Changes: Sorcerer Mage

Revision as of 19:46, 1 September 2018

"Ashes to ashes!"

The Sorcerer Mage is a Level 4 Mages Guild, which functions primarily as a support tower, although it still has a decent attack capability. It can summon Elementals, which act as strong foot soldiers, or Polymorph enemies into harmless sheep. It is also the only tower in Kingdom Rush to have an intrinsic passive ability: Cursing attack. Upgraded from the Level 3 Wizard Tower, Sorcerer Mage Towers handle forces that are close to darkness itself, but most Linireans accept them regardless.

Description

"Sorcerers handle forces that are close to darkness, weaving spells that temporary lower enemy armor and deal damage."

Compared to the Arcane Wizard, the Sorcerer Mage has better crowd control and acts as an excellent support tower, thanks to the Elemental, ability to lower enemy resistance and a higher rate of fire. The polymorph ability allows even the toughest enemies to be clicked into oblivion.

Its basic attack has a passive ability to curse the target and lower its physical armor for 4 seconds, allowing other towers to deal more damage, and also deals extra True Damage over time while the curse is applied (10 damage per second). The curse damage does not stack. If Sorcerer Mage attacks an already cursed target anew, it only resets the duration of the curse.

Note: the curse damage is not factored in the tower's damage value.

Abilities

Polymorph

"Meeeeh!"

Polymorphs enemies into harmless sheep. Sheep are very weak but cannot be blocked.

Sorcerer transforms the target into a sheep, rendering their form incapable of acting in combat, disabling any abilities (except the ability to fly and run), and armor, and halving their original health. However, sheep are unblockable and will still take lives. They will still be targeted by Reinforcements with Spear Throw and Barbarians with Throwing Axes. Terrain does not affect the polymorph effect: enemies are always turned into sheep. The transformation is irreversible. Bosses are immune to polymorph. Polymorphed enemies can be clicked to death, similar to sheep and goat critters on various stages, and do give gold even when killed by this way–this is not the case on Flash. Barracks and heroes ignore sheep, while the other towers and Reinforcements do target them. Here are the enemies immune to Polymorph except Bosses:

Level	Gold	Cooldown
1	300	20 seconds
2	150	18 seconds
3	150	16 seconds

Summon Elemental

"Rock is Eternal"

Summons an Earth Elemental, the stout avatar of the land's power, to block and attack your enemies.

As the only tower beside the Barracks capable of summoning units on the path, the Summon Elemental ability gives you an exceptionally resilient foot soldier crafted from the spirit of the land itself to support your human soldiers. The Rock Elemental does area damage. An Elemental killed in a level with a Poison Pool will spawn a bounty-less Swamp Thing.

Attack rate: 2.0s, Respawn: 8s, Health regeneration: 20 HP/s

Level	Gold	Health	Damage	Armor
1	350	600 HP	30-50	Medium (40%)
2	150	700 HP	40-60	Medium (50%)
3	150	800 HP	50-70	Medium (60%)

On flash, the Elemental is a bit different. It costs the same amount of gold, but its attack rate increases to 3 seconds and its damage per attack is higher.

Level	Gold	Health	Damage	Armor
1	350	600 HP	50-90	Medium (40%)
2	150	700 HP	60-100	Medium (50%)
3	150	800 HP	70-110	Medium (60%)

Range

43% wider than Magic Tower
12% wider than Wizard Tower
Same range as Arcane Wizard and Rangers Hideout
Elemental's rally point range is 90% of Sorcerer Mage.

Strategy

The appearance of the elemental does not change when upgraded. However, any hit points lost will be refunded when the ability is upgraded. Use this to your advantage.
Sorcerer Mage has a different target priority. Instead of targeting the enemy nearest to the exit, it targets the one nearest to the exit without an active curse from the Cursing attack ability. Place your towers accordingly.
Enemies transformed into sheep can be clicked upon to make them explode like other cattle on the map, killing them instantly!
Fully upgrading polymorph is only 150g cheaper than the Death Ray. Thus, when you have to choose, the choice will most likely fall on upgrading the Death Ray.
Place Sorcerer Towers near the beginning of the map; this way, the benefit of the curse is used to its maximum potential, plus other towers get more time to kill off tough polymorphed enemies, such as Yetis or Forest Trolls.
As polymorphing disables armor and abilities, this ability is a godsend when dealing with Trolls, Troll Champions, Troll Chieftains, Troll Breakers, Swamp Things, and Forest Trolls due to their HP regeneration. It also enables you to kill off armored enemies with other towers in less time.
Against enemies with high health, but no armor or magic resistance, Polymorph can sometimes be detrimental, as it allows the creature to pass through your defenders while keeping its strength. Examples of such enemies are Yetis and Magma Elementals.
Although the damage dealt by Sorcerer towers is somewhat disappointing, it still pays off to have at least one of them on the map for the cursing attack and Polymorph.
Certain enemies will retain some characteristics when polymorphed: for example, Wulves will retain their speed, and flying enemies will turn into flying sheep.
Try to have at least one Sorcerer near Artillery choke points, because any units who have their armor lowered will take extra damage from the bombs.
Placed correctly, these can decimate waves of Gargoyles as the initial attack has a chance of instant-killing one, and combined with the curse, a shot is guaranteed to kill a Gargoyle. Combined with the fact that it will not target the same enemy unless the curse wears off makes it very efficient at killing Gargoyles.

Strengths

Due to their good damage and reasonable rate of fire, Sorcerer Towers are able to shred hordes of mid to high HP enemies with great physical armor. They can also aid towers that would otherwise be less effective against high armored enemies, with their curse effect helping to lower enemy armor.

Weaknesses

Sorcerer Mages lack the power and instant-kill spell of the Arcane Wizard to deal with tough enemies effectively, such as Forest Trolls or Dark Slayers (though the polymorph spell does negate this slightly), and have to rely on other towers to kill them off. Naturally, high magic resistance is the mage's bane (although the curses' True damage ignores it).

Related Upgrades

Spell Reach (1 Star): Increases wizard's attack range (by 10%).
Arcane Shatter (1 Star): Magic attacks destroy a potion of enemy physical armor on every hit. (-3 armor level)
Hermetic Study (2 Stars): Mage Towers construction and upgrading costs are reduced by 10%.
Empowered Magic (2 Stars): Increases wizard's attack damage. (by 15%)
Slow Curse (3 Stars): Magic attacks slow enemies by half their speed for a moment (half a second, Also disables Rocket Rider Turbo boost).

Related Upgrades for Elemental

Spiked Armor (3 Stars): When attacked, soldier's spiked armor return a percent of the damage received to the attacker. (~12.5% reflection of damage)

Related achievements

SHEPHERD Polymorph 50 Enemies into sheeps ^[sic].

ELEMENTALIST Summon 5 rock elementals in any one stage.

Quotes

"Do or do not, there is no try!" (main)
"Back to the shadows of Hell!" (main)
"Ashes to ashes!" (main)
"Meeeeh!" (polymorph) (sound from sheep)

Trivia

"Do or do not. There is no try" - A line spoken by Yoda in the 1980 film Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
"Ashes to ashes" - Part of the phrase "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust" spoken during a burial service, to denote the finality of the corporeal body.
Polymorph is based on the spell of the same name from Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

@@ Line 53: / Line 53: @@
 Summons an Earth Elemental, the stout avatar of the land's power, to block and attack your enemies.
-As the only tower beside the Barracks capable of summoning units on the path, the Summon Elemental ability gives you an exceptionally resilient foot soldier crafted from the spirit of the land itself to support your human soldiers. The Rock Elemental does area damage. An Elemental killed in a level with a [[Poison Pool]] will spawn a [[Swamp Thing]].
+As the only tower beside the Barracks capable of summoning units on the path, the Summon Elemental ability gives you an exceptionally resilient foot soldier crafted from the spirit of the land itself to support your human soldiers. The Rock Elemental does area damage. An Elemental killed in a level with a [[Poison Pool]] will spawn a bounty-less [[Swamp Thing]].
 Attack rate: 2.0s, Respawn: 8s, Health regeneration: 20 HP/s
@@ Line 84: / Line 84: @@
 |}
-On flash, the Elemental is a bit different. It costs the same amount of gold, but a few stats are different. Its attack rate increases to 3 seconds and its damage dealt also differs.
+On flash, the Elemental is a bit different. It costs the same amount of gold, but its attack rate increases to 3 seconds and its damage per attack is higher.
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