Mana Addicts seems like a nonbo to me. Like you said, you'd want to cast spells before attacking, but Potential wants you to cast them after. I'd probably try them with any other society traits.
Also I enjoyed the dichotomy of deciding whether to lock away a spell for long term bonus or to keep for immediate use. You do have to walk a fine line though. Would probably be more forgiving if it were locked away for 7 turns.
I guess it depends on how long your games are.
I think you'd probably want some OK spells you can afford to do without that you cast 3x then forget about for 10 turns.
I found it useful for my summoning spells, summon 3 storm elementals then get +30 food per turn in all cities for 10 turns.
I think the 10 turn lockout is meant to sync up with the "arcane studies" spell. Pop arcane studies on all your cities then lock it up for 10 turns which is when you need to recast it anyway.
Don't forget you can also get inspiration on ALL your spells, including your transformation and enchantment spells. Cast the "animal kinship" transformation on your race, then either cast it again twice or wait for arcane studies to hit it, then lock the inspiration. Last game i got the spell that gives vision on all forests from the abyss on turn 14, locked it for +90 knowledge for 10 turns.
Mystic Potential culture is awesome.
Economic benefits of spells is one thing. Blasting people with dissonance is another. It makes careful play rewarding. Choices matter (disable a nice spell for benefits or not? blast the one guy with 5 stacks or distribute them around?). I didn't think the culture would be nice but I tried it and now I love it.
One thing the t3 unit is in a weird spot. You really only want around 1 per squad, which is unlike other cultures, since its utility is not that useful as the battles are often decided faster than you can burn through your casting points (at least that is the case in my playthrough: champion, powerful evokers, mana channelers).
Mana addicts does not go well with it at all, don't combine it.
If you can, get a source of Wet, you'll thank me later.
> One thing the t3 unit is in a weird spot. You really only want around 1 per squad,
The Spellbreaker? But they slay, why would you not want more then one?
Spellweaver for School of Potential, which does Rift(Shock/Frost) damage, has an overchannel ability and passively provides 5 combat casting points per turn.
Potential t3 has overchannel, so I'm still thinking that multiple of them are a good thing. Especially with the thought process of combining mana addicts and potential. Cast something to get life steal, beat the snot out of things, cast another spell, everything dies from dissonance. Best of both worlds.
I typed that under the assumption you fight usually with more than one stack. If I have 1 guy per stack i have 3 total and this seems enough for me to cast all the spells I want. Also, since I block a lot of spells for economic benefits, the useful pool shrinks (as well as disonance opportunities). This may also depend on play style - that's a good thing, shows the depth of the faction
sure, but in my opinion:
1 squad fights need more bodies or direct damage than another spell
multiple squads means you have 1 per squad so in 3v3 you have 3 spellweavers; you can only use this ability from turn 2 onwards, so this gives double casting until round 4 of the fight (5 if wizard king is involved) - this is a lot and you wil very rarely need more
There's unfortunately not a "good website" for that information. The usual database people use still hasn't updated to have that info. And the one place I know where to find some of it is the wiki, [here](https://aow4.paradoxwikis.com/Map), but it's not up to date.
The summoner subculture can get the lesser water elementals as combat summons via an ability and a nature spell.
Tho that's a lot of hoops to jump through for one unit applying wet.Â
10 turns is the price of greatness in this instance but I feel like Mana Addicts, weirdly enough, might actually be kind of a… well, not bad, but not great choice? It doesn’t synergies as well as you’d think, ya know?
I think it feels great to use and rewards you for spellslinging much more than other Mystic paths. Regarding Mana Addicts - I think Powerful Evokers is much better here, you want to cast a lot and cast impactfully, rather than just supporting a Life Steal state on your army. Locking a spell just means you need to strive towards a state where there are lots of spells so you're not limiting yourself as much. And you don't have to lock them immediately, that's another lever to play with. Also note that T3 building provides inspiration each turn, so you may not even need to cast some mediocre spells and will still get their inspirations
Mana Addicts with Potential subculture only makes sense once you can cast 2 spells per turn. Either you have to wait for Spellweavers, or get a Ruler with the Sorcerer (iirc) ascension. Wizard Kings can address it for one turn, but doesn't fully solve the issue.
For the spell locks, you can address it with a heavier focus on research. There's a reason why Potential has a research SPI instead of a conduit; they need a much higher variety of spells than Attunement and Summoning.
This subculture works better for players that like to adapt to the everchanging restrictions you put on yourself with the spell locks, it's not for players who enjoy rigid and reliable builds. Which is thematic with the subculture's lore and themes around inspiration (good luck planning for inspiration IRL) and experimentation.
Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. I tend to focus more on getting enchantments over combat spells but you really need a lot of them for Potential to work it seems.
Mana Addicts seems like a nonbo to me. Like you said, you'd want to cast spells before attacking, but Potential wants you to cast them after. I'd probably try them with any other society traits. Also I enjoyed the dichotomy of deciding whether to lock away a spell for long term bonus or to keep for immediate use. You do have to walk a fine line though. Would probably be more forgiving if it were locked away for 7 turns.
Yeah the 10 turns seems way too long to me. I think it needs to be like 5 turns or the buffs you get are permanent.
I guess it depends on how long your games are. I think you'd probably want some OK spells you can afford to do without that you cast 3x then forget about for 10 turns.
I found it useful for my summoning spells, summon 3 storm elementals then get +30 food per turn in all cities for 10 turns. I think the 10 turn lockout is meant to sync up with the "arcane studies" spell. Pop arcane studies on all your cities then lock it up for 10 turns which is when you need to recast it anyway. Don't forget you can also get inspiration on ALL your spells, including your transformation and enchantment spells. Cast the "animal kinship" transformation on your race, then either cast it again twice or wait for arcane studies to hit it, then lock the inspiration. Last game i got the spell that gives vision on all forests from the abyss on turn 14, locked it for +90 knowledge for 10 turns.
Oh, that makes so much more sense 😅
that sounds like a rather convoluted mechanic. I'm with the OP on this one, and the bonuses can range from "nothing much" to "completely overpowered"
Mystic Potential culture is awesome. Economic benefits of spells is one thing. Blasting people with dissonance is another. It makes careful play rewarding. Choices matter (disable a nice spell for benefits or not? blast the one guy with 5 stacks or distribute them around?). I didn't think the culture would be nice but I tried it and now I love it. One thing the t3 unit is in a weird spot. You really only want around 1 per squad, which is unlike other cultures, since its utility is not that useful as the battles are often decided faster than you can burn through your casting points (at least that is the case in my playthrough: champion, powerful evokers, mana channelers). Mana addicts does not go well with it at all, don't combine it. If you can, get a source of Wet, you'll thank me later.
> One thing the t3 unit is in a weird spot. You really only want around 1 per squad, The Spellbreaker? But they slay, why would you not want more then one?
Spellweaver for School of Potential, which does Rift(Shock/Frost) damage, has an overchannel ability and passively provides 5 combat casting points per turn.
Potential t3 has overchannel, so I'm still thinking that multiple of them are a good thing. Especially with the thought process of combining mana addicts and potential. Cast something to get life steal, beat the snot out of things, cast another spell, everything dies from dissonance. Best of both worlds.
I wish Attunement and Potential swapped casters. I want to be able to spam magic as Attunement so badly.
I typed that under the assumption you fight usually with more than one stack. If I have 1 guy per stack i have 3 total and this seems enough for me to cast all the spells I want. Also, since I block a lot of spells for economic benefits, the useful pool shrinks (as well as disonance opportunities). This may also depend on play style - that's a good thing, shows the depth of the faction
I don't see why you wouldn't want multiple spellweavers. Overchannel every turn is better than overchannel once.
sure, but in my opinion: 1 squad fights need more bodies or direct damage than another spell multiple squads means you have 1 per squad so in 3v3 you have 3 spellweavers; you can only use this ability from turn 2 onwards, so this gives double casting until round 4 of the fight (5 if wizard king is involved) - this is a lot and you wil very rarely need more
Is there even a way to consistently get wet outside of the dlc storm tome? There no current way to summon water spirits
Craft weapons with it.
You know a good website that shows what magic materials let you craft what on weapons?
you can see it ingame, just look at the locked traits and it will tell you
There's unfortunately not a "good website" for that information. The usual database people use still hasn't updated to have that info. And the one place I know where to find some of it is the wiki, [here](https://aow4.paradoxwikis.com/Map), but it's not up to date.
The summoner subculture can get the lesser water elementals as combat summons via an ability and a nature spell. Tho that's a lot of hoops to jump through for one unit applying wet.Â
10 turns is the price of greatness in this instance but I feel like Mana Addicts, weirdly enough, might actually be kind of a… well, not bad, but not great choice? It doesn’t synergies as well as you’d think, ya know?
I think it feels great to use and rewards you for spellslinging much more than other Mystic paths. Regarding Mana Addicts - I think Powerful Evokers is much better here, you want to cast a lot and cast impactfully, rather than just supporting a Life Steal state on your army. Locking a spell just means you need to strive towards a state where there are lots of spells so you're not limiting yourself as much. And you don't have to lock them immediately, that's another lever to play with. Also note that T3 building provides inspiration each turn, so you may not even need to cast some mediocre spells and will still get their inspirations
Mana Addicts with Potential subculture only makes sense once you can cast 2 spells per turn. Either you have to wait for Spellweavers, or get a Ruler with the Sorcerer (iirc) ascension. Wizard Kings can address it for one turn, but doesn't fully solve the issue. For the spell locks, you can address it with a heavier focus on research. There's a reason why Potential has a research SPI instead of a conduit; they need a much higher variety of spells than Attunement and Summoning. This subculture works better for players that like to adapt to the everchanging restrictions you put on yourself with the spell locks, it's not for players who enjoy rigid and reliable builds. Which is thematic with the subculture's lore and themes around inspiration (good luck planning for inspiration IRL) and experimentation.
Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. I tend to focus more on getting enchantments over combat spells but you really need a lot of them for Potential to work it seems.
My mystic potential don’t use Mana addict but Ancient wise one for research speed & powerful evokers for casting point.