spirit levelup rage dilemma

[Viro]

I play a mage (lvl 15 on hard) and i can hardly use the ice spirit anymore because i never get enough rage in 1 fight as a mage and the spirit always gave me the same 2 upgrades after level-up : ice orb dmg or charger
Both are up quite a bit in rage costs now.
I also can't chain fights together because i take heavy losses if i can't nuke some of the ranged guys at the start, and if i nuke them i'm low on mana for the next fight....... seems like alot of hassle just to cast one ice spirit.
If I get one more of those nice random upgrades (the same one i got so far ofc ), i can't use ice orb or charger anymore because i dont have enough max rage and it would take alot of effort to get that much rage in a fight anyway.
Also fell for the tooltip saying mana regeneration after combat.....pffft... after combat i have to stand around for a minute or more until mana regen kicks in.. wish i hadn't put those points in.

Is there any way to use lower levels of the spirit skills like with spells ?

[Hepasto The Terror]

Use rage potion, or use some helm like thorns crown (or similar) which will make your rage reduce slowly. Also you can use items like rage sign to get rage before battle.

[vicheron]

Get some Inquisitors, they have an ability that adds 5-10 rage. Also get the phantom spell, you can use it to make a copy of the Inquisitor stack which has all the abilities of the original.

[Xelian]

Originally Posted by Viro

I play a mage (lvl 15 on hard) and i can hardly use the ice spirit anymore because i never get enough rage in 1 fight as a mage and the spirit always gave me the same 2 upgrades after level-up : ice orb dmg or charger
Both are up quite a bit in rage costs now.
I also can't chain fights together because i take heavy losses if i can't nuke some of the ranged guys at the start, and if i nuke them i'm low on mana for the next fight....... seems like alot of hassle just to cast one ice spirit.
If I get one more of those nice random upgrades (the same one i got so far ofc ), i can't use ice orb or charger anymore because i dont have enough max rage and it would take alot of effort to get that much rage in a fight anyway.
Also fell for the tooltip saying mana regeneration after combat.....pffft... after combat i have to stand around for a minute or more until mana regen kicks in.. wish i hadn't put those points in.

Is there any way to use lower levels of the spirit skills like with spells ?

Lina isn't the best spirit for mage. Her skills require too much rage. Wait until you get the reaper. Level up the poison one. I personally found the rock spirit unuseful. He had a skill draining a lot of rage from the enemy.

[kennec]

i would say ice spirit is nice for mage.

the gizmo is realy cool when u have dragons couse its the only thing that can heal them. it also do very good damage on devils like 1000. it can give units extra attacks and stuff in end game. extremy usefull.

i played a mage to 30. now when i replay game on impossible i invest and use sprits alot more often. due to combats take much longer time couse all stacks u encounter is +70% bigger and magic have less effect.

the one i dont use much in end game was the fire one. the sword simply just do to little damage to be usefull. i think the swords from the ground aoe can be very usefull but only for warriors couse rage cost is like 40-60.

[LiveInABox]

Im a lvl 18 warrior overloaded with rage..just got the reaper spirit who is really cool. once u get him, he has a nice rage drain ability which i imagine will be great for mages. For the ice spirit i only really use gizmo, its really good when levelled up although sometimes it does something stupid like take out a unit on 1 health. The ice ball is quite powerfull as well but i rarely use it.

Originally Posted by kennec

i would say ice spirit is nice for mage.
the one i dont use much in end game was the fire one. the sword simply just do to little damage to be usefull. i think the swords from the ground aoe can be very usefull but only for warriors couse rage cost is like 40-60.

yeah the underground spikes is my favorite rage in the game (although i dont have reapers "black hole" yet). It's far and away the most damaging.

[Yaster]

I'm over 20lvl mage and I find Lina really useful for him. Spamming Gizmo is just to much fun, I've got 2 turns recharge so It's nothing unusual seeing 2-3 Gizmos at the same time. With over 1-1.5k damage It's true power toy, only for something around 20 rage, even for mage that's nothing hard to accumulate. Especially when you combine with reaper 's rage draining (unfortunately It has long recharge, mostly I use it effectively once or twice per battle). Controlling Gizmos can be out off hand sometimes and It can spent it's valuable time on healing (with I personally didn't upgraded, just too weak), but if you place it behind lines It should do it's job (killing archers).

It looks like reaper's soul drain is also useful for mage, but personally I've got to greedy and went from 20% of stack kill for 5 rage to 30% for 20 and It got hard to use. I start battle with rage draining to get to 20rage so I've got mine soul draining blocked for several turns. Well I wish to stay with 5 rage. currently it would take something comparable to gizmos damage (~5k) to stronger foes but it seems like end game would be really heavy on big stacks, soul drain would get really hand then.

Also the orb creating skill of Lima is useful on the end of battle when you get low on mana for resurrection/sacrifice. Thought it's nothing big. Rest of reapers and lima stuff seems just to expensive.

Frog spirit seems mostly useful on the beginning and stone one is just useful for wasting unneeded rage. Later all you'll want to use is stone's wall (thought it needs some level ups for less rage use, it waste one units turn, not that bad yet 20 rage is really too much) and frog Armor (with actually is really useful, mine cost 10rage and considering its ablility to stop one attack (or counter attack) of foe no matter how strong it's something of thinking about - I suggest to get every possible upgrade of cost and recharge for it, It is worth it). Damaging skills are just to weak for big stacks off high HP units (with one exception - it's seems that, at least stone, damaging skills of spirits doesn't count as magic so it can damage black dragons, and trust me, those aren't easy to kill. A small nudge (worms style!) over theirs grave sometimes seems reasonable).

[laffwis]

Originally Posted by kennec

i would say ice spirit is nice for mage.

the gizmo is realy cool when u have dragons couse its the only thing that can heal them. it also do very good damage on devils like 1000. it can give units extra attacks and stuff in end game. extremy usefull.

in the end game i used reaper, quite effective when you have soul drain (forgot the proper name) on 30 % with reduced rage to 20 and rest to 1!!!! so every turn you can kill 30 % of one stack, since its quite easy to accumulate rage by then. another very usefull skill is that with which you can se back your unit one turn. all losses within that turn are replenished!!

[LiveInABox]

Originally Posted by laffwis

in the end game i used reaper, quite effective when you have soul drain (forgot the proper name) on 30 % with reduced rage to 20 and rest to 1!!!! so every turn you can kill 30 % of one stack, since its quite easy to accumulate rage by then. another very usefull skill is that with which you can se back your unit one turn. all losses within that turn are replenished!!

yeah soul drain can be really usefull. mine was at 50% kills towards the end of the game. by the end i was only using the shield for the slime thing, the spikes, gizmo, soul drain and black hole.

[laffwis]

Originally Posted by kennec

i would say ice spirit is nice for mage.

the gizmo is realy cool when u have dragons couse its the only thing that can heal them.

not very true i think, as far as i can remember you can heal green dragons and red dragons with spells (but maybe im wrong ). since black dragons are immune to magic and bone dragons are undeads its clear you cant heal them. but those 2 i dont use anyway just because of that reason and when you have to fight against demons they are useless anyway. and i think dragons are just overestimated. but thats of course only my opinion after one walk through on normal mode.