Magisters & Their Structures
Magisters are responsible for providing you with support structures. Their spires can cast spells on sappers as well as both friendly and enemy towers, and their sources provide both beneficial and detrimental auras to everything in the area.
Magisters can construct the following buildings:
| Gold Cost: | 120 |
| Mana: | 100 Initial, 500 Maximum, 2/sec |
| Casts: | Bloodlust |
| Attack Speed: | +40% |
| Cooldown: | 1 sec |
| Range: | 600 |
| Duration: | 60 sec |
| Mana Cost: | 50 |
Blood Spires can increase the attack speed of friendly towers with their magic, indirectly bolstering your defenses. They are more effective when used on towers with high damage output, such as Arcane Towers and Ancients of War; you can also increase their effectiveness by using Ether Sources or Brilliance Aura to supply them with more mana. Make sure to build Blood Spires in locations with several other towers for them to bloodlust. Remember that you can turn off auto-casting if you want to store up mana in case of an emergency.
| Gold Cost: | 120 |
| Mana: | 100 Initial, 500 Maximum, 2/sec |
| Casts: | Slow |
| Attack Speed: | -40% |
| Cooldown: | 1 sec |
| Range: | 700 |
| Duration: | 60 sec |
| Mana Cost: | 50 |
The counterpart of the Blood Spire, the Sloth Spire can reduce the attack speed of enemy towers, making it more difficult for them to stop all of their incoming sappers. You should seriously consider conserving mana on your Sloth Spires and then slowing many towers at once, so that you can deliver a greater shock to their system and increase the likelihood that some sappers can make it through to their circle of power before they can react.
| Gold Cost: | 120 |
| Mana: | 100 Initial, 500 Maximum, 2/sec |
| Casts: | Heal |
| Healing: | 25 |
| Cooldown: | 1 sec |
| Range: | 400 |
| Mana Cost: | 5 |
The Healing Spire restores health to nearby friendly sappers, reversing some of the efforts of your opponents' towers and improving the chances that some sappers will get through their defenses. A single healing spire can constantly reverse the damage of a Guard Tower functioning only on its mana regeneration, but it can heal much more quickly if it has a steady supply of mana. Again, you may want to consider saving your mana for a concerted strike rather than spending it constantly; the mana is wasted if you aren't enabling any sappers to make it to your enemy's circle of power.
| Gold Cost: | 100 |
| Mana: | 100 Initial, 500 Maximum, 2/sec |
| Casts: | Abolish Magic |
| Cooldown: | 1 sec |
| Range: | 800 |
| Mana Cost: | 75 |
The Cleansing Spire can be used to counteract the effects of the Blood Spire or the Sloth Spire by dispelling their magic as soon as it is cast. The Cleansing Spire has a lower cost and longer range, but it takes more mana to remove an enchantment than it takes to cast it, so you'll need more than one if you want to completely counteract an opponent's spires.
| Gold Cost: | 300 |
| Aura Effect: | +10 Armor or -10 Armor to all sappers |
| Range: | 900 |
Fortification Sources provide an armor-modifying aura that significantly increases or reduces the armor of all nearby sappers, regardless of team. They can be used to make enemy sappers more susceptible to your towers, or built near enemy towers to make friendly sappers resistant to enemy attacks.
Since you can reverse the effects of the Fortification Source at will, you might consider leaving one near enemy towers set to the negative armor aura until you're ready to launch a concerted attack, then invert the aura so that the sappers suddenly become much harder to kill.
Remember that Spell Shooters ignore their targets' armor.
| Gold Cost: | 200 |
| Aura Effect: | +50% speed or -50% speed to all sappers |
| Range: | 900 |
Speeding or slowing the movement speed of sappers may not help as much as you would think, since the sappers keep appearing at the same rate no matter how quickly or slowly they move, and you still need to kill them all. However, speeding or slowing the sappers can force them to linger longer within the area of effect of one of your ultimate powers, like Starfall or Tranquility, or get them more quickly past an enemy ultimate. Alternating between slowing and quickening sappers can also concentrate them into tighter groups with gaps between them, which sometimes gives them a greater chance to overwhelm enemy defenses by taking them suddenly.
The Locomotion Source does not affect heroes or workers.
| Gold Cost: | 300 |
| Aura Effect: | +1.5 mana/sec or -1.5 mana/sec to all heroes and towers |
| Range: | 900 |
The Ether Source is a powerful but indirect tower, supplementing or reducing the mana regeneration of all nearby towers and heroes, whether friendly or enemy. Note that the modification is 75% of the natural mana regeneration of towers, so a positive Ether Source can allow your towers to cast nearly twice as often, and a negative Ether Source can reduce their casting almost to nothing. Also, do not underestimate the usefulness of an Ether Source for providing additional mana to your hero when you're trying to sustain an offense or defense with spells like Cloud or Death and Decay, or for hindering an enemy hero trying to do the same thing.