Age of Magic – Ultimate Guide to Archons Faction

Archons Faction Guide

By Jamisonparker1219.

The Archons are a classic favorite since the beginning of the game. In fact, much of the game lore even revolves around the Archons in some way, whether it’s through them directly, through the demons, or with the Crimson Order.

While they used to be a formidable faction, especially in PvP arena either as a complete faction or with individual characters mixed among other teams, with the advent of the newer meta teams their overall utility has suffered quite a bit. However, with the creation of the Crimson Order, they have experienced a bit of a revival and improvement. Nonetheless, the Archons are still fun and exciting to use and still have their role in PvE.

Archon Members

• Artus – Boss/Leader (See section ‘Foundational Members’ below on how to unlock)
• Elios – Caster, Warriors of Light, Leader
• Magnus – Tank
• Sacrif – Healer
• Tiros – Melee Damager
• Argen – Rogue
• Sterus – Ranged Damager, Warrior of Light

Overall Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

• Ability to apply shields to the team regularly with multiple different characters (e.g. Sacrif, Magnus, Artus).
• Ability to remove debuffs and prevent them from being applied (Sacrif).
• Longevity: Ability to “Escape Death” (Sacrif, Magnus) and Sacrif’s awakened passive allowing for healing essentially with every other hit to every team member.

Weaknesses:

• If a member dies, there are no abilities that offer resurrection within their faction.
• Not necessarily a weakness per se, however, despite their very strong ability to constantly apply shields, many newer teams have abilities to bypass or destroy them (Clouds, Chaos).

Sacrif’s main healing ability has a high cooldown time at 7 turns, and even when awakened, only goes to 6.

Important Abilities

Artus

• Leader ability “Ruler of Arcadia” increases his own damage output, reduces cooldown timers of archon and crimson allies, as well as increases speed and damage output of archon allies when awakened
• Special 1 “Starlight” decreases damage from critical hits to all allies, adds more shielding to all allies, and allows counter attack for all allies. These effects apply to all allies, not just archons or crimson allies.

Sacrif

• Passive ability “Light of Archons” contributes to shield generation for all archons and crimson order allies, though by a small amount. When awakened, the shield strength increases from 6% to 15%, and also restores 15% of an allied Archon’s HP at a 50% rate when receiving non-lethal damage
• Special 2 “Holy Healing” restores 40% HP to all Archon and Crimson Order allies, gives them a shield if they are at maximum HP when the skill is used, and gives all archons and crimson order allies the ‘Escape Death’ buff, which buffs an ally such that when their HP goes to 0, they get healed up to a certain percentage of their overall HP instead.
• Special 1 “Fortitude of Warriors” removes debuffs from Archons and Crimson Order allies, as well as prevents casting debuffs on them for 2 turns while simultaneously giving Sacrif back some initiative.

Tiros

• Special 1 “Stellar Rain” can deal a significant amount of damage to a single character
• Special 2 “Light Cyclone” can also deal a significant amount of damage to all enemies and reduce their initiative
• Passive ability “Storm warrior” when maxed allows him to use his cyclone ability upon death

Argen

• Both of his Special 1 and Special 2 attacks completely restore his initiative if he kills an enemy with the skill which can be useful for taking out multiple enemies in a row if they are all low on HP

Magnus

• Passive “Champion of Arcadia” gives him provocation when any ally whose HP is at 35% or lower gets attacked, which helps prevent that character from dying – and, there is no limit to how many times this can activate in a given battle. Furthermore, this skill prevents Magnus from receiving critical damage which further contributes to his own survivability.
• Special 2 “Light Beam Strike” offers self healing, provocation, damage reduction, and gives him the ‘Escape Death’ buff similar to Sacrif’s ‘Holy Healing’ ability. This skill, in conjunction with Sacrif’s skill, can seriously help keep Magnus alive so that he can continue to protect his allies.

Elios

• Leadership ability “Guardian of the Golden Grove” can help offset damage from critical attacks, and can also offer a huge damage output increase to his fellow Archons and Crimson Order allies. Furthermore, these effects also apply to the Keepers of Arrat characters which can be useful early on if you do not have a full Archon squad just yet (and there are only two other Keepers of Arrat characters that have leadership skills available).
• 1st Special “Searing Light” can essentially make all of your enemies unable to dodge the next hit while also reducing their fortitude by 100%, making all enemies vulnerable to your next move, whether its damage-focused or debuff-focused. Furthermore, if used against dark characters, they can have their ability cooldowns increased by 1 turn, which can give you an advantage in a close battle. Keep in mind though that this skill is not as useful without a full team of Archons, Crimson Order members, or Keepers of Arrat as it is reliant on the number of alive teammates from these other factions.

Awakening Priorities

Artus

• Special 1 “Starlight” increases shield power to 15% and increases initiative given to archons
• Leader ability “Ruler of Arcadia” is high priority as it increases his own damage output as well as speed and damage of archon allies.

Sacrif

• Passive “Light of Archons” increases shields to 15% for all archons and crimson order at the start of the turn. Also adds an important survivability factor where all allied archons (crimson order is NOT included in this) can restore 15% HP at a 50% rate when they receive non-lethal damage from any attack
• Special 2 “Holy Healing” increases healing from 40 to 60% and increases shield contribution to 33% from 17% if they have full health (this applies to crimson order as well). The ‘Escape Death’ buff becomes more powerful in terms of how much HP is restored upon death. Though the decrease in cooldown is only 1 point from 7 to 6, this will allow more frequent use in a prolonged battle

*Overall, the top three awakenings to be prioritized should be Ruler of Arcadia, Light of Archons, and Holy Healing.

Characters

Individual Importance and Mixing/Matching with Other Factions

Foundational Members

• Generally speaking, Artus, Magnus, Tiros, and Sacrif are the most important Archons to have in battle. Sacrif is very useful as she is the only character capable of healing the entire group, and she offers the ‘Escape Death’ buff as well as the ability to clear debuffs and prevent their application. Magnus is a great tank, Tiros can apply a significant amount of damage compared to the other Archons, and Artus can also apply shields and increase the strength and speed of his allies. For the last spot (assuming a team of 5), Argen is typically the more popular choice due to his ability to apply damage to characters and regain initiative. Elios helps offer initiative increases to his fellow archons as well, allowing them more turns during a battle. While his leader ability is a nice boon, especially with some damage increase, it does not outcompete Artus’s leadership ability; that being said, it can take quite a long time before you can acquire Artus through the special events. In this scenario using Elios as the leader would be your best option, and in some situations, his ability to boost his teams initiative, give them some health back when taking a critical hit, and boosting their damage output when they lose health can give your team quite an advantage.
• Sterus is not frequently used due to the relative ease with which he is killed. However, there are a couple instances where he may be worthwhile to place in your team:
• Fight demons – his basic ability when maxed out gives him a 100% chance to attack a demon a second time. Furthermore, with his other abilities that give him periodic damage increases, this may prove useful when fighting an all-demon team.
• In battles where you want to avoid strong AoE attacks. With his periodic damage increases based on his passive, his first special ability “Bolt of Faith” can become powerful, and even single-shot some enemies in early Cradles of Chaos nodes where Archons receive a buff. Other situations that may benefit from avoiding strong AoE attacks is when battling an enemy like Phoenix, whose death can actually help her own team if she is not the last character standing.

Unlocking Artus

• Aside from the new characters being introduced periodically and meta characters, Artus used to be, and still is, one of the most difficult characters to obtain. This is because you can only get his shards through his ‘Epic’ event which only comes around every few months, and in order to unlock him, you must have collected all 325 shards from said event. Furthermore, the requirements to complete each stage of the event make getting to and beating the last stage a drawn out process. Aside from the initial stage, every subsequent stage requires characters classified as Abyss Slaves (i.e. Abaddon, Rok, Succubus, Kage, Balthazar). Each stage requires a higher level, equipment level, and star level and the very last stage requires that all five of these characters be at 7 gold stars. While this may not seem disparaging at first glance, three of those five characters have their own events to obtain their shards, and Abaddon can take some time to farm. The most difficult character to get to 7 stars by far is Balthazar, as his event only comes around about every few weeks, and it is not the most generous in giving shards to those who don’t have spare gold lying around.

Mixing/Matching with other Factions

*It’s worth noting that while a couple of the characters can be used in other team setups, the majority of all of the archon’s skills and effects have the most utility within their own faction (and alongside the Crimson Order). Much of each skill’s utility tends to decrease when used with separate/heterogenous factions

• Magnus is a tank that can generally be used with other teams, though his shield application ability loses some utility since it primarily helps his faction allies. However, his ability to provoke enemies when a weakened allied gets attacked is a very powerful skill to have in any team setup
• Elios can be useful against dark characters or enemies that tend to hide, preventing you from targeting them.
• Roinar (a Light Dark Elf) can often be added to the Archon team in place of Elios as leader (assuming you aren’t using Artus or Lucius) as his effects are impacted by the number of Light allies. He is a powerful ally to an Artus-Archon team. Roinar can also remove buffs from enemies, which no Archon can do.

Crimson Order Synergy

While not going into too much detail about the Crimson Order and their abilities – as that will be a separate guide – it is worth noting that the Archons and the Crimson Order have unique synergy with each other. The majority of the Archon skills and effects also impact the Crimson Order, and vice versa. Most importantly is Lucius (Crimson Order Boss) due to his passive skill ‘Justice of the Order,’ as it increases damage of all Archons by 110% and their HP by 100%. This in conjunction with Artus’s leadership ability awakened can add significant overall utility to the Archons, making them a formidable team yet again.

Another Crimson Order character that has unique synergy with the Archons is Teresa, and specifically when paired with Argen. When used together, this potentially allows Teresa to apply a significant amount of shields to random allies throughout the battle, as Argen often performs more than just one attack.

PvP

(Player vs Player [e.g. Arena, Tournament, Clan Wars]) and PvE (Player vs Environment [e.g. Raids, Cradle of Chaos])

With the new meta teams, the Archons have certainly fallen behind in terms of their utility in PvP. They can easily be taken out by many of the new teams, especially teams that can bypass or easily destroy shields. However, with the creation of the Crimson Order and Lucius’s ability to increase their HP and damage, their utility has certainly improved. With him and Artus as leader, you can add a significant boon to their survivability and their damage output and take out leveled teams including meta teams like the Vans. However, they will still often lose to higher level meta teams, as even at a high equipment level their overall stats are just not on par with the new teams. This unfortunately limits their use in arena and tournament.

The Archons are more useful in PvE, especially in Celestial Gates and various event modes when they arise where Archons are required. However, with the Crimson Order in place, an equivocally leveled Crimson Order team may be better than a strict Archon only team. Even in Celestial Gates, for example, the nodes requiring Archons also allow for Crimson Order to be utilized. However, in certain Cradle of Chaos regions where they are offered faction buffs, then they can certainly be helpful to clear various nodes especially when used with Artus and Lucius.

Battle Tips

While a step-by-step battle guide may be more useful for certain boss nodes and other meta teams, there are a couple of skill combinations to keep in mind when using this team, as well as when to use certain skills within the battle. While there may be many other combinations of skills and different orders in which to use them depending on the situation, here are a few key ones to highlight:

Lucius “Suppression” paired with Elios “Searing Light”

Suppression increases the attack power of all allied Archons by 100% on the next hit for 3 hits, and Searing Light has a 20% chance per allied Archon/Crimson Order ally to prevent the enemy from dodging the next hit and reducing their fortitude by 100%. After this, any Archon attack can cause a significant amount more damage. For example, if you were to use Tiros’s cyclone ability, this could cause massive damage to all enemies. Any of Artus’s AoE attacks would cause more damage as well.

Teresa “Priestess’s Amulet paired with Argen’s attacks

Because Priestess’s Amulet offers shielding when Argen performs an additional attack or attacks additional targets, this combo can offer significant shielding to allies. Argen’s basic attack at max level has a 50% chance to perform 2nd attack, and then a 50% chance to perform a third attack. Furthermore, his skill ‘Silver Thunderbolt’ will attack a 2nd enemy and almost always a 3rd enemy if your allies are alive. On top of that, if he kills an enemy using his second or third ability, he essentially gets another turn. All in all, this combo can fling shields left and right on your allies

Individual Skill Considerations

While every battle may be different in some way (e.g. different enemies, different classes of enemies, initiative/speed levels, etc), there are certain skills that may prove more beneficial in various situations against certain types of enemies. Almost all team compositions will include a healer and a tank, followed by some combination of another tank and/or healer, caster, rogue, ranged damager, leader, etc. While these recommendations may not be beneficial in every single scenario, this should help give some guidance on how to get the most of each skill and potentially gain the upper hand rather than wasting them at an inopportune time during a battle.

Artus

• Basic ‘Crushing Blow’ – If there is an enemy who is about to take their turn who can cause significant damage, this can also be used against them to mitigate some of that damage as well as decrease their initiative to try and prevent their turn from taking place
• Special ‘Starlight’ – This skill should be used early in battle due to its reduction in damage from critical hits as well as offering shield protection to allies. This helps mitigate overall damage and helps prevent allies from potentially dying early in the fight. Be careful though, and keep in mind that in some situations it may be detrimental to cast a shield on your allies (e.g. after Drake casts ‘Acid Fog’)
• Special ‘Star Thunder’ – One benefit of this skill is that allies can gain initiative when using special abilities. Thus, it has more use when used prior to allies using all of their special skills. Either way, it is unlikely that every ally will have used all special abilities prior to you casting this skill, so members will still benefit in some way
• Special ‘Supernova’ – This skill is interesting as it allows your allies to gain initiative per enemy who evades the attack. If there is a situation where Artus’s accuracy has become 0, or the enemies are guaranteed to evade the next attack, this skill can be used to get all of your allies a turn, with the understanding that this turn will not have caused any damage to enemies. While this may seem odd, it can change the nature of a battle quickly by allowing your allies to jump ahead of your enemies with another turn.

Elios

• Basic ‘Flame Flux’ – Beneficial to target dark characters due to increased damage output.
• Special ‘Searing Light’ – Due to its ability to force characters to succumb to the next hit and take damage as well as its fortitude reduction, it may be beneficial to use this skill prior to a powerful attack or a skill that applies a significant debuff to enemies. So for example, if you use this ability prior to Tiros using ‘Light Cyclone,’ this would essentially guarantee Tiros to land this attack on all enemies, causing damage and reducing their initiative (assuming the RNG lands in your favor within the 67% chance constraint).
• Special ‘Wisdom of Stars’ – This skill is beneficial to force dark enemies out of hiding so that you can target them with your attacks. It also has potential to give your allies quite a bit of initiative depending on their individual buff load. If there is a dark enemy, such as a healer that you are trying to take out but can’t target due being hidden or they are hiding behind a tank, this skill can be used so that you can quickly try and take out the healer. This could potentially be used prior to Tiros’s ‘Stellar Rain’ skill that can apply a lot of damage to an individual enemy.

Tiros

• Basic ‘Mace Strike’ – Can be beneficial to use against enemies that have armor-increasing buffs as this attack can remove them. So for example, if you are facing Seigfried and friends, once he uses his ‘Patronage of Light’ ability that increases his and his allies’ armor, this basic attack can be used to remove this particular buff
• Special ‘Stellar Rain’ – This skill has potential to cause significant damage to an individual enemy as each strike ignores the target’s armor, and each critical hit causes a further 9% damage (based on max HP of enemy). This skill should generally be used when you know you can land each strike on the enemy (e.g. enemy is not guaranteed to dodge, you don’t have accuracy decreasing debuffs). It is also beneficial to be used against healers; keep in mind that the cooldown time is 5 turns, so you may want to avoid using this attack until you are sure you will benefit from it and not waste it. After Elios uses either of his special attacks could be a good time to use this ability.
• Special ‘Light Cyclone’ – This attack can apply significant damage to all enemies and reduce their initiative. Because it can reduce initiative to all enemies, it can be useful in times when your allies initiative is low and the enemies’ is high, giving your team a chance to go before your enemies. As stated above, it can be beneficial to use this attack after Elios’s ‘Searing Light’ as it will guarantee this attack to land.

Magnus

• Basic ‘Spear Strike’ – This skill can be strategically used to target an enemy who is about to take a turn if either Magnus or an ally is with the lowest HP and could be killed (assuming they have a shield on them). This is because this attack will force the enemy to deal 50% less damage for the next 4 attacks to this ally and Magnus, thus offering some protection.
• Special ‘Gatekeeper’ – This skill is generally beneficial to be used early on in a round as it immediately puts up a shield to allies and can slow down all enemies by a little bit. This can give you a good start to the round as it offers protection and may give your party an edge on taking turns. Similarly to Artus’s ‘Starlight,’ be careful when using this skill if an enemy can benefit from you putting up shields.
• Special ‘Lightbeam Strike’ – This skill is quite important and gives longevity to Magnus. It removes debuffs (and buffs), offers self-healing, places provocation on self while decreasing damage to self, and allows him to survive a killing blow with some HP restoration. There are several instances where this skill can be strategically used – if you have an ally who is low on HP and Magnus’s passive cannot yet trigger, this skill can be used to place provocation on Magnus so enemies cannot attack your weakened ally; if Magnus is low on HP but has effects on him, this effect can remove all effects and help heal him; if there are many debuffs on Magnus. This can be used every 6 times, and is generally a good skill to continually divert attention from your allies to Magnus.

Sacrif

• Basic ‘Threads of Light’ – Has a chance of reducing enemy initiative by 25% (when maxed but not awakened), and even awakened will only reduce initiative by 35%. No particular strategic play with this skill, other than perhaps targeting an enemy with high initiative if you really don’t want that enemy to take a turn.
• Special ‘Fortitude of Warriors’ – This is a highly valuable skill that can remove debuffs from your allies, prevent debuffs from being placed, and give self-initiative. In general, there are two situations where this skill should be used: if your players have debuffs on them that need to be removed, or you are playing against a team that focuses on debuff placement (e.g. Cloud Wanderers) as it offers debuff protection for 2 turns. Because it gives Sacrif initiative after it is used, she may get another turn quite quickly; if there is a situation where your team is low on HP and they have debuffs on them, and both this skill and ‘Holy Healing’ are available, you can take a gamble and use this skill to remove debuffs/protect from debuffs, then get a second turn to heal your team (rather than using the skills in the reverse order). Keep in mind though that the cooldown time is 6 turns (5 turns when awakened) so timing is important.
• Special ‘Holy Healing’ – A very important skill as it is the only team-healing skill in the entire faction. With a cooldown time of 7 turns (6 when awakened), it needs to be used sparingly and ideally at the right time. It offers healing to those with decreased HP and some shielding to those at max HP, so it does not ever truly get wasted on someone with full HP as healing skills from other factions may. See above ‘Fortitude of Warriors’ for recommendation on when to use this skill in combination.

Argen

• Basic ‘Dagger Strike’ – Simple basic attack that has chance to attack multiple times. If Teresa is on the team, this skill can be used to help apply shielding to allies who are low on shields or HP.
• Special ‘Silver Thunderbolt’ – This skill can attack multiple enemies with the chance to get 100% initiative if a target dies with this attack. This can be useful if there is an enemy – or multiple enemies – who are low on HP; this is because you can potentially kill an enemy with this skill, then get a second turn immediately and kill another weakened enemy. If you use this skill on a team with full HP, he will likely not kill any enemy and not get a bonus turn.
• Special ‘Blinding Stab’ – Similarly to his other special ‘Silver Thunderbolt,’ if he kills an enemy with this attack he gets 100% bonus initiative, allowing him to take another turn. Furthermore, he boosts his own damage by 30%, and this attack is undodgeable. So, if you have multiple enemies with ~low HP, this attack could be used to kill an enemy, get another turn, and then you can use ‘Silver Thunderbolt’ to potentially kill another/a couple of enemies then get another turn to use his basic attack and kill another enemy. Used in this order in the ideal setting, Argen can be quite useful in cleaning up a weakened enemy team.

Sterus

• Basic ‘Crossbow Bolt’ – Mostly useful against demons as he can get another basic attack against said demon.
• Special ‘Bolt of Faith’ – Can be used to individually attack an enemy. More useful with a full team of Archons/Crimson Order members in order to maximize damage. Can be used after ‘Divine Retribution’ to guarantee a critical hit on this attack.
• Special ‘Divine Retribution’ – Attacks all enemies and increases his own chance of performing a critical hit until the end of the next turn. This skill can be used before ‘Bolt of Faith’ as it will allow that attack to land a critical hit.

Enemies to Avoid Battling

As a general consideration, you should avoid battling enemies that can easily bypass or destroy shields, or use shielding against you. This is because the Archons are a shield heavy team, and not only can they easily max out their shields, but they can continually regenerate their shields using multiple characters (as opposed to 1 character putting on a shield, or shields added a single time at the beginning, etc). Once their shields are taken out, they don’t have a very strong ability to heal themselves aside from Sacrif’s passive and healing skill which has a high cooldown, and they have no resurrection abilities.

Dark Elves

As a faction as a whole, various characters have initiative lowering effects and other bonuses when fighting light enemies, such as offering increased damage on attacks as well as additional attacks

Drake’s ability ‘Acid Fog’ can be absolutely devastating towards a shield heavy team, as it directly deals unblockable damage to the character based on the strength of the shield generated. This ability is so powerful that Drake is frequently used to take down very difficult bosses in various modes (e.g. Balthazar as a boss)

Chaos Spawn

Sid’s special ‘Black Hole’ is an AoE attack that immediately destroys all shields in addition to dealing considerable damage

Guardians of Order

Omphis basic attack can destroy shields in one shot

Cloud Wanderers

Roxanne’s first special ability ‘Ode to the Heavens’ allows all allied Wanderers (herself included) to bypass shields completely for 2 turns which allows this faction to easily take down shield-heavy teams

Renegades

Balthazar’s first special ability ‘Path of Darkness’ can deal double damage to shields, and if he lands a critical hit using this effect he can easily deal significant damage to any character’s shield

Crowley Darkmind’s first special ability ‘Experimental’ can remove shields altogether, and paired with his ability to remove buffs from all enemies can make him and Balthazar together a dangerous combo for the Archons.

Mordred’s 2nd special ability ‘Distortion’ can polymorph a random hero, making them functionally useless for as long as the debuff is present, as well as making that hero easier to kill. While this skill can be an annoyance to any character/faction in the game, it can pose a significant threat to the Archons if used in conjunction with Balthazar’s and Crowley’s shield destroying skills and buff removal skills.

Druids

Rhiannon and Maedb can be a deadly combination for the Archons within a druid-focused team. Maedb can essentially block Sacrif’s ability to remove debuffs which can make the Archons vulnerable. Furthermore, with the other druids on the team, her second special ‘Nature’s Wrath’ can cause massive damage to all Archons. If used with Maedb’s ability to block Sacrif, then the Archons lose their ability to heal and remove any DoT effects that were placed on the Archons prior to Rhiannon using this ability.