The Daily Deal

Why do you think that reducing a farming time is ridiculous? Can you propose any other way of getting, say, a Raging Battler besides the constant farming? Just sitting and waiting until Randimar will bring it to you?
I've never suggested to spend 5000 per wizard, but if a player has NO Staves of Misanthrope like me, buying 1-2 copies would be good. I still hope to farm the rest myself

Yes, the top Firestorm items (Firehide Robes and the double-Firestorm legendaries) should be bought first, but Staff of the Misanthrope is close to them in power.

You don't need more than 7-9 Firestorms per wizard, and that can be achieved without staves. Extra Firestorms aren't going to be that effective. That's why I am using White Flame and other non-Firestorm staves on high levels.

I've said "maybe". I don't remember the map names, but there was an open map in the Leagues.

Yes, I still can win with one wizard, but losing another is losing half of my offensive power, so the winning will take much longer.

 

Good question. I am thinking about that myself. But as long as I have Wym's Fiery Bangle, I guess I can live without it.

 

Miligar's Dragon Tongue
Multiplayer-5
Wizards are basically limited to burning cards and damaging terrain in terms of high damage attacks on arcane items. If you want a purely offensive wizard then you can't go wrong with the 7 damage from Flame Jet. Be sure to include some sort of armor removal in your build. Resistant Hide and Reliable Mail are both widely played and will shut down burning attacks if you aren't prepared.

Singleplayer-4
Flame Jet is even better in singleplayer since the AI will not play around linear spells. If you want to play for fun with powerful burning spells Flame Jet and similar burning cards will get you through the campaign with style. However, if your goal is to get through adventures as quickly as possible Firestorm and Volcano items should still be your priority.

Overall power level- Miligar's Dragon Tongue is primarily a multiplayer item. While it will still get a lot of damage through in singleplayer it takes multiple turns to achieve it. I would get it if you want an offensive multiplayer wizard but would pass on it for singleplayer farming purposes.

Substitutes- None

Agility
Pacifist Trickery
Tome Of Pain

5-Staple item that does not need to be built around. Sees a lot of play in multiplayer or has great utility in single player.
4-Powerful, but deck specific. Popular in multiplayer or useful in certain adventures.
3-Average. You could do better, you could do worse. The cards on this item will not make or break a build.
2-Subpar. There are unplayable aspects to this item or many better alternatives exist.
1-Very bad to totally unplayable. Little or no redeeming qualities.[/QUOTE]

 

Reducing farming time is great. Greatly reducing farming time in a few maps with Flash of Agony instead of reducing farming time in almost all maps with Firestorm is ridiculous.

How is it close in power if Flash of Agony is nearly dead on most maps?

What the heck are you talking about? Why wouldn't you use as many 4 damage to everything within 5 spaces spells as possible? So you can do 2 damage to everything instead with Instant Burn? Your farming builds are not optimized for speed.

Let's say you have a Combustible wizard with 3 Firestorms in hand. The first Firestorm does 7 damage to you and 4 to everything. The second one does the same. If you have 15 or more hp you can use your third Firestorm. If you have less then you are in a low level module and the enemies are dead or close to death. Your second wizard finishes the job. You only need around 3 Firestorms to kill things, even less with Savage Curse. The problem you are having is due to not drawing enough Firestorms. Look up other people's farming builds and you will see that they all try to maximize Firestorms, even if it adds Combustible to their decks.

 

I totally agree with PEONPROP.. Firestorm + Volcano + Walls of Fire were my key for SP farming ..

And.. imho, I would always value MP-playable items over SP-playable items... for SP, you don't have a ladder/ranking .. if necessary, you can sometimes skip a round due to inconsistency, it wont do much harm .. you'll win anyway .. 30s longer but who cares .. for me that's not enough (actually players who do care .. they already have their Power Parties and they know if they need SP-farming item or dont.. )

For MP, when you have a good deck .. and find a better item (bleneth 2xMF vs skull for example) .. that can make a difference between win or loss.. but for SP.. what, that could sometimes reduce your farming time ..

I dont value SP-only items that much .. I value "core" items .. Firehide Robes, Magma Scepter, Wym's Lavastaff, SOTI, ..

What is interesting -> few of you mention White Flame for SP farming.. but I never used that.. I tried .. but I liked wide-area spells more ..

Also, Staff of Misanthrope .. I tried it .. it was good somewhere, somewhere was not .. and I dont like losing time on switching decks .. so I left it for more Volcano-FS..

Well .. I've farmed lvl5-7 for 6 months .. and get 0(zero) Raging Battler's ..

 

1). Adding the few more Firestorms besides my 7-8 doesn't reduce the farming time much. I am constantly discarding the Firestorms since they aren't advantageous in my situation (for instance, affect only half of bots, but all my chars). 2). Reducing farming time even on a single map is great.

No, it isn't "dead". It's a great addition to the Firestorms.

I am talking about I don't need extra Firestorms from the staves. Because Ember Bursts, Flame Jets and Globs of Flame are generally more effective than 8th+ Firestorm, especially with burning skills and White Flame.

"If" is the key word here. The bots aren't just sitting ducks, they attack you too.

 

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the bigger picture so I'll stop trying to reason with you on these.

If anyone else has a farming party like yours that isn't due to item availability I'd genuinely like to know.

You have a buff priest that can act as a meat shield while you fire off attacks. You can also throw the Combustible wizard under the bus for just 2 Firestorms. You only need 3 total. Have you even tried farming with Combustible? I don't know about anyone else but I rarely fail because of it.

 

OK, I won't ask what can be "the bigger picture" in farming

My priest doesn't have much better speed than my wizards, and if I will make him an Elf, I really doubt he will make a good meat shield Also, I don't control the bots, which tend to attack my wizards even if they aren't closest to them. To "throw the combustible wizard under the bus" I need to catch all the bots with his Firestorms, and that may be difficult. At least Flash of Agony never damages the wizard himself.

Surely I had. I've got 4 Staves of Inferno. Yes, they are great on some maps, but I don't like them for the Combustibles. I prefer to farm "automatically", without having to think whether I should kill my wizard now.

 

Ector makes some good points here - I think @peonprop may be a bit harsh in giving Staff Of The Misanthrope a 3 in SP - I reckon it probably deserves a 4 for usefulness. I prefer it over Staff Of The Inferno on several of the early levels (with a Savage Curse Priest) and I love it on some higher level maps to free up tokens e.g. battles 1 & 3 of The Pools of Slime. Its usefulness has definitely increased since the FS nerf.

Having said that, I'm not sure I'd advise players to buy one - if you replay the level 2-4 adventures daily (less than 30 minutes work) and you drop a legendary, the small number of legendary items at that level gives you a good chance of getting one.

 

My party isn't like Ector's; I don't have any decent priest items so I'm using 3 level 4 dwarf wizards. I also only have one double FS arcane item, so I can only get 6-7 FS on each when using Infernos.

And right now I'm farming for some level 12 Halloween items I'm missing, and using Flash Of Agony on the first map of Tvericus is working much better than Firestorm. This will be even more important in December since all the Christmas items I'm missing are level 12 legendaries.

 

I understand that Flash of Agony is better on some maps. My question was do other people use Flame Jet, Glob of Flame, Instant Burn over Firestorm for farming? Ember Burst I can understand but the rest seem incredibly slow.

 

It does work better .. but Firstorm also works ok there .. pass pass, walk in, do 3 firestorms and map over. Is there any need to have special deck just for Tomb of Tvericus .. with Firestorm and Volcano it's quite a fast map .. I would never make a special deck for it..

Nobody argues that Flash can be good ..even better in some maps .. but I think FS is more flexible..

 

It's funny, I think Flash of Agony used to be really good for the melvelous adventures. After the last patch, not so much.

There was a time where I cared about my characters surviving while farming. After a while you learn to burn the combustible guy to death because it means winning earlier.

I'm going to stick to my old opinion: Staff of the Misanthrope is unique and useful. Like a 5! I think, nothing else has 4 Flashes. Don't buy one though, it's a waste of money.

 

I've just cleared Tvericus with my new Staff. It was the easiest Tvericus I've ever played! Flash + Firestorm is much better than pure Firestorm at least on two maps: the first and the last one. I hit Tvericus from the large distance (with Savage Curse) and then played Inspiring Presence.

 

I've just cleared tvericus, used Staff of Pain + Staff of the Misanthrope on one guy and switched to White Flame on the other guy after the first level.

Meh. I had more tokens than I knew what to do with. And all the good firestorm items are tokenless, so I use stuff like Cone of Cold/Force Cone buffed instead.

 

What, no one's excited about Advanced Footwork today?

(Me either)

 

Xemu's Crown
Multiplayer
All three cards are fine although they're not too commonly played. Short Perplexing Ray and Cone Of Cold are not as good as they used to be as they can only delay attacks rather than stopping them completely. Both are also much better against melee teams since opposing wizards will be out of range and will not need movement as much. That being said, you can catch people off guard since no one will not be playing around these seldom used cards. Stone Spikes can be used as a pseudo cantrip card in a pinch. Your opponent will have to decide between giving up priority or taking 6 damage. Stone Spikes can also be used to slow progress down narrow passages by forcing your opponent to use an extra movement card in order to pass over it.

Singleplayer
Single target cards like Short Perplexing Ray and Stone Spikes take a major hit in singleplayer. The enemies often have large shared hands so taking one away is negligible. This can still be used to put some distance between your wizard and the mob but Telekinesis type cards just do the job better. Using Stone Spikes on a single enemy while there are a dozen running around is similarly miserable. If you really want to use damaging terrain in adventures where you are outnumbered Wall Of Fire and Volcano are much more effective at affecting multiple targets. Now that encumber can no longer be used to immobilize, Cone of Cold is useless against mobs that use Shuffle as their base movement. No more zombiecicles.

Peon's prescription for prodigious players- Xemu's Crown is a bit too unfocused. While the cards are decent you would be better off seeking items that contain two or more copies of the desired card so that you can tune your wizard to your liking. Would not purchase this item.

Substitutes
Axander's Twisted Circlet (E), Farzil's Perplexing Horn (E) major token: Short Perplexing Ray
Hasek's Icy Ring (E), Hylithia's Wand (E), Xochu's Icy Circlet (E): Cone Of Cold
Bloodfoot Wand (E), Eych's Amulet (E): Stone Spikes

Advanced Footwork
Azure Shield
Cobalt's Chalice

 

Today's deal: the most sought after item in CardHunter history!

 

The Vibrant Pain isn't as useful as it used to be. Might still be fun to run with elven maneuvers.

 

Vibrant Pain
Multiplayer
While Vibrant Pain is no longer the pinnacle of warrior technology it is far from unplayable. You give up damage but in return you get an unparalleled amount of mobility from your weapons slot. The addition of fly to Nimble Strike allows you to hop over impassable terrains and whatever barriers wizards throw down. Fly also allows you to position yourself behind enemies and get an unblockable attack through (with the exception of Defender's Block and Cause Fumble). Be careful about attacking with step moves from the front as Pushback Parry is widely played.

Singleplayer
There are very few instances of impassable or difficult terrain so most of the utility of Vibrant Pain is gone. It can be used to fly to the final boss of Secret of the Elder Mind but that's about it. The extra mobility can also be useful for chasing down highly mobile ranged mobs such as Blinking Wisps or Marksmen. Requiring double major tokens limits it to high level modules so take that into consideration if you're thinking about purchasing.

Peon's prescription for prodigious players- Vibrant Pain is a powerful tool for getting close to ranged enemies but you need to buff the attack with things like Mass Frenzy in order to compete with other melee characters. This is great with dwarves who need extra movement while buffing the attacks with Blind Rage and elves using Elven Maneuvers to draw the Nimble Strikes. Would purchase if you're prepared to build around it or if you need fly for certain leagues. Otherwise, it just does too little damage, even if it gets you 6 cards closer to 14 attacks.

Substitues- Lochaber Axe (E) double minor token

Flashing Longspear- One of the best Impaler weapons.
Stookster's Amulet- Nice tokenless source of Firestorm.
True Mail- One of the better double Reliable Mail heavy armors if you can spare the token.