How to be OP in Magicka, divided by different tiers.
Local Scale Threat:
To be a local threat in Magicka, a threat to a local area, you probably would need to be able to threaten local populations of human, goblins, orcs etc. as well as possibly a bigger monster like a forest troll or a traekmonstrir. So let's try and analyze the native population's capacities.
While it might seem at first glance that the Magicka World possess technology only about on par with Middle Age Europe, Magicka: Vietnam shows that they possess modern technology and futuristic technology is shown in Magicka 2. As such, an ability an ability to avoid gunfire in some way would be really helpful. Even before that the "grinders of town" was some form of machine that could quickly destroy a city.
Their is also superhuman stats in the verse. An Armored Orc was able to burst through a wall and yet the human and orc kind have waged war against each other evenly including in melee. So likely wall level physical stats.
In addition if counting other common species, zombies have higher endurance then most species and are healed by death energy (but harmed by life energy). Dwarves also possess teleportation abilities. Beastmen have super leaping abilities and giant spiders can spit a poison spray.
So there is some idea of what the enemies will be bringing to use as weapons, are there any notable weaknesses here. There is and it's something that applies to most of the verse actually:
Intelligence/Manipulator Builds. It's not that most of the verse is dumb, per se. Merely that they don't take things very seriously, as the verse is rather goofy.
So what we're looking for is a character who offense can take down zombies, who defense can deal with the powerful ranged attacks of bullets and poison sprays as well as chaotic movement styles like teleportation and superleaping, and who is a serious intelligent manipulator.
The first sorta obvious choice that comes to mind
Ozymandias from DC Comics. His superbrain would be already super op for this tier in Magicka. His superbrain calculates in combat every possible permutation of the fight and allows him to pick the most optimal one meaning he would be well able to fight in the chaotic magicka battlefield. He's a martial arts master and could disable the limbs of his opponents and is fast enough to catch a bullet and well as physically wall level. However the biggest weapon would just be manipulating people to make him god-king which not only wouldn't be that difficult for him it would just give him access to even greater amounts of technology.
That said there is someone from DC I think would do even better then Ozymandias due to his sheer raw versatility, and this guy would just not be fair for the verse.
Constantine. Throwing Constantine into Magicka is not even fair Constantine is one of, if not the greatest manipulators in fiction. His walls and magic blasts would be broken at this tier of power but his sheer intelligence would let him do everything Ozymandias would do and much more given his magic background. He might even learn the native magic boosting his tier. This is not even including all the other magic bs Constantine can do.
Constantine would be so broken in Magicka. His offense and defense are more varied and layered then any other low tier by miles, he has magical manipulation, his stats are comparable and his raw intellect would just by itself be a broken weapon
However you don't need to be a manipulator type genius to do really well in Magicka. Considering the potential technology growth of the verse, I think a scientific genius could also do really well. Taking a really different tract, there's another character I think could do very well, and even break into the highest tiers assuming not blitzed
Alphys from Undertale would be a really broken character for the local scale fighters. First off she has soul manipulation, something almost no one in Magicka has, and would be a potential one-shot. She doesn't have danmaku which would probably be helpful in Magicka since it could rapid wear down a Wizard Shields, but she doesn't really need it since her attacks directly target the soul.
Now you might be rightfully concerned by Undertale Monsters' weakness to murderous intent, something pretty common in Magicka where Death is seen as very casual. However for the low tiers she has a pretty strong counter to that...namely flight. Alphys possess a jetpack. Most Magicka Monsters only really use melee attacks and the ones who don't only use very limited straightforward ranged attacks which Alphys using genius intellect and her very quick flight could easily avoid. And even if she does get hit, she's pretty touch, capable of casually tanking the heat of Hotland which can evaporate Styrofoam. She could just fly above the battlefield avoiding the few ranged attacks with her flight and genius intellect and bombarding them with electrical blasts, bombs and soul attacks. She'd be some mixture of artillery and air support.
That's not even getting into her ability to invent, including creating futuristic technology from basically Medieval technology, who knows what she could do in the Magicka verse.
City Scale Tier:
At this tier the expected enemy are probably gonna be mages of some variety. Wizards can manipulate the generally 8 elements of magic including Fire, Water, Cold, Lightning, Life, Earth, Death and Shield. Varients of Wizards gain proficiencies in some number of magics at the expense of others (compare life based Druids to death based Necromancers)
The one I find people always underestimate is shield, and shield is the one that makes Magicka so deadly on the versus scene against even people generally much stronger then them. While the other Elements get up to lower end multi-city block level (speed range is hypersonic to mhs), shield can block planetary attacks. Shield's weakness per se is that is repeated attacks. Namely shield is good at stopping singular big attacks, but weaker against danmaku styled attacks. However because Wizards can stack shields and immediately replenish one when it runs out, Wizards are very difficult to fight conventionally. They can even create auras with shield capable of absorbing the other elements. Their shields can also be used to reflect or deflect ranged attacks.
You might be thinking that the answer is teleportation. Not Quite. Teleportation would probably be useful as most magicka combat is in essence spacing and area denial, and could get past a generic shield, Wizards can also create skintight personal bubble shields. That's not to say teleportation is a bad choice. People who know me well know Teleportation is my favorite power and the teleportation magicka is a quite useful one in game, however it's certainly not the best.
Generally speaking any tactic that relies on transmission through space is a bad tactic as a wizard can easily reflect it back at the user or just deflect it. At worst they can casually push themselves out of the way. Projectiles, Beams, Novas, these are suboptimal tactics as magicka combat is highly efficient at dealing with them. What you want is something that hits someone directly without going through the intermediate space. This is most often some kind of hax like brainwashing (so long as it's not transmitted through space like as a brainwashing beam). However very strong and PRECISE telekinesis would also do it very well here. Which brings me too
Any Low Tier Jedi or Sith from Star Wars would just be silly powerful in Magicka.
First off they have powerful and precise telekinesis means they could do a classic force choke on any wizard in the verse, and they would have no counter. They couldn't even try to counter with magic since everyone except Grimnir needs to move to do magic which they can't do if their limbs are telekinetically being held.
Forget about every hitting them. Even outside the ability to create barriers with the force capable of doing everything a magicka shield could save possibly sheer potency (outside of High Tier Jedi/Sith), they have pre-cog, telepathy and aura-sensing potent enough to casually dodge all the element attacks. Pretty much all magicka combat is also transmitted through space outside special magicka, and those could be super easily avoided by Jedi in training.
Even if you get them into close range, they have weapons that are canonically (sorta) the strongest weapon in Magicka, and are more skilled hand to hand combatants then anyone in Magicka. And that's not even getting into the mind trick which would be comically effective against anyone in the verse.
What other sort of builds work? What if you don't want to use abilities that direct affect them. Well then I would suggest also using the kind of magicka that are considered op in game. In particular one thing I would think is really strong would be invisibility, hitting the wizard before they know they are in a fight. Invisibility is one of the most op magicka in the game, and having it would be a considerable advantage. There is considerable temptation to try and pick a build that uses lots of water manipulation to try and take advantage of the wizard inability to swim. However you would need to be able to creates lot of water quickly to keep them from freezing or evaporating it quickly. That said while Wizards have damage negation with their forcefields they don't actually have the usual accompanying power of force negation, meaning that while shields protect them from damage they do still get flung around. This could be taken advantage if one can knock them into water or into space.
I briefly considered the Predator from Predator film series While their power stats are in the right range and they do have invisibility their own anti-invisibility is pretty useless here as almost no one in Magicka has invisibility, and their improved melee capacities wouldn't really help mitigate the MASSIVE speed difference if they do get detected. I have what I think is a much more viable stealth assassin build from a more obscure source.
Iflar, the Prince of the Mipedians from Chaotic. Oh he'd be amazing in Magicka. Really the Mipedian Tribe in general would be super powerful. Focusing on speed, air attacks, and invisibility the Mipedians make for ideal stealth assassins.
Given their speed focus they likely would get up to massively hypersonic speeds, supported by one of their own being able to move through the entire Mipedian desert in seconds, and one of them being made of lightning. This would put them on the faster end of Magicka verse on par with Lightning Elementals. They also have air based attacks which is helpful because Magicka Wizards don't actually have the ability to make air auras, and if their initial assassination attempt fails or they get detected, they still have a pretty solid tactical chance utilizing their speed and air attacks to knock the wizards around until they get thrown into water or get thrown into orbit.
Iflar is particularly good at stealth and invisibility making him ideal for this, not to mention as a proficient air manipulator he would have access to attacks that do lots of hits at one, ideal for breaking down Magicka Shields like Pebblestorm which bombards the enemy with dozens of tiny fast moving pebbles. They also have access to Fearocitity which attacks the enemy's courage, possibly acting like the op already Fear Magicka, but instead of hitting enemies omndirectionally at short range, creating a cyclone that could hit a much larger area.
Iflar could easily avoid direct combat, even if he is detected, he could easily retreat and return to stalk, and can take advantage of any moment of enemy weakness.
These are both more classes or builds that I think would do well but there is one more specific character that I think would do particularly well, not a part of any particular class, but would just do really well due to particular stat, ability and personality combination.
Deadpool, Merc with a Mouth. He would actually do really well in Magicka just in a completely normal direct conflict.
First off he has a ton of feats on the higher end of the MCB Range, nearing Town Level. Bear in mind general City Scale Fighters and general wizards are doing on the lower MCB range. He's also MHS which again is on the higher end of the speed range.
Deadpool's regen speed can be a bit overstated, he can't say regen half his body in seconds. That said given the power different, a boulder from a Magicka Wizard would likely cause bruises and scratches to Deadpool which IS the type of thing he can regen from in seconds. Meaning that outside of Magicka or just bombardments of attacks Deadpool would be downright unkillable for most of the verse. But that's only the beginning.
Remember how I said teleportation would still be good in the Magicka verse? Deadpool has teleportation that would allow him to avoid some of the few threats regardless. He also I have been informed has a planet level blade. Considering the surface area difference this would likely allow him to simply cut right through a Magicka Wizard's shield. It would be an almost perfect anti-wizard weapon. He's also physically speaking a master of melee fighting way better then anyone in the Magicka verse.
However Deadpool has one more thing that would make him op in Magicka, the combination of his personality and his fourth wall awareness. Magicka on surface is a pretty standard fantasy game, and very cliche in that sense because it's a parody. Deadpool would know the tropes and be able to basically know what's going to happen just by knowing what game he's in. He could even theoretically exploit this. He might go into a monologue causing the other characters to become static and not moving while his text bubble comes up and then just shoot or slice them while in he is monolouging so they have no ability to react.
Even ignoring that possibility Deadpool's personality gives him an advantage. A lot of the serious characters who can manipulate the goofy Magicka world have a trade off in that they stand out like a sore thumb like Grimnir do and so would attraction and threat. This is still a good trade-off to make and doesn't mitigate how advantageous it is to do this, however Deadpool can play both ways, using his silly antics and demeanor to fit into the world while also using his more serious non-meme "real" self to manipulate events to his favor.
Planetary to Multiversal Threat:
Here we deal with the greatest wizards of all time, as well as cosmic forces like Assatur, Death and Cthulhu. Planetary Level Attacks, Intangibles, and serious haxes will all need counters and there isn't really additional weaknesses which makes this section difficult.
What would be good are anti-intangibility, ways of avoiding the attacks of the high tiers possibly by manipulations of space, and counters to mental manipulation.
And that's not even getting into his offensive options. At will non-spatially transmitted mental and matter manipulation? That would be a one-shot for anything not intangible in the Magicka Verse. And if he has to fight those, not only is he likely able to be able to hit intangibles but he can theoretically summon a spiritual entity, his rune god to to hit on the spiritual plane.
This isn't even including his stealth and manipulation abilities which would just make him even more deadly against high tier Magicka foes. His only weakness being if he doesn't have his rune god, fighting Death and Assatur might prove difficult to hit them, unless he can brainwash them.
However I know a character from another Medievil fantasy that would do even better in Magicka then that, a verse on the opposite end of the Fantasy brightness spectrum to Magicka...
Griffith from Berserk would do amazingly well against Magicka High Tiers. His passive spatial and casuality manipulation would stop basically any of Cthulhu or Assatur's projectile attacks from reading him and he himself is a powerful reality-warper that can hit intangibles and knock them out of existence.
It helps that he has casual dimensional manipulation so he can clearly hit people like Assatur and Death and is a powerful manipulator in a world where powerful manipulators and general Charisma based builds would allow for easy subjugation. Griffith could basically do what Lok did but way more efficiently and extending even into the other realms. He can even do the same force choke that the Jedi users did but better collapsing any enemy wizard into a ball.
Griffith is basically the fusion of every other successful build, being a genius manipulator, with powerful telekinesis, mind hax, spatial disruptions, powerful wind manipulation and much more.
And that's how to be OP in Magicka.
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