Warmage

A great deal of the CQ community seems to think that the only way to play endgame is to toss on two Gannonsmashers and spam the attack button, but you know what? They're full of shit! By sacrificing a little bit of damage, the warmage is able to use spells with a far higher hit-rate and completely ignore the Strength stat, enabling them to focus entirely on becoming an unstoppable armor-stacking juggernaut with enough haste to switch to melee if owning everything with massive balls of fire gets too boring. They often watch their fellow heroes fall in one hit when new challenging content is released while they steadily mow down everything in their path.

=Features=

Pros

 * 1) Never die. Ever.
 * 2) Consistent damage output.
 * 3) Burn all the things.

Cons
Usually requires so many cigarretes that it is a miracle the hero does not drop from oxygen deprivation.

=Skill Investment=

Fireball
The Warmage's primary damage dealing ability. Get it as high as you can, as quick as you can.

Magic Missile
An amazing finisher. Each missile has it's own individual hit chance, and a high one at that. Requires a very small amount of skill points to max out; do so whenever it's convenient.

Mirror Image
Not as important to max out as one might think. Get it to around 20 max images or so.

Shield
Again, not terribly important too max. Increase it when monsters start hitting too hard.

Sorcery
Expensive as hell, but important nonetheless. Best way to level this is to dump points into it when it becomes cheaper than raising Fireball.

Fire Shield
Pretty useless, but the damage starts to add up eventually. Don't worry over it too much.

Dodge
Extremely important. This is the real way the hero is going to be mitigating damage, regardless of how well he can soak it up with massive amounts of armor.

Block
Same as dodge. There's no reason to dual wield so you might as well take advantage of it's awesomeness.

Parry
Riposte doesn't work when you cast, but you can still parry. So... Same as dodge.

Weapon/Battle Mastery
Needs to be high enough to at least hit things. There's always a chance you'll completely run out of mana, and a warmage can survive a lot longer than most when unprotected by the Shield spell; maybe even long enough to beat a monster to death out of desperation.

=Stat Distribution=

Stamina
The more the better. However, most late-game gear provides a great deal of this stat so it's not really worth investing in. The hero won't get hit often and he won't get hard, but wasting cigarettes on health never ends well. As long as the hero's health is high enough that the player is comfortable with him taking a few hits, it's plenty.

Intellect
A mana pool of over 100 is absolutely required. This is the amount of mana restored by a single cigarette and gaining a surplus of mana can very easily turn into a huge waste of money. There is a massive amount of this stat on some of the end game items available right now, so be frugal when investing in it.

Strength
Serves no function other than to increase the hero's inventory space, which is actually sort of important, considering his crippling cigarette addiction. Probably best to ignore this stat unless you really, really need it.

Dexterity
The bread and butter of CQ's warmage. For this build to really shine, the hero needs to have the massive amount of damage absortion that Armor Class provides, which isn't difficult considering he doesn't really have any other stats that are in high demand.

=Play Style=

Be efficient. Warmages require a lot of cigarettes to function, and while the thought that has to go into their combat is minimal, it's a hell of a lot more than the melee'rs banging their mobiles against their heads. Learn to use the mana bar properly, pay attention to how far it goes down each turn, and don't smoke until you're down at least 100 mana, if not more. There's always a chance a hit will slip through, so waiting til this happens and getting both your health and mana up at the same time is a major bonus. However, don't forget that your Shield spell is constantly swallowing up mana and will deactivate when it falls below 5. The cost of recasting it is a bit hefty and should be avoided at all costs. Get creative with Mirror Image as well. The warmage needs to take advantage of his AC and figure out how many images he needs to survive a turn. Eventually, getting low rolls isn't much of a hindrance when compared to losing mana on another cast. I mentioned Magic Missile being a great finisher earlier; always use it to finish off the enemy when you can. It costs less mana and prevents misses, which are quite costly. Normally a miss means 5 mana wasted on a fireball and another 5 mana leeched away by the shield spell.

Basically, the warmage has 2 choices: Pay attention or die.