Hello, potential battlemages! My name is Jesse Kurlancheek and I’m the Design Director here at Proletariat, the developers behind Spellbreak. Spellbreak is a competitive third-person action-spellcasting game where you take on the role of a powerful battlemage and it releases for free today! In a previous post, I described the six classes available at launch and gave a brief overview of what they could do. In this post, I want to look a bit deeper at some of the many abilities and build customizations options available for you to create a character best suited to your playstyle.
A quick refresher on How to Build a Battlemage in Spellbreak:
Class
Your class is your biggest upfront decision. It dictates your primary spell and sorcery as well as the four skills you’ll unlock over the course of the match.
Talents
Another decision you’ll make pre-match. You can choose up to three different talents that give you passive benefits, each changing the way you play.
Equipment
Once you’re in a game, you’ll find various pieces of equipment on the ground, in chests, and dropped by other players.
- Offhand Gauntlet – This gives you a second spell and sorcery and can be used to combine elements with your chosen class.
- Rune – Your rune gives you access to a variety of movement abilities on fairly short cooldowns.
- Amulet, Belts, and Boots – These increase your maximum mana, maximum armor, and maximum movement speed, respectively.
Build Example 1
Here’s a flexible build that focuses on making it easier to hit and track targets, a good mix of mobility options, as well as solid offensive and defensive options.
Class
The Pyromancer gives you access to Fireballs and Flamewall, both of which have large areas of effect when paired with the class skills. Additionally, the level two skill, Firefly, gives you surprising amounts of mobility by flying through your Flamewalls.
Talents
- Tracking – This lets you highlight any target you tag for a few seconds, letting you keep track of them even behind terrain or other obstacles.
- Fervor – The base cast time on Fireball is a little slow, but Fervor speeds up your cast speed allowing you to fling more of them, more often.
- Recovery – Whenever you take any damage, Recovery will slowly heal 50% of it back over a short time period. If you get hit, dodge behind some cover and heal back for free!
Equipment
- Offhand Gauntlet – I’m a big fan of pairing a Toxic gauntlet up with Fire since when you combine the two elements, you can cause a massive explosion for bonus damage. Setting toxic puddles on fire can give you some decent area control as well.
- Rune – Featherfall lets you launch yourself into the air and when paired with both Fire and Toxic’s area of effects and Tracking’s highlighting, you can stay above your enemies and ensure lots of damage.
Build Example 2
At the other end of the spectrum, here’s a build specializing in damage at the expense of all else. Your goal with this build is to open up on someone, expend all of your resources and hope you burst them down before they know what hit them.
Class
The Conduit gives you access to Lighting Bolts and their passive skill, Potential Energy, which ramps up your damage the longer your cast. To leverage this, we’re going to want to help you get in position and stay on your targets. The final Conduit skill, Power Surge, makes your spell casts free for a few seconds as well, so once you’re “spun up” you are a true force of destruction.
Talents
- Focused Mana – Whenever your mana is at 80% or higher, you’ll get a damage bonus from this talent. Lightning Bolt’s cost is on the low side and this will let your talent pick up the slack until Potential Energy takes over towards the end of your mana bar.
- Fervor – Similarly, more cast speed provided by Fervor will let you ramp up your damage stacks faster as well.
- Recklessness – Now we’re getting dangerous. Recklessness increases your damage when you have NO armor. We’re going to intentionally never pick up a belt with this build to keep this buff up at all times. The downside is that… well, you have no armor, so you’ll have to be extra careful.
Equipment
- Offhand Gauntlet – Keep leaning in to the theme and go with Frost as an offhand. It’s about as close as you’ll get to a sniper rifle and while Lightning is decent at range, Frost is the best option if your target is far away.
- Rune – Invisibility not only gives you an escape, which you’re painfully lacking, but it also lets you get in close to unsuspecting targets to take advantage of them being out of position.
I could go on and on, but hopefully this gives you a brief insight into what’s possible when building your own battlemage in Spellbreak. We’ll be adding new talents, runes, and even classes going forward, unlocking even more possible combinations. We’d love to see what builds you come up!
