage was self-explanatory. My Dispel would cost half as much and grant me Potency stacks so that I could mana shape my skills for free. I didn’t think it would also work with Reverse Card–that was redirecting a spell, not negating it–but even if it only applied to Dispel, that stacked with the skill’s built-in cost reduction of 0.5 percent per level of Mystical Magic. Getting another 50 percent off would take it down to 22.5 percent of the cost of the spell I was dispelling. I’d probably net mana once I got a free mana shape out of it.

Mirror Match looked like all sorts of fun, but its main drawback was how conditional it was. I was building to avoid debuffs as much as possible through outright immunities, the natural resistance Body of Theseus gave me, my Exposure Therapy achievement, gear, and so on. There was also no guarantee an enemy would have any buffs, but at higher levels, everybody would be rocking some sort of potent augment.

The best use would likely be copying an ally after they’d been buffed to hell. My first thought was Varrin when he went maximum effort with Xim’s Sam’lia blessings, Nuralie’s roid potions, and his own series of self-buffs. There were a few ways to turn this into a cheap power-up, and the 1-hour cooldown didn’t turn me away much. The evolution could benefit from setup and preparation, or it could be used as a mid-combat oh shit button.

Twinned Skill let me copy a skill, full stop. It needed me to ‘react’, so there was some minor commitment regarding economy but a lot less than what was normally required from an active skill. I could double down on Etja’s death rays, Xim’s heals or fiery Judgment, Varrin’s whirlwind attacks, Shog’s movement abilities, Grotto’s mental attacks, or Nuralie’s debuff-compounding skills. That was just a selection, and having the evo might influence further skill selections as a group, encouraging us to find the most broken skills to copy.

Twinned Skill would require the most preparation, practice, and technique. It could also only be used once per minute. In high-speed combat like the Doomed Aspirant fights, that meant I could only swing it once. That also assumed I’d have time to ‘react’ and copy the skill, rather than blocking, dispelling, or redirecting. Unlike copying buffs, which had a duration, it would be a one-off.

Finally, I looked over Intelligence 40, which I hoped would be a big one.

Intelligence. No matter how much head trauma you suffer, it somehow keeps going up! We’d say to add more padding to your helmet, but your mutated biology protects your noggin’ better than any armor ever could. Celebrate your healthy inhuman brain cells by choosing 1 of the following evolutions!

1) Arcane Geometry: You have learned how to manipulate skills to create effects that go beyond the bounds of their descriptions, but your mastery over this ability has been amateur at best. Now, your burgeoning intellect has caused an epiphany of profound insight, granting you familiarity with the following mana shapes and expanding their use beyond any single skill.

Immediately after acquiring this evolution, choose 1 mana shape from the list below. Whenever you use that mana shape on any skill, it does not apply the listed cost increase. This effect may only occur once every 6 seconds.

You can change the chosen mana shape with 1 hour of meditation once per day.

Biggus

If you use the biggus shape on a skill that causes an effect outside of your body, that skill becomes a spherical AoE with a radius of 5 feet. If the skill is already an AoE, its radius is increased by 5 feet if it is a sphere or circle, 10 feet if it is a cone, or 20 feet if it is a line. This does not increase the skill’s damage or other effects against any individual entity, even if those effects would normally increase based on size. (Looking at you, Oblivion Orb.)

This shape adds +20 to the original skill cost.

Bubble

If you use the bubble shape on a skill that targets or affects only you, it instead targets and affects all entities of your choice within 5 feet of you.

This shape multiplies the original skill cost by the total number of targets.

Devil Drill Beam!

If you use the Devil Drill Beam shape on a skill that requires touch, it instead becomes a 30-foot line that continues through all obstructions and entities along the line.

This shape triples the original skill cost.

Discretion

If you use the discretion shape on a skill that creates an AoE, you can cause that AoE to affect only enemies or only allies.

This shape adds +50% to the original skill cost.

Funnel

If you use the funnel shape on a skill that targets only one entity, the damage and healing the skill would cause is doubled. A skill shaped with Funnel can only target 1 entity regardless of any other shape, ability, or effect that would allow otherwise.

This shape doubles the original skill cost.

Jet

If you use the jet shape on a skill that requires touch, it can instead affect any target within 20 feet of you.

This shape doubles the original skill cost.

From Downtown

If you use the From Downtown shape on a ranged skill, its range is doubled.

This shape adds +50% to the original skill cost, with a maximum increase of +20 of the applicable resource.

Vertex

If you use the vertex shape on a skill that targets only one entity, you can target a second entity within range.

This shape doubles the original skill cost.

Wedge

If you use the wedge shape on a skill that makes a spherical AoE, it instead makes a cone with a length equal to twice the sphere’s diameter.

This shape adds +50% to the original skill cost.

If you acquire any additional mana shapes, they will be added to the list above. If you can augment a mana shape beyond the effects listed, further augments still carry a cost.

The resource cost of mana shapes is typically mana or stamina. If a skill requires a different resource, the costs of any applied mana shapes may be adjusted. If a skill does not have a resource cost, a cost for the mana shape will be added.

2) Grand Archives: You can touch upon the mental field surrounding all thinking entities, acquiring knowledge from the vast reaches of the planes. As a 1-minute activity, you can focus on any object you can perceive. Upon completion, you gain a preternatural understanding of that object, allowing you to discern its purpose, how to construct similar objects, and how to operate the object proficiently, assuming any living entity in the universe knows such things.

This ability cannot extract information from entities immune to telepathy or mind-reading.

This ability has a cooldown of [?] days, based on the rarity and potency of the acquired knowledge. Be careful, because some knowledge is better left unknown.

3) Armchair Expert: Whenever you aid another entity in a non-contested check, you may add a +6 bonus to that check for each INT evolution you possess. This effect only occurs if this bonus is higher than the bonus you would normally confer.

Well, slap my ass and call me Daddy, ‘cause these options were making me warm and tingly in all the right places.

We had the always popular selection of “makes every skill you have more useful”, an Arlo-classic option of “it’s probably ridiculously broken but carries portents of forbidden power”, and finally, the time-honored choice of “useless for you, but makes everyone around you better.”

Personally, I didn’t think it was a tough pick. Mana shaping. It saved us in the Creation Delve when I used Makankosappopotamus to get up in Ihxiobrixolas’s guts, saved us in The Cage when Grotto used it to stupefy the Specter of Orexis, and saved us against The Pit when Etja and I used it together to blow up the world’s biggest (maybe) eyeball. I used it to modulate the size of Oblivion Orb, increase the range on Explosion!, and expedite the Closet portal, and I knew that I wasn’t using it to its full potential.

The sheer number of options Arcane Geometry would enable were in the neighborhood of one entire shitload, and that was only considering the new mana shapes it would control-copy-paste into my brain. Being able to pick a shape that would become free, regardless of the skill, was a hell of a cherry on top. Beyond that, the evolution said “skill”, not “spell”, which would unlock mana shaping for stamina-spending techniques. I’d known it was possible but hadn’t had the time to mess around with shaping techniques. Overall, it seemed like an easy choice.

My party members didn’t disagree, exactly, but they did have Thoughts.