Who a better Support wizard: Ezren or Seoni?

[Archangelrey]

I was try to figure who would be a better character to carry alot of items and spell and basically drop them to back up other character in the party. I was think of load with orbs and area spells (eg Toxic Cloud)

 

I know Ezren has advantage with spell since he can carry up 11 spells and start with 8 spell but it take time to build him up with powerful spell that can reuse over and over again.

 

Yet Seoni can recharge items and spells with no issues but can cycle through a quick dead if you use her ability. 

 

Both can hold the same number items.

 

What do you think?

Edited September 14, 2016 by Archangelrey

[firestormkirby]

If Ezren's Spellbook was working correctly, he would win hands down. A perfect storm would be the 4 cloud spells plus the 3 (5) ability spells, then add in Scrying and Haste. Ezren could continually cycle through them so each party member could get +3 to STR/DEX/CHR (WIS/CON) and 4d4+2d6 to all combat checks, and put what every they wanted on top of the deck. Haste would be useful for Ezren since he could then explore indefinitely. He could then have items that are useful for him, but I would suggest not putting in ones he could recharge since that would ruin the cycling. At AD3 when you get the Cat ally and add 2 power points into recharging he should rarely be failing any recharges.

[RedPred]

Seoni is a better support. Ezren is very powerful but not a great supporter as Seoni in the common built.

 

Seoni:

- can use blessing to help

- can use Arcane spells to help (auto recycling)

- can use high rank Arcane spells to help (auto recycling)

- can use Arcane items to help (auto recycling), ex Wand of Enervation

- has a large hand

 

So Seoni can do everything Ezren can do in a simple way, but also she has blessing you can use to help others.

 

Then you can build Ezren as a pure supporter and he can have a very large hand always full of spells to help. But that build reduces sensibly his ability to fight and extra-explorations in casual locations.

[MauGibrin]

I think Lem is a better support spellcaster than any of those two. In fact, he might be the best support character in the whole game (along with Lini, the Druid).

 

But between those two, if spells are your main concern, I think Ezren is a better choice - only because Seoni will have only 3 to choose from at the start of the game, and he almost always succeeds at recharging them, anyway...

 

Cheers!

 

Mauricio

[Borissimo]

There's some disagreement here, so I'll hop on the scales with my 2 cents:

 

Ezren is unquestionably the better support. It's not even a contest.

 

Neither Ezren nor Seoni have any abilities that are inherently support-oriented. So it all comes down to the cards. Whereas Ezren has 8 spells and 0 blessings, Seoni has 3 spells and 5 blessings. Seoni has to use most, if not all, of her spells for combat. Otherwise, you'll have to use her hero power to fight things, which has 2 problems: 1) It slowly kills her, and 2) That ability actually sucks. So she's discarding cards to her ability, discarding allies to explore, and discarding blessings to "support" the party -- she's gonna need a lot of healing to survive all that discarding. Judged in terms of support, Seoni is literally the worst supporting character in the entire game. She's like a negative support. The party has to support her!

 

Ezren, by contrast, can actually take a decent amount of support spells, and while he doesn't auto-recharge them like Seoni does, with power feats he'll eventually get to the point where anything 9 or lower is an auto-success, and 10's and 11's are almost sure things. This is functionally almost equivalent to Seoni's auto-recharge. And unlike Seoni, Ezren doesn't suck resources away from the party since the only cards he'll ever be discarding are (possibly) his allies.

 

Ezren's not a great support, mind you -- the support characters in this game are Valeros, Lem, Harsk, and the divine casters -- but as he's not the literal worst support in all of Rise of the Runelords, he is better than Seoni.

[dabub]

There's some disagreement here, so I'll hop on the scales with my 2 cents:

 

Ezren is unquestionably the better support. It's not even a contest.

 

Neither Ezren nor Seoni have any abilities that are inherently support-oriented. So it all comes down to the cards. Whereas Ezren has 8 spells and 0 blessings, Seoni has 3 spells and 5 blessings. Seoni has to use most, if not all, of her spells for combat. Otherwise, you'll have to use her hero power to fight things, which has 2 problems: 1) It slowly kills her, and 2) That ability actually sucks. So she's discarding cards to her ability, discarding allies to explore, and discarding blessings to "support" the party -- she's gonna need a lot of healing to survive all that discarding. Judged in terms of support, Seoni is literally the worst supporting character in the entire game. She's like a negative support. The party has to support her!

 

Ezren, by contrast, can actually take a decent amount of support spells, and while he doesn't auto-recharge them like Seoni does, with power feats he'll eventually get to the point where anything 9 or lower is an auto-success, and 10's and 11's are almost sure things. This is functionally almost equivalent to Seoni's auto-recharge. And unlike Seoni, Ezren doesn't suck resources away from the party since the only cards he'll ever be discarding are (possibly) his allies.

 

Ezren's not a great support, mind you -- the support characters in this game are Valeros, Lem, Harsk, and the divine casters -- but as he's not the literal worst support in all of Rise of the Runelords, he is better than Seoni.

I would argue that is not strictly true. It seems so in theory but the key is in the 5 blessings that Seoni can carry. Assuming that both of them will have to carry attack spells so that they themselves can survive their own encounters, say that Seoni takes 3 attack spells in her 3 spell slots and Ezren takes 3 of 8 of his spells as attack spells, freeing up 5 spells for support, I posit that in most circumstances, 5 blessings are better than 5 support spells in that blessings are a lot more flexible and can be used for pretty much any check compared to most support spells which are usually very situational and isn't always the one you need at any given moment. This is further the case once you get to their advanced classes and you stack Seoni's deck with nothing but blessings of Pharasmas which become a 1D12 regardless of what the check is. 

[firestormkirby]

I don't get how people can claim that

 

1 or 2d12 on any single check is overall better than

 

+3 STR

+3 AGI

+3 CHA

+3 WIS*

+3 CON*

+2d6+4d4 on combat checks

+scrying

for every character. All the time. (every single spell, except scrying - which is a 11/12, is freely rechargeable after AD3)

 

I just don't get it.

 

*Treasure cards, not base game cards

Edited September 15, 2016 by firestormkirby

[RedPred]

 

 

You have given Seoni a terrible game picture. It's not true at all.

 

I played her from the beginning of my adventure with the game. 3rd character added and never removed. I play normally with her every single Legendary 6-party scenario I play. Never regretted about that. But I use also Ezren then, so I know perfectly how many times I have to help her and how many to help him.

 

And I can say for sure that Seoni does regularly a high damage more easily than Merisel just 'recharging' one offensive spell. I never help her in a combat at Legendary 6-party since months... She has spell to move others characters, spell and items to reduce combat check of every other characters and allies and blessing to help others ... And in 3 turns she closes every scenario where I set her.

 

I have no idea what build you gave her or deck you built for her... but I m sure they are quite poor to underestimate her so badly, try to rebuild her differently mate...

 

@ MauGibrin Lem is better also in my opinion, but the op asked something different

[269Hawkmoon]

Some of this i from physical game play experience.

 

I don't personally ever give Seoni any combat spells. I let her use her power for that. All her spells for me do things besides define her combat check. Glibness and Haste being the top choices. Her job for me is to blow things up.

 

But I still find Ezren the better support. In fact, I often have Illusionist Ezren with only 1 or 2 comat spells at most after his role card. and usually just Swipe. Instead, I give him an evade card or two (invisibility is the best), then as much Augury and Scrying as I possibly can. Throw in some Incendiary Cloud or two. Give him items and allies to basically guarantee his recharge check (Cat, Headbands of Various Levels of Intelligence, etc).

 

If you've got him up to 11 spells, something like this would be awesome:

 

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Invisibility (Evade)

Invisibility (Evade)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Scrying (Support)

Scrying (Support)

 

I consider Augury and Scrying support since letting others know what is coming is maybe the most helpful thing you can do. Allies, I like to through Brodert in there as another almost-Scrying power. And Cat to help his recharge. Monkey if I can get away with it.

 

I almost never try to have Ezren actually make a combat check. He starts off with Augury/Scrying at his location. Then non-villain/henchmen monsters he evades and puts on the bottom of the deck. He sets up the other locatoins with Scrying and Brodert. If he finds a henchman, he puts it on top either for someone else to close the location or to wait until he has Swipe to take the henchman out himself.

 

So, yeah, put me in the Ezren camp for who is more support oriented.

[kurtalb1]

Some of this i from physical game play experience.

 

I don't personally ever give Seoni any combat spells. I let her use her power for that. All her spells for me do things besides define her combat check. Glibness and Haste being the top choices. Her job for me is to blow things up.

 

But I still find Ezren the better support. In fact, I often have Illusionist Ezren with only 1 or 2 comat spells at most after his role card. and usually just Swipe. Instead, I give him an evade card or two (invisibility is the best), then as much Augury and Scrying as I possibly can. Throw in some Incendiary Cloud or two. Give him items and allies to basically guarantee his recharge check (Cat, Headbands of Various Levels of Intelligence, etc).

 

If you've got him up to 11 spells, something like this would be awesome:

 

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Invisibility (Evade)

Invisibility (Evade)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Scrying (Support)

Scrying (Support)

 

I consider Augury and Scrying support since letting others know what is coming is maybe the most helpful thing you can do. Allies, I like to through Brodert in there as another almost-Scrying power. And Cat to help his recharge. Monkey if I can get away with it.

 

I almost never try to have Ezren actually make a combat check. He starts off with Augury/Scrying at his location. Then non-villain/henchmen monsters he evades and puts on the bottom of the deck. He sets up the other locatoins with Scrying and Brodert. If he finds a henchman, he puts it on top either for someone else to close the location or to wait until he has Swipe to take the henchman out himself.

 

So, yeah, put me in the Ezren camp for who is more support oriented.

 

Wow, never would have considered this build for Ezren.  May have to try it some time.

 

Just an FYI ... 269Hawkmoon is THE "go-to" person (or at least one of them) on the BGG forums for information on this game.  It's nice to have him/her here!

[RedPred]

Augury (Support)

 

Augury is not a pure Support, if we intend support for other characters. Because 90% of the time we use it, it rearranges the location deck for the spell-casters exploration. Or in other words it helps the spell-caster himself in his own turn, and just sometimes it helps other chars at the same location. Statistically I use Augury at the start of caster turn to make him closing faster the location, so at end turn all the inspected cards are already drawn. Also in Legendary we have movement restrictions that highly reduce the use of Augury as support card for other characters.

 

Scrying is Support indeed, because it can help who you want when you want freely. And if you can choose between Augury and Scrying, the second is clearly better.

[Nym]

Some of this i from physical game play experience.

 

I don't personally ever give Seoni any combat spells. I let her use her power for that. All her spells for me do things besides define her combat check. Glibness and Haste being the top choices. Her job for me is to blow things up.

 

But I still find Ezren the better support. In fact, I often have Illusionist Ezren with only 1 or 2 comat spells at most after his role card. and usually just Swipe. Instead, I give him an evade card or two (invisibility is the best), then as much Augury and Scrying as I possibly can. Throw in some Incendiary Cloud or two. Give him items and allies to basically guarantee his recharge check (Cat, Headbands of Various Levels of Intelligence, etc).

 

If you've got him up to 11 spells, something like this would be awesome:

 

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Swipe (Combat and Support and Acquisition)

Invisibility (Evade)

Invisibility (Evade)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Incendiary Cloud (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Augury (Support)

Scrying (Support)

Scrying (Support)

 

I consider Augury and Scrying support since letting others know what is coming is maybe the most helpful thing you can do. Allies, I like to through Brodert in there as another almost-Scrying power. And Cat to help his recharge. Monkey if I can get away with it.

 

I almost never try to have Ezren actually make a combat check. He starts off with Augury/Scrying at his location. Then non-villain/henchmen monsters he evades and puts on the bottom of the deck. He sets up the other locatoins with Scrying and Brodert. If he finds a henchman, he puts it on top either for someone else to close the location or to wait until he has Swipe to take the henchman out himself.

 

So, yeah, put me in the Ezren camp for who is more support oriented.

 

I haven't played the boardgame, but for the iOS version on Legendary difficulty, I'm not a fan of Illusionist. Any monster you Mind Trick with Invisibility is a monster you haven't cleared, and it can end up getting shuffled back into the encounter deck the next time you cast Augury. I find the +1 hand size of the Evoker more useful, even if the other abilities are blah, along with packing a couple Fire/Lighting Bolts for anything Swipe can't handle. My ideal loadout for him would probably be...

 

2x Swipe

2x Firebolt

2x Haste (Haste is amazing on Legendary, extra explores plus movement to help deal with the adjacent movement requirement)

2x Incendiary Cloud

1x Scry 

2x Augury (Replaced Scry once later story mode chapters allow more points in Recovery)

 

That said, I agree that he is the best support, especially for larger parties on Legendary. His titanic hand size means that he'll almost always be holding a decent set of location agnostic assist tools, and not being dependent on blessings means that he can spend them at will without worrying about draining his deck. The one notable downside is that he functions mostly as combat assist since the skill buff spells are dramatically inferior to blessings, so much so that not even the ability to recharge them makes up for it. Not a huge deal, though, as combat rolls are the most common in the game so he won't spend any time gathering dust.

 

Seoni, for her part, is no slouch. She's probably the second best support on Legendary (Lem is kinda trash) and is a much faster explore than Ezren. With 2-4x Haste and 2x Scry she can tear through location decks with abandon.

Edited September 17, 2016 by Nym

[RedPred]

2x Swipe

2x Firebolt

2x Haste (Haste is amazing on Legendary, extra explores plus movement to help deal with the adjacent movement requirement)

2x Incendiary Cloud

1x Scry 

2x Augury (Replaced Scry once later story mode chapters allow more points in Recovery)

 

Wonderful deck composition mate! I like playing aggressive 

[Hannibal_PJV]

This Sounds a lot like my Ezren, but that is the beaty of this game. You can meke very different builds and They all works reasonable well, when you use the advanteges!

[Nym]

Also, it's worth having a couple of Enfeebles around in you inventories somewhere. Carrying a single copy of the spell on maps where you don't always want to fight the Villian/Henchmen (like Into the Mountains) it can be super useful. Importantly, Enfeeble, as opposed to most other evade effects, places the monster on the top of the deck, which lets you isolate the Villian. The only downside being it's a dead card in your hand until you encounter the Villian, and cards in hand are at a huge premium, so it's not necessarily worth toting it on most maps.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Nym

[Cheem]

Also, it's worth having a couple of Enfeebles around in you inventories somewhere. Carrying a single copy of the spell on maps where you don't always want to fight the Villian/Henchmen (like Into the Mountains) it can be super useful. Importantly, Enfeeble, as opposed to most other evade effects, places the monster on the top of the deck, which lets you isolate the Villian. The only downside being it's a dead card in your hand until you encounter the Villian, and cards in hand are at a huge premium, so it's not necessarily worth toting it on most maps.

By Enfeeble, do you mean Web? Because while I've seen a Web spell (evade enemy, put it at the top or bottom of the deck), I've never seen an Enfeeble. Nor a Scry for that matter...

[RedPred]

By Enfeeble, do you mean Web? Because while I've seen a Web spell (evade enemy, put it at the top or bottom of the deck), I've never seen an Enfeeble. Nor a Scry for that matter...

 

 

Enfeeble evade a monster returning him at the top position of location deck. Scrying is like Augury but you can choose the location to inspect top cards.

I'm not a great fan of evading too. I prefer to burn through location decks killing monster and grabbing gold from their pockets!    

[Nym]

By Enfeeble, do you mean Web? Because while I've seen a Web spell (evade enemy, put it at the top or bottom of the deck), I've never seen an Enfeeble. Nor a Scry for that matter...

 

 

They function as Redpred says, Enfeeble also doesn't have the 16 difficult cap of Web. You might not have them unlocked in your collection. If you go to the main menu and look in the gallery, you can find Enfeeble in the Chapter 1 deck under spells, Scry is Chapter 3.

[269Hawkmoon]

 

Augury (Support)

 

Augury is not a pure Support, if we intend support for other characters. Because 90% of the time we use it, it rearranges the location deck for the spell-casters exploration. Or in other words it helps the spell-caster himself in his own turn, and just sometimes it helps other chars at the same location. Statistically I use Augury at the start of caster turn to make him closing faster the location, so at end turn all the inspected cards are already drawn. Also in Legendary we have movement restrictions that highly reduce the use of Augury as support card for other characters.

 

Scrying is Support indeed, because it can help who you want when you want freely. And if you can choose between Augury and Scrying, the second is clearly better.

 

True. I often assume Ezren might start the game with Augury, so I slot him first and have him go somewhere he won't really be trying to close. If he pulls Augury, he plays it, sets up the deck (hopefully) for someone else, moves, and starts to work on his own location. 

 

And yeah, Legendary definitely screws with this strategy quite a bit.

[Darkren]

From my experience, Ezren is the better support.  

 

When you cast a spell, you have a chance to draw a spell. 

If you put Ezren in the right location, casting a spell nets him two draws.   I have had him up to 13 cards in hand before it cycled back to his turn.  Yes, I am using the spells.  I just had 2 draws for every one spell cast, and recharged every spell.   So the deck thinned out and I got to the cycle I wanted to keep.

 

He also has a very high recharge rate, and has more items than Seoni. 

 

The items to use for him as a support are the orbs (orb of ice, orb of storms, etc) or the flasks(flask of force being a example).  As well as one of the best support items, the wand of enervation.

 

In my opinion, the spell recharge/draw and larger item pool and larger spell pool vastly outweigh the 0 blessing drawback.

 

Before AD4 came out, Seoni was able to auto recharge the flask of force...  that seemed to change after AD4 came out.  In losing that, she lost a large part of her support ability.

[zarrick13]

There's some disagreement here, so I'll hop on the scales with my 2 cents:

 

Ezren is unquestionably the better support. It's not even a contest.

 

Neither Ezren nor Seoni have any abilities that are inherently support-oriented. So it all comes down to the cards. Whereas Ezren has 8 spells and 0 blessings, Seoni has 3 spells and 5 blessings. Seoni has to use most, if not all, of her spells for combat. Otherwise, you'll have to use her hero power to fight things, which has 2 problems: 1) It slowly kills her, and 2) That ability actually sucks. So she's discarding cards to her ability, discarding allies to explore, and discarding blessings to "support" the party -- she's gonna need a lot of healing to survive all that discarding. Judged in terms of support, Seoni is literally the worst supporting character in the entire game. She's like a negative support. The party has to support her!

 

Ezren, by contrast, can actually take a decent amount of support spells, and while he doesn't auto-recharge them like Seoni does, with power feats he'll eventually get to the point where anything 9 or lower is an auto-success, and 10's and 11's are almost sure things. This is functionally almost equivalent to Seoni's auto-recharge. And unlike Seoni, Ezren doesn't suck resources away from the party since the only cards he'll ever be discarding are (possibly) his allies.

 

Ezren's not a great support, mind you -- the support characters in this game are Valeros, Lem, Harsk, and the divine casters -- but as he's not the literal worst support in all of Rise of the Runelords, he is better than Seoni.

 

Lets add in the fact that, currently, the only Arcane items are either Wands, which get outclassed pretty quick (not counting the fabulous Loot wand), and Flasks, which a successful 'recharge' still lands the item into the discard pile and also require the user to be in the same room as the threat being fought.  So Seoni's auto-item recharge ability ends up not that great when she still requires some kind of healing to back her up with an inventory of her most useful 'support' item, the flask. 

 

With that said, Seoni's ability does mean that her three (or six at max spell slots) spells can all be utility.  If she's loaded on utility spells and Flasks, maybe with a Staff of Minor Healing or two, and her blessings, then yeah.  She can play a pretty mean support, with the ability to whip off an Arcane Blast any time she damn well feels like it.  Give her Poog and Father Z to help her heal discards and you've got a pretty decent support-wizard.

 

If you want someone to load up on magical Orbs instead, Lini is probably the best choice.  The Orbs all count as divine and with her animal helper she's bound to (almost) never miss a recharge.  Plus you get the benefit of loading her up with Heal/Aid/Swipe spells for the rest of your party's needs.

 

I actually have a party with Lini and Seoni doing this schtick.  Seoni wanders off, blows a lot of monsters up with spells and flasks, comes back for a heal or two, and Lini supports by throwing balls around + Aid spells.  Very entertaining.

[DrDior]

Isn't this a great discussion?
Either character will work, but I put both in my six character parties.

Some points follow.

Ezren, with improved recharge powers is nearly as good as automatic on spells.
And with orbs which reach any location, he is automatic. Note that orbs are not archane, and Seoni has to roll a check to recharge them

Seoni is the character most likely to run out of cards. Discarding them to use as spells has some risk. Since I use a no-heal party, I would not choose it.

Both E and S provide ranged support with orbs and select spells, while maintaining significant fire power. That means killing, not evading, which the lost of a card on the blessing deck.

Six party adventures have a high incidence of locations requiring intel or charisma to close. Both of these characters are automatic at closing those locations.

Ultimately, the answer as to who is best depends on the rest of your party, party size, and character builds. Any pat answer may not fit your party.

So, look for build tips in the responses and decide which helps your party the most. For my parties, I rarely need an attribute boost so that type of support build is unnecessary. But it may be essential for your party build. I use a plethora of recharge abilities and recharging cards, so one mass heal in my party is enough, and usually a wasted card. But not always!

 

I forgot to mention in my original post that I use the paladin in my party.  Give her the power to recharge spells and give her improved guidance spells.  It is almost like recharging a card for +3 to anything.   So she really is a third support person.

Enjoy and good luck

P.S. I always keep a charm on Ezren. It's like having an extra card in you hand. It's a random ally, and often it's an explore. And it's fun.

Edited November 2, 2016 by DrDior

[zarrick13]

P.S. I always keep a charm on Ezren. It's like having an extra card in you hand. It's a random ally, and often it's an explore. And it's fun.

 

Charm Person is a great spell until you can get a couple Haste spells instead.  Between two Haste and his skill to get extra turns on Magic acquisitions, I hardly miss the fact that he lacks any blessings for extra turns. 

[nsr]

One benefit of Charm over Haste is that you can attempt to draw a spell before using the summoned ally to explore. So if you're out of attack spells, you can first discard Charm and see if you draw an attack. Then you can decide to explore. With Haste you have to explore, so there's a chance you'll draw a monster to fight without getting an attack spell.