The Eruptor as an area based offensive caster had a pretty easy time with low level monsters given time to prepare. She'd deploy one or two of her Domains and then cast Lava Rain or Meteor Storm. Aftershocks from Tectonics combined with Roiling Ground from Igneomancy and supported by damage from Warm Air and decreased cost from Ash Cloud would deal 40 a turn in AoEs of 12 to 20m. Easily enough to chew up low level enemies before they got in range. A couple Fault Slips could also work.

Fault Slip could also handle level 2 enemies if it could catch them all in a line. She had no chance at level 3 enemies. Anything with strong absorbtion, control reduction, or even high health could defeat her. Her heavy AoE damage worked best in concert with a true control mage while she occassionally supplemented with Fault Slip.

The Treant had a lot of difficulty solo against masses of enemies. While she could stack absorb and health recovery her damage output was quite low and she was heavily defensive support focused. She had 20 inherent absorbtion from passives and she could add 12 with Barkskin which lasted 20s with a 1s cast time. Most lvl 1 monsters couldn't break that even with their highest damage abilities.

However once lvl 2 monsters came into play she had more trouble. She had to use Bash to kill which was only 32 damage with passives added. Additionally she had no offensive buffs and was weak to stuns although Grit could ameliorate that to some degree.

They were a bit more powerful together. We set them up to engage a set of lvl 3 Gust Bears on the moors.

Gust Bears lvl 3*3 Health 350 ABS 20 Mana 200 MOV 15m/s Rushing Thoughts -1s control Swift Paw 50 dmg 1s Gale Smash 70 dmg 1s Stun 25 mana 1s Gust Slam 100 dmg 2s Stun 50 mana 2s Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78 Mana 146/226 +7/s Mana 281/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Forest Heart 1s Roiling Ground 3s

The bears start out 75m away since the plains provide tons of open space but they are Air Aspected and they'll close that distance fast. The Treant starts out with Forest Heart both for the mana cost reduction and for the recovery. The Eruptor deploys Roiling Ground.

I'm going to skip some turns were nothing happens. The bears close 30m out of 75.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78 Mana 126/226 +7/s Mana 297/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Bark Skin 0s Roiling Ground 1s

Forest Heart has finished while Roiling Ground has 2 more seconds. The adventurers have regained 14 and 16 mana respectively. The Treant casts Barkskin in case she needs to take any hits. It costs 34 mana.

The bears get to 45/70m.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78 Mana 92/226 +7/s Mana 305/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Sprout Hedges 0s Roiling Ground 0s

Roiling Ground will finally be active next phase. It will deal damage to the bears on their phase. Sprout Hedges will stall the bears an extra turn.

The bears break through the hedges with their basic attack in one strike. They remain 2s away.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 69/226 +7/s Mana 256/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Sprout Hedges 0s Aftershocks 2s

The Eruptor deploys Aftershocks to apply constant damage. The Treant stalls again with Sprout Hedges saving another 4 mana due to Roiling Ground. This repeats for another set of phases until Aftershocks is done.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 53/226 +7/s Mana 272/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s N/A Aftershocks 0s

The Treant takes a pause as Aftershocks finally completes. The bears finally move to 15m away from the adventurers.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 60/226 +7/s Mana 230/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s N/A Fault Slip 1s

The Treant finally has the mana for Grasping Roots but she needs the enemies to be in melee range before it can hit them. The Eruptor finally done with her Domain spells prepares a cast of Fault Slip to sync with Grasping Roots. With a 37% mana cost reduction from Domains and Passives it costs only 50 mana.

The bars finally get into melee range, ready to attack.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 14/226 +7/s Mana 238/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Grasping Roots 0s Fault Slip 0s

Grasping Roots finally locks down the enemy after a Faultslip clears their resistance to control effects. A full 3s of control go into effect.

Gust Bear lvl 3 Gust Bear lvl 3 Gust Bear lvl 3 Health 255/350 Health 255/350 Health 255/350 ABS 20 ABS 20 ABS 20 Mana 200 Mana 200 Mana 200 MOV 15m/s MOV 15m/s MOV 15m/s Rushing Thoughts -1s control Rushing Thoughts -1s control Rushing Thoughts -1s control ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] Control: 2s Control: 2s Control: 2s

Fault Slip deals 70+5+5+5=85-20/2=75 damage. Roiling Ground deals 5 with the boost from Aftershocks and Warm Air while Aftershocks itself deals 15. 95 damage is applied to every enemy. The bears must now wait out 3 whole seconds before being able to act. Well 2 more after this 1.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 21/226 +7/s Mana 196/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Bash 0s Fault Slip 1s

The Treant is essentially powerless at this point. She uses Bash since they don't have the defenses to make Weak Spot effective. Bash(10)+Mace(8)+Ferocity(14)+Batter(2)-ABS(20)=14 damage on the central Bear. Not a lot but Bash has no Strike Cost. The Eruptor went for another Fault Slip.

The bears all took 20 damage except the central one that took 34 and were one turn away from being freed.

Treant Eruptor Health 154/154 Health 78/78 Mana 28/226 +7/s Mana 204/364 +8/s MOV 10m/s MOV 5m/s Bash 0s Fault Slip 0s

All the bears were delayed another second from acting plus 2 seconds for the middle one. They were still 2 turns from being ready to attack. They took 95/109/95 damage respectively.

Gust Bear lvl 3 Gust Bear lvl 3 Gust Bear lvl 3 Health 140/350 Health 112/350 Health 140/350 ABS 20 ABS 20 ABS 20 Mana 200 Mana 200 Mana 200 MOV 15m/s MOV 15m/s MOV 15m/s Rushing Thoughts -1s control Rushing Thoughts -1s control Rushing Thoughts -1s control ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] ENV: [15-(20/2)] + [25-(20/2)] Control: 1s Control: 2s Control: 1s

The middle bear had taken 14+14+20+20+75=143 damage. The others were at 140 rather than 112 health. The fight was effectively over. With the central bear being eliminated and another bear taking 2s of stuns every other turn the final bear couldn't apply stuns effectively on the Treant do to Grit. With a great deal of extra prep time thanks to the openness of the plains they had won. Barely. Bearly?

This fight would have been trivial, even with a shorter prep time, with a 3rd adventurer. The Cleanser for instance could have applied both mana support and bonus control effects. Easily enough to overwhelm a such a low tier anti-control passive. The Shieldmaiden would have been just as helpful with control and a decent early boost casting Invigorate to get buffs up faster and earlier.

Since there was every reason to think that the Cleanser would enable them to triumph over something like a Quartz Behemoth we felt no need to do a test. The Crusher said she'd like to do some solo training, though, and we kept an eye out for an interesting enemy for her to be tested against. Finally we figured a Quartz Behemoth would be fine for this and we scouted a lone one out.

Quartz Behemoth lvl 4 Crusher Health 700 ABS 40 HP 232 Mana 350 MP 144 +7/s MOV 5m/s MOV 15m/s Quartz Aura: -2s control Alacrity 4s Boulder Fist 100 dmg 2s Stun 1s Might 8s Pounding Smash 200 dmg 3s Stun 70 mana 2s Mantle 5/5

The Crusher led off with Alacrity, Might, and Mantle for 110 mana. She recovered 21. By then the Behemoth had reached her. She had 55 mana to use. She employed 1 Shatter to break down the incredible absorbtion since she'd never kill it otherwise. That left her with 25 mana.

She dealt Hammer(10)+Bracelet*2(10)+Brawn(10)+Might(10)+Shatter(10)+Brutality(7)-20=37 and then 27 on the basic attack. Mantle applied 0 damage due to the other half of the Absorbtion. 64 damage was pretty painful to see but the absorbtion would soon be cleaned up.

She hit 32 mana and repeated her earlier action. The monster now had 3s of control one of which it would lose right away. This time she dealt 78 total damage thanks to the previous Shatter. Sadly she was down to 1 Strike of Mantle.

She was now at 9 mana. She employed 2 basic attacks. The first dealt 5 magic damage +37 physical damage for 42 damage. The second one dealt 27 since Mantle was no longer splitting absorbtion protection. 64+78+69=211 damage. The enemy had 4 turns before it could attack.

She was now at 16 mana. She was dealing 27 on each attack because she had 47 physical damage against 20 absorbtion. 211+54=265. She had 1 turn of Alacrity left.

She was at 23 mana and attacked again for 2s of control and 54 damage. 265+54=319.

She was now at 30 mana. Alacrity put her back to 2 attacks a turn. She lost 1 second of control buffer. The behemoth had been at 5 and was now at 4s to freedom.

She could recover 42 mana in the time it took Alacrity to wear off. She could add a steady 54 damage and 1s of control every phase. Clearly she would be victorious in only a few more phases.

The Crusher excelled at 1v1 or 1v2 combat. As long as she had time to cast Alacrity and opponents didn't have a too high combined control resistance she was practically untouchable. The extra bonus to stun on her epic hammer was truly unfair. I often considered my ability to beat her, or any of the others, in a 1 on 1 fight. While Haste was a heavy advantage I had a lot of limitations due to mana. I could Quicken myself and Leech out all her mana. Of course her Strikes were cheap so it'd be hard to keep her too low to use them if she could get into range. Double Time stops could lock her down but at heavy risk of running out of mana. Stagnation could work but since it was a 2s cast I couldn't double cast it to stack tons of control. My ability to do damage to her was limited. I'd have to get right in her face with Mana Strikes. I think I was just a little bit of efficiency away from being able to do it. If I could cast Quicken into Stellar Radiation into dual Mini Novas perhaps? 100+15-15. Plus she healed 5/s. It would take 3 hits. I'd have to get very lucky. The instant she hit me I was toast due to stuns. I think I could win with like 60m of space. Quicken, Slime Pool, Stellar Radiation, Stagnation, Triple Mini Nova. Had almost exactly enough mana for that. She'd be one second from an attack that put me in permanent stun.

We had one more day of training on monsters before we made it to the Ducal Seat. Then we'd be entering a relatively heavily patrolled section of the *Near Wild* and wouldn't be able to find anything challenging. I figured we could work on some more untested triads to help improve team synergy and practice out still relatively new Talents. We made camp for the night after discussing a few of the fights of the day. I definitely wanted to see the Arcanist and the Cleanser work with someone. Hopefully we could scout some decent targets tomorrow.