Hello readers!
Prelude (My honest thoughts)
I have leveled a few separate mage-based characters at this point in Season 1, and I have also consumed media relating to builds and classes relating to the Mage. It is very apparent that Runemaster is without a doubt the only competitive Mastery Class for the Mage currently. It is also very apparent that Sorcerer is not worthwhile to consider playing due to the existence of Runemaster. Runemaster contains every major ability that Sorcerer has access too with a few minor differences, so it is the question of why play Sorcerer when you can just play Runemaster which offers a game loop and itemization that every other Mage Mastery Class lacks.
Due to the game loop of controlling the elements, and using a combination of the elements to trigger larger affects, it makes Runemaster versatile and fun. It has a large number of builds and has the ability to push significantly further than any other Mage Mastery class currently. I have been entertaining the thought of "What if Runemaster was the base Mage class rather than a Mastery class?". I love the idea behind Runemaster, and I feel it can be expanded into the other related Mastery classes relatively easily in a conceptual manner. (I understand it would be relatively difficult implementation due to the need to conceptualize additional skills.)
I want to analyze what could potentially change about the other Mastery classes in regards to making the Runemaster the base class. I will be breaking down each class as a separate topic. The classes I would recommend would be Rune Apprentice (Formerly Mage), Rune Master (This would take over sorcerer, since, Runemaster and Sorcerer are basically Easy mage vs Hard Mage, but still the same class), Rune Blade (Spellblade), and two other classes as something debatable, Rune Sage and Rune Summoner or Elementalist.
(Sorcerer and Spellblade are two of the bottom three classes on the leaderboards currently, making Runemaster appear as the only viable Mastery class to enjoy. RIP to Forge Guard as well)
Classes
Rune Apprentice (Formerly Mage)
Imagine taking Runemaster as it is currently and plopping it down where Mage currently stands with a simplified Passive tree befitting a base class, which, is ideally what I envision here. It would still have the Runic Invocations, though probably just the simplified 1 and 2 combinations. This would allow the player to experience handling the elements and getting use to the mechanics early on.
This would make the Mage base class appear relatively strong, but the trade off is the complexity of managing your Mana pool as well as your spells to trigger the effects you want. This is also possible without changing the base skills the Mage currently has three strong starting skills for triggering runes: Fireball, Lightning Blast, and Snap Freeze. Elemental Nova, the fourth spell unlocked by the base class, could easily be updated to be the “Runic Invocation” spell for Mage now, since, a combination of the three elements could be what serves to trigger what Elemental Nova is currently. The remaining skills could remain the same for the most part in the base class’s tree.
Rune Master (Sorcerer)
What can I say? Drag and drop the current fully unlocked Rune Master over Sorcerer, and you practically lose nothing. A lot of Sorcerer’s skills you unlocked by leveling up the Sorcerer passive tree have equivalents in the Runemaster’s Invocation Combinations. It really begs the question of why does Sorcerer exist at this point. This class can also be the only mastery class that gains access to invoking spells using four glyphs rather than the three the other two/three mastery classes could use.
Igneous Rain → Meteor
Antipode of Mesembria → Black Hole
Ball Lightning → Static Orb (albeit a little slower)
Rune Blade (Spellblade)
Spellblade is the Mastery Class I personally have the most experience with. I think it would be awesome if triggering Invocations from using Shatter Strike, Flame Reave, and Surge. Currently playing Spellblade, you are forced to pigeon hole yourself into builds around one of the attributes specifically.
You are able to max out on Shatter Strike to either kill enemies through hundreds of crits in a few seconds or to stack the max amount of Frostbite stacks possible in the game. You can invest into Mana Strike and play around Spark Charges. You can decide between Flame Reave or Firebrand if not both and play a worse version of the Shatter Strike builds, but with fire rather than ice. (Ignite lacks a lot of items tailoring for it compared to Chill, Frostbite, and Freeze. Ignite does have better weapons, though).
I think the expansion of Spellblade to utilize combinations of its elemental melee skills to trigger Melee Runic Invocations would be awesome. It would hyper expand the possible builds for Spellblade.
Rune Sage (Former Runemaster)
In Last Epoch, there are a total of seven different damage types. We have the common three associated with elements: Fire, Water, and Lightning. We also have the Physical type representing just smashing things. The remaining types are Void, Necrotic, and Poison. Two of these three remaining types fall under the Acolyte’s prowess. Void belongs to Sentinal class line as Void Knight.
What I envisioned Rune Sage to be would be a Runemaster that has access to an expanded Rune system which could utilize the remaining damage types to broaden its arsenal. It doesn’t need to have the heavy impacting skills that would come from mastering the three primary elemental spell types, but it could have the ability to utilize void, necrotic, and poison glyphs as well. To make the combinations easier on the developers, we can limit the number of time they can use these expanded glyphs to two glyph combination empowerment. This would extremely minimize the number of combinations substantially.
Rune Summoner/Elementalist (Former Runemaster)
The idea for this class was not originally my own. The streamer I was following mentioned this idea, and I was like… “Sir, that is a brilliant idea.”
Mage is the only base class in the game that is unable to use Minion-related items. Acolyte has skeletons. Primalist has animals. Sentinal has living armors in its Forge Guard. Rogue has its Falcon in Falconer.
Another option to replace what Runemaster would have been is a summoner/elementalist class. Since mage classes are derived around the three elements, it makes sense for them to possibly have the ability to summon elementals as their minions. This would grant Mage with a minion class itself, such as the other base classes in the game. Based on the rune combinations can determine how powerful or how numerous the summon can be for the Elementalist.
Conclusion
I placed some thought into a lot of this subject, and I wanted to write out a forum post for it in the Suggestion column. Now this may be misplaced, but I feel it is a rather large suggestion for changing the Mage class as a whole, so it should belong here as well.
Currently, the mage class suffers from its lack of diversity for two of its three Mastery Classes, one of which is questionable about why it even exists at this point. I love the concept of what Runemaster is doing, and rather than nerfing it or buffing the other classes, I wanted to expand Runemaster’s concepts to the entirety of the Mage class and its masteries. I think it would offer awesome game designs and builds for the other two classes as well.
I understand that this overhaul would be draining. I would possibly introduce numerous bugs for the mage class as a whole, but I believe it would make Mage the most enjoyable class to play in the game. Currently, Runemaster is one of the most enjoyable Mastery classes to play, but everything else about Mage is limited due to Uniques and Scaling.
Best regards to anyone reading this post. I hope you all will express your thoughts on this as well as your own suggestions to how to improve the Mage class as well. If you do not feel that the Mage class needs improvement, please feel free to also write that down.