Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

161 ratings
Aloth the Arcane Master (War Mage) – POTD Build Guide
By Lost Sinner
★ Wizard (War Mage) - Build Guide for Aloth.

★ Role: Striker, Tanker, Crowd Control Monster.

✎ Team comp: Perform well in a ranged heavy party, and better to just accompany with one another front-liner, too much front-liners would prevent Aloth from going all out. A Priest is recommended if you want Aloth to hit his spells at all without using consumables/drugs as his base Perception is low.

✎ Powerspike: build powerplay once Aloth obtained Ninagauth & Vaporous grimoires.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
✖ Artwork by: Penett Penett
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
★ Showcase Video
✎ Leveling Progression
♦ Leveling:
  • Level 2: Chill Fog
  • Level 3: Infuse with Vital Essence & Shield Style
  • Level 4: Spirit Shield
  • Level 5: Llengrath's Displaced Image & Arcane Veil
  • Level 6: Bear's Fortitude
  • Level 7: Ironskin & Secrets of Rime
  • Level 8: Fleet Feet
  • Level 9: Ryngrim's Enervating Terror & Rapid Casting
  • Level 10: Uncanny Luck

  • Level 11: Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst & Scion of Flame
  • Level 12: Arcane Dampener
  • Level 13: Potent Empower & Accurate Empower
  • Level 14: Improved Practical
  • Level 15: Tough

  • Level 16: Wall of Many Colors & Minoletta's Piercing Sigil
  • Level 17: Farcasting
  • Level 18: Penetrating Empower
  • Level 19: Minoletta's Missile Salvo & Prestige
  • Level 20: Arcane Cleanse

----------------------------------------------------------------------

♦ Civil skills:
  • Active: Alchemy
  • Passive: History

♦ Weapon Proficiency:
  • Dagger - Club - Flail
✎ Equipment / Gear
✦ Gear:
  • Whitewitch Mask (Head): +1 Illusions Power Level, Grants Enervating Terror per rest, Grants Repulsive Visage when Bloodied per encounter.

  • Stone of Power (Neck): +1 Intellect, Grants Power Surge which +1 Power Level for an encounter per rest.

  • Miscreant's Leathers (Light Armor): -10% Recovery Time, +8 Reflex, -10% Crit Damage taken, +5% chance to ignore attack.
    ✖ Note: you have to invest it to Legendary so that Aloth can have a good combined AR from base armor + buffs up to an amount good enough to stand guard against multiple attacks while still having close to 0% recovery.

  • Kuaru's Prize Ring: +5% Damage with Spells, +1 Intellect, +1 Perception

  • Ring of Focused Flame: +10 Accuracy with Fire attacks

  • Boots of the Stone: +1 Dexterity, +1 Resolve, Resistance to Might afflictions.

  • Upright Captain's Belt: Immune to Push and Pull effects, +1 Constitution, Grants 1 Concentration on combat starts.

  • Fire Thrower Gloves: +2 Dexterity, +2 Explosives, +1 Arcana, +1 Evocation Power Level.

  • The Giftbearer's Cloth (Cape): +1 Quick Item Slots, +1 Weapon Sets. +5 All Defenses except Deflection (Increases with the History skill)

  • Milx (Cat): +1 Intellect and +5% Hits to Crits for Abilities/Spells (Party-Wide)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

✦ Weapon:
  • Main Weapon Set:
    • Griffin's Blade (Sword): +10% Damage with Spells, +5 Will, Grants Steadfast to self and allied AoE when Bloodied.

    • Small Shield: Any

  • Main Grimoires:
    • Ninagauth's Teaching (Grimoire): Grants 2 unique Nina spells, Death Ray and Shadowflame along with some other Nina base spells such as Freezing Pillar and Killing Bolt.

    • Vaporous Wizardy (Grimoire): Damage causes an interrupt, Grants +1 extra spells to all wizard spells level.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

✦ Alchemy:
  • Ripple Sponge: +X Perception, +X Resolve, +X Intellect
  • Potion of Ascension: +X All Power Levels
  • Potion of Perfect Aim: % Missses to Grazes / Grazes to Hits / Hits to Crits conversion
  • Potion of Moderate Healing: +X Great Health restored
✎ Abilities Preview
♦ As a War Mage:
  • Aloth focus on close range combat with his magic, with enough defensive buffs to stand guard and the striking powers to lay waste against his enemies. While also excel at crowd controls, giving enemies a hell experience with different Illusion magics.

  • When using 2 Grimoires: Aloth should always start with Ninagauth and spend it unique spells if needed, then switch to Vaporous grim for the extra casts. Doing this allow him to comfortably empower any spells however he likes and still has enough spells left to unleash on the enemies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

✦ Buff Spells:
  • Vital Essence: Grants Fit and Smart inspirations which +5 CON & +5 INT. Giving aloth more durability and more intellect to better his spells. (High Priority)

  • Arcane Veil: Huge +50 Deflection boost for a short time, with the right investment it can goes up to 20~30s allow you to matrix dodge most attacks that are not veil piercing. (High Priority)

  • Llengrath's Displaced Image: +10 Deflection, +20 Relfex, +30% incoming Hits converted to Grazes (Deflection or Reflex only), making Aloth even harder to be hit. (High Priority)

  • Spirit Shield: decent armor boost of +3 Armor Rating and +1 Concentration. (High Priority)

  • Ironskin: strong armor boost of +5 Armor Rating, the effect last up to 10 hits, does not stack with Spirit Shield. (Situational)

  • Fleet Feet: Grants Nimble which +5 Dexterity allow Aloth to act faster and +100% Stride as well as 20 Defenses when Disengaging allow Aloth to quickly move in the fray and quickly reposition whenever he want to a more ideal position to cast spells or to intercept enemies. (High Priority)

  • Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst: strong retalition buff that deal Piercing Damage and Stun enemies whenever they strike you. (High Priority)

✦ Crowd Controls:
  • Ryngrim's Enervating Terror: a powerful control, reduce enemies defenses, lower their health and render them helpless, leaving them vulnerable. Even if Terrified is not kicked it, Frightened will also make them unable to cast offensive abilities, and Weakened state still leave enemies low on HP for you to maul them down quickly. (High Priority)

  • Chill Fog: strong aoe debuff, deal decent continous AoE damage and apply Blinded with a 3s tick. Forcing ranged enemies to engage in close range with slower recovery (-50% Range, +50% Recovery) and reduced defenses (Flanked), affected enemies will also have their accuracy lowered when attacking you (-10 Accuracy, -5 Perception), an already hard to hit target with all the buffs up. (High Priority)

  • Expose Vulnerabilities: Foe AOE interrupt and -2 Armor Rating, -10 Deflection, a good debuff to reduce enemies defenses allowing your attacks to sink in their flesh. (Situational)

  • Gaze of the Adragan: Foe AOE Paralyze (Petrified) anyone affected, leaving them unable to act and having 25% of incoming Hits converted to Crits. Unless enemies are low on Fortitude, it's better for Aloth to priotize Terror over Gaze. (Situational)

  • Wall of Many Colors: a power crowd control, creating a line of magical wall dealing different type of elemental damage and multiple hard CC continously each tick, once the effects kick in enemies will be mentally unfit for combat. Useful to disable multiple enemies in a line, becareful not to turn it against yours though as it also affected friendly. (Situational)

  • Arcane Dampener: Beneficial effects suspended to Foe AOE. Useful to shutdown individuals that fond of using buffs, you can disable enemy posititive effects instead of trying to ram through enemy thick layer of buffs. (Situational)

  • Arcane Cleanse: a more powerful version of Arcane Dampener that is available to you at late game. (Situational)

✦ Offensive Spells:
  • Ninagauth Shadowflame: a strong ranged aoe attack that also Paralyze enemies. (High Priority)

  • Ninagauth Deathray: high Raw DPS beam, use it as a single/multiple target melting tool. (High Priority)

  • Ninagauth Freezing Pillar powerful continuous AoE, dealing Freezeing damage and apply Hobbled per tick. You can Empower it to make it even more lethal. (High Priority)

  • Fireball: a decent early game attack, low priority when it comes to late game spells. (Situational)

  • Torrent of Flame: strong Burn AoE around the caster, becareful not to hit nearby allies, disengage and quickly reposition if needed thanks to Nimble inspiration from Fleet Feet. (Situational)

  • Minoletta's Precisely Piercing Burst: powerful Piercing AoE around caster, with enough pen to penetrate or overpen the hardest armor, dealing major damage, it does Foe AOE only. (High Priority)

  • Ninagauth Killing Bolt: powerful long range single target dealing Raw damage and summon a Spectre if target is killed by the Bolt. (Situational)

  • Wilting Wind: a powerful Raw AoE with massive radius, apply Weakened afterward. (High Priority)

  • Kalakoth's Freezeing Rake: powerful long range Freezing AoE (Situational)

  • Meteor Shower: powerful destruction AoE, calling down meteors to lay waste on enemies in a massive area. (High Priority)

  • Minoletta Missle Salvo: a more pin point accurate version of Meteor Shower, unleashing a barrage of missles dealing Crush/Corrode damage in a small area. (High Priority)

✦ AI Behavior Script:
21 Comments
Skywalker 3 Mar, 2021 @ 4:48am 
What are high priority and situational spells..difference ?
Monster Cockter Wilds Codex Dnvo 25 Dec, 2019 @ 8:00pm 
Better to give him all perception equip and buffs and get eldritch aim, then go full disable. Especially if your main is an evoker.
serenity 5 Sep, 2019 @ 8:58pm 
sorry i was blind
serenity 5 Sep, 2019 @ 8:57pm 
the source of artwork plz:cosmopig:
Raggle Fraggles 4 Jan, 2019 @ 3:45pm 
Maybe a dumb question but is Improved Practical listed at lvl 14 supposed to be Imporved Critical?
✰♡ Shotgun Panda ♡✰ 7 Jul, 2018 @ 3:44am 
I'm so very sad... First game my group was soooo range heavy. Now my team is extremely front line heavy. :( Myself and my pet are already taking up two front line positions as is. Using your guides so far for Eder and Xoti (just started playing). So, already got 4 people wacking things in the face now. lol

Great guides! May end up using bits and pieces of this to throw something together. Not playing on hard difficulty, so should work out okay.
Quickpawmaud 19 Jun, 2018 @ 8:06pm 
ok thanks and are you going to make any watcher builds as no one else does the ai setup things which are very helpful as i suck at making them myself
Lost Sinner  [author] 19 Jun, 2018 @ 8:04pm 
• one another Boots of Stone is sold by the merchant inside the Imperial Command. Also take note that most builds are made to give the character best possible items, so you have to mix and match them if you run 2 builds that recommended the same gear.

• Ahu Taka Footprint is from Whēnura Cleft, an event on an uncharted Island at 8° 4' S, 56° 56' E , the same island where the Collapsed Mine Coal at.

• Woedicas Strangling Grasp at an island where Uamoru the Pretender at, Old Battleground - 4° 49' S, 66° 29' E.

• Milx the Cat is from the pet store in Serpent's Crown, top left of the map.

• Forgotten Catacomb at 6° 1' S, 66° 8' E.

The cordinates are on the top left of your screen when traveling on sea.
Quickpawmaud 19 Jun, 2018 @ 11:22am 
and where is the catacomb that the reckless Brigandine is in
Quickpawmaud 19 Jun, 2018 @ 10:16am 
well actually i have one boots of the stone from the special merchant from achievements but you have it listed for both maia and serafen