| 10 | +1 Projectile(s) |
|---|---|
| 20 | +25% Damage when dealing Magical Damage |
| 30 | +1 Penetration |
| 40 | LINGERING MISERY: Enemies that die while affected by Decay have a chance to leave behind a cursed zone for 8s. Enemies within that zone are slowed by 30% and take 480% per tick. |
| 50 | All Heroes: +50 Health |
| 60 | x1.5 damage to stunned enemies |
| 70 | All Heroes: x1.025 Damage when dealing Magical Damage |
| 80 | AURA OF DECAY: The Dark Mage emits an aura. Enemies within the aura receive 480% bonus damage per tick of decay. |
| 90 | All Heroes that share faction: +100 Health |
| 100 | INEVITABLE WITHER: Decay can now stack up to 4 times on a single enemy. |
| 120 | All Heroes: x1.025 Damage when dealing Magical Damage |
| 140 | Strong Stat Bonus: +5 Penetration |
| 160 | All Heroes: +100% Damage |
Out of the light and into the darkness emerges a new hero. He's not an adventure hero, so only the lucky few will be able to obtain him. But with one magical spin of the wheel, he can change the course of your HvH adventure.
His name: The Dark Mage.
The newest hero in the HvH roster, this genie-worm Prince of Darkness will decay the souls of the horde until you become their master.
So, let's take a dive into the forbidden magic of the Dark Mage to understand his true potential.
The Dark Mage is the newest hero in HvH, released as part of a wheel event. Most of us aren't gonna be lucky enough to grab him, but the lucky few who are will be getting what I think is a pretty strong hero.
An auto-aimer who shoots magical projectiles, this hero fits into the Mage faction tremendously well. If a plus-one penetration in his base stats looks pretty strong, the plus-five penetration in his level 140 star bonus will surely put the horde to sleep.
The key to the Dark Mage is understanding his Book of Decay. Each of the Dark Mage's base attacks applies Decay to an enemy. Decay deals magic damage over time, and that damage gets amped up through all of his skills. Much like the Slime Sage, the interaction between the base weapon and the skills is how you'll understand this hero's true potential.
If you don't plan on forging the Dark Mage, you can at least get access to his globals. So let's take a look at them. The Dark Mage actually has some fantastic globals! On the heels of Slime Sage, who had pretty awful globals, this is quite refreshing.
So out of the five potential globals here, three of them are excellent, and the other two are somewhat forgettable. And like basically every other hero in the Mage faction, his faction bonus is just more magic damage for other mages.
Credit:@DogJosh
Looking at the Dark Mage's Forge, the first thing to note is that Book of Decay evolves into Book of Collapse via the Damage Tome. Since Damage Tome is core in every build, this makes evolving his weapon super easy.
The other important thing I've gleaned from reading this, though it isn't explicitly stated, is that Book of Collapse stuns. I don't know when in the process of applying Decay it causes the stun, but we'll see in the forge that you can toggle it on and off, so it must stun somewhere. Maybe instead of saying "turning vitality into dust," they really should have said, "stun is done."
Level 1: You have Dark Magic, which causes the horde within Lingering Misery to do less damage. This might be the first time outside of the Weakness jewel I've ever seen those words in the game!
The other option is Spreading Misery, which makes Lingering Misery get bigger and hit more of the horde.
Level 2: You have the option for Spreading Decay, which is a nice pairing with Spreading Misery. I see what they did there. Spreading Decay increases the size of Aura of Decay.
The other option is Continuous Decay, which causes Aura of Decay to start applying Decay to the horde... and my brain is starting to decay from saying "decay" all the decaying time.
Level 5: I say that because at level five, Quaking Collapse references the fact that Book of Collapse causes a stun. When that stun occurs, it can now pulse for 500% weapon damage, which sounds like a whole lot. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you the percentage at which Book of Collapse actually stuns, so it's hard to know how frequently these pulses will occur. It could be like Artificer, where it happens all the time, or it could be like Oracle, where it's more on a set schedule.
And because we haven't finished spreading everything quite yet, there is now Spreading Collapse. This gives any horde affected with Collapse a 50% chance to shoot out a 360-degree projectile, dealing more damage. That sounds pretty cool and should be a giant amp to your damage. So you can either have this more reliable form of damage or the more intense, short burst of damage from Quaking Collapse.
The team at hvH has really leaned into having the forge impact a hero's skills, making them stronger depending on your game state and game mode.
While he might not have a unique identity when it comes to game modes, I do think he'll have a unique identity in how he deals damage. For that, you need to understand his skills.
If a horde with active Decay on it dies, it has a chance to leave behind Lingering Misery—a giant area of effect that both slows the horde and does a whole ton of damage. The key here is that a horde has to die for Lingering Misery to spawn. So, it won't work in instances like Boss Brawl, and you will have to clear out at least one enemy for it to have a chance to proc in the first place.
This is a purple area around the hero, much like Ember's aura, but it doesn't do damage directly. Instead, it amplifies the damage ticks of Decay from the base weapon. If a horde has Decay on it, it will take additional damage while standing in the aura. This sounds particularly interesting for Boss Brawl, where you can have the boss standing in the aura the entire time. It also means the size of the aura is going to matter, which is a bit of foreshadowing.
Unlike most other ultimates in the game, this one doesn't require clearing the horde to activate. It allows Decay to stack on an enemy, and each level-up allows it to stack more, starting at two and going all the way to six. That's really interesting.
Anytime an ultimate doesn't require you to clear the horde, you have a chance to proc it much more often and in any game mode, which means it can potentially become very interesting in Boss Brawl. I put a focus here because I'm an end-game player, and that's one of the main events. But it'll also help you in something like Arena, Nightmare Mode, or Hero Clash.
The key is just being able to stack it up enough.
The problem with heroes like Slime Sage and Void Raven is that you can't stack up their abilities effectively. A lot of the horde will die before it has a chance to stack, making the additional damage kind of useless. That's why I personally think of modes like Nightmare or Boss Brawl. But if the damage is substantial enough, it'll offset the time required for it to tick, and you'll be able to clear the horde anyway. I think that might be the case with Dark Mage because of how his forge interacts with his skills.
So let's take the Dark Mage for a quick ride in Try Mode. Watching him in action, I actually got pretty excited. I've been doing a lot of testing of newer heroes, but only in Try Mode, and this is one of the times where a hero looks surprisingly strong.
Again, it's super hard to gauge from Try Mode because the horde isn't doing all that much, but you can get a sense of how this kit is going to work. The big thing I noticed was that the size of Lingering Misery was huge.
Those purple areas are zones of death for the horde. Combine that with the fact that you can stack Decay via the ultimate, particularly at high star levels, and you should be able to pump out a solid amount of damage as the Dark Mage.
If that compounding decay from Aura of Decay works well, he might actually be strong in something like Boss Brawl. The key for Normal Mode and Hard Mode will be whether those ticks of Decay can do enough damage before the horde actually gets to you. Because you're relying on an aura that's close to you, it will have super high-value damage, but it has to be enough to keep you alive.
It might just be that he becomes a very binary hero: either he can clear the content or he can't. Think of Bunny or Assassin, who do so much damage, but that damage is all they've got. If they can't clear out the horde, the horde will get to them, and they'll get cleared out themselves.
It's hard for me to tell exactly where the Dark Mage will end up on your shelf. Either hidden in the darkness or coming out into the light to shine his darkness on the battlefield.
July 102 2025: Fixed typo. Hat tip: @Royal_Asgardian
