How to deal with anti-magic as Arcane Knight?

[JESUSSSAYSNO]

Title. I'm running a Bleak Walker Bloodmage on Path of the Damned. It's a solid build and I'm considering writing a guide on it due to how enjoyable I'm finding it, but I'm hitting walls against opponents with the Arcane Dampener spell.
 

I've been using Whispers of the Endless Paths with the counterstrike upgrade paired with Arcane Veil and Caucelhaut's Corrosive Siphon to stay alive and do damage as a main tank, but I'm getting hosed by enemies who can suspend my buffs. Is there any solid workaround or counter to Dampen Magic or similar dispels, as a melee Arcane Knight, or do I just get hosed?

I could swap my party comp around and bring a more physical oriented tank who doesn't need magic buffs to tank, but I also want to know what more experienced Arcane Knight players do to handle anti-magic. Its really brutal when 65% of my kit and point investment is trivialized by a single spell.

Edited January 30, 2019 by JESUSSSAYSNO

[Waski]

Boost WILL, with blood mage You should have over 200 (210?) on PotD considering penalty. With palladin should be doable.

[JESUSSSAYSNO]

Boost WILL, with blood mage You should have over 200 (210?) on PotD considering penalty. With palladin should be doable.

I'm level 7 now, buffed up I can just break 100 Will, while I'm not specifically stacking it, but the value seems really high for this stage of the game. Ended up getting lucky and played a bit better and beat the encounters giving me trouble. Either way, it seems a lot more reliable to have a physical based medium shield tank in the party for these kinds of situations. Solo would be a different story.

Edited January 30, 2019 by JESUSSSAYSNO

[brasilgringo]

See the Electric Dyselxic build post of my Deathless Thaumaturge build post.  You need to hit something like 194 Will to reliably resist Arcane Damper casts ... however note that the higher-level Arcane Cleanse is unresistable (as far as I can tell) and will also bone you.  

 

For Will stacking, try Llegrath's Safeguard (which you can cast before combat initiates, and trigger by Blood Sacrifice so it is active at combat start) -- and also items like Griffin's Blade sword (+10 will I think, enchanted), Katherine von Killen cat (+5 will pet), and Mangera's (Magnera?) Chain armor (enchants to +10 will I believe).  Wearing those you can resist the Arcane Dampers if you get to 194+ (note that Blood Mage suffers a defense penalty against opponents at Bloodied or lower health -however by that point hopefully most mobs are about to die and you won't suffer if they cast on you).

 

The only other method for AD avoidance is to watch the tiny little icons over the mobs heads and try to interrupt them from casting, using Thrust of Tattered Veils (scrolls or spells) or something that constantly interrupts them (Slicken is 100% win for this - it will carry you past Concelhaut and Splintered Reef) and prevents the cast.  Or if you see them casting, you can use a Withdrawal potion or scroll to tough it out.  I find watching the icons hard / hard to see, so chain-Slickening mobs works great for me to avoid the cast happening (Slicken is in Ninagath Teaching grimoire I believe).

 

Another cool option when it works is the Writ of Sorcery from Priest of Woedica class, which shuts down spell casting for 20-30 seconds on enemies.

 

The Arcane Cleanse issue is super annoying as it doesn't have a readily identifiable icon and can't be resisted - Sigilmaster boss has a sigil that uses it, and some mobs (like those on Deck of Many Things ship, if you aggro them) also do.  In this case, you just have to heal through the lack of buffs.  I had to switch all my gear to healing gear and use potions and scrolls until I got the Cleansing sigil down at Sigilmaster boss.

[DozingDragon]

Have one party member that you send after enemy casters at the start of combat. They could use abilities that interrupt, the crossbow or arbalest modals, or hard CC abilities (tier 2 or above resolve afflictions or intellect afflictions, tier 3 might and dexterity afflictions). While some classes have more interrupts than others, you should have at least one character in your party that has access to some decent interrupts.

[Icetrinity]

Have you tried using Suppress Affliction? I haven’t used it specifically on a spell buff like Arcane Veil, but did use it on my Ascendant Cipher when they were hit with Arcane Dampener and that seemed to do the trick then.

 

Also makes sense to have a Priest using Salvation of Time on all of those defensive buffs and potentially pushing your survivability even higher with spells like Despondent Blows anyway.