Sage

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Description
The Sage is a full support wizard class that has little ability to directly influence the progress of combat. Almost all of the Sage's abilities interact with his spells, whether that be via an increase in spellcasting or the decrease in mana regeneration time.

Stats and Skills
The attribute changes you get by choosing this class:

The abilities you get by choosing this class:

Overall
The Sage is a rather potent support hero with a fairly small amount of useful tools available via the Divination spell sphere. Direct combat support is also a massive issue with the Sage, as Psychic Blast is the only spell that can actually effect a combat situation in the Divination spell sphere and whilst it is useful, it is extremely costly (Breath of Dieing can come much later by around level 35 and is one of few spells usable in a combat situation for the Sage). In fact, Psychic Blast costs only 5 less mana than Armageddon. However, the spells which are useful can be very handy. In particular, Telepathy, Comprehension and Mind Leech are three spells that alone can lead the Sage to victory.

Due to the fairly high mana cost and low duration of comprehension, it is often necessary to time it correctly so that you will actually get the discounts. This is less of an issue with very high mastery in the sphere but on moderate levels, you will want to cast it right before major upgrades. Telepathy on the other hand is quite cheap so the issue is more about properly hitting the amount of xp required for level ups. For most races, a total of 70 xp for level 6 units is a good target. Your units gains xp bonuses from your intelligence and upgrades as well so be sure to take that into account.

Races
A natural synergy with the Sage is the Knights race. The massive XP boosting and research cost cutting powers prove to be a powerful combination with the Knights. A Knight Sage is capable of cutting down the immense costs of countless researches including ones such as Flaming Arrows, Crusade, Weaponsmith and all of those at the Shrine of the Sword. At a high enough level, Squires become tough archers which boast around as much damage as upgraded elven archers. The use of Telepathy should be almost constant, whilst Comprehension every now and then whenever researching is necessary. Mind Leech is nicely abusable with Archons, and proves to be very good against experienced enemies (that Training research backfires on the enemy) and even better against heroes and lair bosses.

An interesting if not mildly startling combo with the Sage is with the Fey. The XP boosts given this early to the Fey can quickly become overwhelming, and even provides a tasty bit of anti-rushing. Similarly to the Knights, Telepathy is to be fired off permanently whilst Comprehension can really smash down the costs of horribly powerful researches at the Faerie Ring and more noticeably, the Orb of Wonders' Lore research. With enough Lore mixed in with Telepathy, the Fey become extremely powerful to say the least. The only downside of this combination is that Mind Leech probably won't be quite as useful as the Fey generally prefer missile attacks to melee ones.

For any race/class Sage combo, if the Sage has too much mana available, either summon a Mage or increase the vision radius for all your units and buildings via True Sight.

Counters

 * The Sage finds it extremely hard to directly intervene in combat. This may be remedied by progressing through an alternate spell sphere, but remember, many damage spells are not very powerful (even more so at low levels) and the more investment put into any other spell sphere, the less bonus XP is given to your troops, which is generally what the Sage should be focussed on since it is a full support class.
 * Just like pretty much every other support class, the Sage is pretty easy to pick off and dispose of similarly to Merchants, except currently in 1.03.24, they're even weaker and easier to destroy (as are most wizard classes). Similarly to the Merchant as well, the loss of a full support hero could easily mean the game.