A Martyr Mage deals damage with Life Magic via the Martyr's Hecatomb spells, Harm spells, and Drain Health spells.
The Martyr's Hecatomb spells, Curse of Raven Fury, and the Drain spells are sources of offensive damage. The damage of these spells is based on your current Health. Because of this it is very important that Martyr Mages have as much health as possible. For this reason the Martyr Mage template has 100 innate Endurance.
It is also for this reason that the completed template has trained Leadership in order to use the Horns of Leadership, which are created via Gearcrafting. When used in a fellowship (even a one person fellowship) these horns add to your health. These horns require a certain buffed leadership skill to activate. The best horn, the Platinum Horn of Leadership, boosts your health by 10 points and requires 225 buffed leadership skill.
The drain spells are somewhat complex to work with and have non-intuitive effects. However, Drain 6 for example does a similar amount of damage to Martyr's Hecatomb 7 given a caster maximum health bar of 350, so the drains should not be discounted for offensive attacks. Here is a summary of the drain spells, the spell caps are not documented on the spell descriptions in game.
Pros
There is no protection against life magic damage. That is, since the damage is non-elemental and is dealt directly to the enemy's health, there is no life protection spell to reduce it.
Because you do not deal in elemental damage you do not need to carry around a vast array of wands.
Typically a Critical Strike (Quest: Biting Strike) or Crippling Blow (Quest: Crushing Blow) wand is desired.
Template finishes early.
Specialized Creature and Life makes for a good support mage, and not having war magic means more experience can be invested into creature/item/life.
Drain spells have a much larger radius of operation than the void magic Destructive Curse spell, for example, which makes attacking Mob's remotely possible, and useful at times, although it is not particularly efficient, or timely way to take down a mob. (Players attempting this may wish to use Raven's fury, or Health to Mana, if practical to "empty" health in preparation for a drain of a remote target)
Cons
Players have Natural Resistances which can reduce the damage of life magic spells.
Some creatures are drain resistant or completely immune. Unfortunately, there is real no pattern to this. Drain resistance/immunity was added to creatures in the early days as a quick fix to prevent macroing and exploitation. For example, Acidic Diamond Golems are immune to drains/harms. Diamond Golems are not. This is because the Acidic variety were once macroed in Knorr. NB - Typically creatures are not immune to the life projectiles, but have varying immunity to the drain spells. Olthoi slashers, for example, are totally immune to Drain and Harm spells, however, not to any type of life bolt.
Because there is no protection spell against life magic damage there is also no vulnerability spell. You cannot substantially increase your damage by casting a spell or using a rended wand.
Critical Strike, Crushing blow and Sneak attack can improve damage output somewhat.
Martyr Mages may be difficult to play for an inexperienced player, especially if that player has never played a mage before.
Drain Spell Details
Spell Level
Drain %
Restore %
Damage cap
Restore Cap
Time to cast
(seconds)
Range
I
25%
200%
30
60
1.6s
10
II
25%
160%
50
80
2
15
III
25%
133%
75
100
2.5
20
IV
25%
100%
120
100
3
25
V
30%
100%
120
120
3.3
30
VI
40%
75%
151
113
3.3
33
VII
50%
50%
180
90
3.5
38.3
VIII
60%
TBC
TBC
To be confirmed from retail data.
The spell description for this
spell was incorrect at end of retail.
3.5
Drain 1, 5 and 7 are the most useful drains and can be used in different situations. It is suggested the Martyr mage aim to use drain 1 and 7 (when available) as a staple.
General Attack patterns
Drain 1
Very quick to cast.
Can restore at least some health from targets with low remaining health.
Recovery of health
Emergency mana (or stamina) even when the caster has close to zero mana, this spell will usually cast assuming the player has the mana conversion skill, and can yield up to 60 mana per cast.
A "Topping off heal" ready for other offensive spells.
Drain 7 or 8
As high as level is available
Offense - does the most amount of damage
Note: The level 8 drain spell returns a maximum 70 in current "emulators" for 200 damage (82 in retail, for 205 damage) . This usually makes the level 7 version preferable, particularly with higher level content and if used in combination with Martyr's Hecatomb, given the fact that the Hecatomb Spells give rise to critical hit and damage bonuses, it is better to cast those more often, and therefore recover more health via a drain spell.
Drain 5
In combination with Raven's Fury, this spell restores the most health, while still doing some reasonable damage (120 max), assuming the MOB being attacked has high health, and the player needs to restore more health than drain 7 can achieve. This combination is usually the most effective of the drains (in combination), for players with high health (over ~440 for example)
For recovering stamina or mana from a target. This is the most efficient recovery spell returning 120 stamina or mana (assuming the target has enough vital to drain - if not use drain I). Note that it is more effective to use revitalize 8, than to use this spell. Draining mana directly from a target is effective though, as there is no spell that directly returns mana to the player without removing it from another one of the players pools.
Suggested Martyr mage offensive casting pattern
As a general offensive pattern for the Martyr's Hecatomb spells paired with the Drain spells, is as follows. The sub-steps can be ignored to simplify the method.
At full health cast the highest level Martyr's Hecatomb
Cast the highest level Drain spell possible for the highest drain damage and to restore health to full.
If the drain spell does not replenish full health because the mob has low health remaining, switch to drain 1 or other healing method.
If the mob has plenty of health, but health is capped due to the Restore cap (above table), then:
If your remaining health to be replenished is near the Restore cap of the drain spell in use, cast the drain spell a second time.
Otherwise use drain I to repeatedly restore health until full health is restored.
Using Curse of the Raven's Fury
Most likely players will want to use this spell when available, and may find that it becomes the staple spell to use over the other damaging spells. This spell drains half the health a player has, and deals 200% of that number to multiple targets, up to 8. Each bolt will do 200% damage of the amount drained. The bolts are emitted from close to the player at 45 degree angles:
The bolts (as shown in the picture) emanate from the player at 45 degree angles, therefore two considerations arise:
A bolt may miss a target if the target is between the bolts.
It is possible to hit some targets with two bolts, given precise positioning - typically the player is quite close to the target to reduce bolt spread and a miss, or double miss.
NOTE - in 2006 Turbine made a fix to the Raven's Fury spell since it used to emit two overlapping bolts immediately behind the player - this is no longer the case. Players may still try and exploit point 2 listed above, for double damage, however.
Casting patterns
There are again many variations here; Three notable patterns are as follows (with useful variations noted). They assume a player starting with full health. There are many alternative combinations that work in different situations, the strategies listed here are the most generally useful.
Raven's Fury with Drain spells.
Cast Raven's Fury
Use the highest drain spell available to recover health and do the most damage (drain 7-8 for instance)
Variation: cast drain 5 to recover more health but do less damage. This does in fact have the highest damage over time for players with high health.
Cast drain 1 to top of player health.
Variation: continue to cast higher level drains until health is recovered, this may not be optimal and depends entirely on the players health needed to be recovered, and the targets health remaining.
Raven's Fury with Stamina to Health
Cast Raven's Fury
Use highest level Stamina to Health spell to recover full health
Repeat from start, until out of stamina, then:
Switch to another strategy (3, below, for example), or intersperse one or more revitalize castings to recover used stamina.
It is also possible to start using the mana to health spell to regain health, though this can be a little risky with targets that are a significant danger to the player, it also may result in both the stamina and mana of the player being depleted and require time consuming replenishment. Health to mana may also be used, but puts the player at still further peril.
As above #2. Except use Heal self to recover health, followed by drain 1 to "top off". This is a completely sustainable pattern over pattern #2, but a slower to repeat and reduces the damage over time.
The template below plans to obtain the leadership skill so as to be able to use the Horns of Leadership to increase damage output. However, there are other possibilities to consider.
Template considerations
Summoning. This allows a needed boost to damage output as well as providing distraction tactics while in combat. The Specialized life magic means that the player may cast Vulnerably spells for the minion under their control. This is likely the best choice for a Martyr mage, especially given life magic is the "hot" attack skill and complements summoning with life magic vulnerabilities for the summoned creature's targets.
Specialized Sneak Attack, with the aid of Specialized Deception provides some extra damage output for those that prefer a non summoning build. However, given that most attacks will be from the front, the additional average damage over time is only 3% (20% x 15% = 3%), so using the horns of leadership is always better when casting the Hecatomb spells, and slightly worse (by 2 points when casting Raven's Fury, assuming a player health of 400)
Specialized Melee Defense is highly recommenced, given that the spell Raven's Fury can only be useful when casted close to targets; this offensive attack is the most damaging attack available in later game play, dealing at least the amount of health the player currently has, against 8 targets surrounding the player.
Biting strike (or better, a Critical strike weapon are the usual recommended mainstay for a Martyr mage. A tinkered Critical Strike Weapon can increase the critical hit rate for bolts, that is: Martyr's Hecatomb, and Raven's fury up to 50% depending on the wielders skill.
The quest version of the same, Biting Strike has a fixed multiplier, which is not shown on the description. These multipliers vary by weapon. For example, the Branith's staff - while it is a War wand, can be wielded by the Martyr mage, and gives a critical chance multiplier of 33%. This can be tested against target drudges, over many casts - at least 50, better 100. The /log command is useful for collecting the spell output and subsequently counting it with some tools (a spreadsheet, or, if familiar grep + wc -l)
X-blow
Crushing blow (Quest weapon only) or Crippling Blow (Tinkered only)
These weapons do not change the critical hit rate, but instead change the critical hit amount. Both the x-strike, and x-blow weapons give the same damage over time. Ordinarily it's recommended to use x-strike weapons, because:
Failing to land with a x-strike weapon is "less" detrimental than failing with a x-blow that could have activated.
The Damage over time is more consistent with x-strike weapons
There are three reasons to use X-blow weapons:
So long as you can reliably hit the target, for targets that have rapid healing, an X-blow weapon can help overwhelm the healing effect of the target. This isn't particularly useful for targets with large health since the DOT is the same, and the benefit of X-blow would be small.
To ensure a kill of lower health targets. Activation of X-blow can mean that the target kill will be assigned to the caster, which may not be the case otherwise.
In PK. X-blow weapons have obvious ramifications.
Slayer weapons
Slayer weapons are quest only weapons that have the slayer property. e.g. Singularity Scepter of Life Magic has the Virindi slayer property. These weapons all give a bonus multiplier to target creatures of the named family type. The Saulandoi for example, gives a 2 x bonus against Olthoi. Family type means that Virindi slayers work on Ebon Rifts, for instance, since they are a type of Virindi.
These slayer weapons are therefore quite important to the Martyr mage, since they may give an additional 50% damage output over a Crippling Blow tinkered weapon, given a suitable target. This is noticeable, for example, when attacking Olthoi hordes
Since the Soul bound staff has biting strike AND crushing below, it's damage over time works out like this:
Biting strike 0.3 multiplier
Crushing blow 2 multiplier (100% extra damage)
0.3 * 100% = +%30 Damage over time.
Compare this to the best Critical strike weapon you can tinker:
0.5 * 50% (bonus) = 25%
Therefore, the Soul bound staff is better than any tinkered weapon you can make in terms of extra damage over time. Additionally, it gives 40% melee d, and +27 mana conversion to boot.
Baron's Amulet of Life Giving +15 Health
Elysa's Favor (Red) +15 Health
Elysa's Favor (Blue) +15 Health
Elysa's Favor (Yellow) +15 Health
Elysa's Favor (White) +15 Health
Refulgent Bracelet +15 Health, Stamina, Mana
Jaleh's Necklace +25 Health
Messenger's Collar +25 Health
Runic Helm of Knorr +25 Health
Encrusted Bloodstone Jewel (45+) +30 Health
Red Empyrean Ring +30 Health
Salvaged Hematite imbued piece of jewelry +10 Health
Bloodletter Charm Necklace +10 Health
Protective Drudge Charm +10 Health
Asheron's Benediction +10% Health - available only on accounts which pre-ordered Throne of Destiny.
Asheron's Lesser Benediction +8% Health - an augmentation available for those without pre-order account status.
Crown of Anointed Blood +7 Health
Salvaged Ruby imbued trinket +5, +10, or +15 Health, depending on level of Gearcrafting Armature used.
Bronze Horn of Leadership +2 Health
Silver Horn of Leadership +4 Health
Gold Horn of Leadership +6 Health
Pyreal Horn of Leadership +8 Health
Platinum Horn of Leadership +10 Health