So I made a Dex based Eldritch sorcerer recently and I'm making him mythic because I am bored and have nothing to do. Consequence I actually looked at the fighty archmage path abilities. (Enduring armour is actually pretty decent for Dex builds).
Now I feel like particularly for a sorc (which he is) Wild Arcana is just sort of insanely amazing but how bad is Mage strike?
It could be a swift action attack with a +18 to hit and a +18D6 damage, and the bonus to hit seems to stack with true strike.
Surely there is something we can do with a +38 to hit?
It could also be +4 attack/+4d6 energy damage. You get path abilities with your first mythic tier after all. As a swift action attack it looks like it's more prone to DR/energy resistance stopping it than the champion or trickster equivalent abilities, but does more total damage (except possibly compared to the trickster surprise strike.)
If you're considering sacrificing a 9th level slot to use it, the ability needs to be better than a quickened 5th level spell boosted with a use of mythic power. I'm not convinced it is.
As to what you can do with an unreasonably good attack bonus - possibly called shots if that optional rule is in use. If you use a combat maneuver which can replace an attack then it's close to autosuccess on that maneuver. I suppose you could make observers choke by using a non-magical improvised weapon to make the attack, just because you can.
With recuperation (mythic tier 3) you can get your spells back after 1 hour so Novaing becomes a bit of a none problem most days. Especially if you have a demi plane with funky time you can get your spells back in basically no time at all in real world time :P
Unfortunately it only applies to melee attacks otherwise telekinesis for ranged CM would be a thing that would be pretty amazing.
I kinda don't care about the damage boost that much because there are a few ways in mythic to do crazy damage and 18D6 doesn't really scratch them.
I don't think I mentioned novas? The point with the equivalent to a 5th level quickened spell boosted w/mythic power is that you could do that instead of a mage strike with a 9th level spell - same action, same resources used. Whatever you get out of the mage strike needs to be better than that (& better than intensified empowered cold ice strike for that matter), or taking the mage strike archmage arcana was a bad idea.
And? If you can pretty much continuously nova as any arcane I think you can afford to burn the occasional high level spell slot. It illustrates my point. I mean beyond the grand architect s~@* and setting up your own pocket dimension how often do you really need to cast 9th level spells? More often than not those slots are taken up with nasty meta stuff in my experience and this guy doesn't meta much.
What 5th level quickened spell is giving you a +18 to hit on a swift action attack? I know quickened true strike gives you a +20 to hit, but it doesn't give you the attack action.
I suppose you could use amazing initiative to get the attack for a true strike but then you're burning a mythic point just the same as mage strike and you could have used that standard action for some other thing. Although actually what one would do with that standard besides attack I'm not too sure.
Meaning you either need to burn a standard or full round action to achieve what Mage strike is giving you.
With this you can cast, move and strike.
Right. You need something which makes enough use of that +18 attack that it is better than:
Intensified empowered cold ice strike
or:
Quickened suffocation
or:
Quickened dazing mythic burning gaze
or:
Quickened hold monster.
That one attack needs to be better than all of those for mage strike to be worthwhile.
It's not a game theory course. The OP did not want to know the optimal way to build. The OP wanted to know (if I understand correctly) what the most fun/interesting/useful thing to do with Mage Strike might be.
@avr
Is quickened dazing burning gaze a thing? O.o surely the DCs are too low.
I see what you're getting at though. If you have 9th level slots though, I feel like the DCs for all those spells is gonna be pretty low. With the exception of maybe CIS which targets reflex and is a level 6 spell. the damage on mage strike doesn't allow a save and the hit bonus is so great your probably only missing on a one.
@GozrehTime
(good name by the way)
pretty much, sort of if there were any fun things you could do with it really since I'm making a mythic Eldritch Knight is seemed like it was worth looking into.
It's hard to know. I usually play non-mythic P6 and haven't looked at it :-/. I think the most important question is what kinds of rider abilities can be added to this melee attack. Would a mesmerist's painful strike activate? Could one use Vital Strike?
I agree with the point about combat maneuvers above. You could also think about Stunning Fist. You could dip Unchained Monk and take Monastic Legacy to boost unarmed damage. Either take the Scaled Fist archetype with sorceror or, with the Empyreal Wildblooded archetype, any other monk variant. Enter Eldritch Knight when ready. Now you can flurry with unarmed strikes and cast spells. Use the Mage Strike attack to get off Stunning Fist; then you can get some guaranteed Medusa's Wrath damage.
One variant here would be to use Druid instead of Sorcerer; Feral Combat Training might let you make a big hippo bite or something with Mage Strike.
Assuming that you have say 30 Cha and say a relevant spell focus, comparing some CR 20's saves to those DCs (remember you can retry the 3rd, burning gaze, as a move action for 20 rounds thereafter):
Pit fiend: saves on a 6+, 2+, (immune), 8+
Akvan div: saves on a 5+, 8+, (immune), 5+
Great wyrm green dragon: saves on a 14+, 3+, 10+, 3+
Star-spawn of Cthulhu: saves on a (immune), (immune), 14+, 2+
So actually a dazing burning gaze is among the more useful of those. Some big critters have surprisingly bad reflex saves. Unreliable I admit, especially if you don't know what creatures are immune to which energy.
I'm pretty sure vital strike's bit about being it's own standard action crashes any attempt to use it for anything like this. Stunning Fist is interesting - a Fort save DC 30 isn't great, mainly because a lot of big critters have really good Fort saves, but stunned for a round is a very good debuff.
Yeah stunning fist has the same problems attached to it as that list of spells you made.
Also if you have mythic tiers and 9th level spells just CR20 creatures are probably weak sauce to you now xD. I also agree about the vital strike stuff don't think it would work.
Also mythic vital strike doesn't exactly need buffing xd
Hmm I'm not sure there is any obvious way to use this ;=;