What are good character builds in Puzzle Quest 2?
I've noticed that when I play tournament style a lot of the monsters have good synergy between their abilities. However, in my single player, I can't seem to find a build that gives me that level of synergy.
I'm not picky about which hero I use, I'm just looking for a build which comes together nicely
As there is no other answers, let me describe how Sorcerer at level 50 looks like and you decide for yourself whether or not it has good synergy.
Sorcerer
Defense: 10/10
- Drains blue mana instead of health (very cheap, never ends if you keep matching blue)
- Has ability to drain enemy defense to 0 adding it to your defense (best spell imo, also cheap)
Attack: 9/10
- Has ability to add red mana to weapon damage (weapon will be dealing around 60 damage, or double that if critical, very effective)
- Chasm spell that usually does 30-45 damage, no cooldown, cheap (my primary attack spell)
- Can destroy all gems dealing 2 damage each (usually dealing 80-100 damage on small maps and 100-130 on big). Expensive, but effective. When all gems are destroyed there is good chance you will trigger chain reaction and damage could reach 170 on big maps.
Gaining mana: 6/10
- Can destroy any colored mana giving full effect (usually adds 5-10 to mana, not too effective but cheap. Good when you need little more mana for some spell)
- Can create x3 wildcard in any position. Not too effective (gives about 15 mana) and not too cheap for its abilities
Weak sides:
- No effective spells to stun an opponent to miss multiple turns
- Weak character at lower levels (below level 15).
- No spells to trigger good chain reactions
Conclusion:
Very tough to kill (at least in conquest on normal difficulty) once you reach level 15. I had no defeats from level 15 to 50 except couple times (but before level 15 it was really hard to win, I almost gave up on this character). Strongest sides are defense and attack which is all that matters. No specific field of focus, so you need to upgrade all skills (well, best spells are based on red, green and blue colors so you can skip upgrading yellow as you have more than enough defense already).
While every character has a tiny bit of synergy, the assassin is far and away the most powerful.
Defense: 10/10
Not unlike the sorcerer, the assassin has a shield using purple mana. What makes it even better than Ice Shield for the sorcerer is that if you have under 13 mana when you use it, it doesn't end your turn. On top of that...
Attack: 15/10 (yes, it's that good)
The spell which gives you almost impenetrable defense also doubles the power of your main attacks. If that wasn't enough, you can use Disarm which doubles it yet again. At level 50, you could easily be doing minimum 50 damage on each attack. The final spell, which destroys all purple effectively does 8 damage per purple. On big maps, you can easily get over 200 (I had 240 recently) in damage.
In addition, the assassin only weapons can poison. The best poison damage is quite powerful and cannot be blocked. On top of that, the poison can stack, so you can use two poison weapons for double the damage. Not that you really ever NEED to use your weapon, but it's nice when you get enemies that jack their defense up really high.
Gaining Mana: 6/10 Have to somewhat rely on items for this and just luck at the beginning. The only reason it isn't lower is because the strikes morph the mana into purple, allowing you to easily get purple mana. You can generally get enough fours in purple to give you time to build up the others.
Weak sides:
The only real weakness is that starting up can be a bit slow. Although she cannot stun, her ability to chain together attacks (highly damaging ones at that), make that point almost moot. On big boards she absolutely destroys. With just a tiny bit of luck, no enemy should get more than one turn on a large board.