67 réponses à ce sujet

[ckriley]

I've played through the OC of DAO about five times or so.  The first time I played was as a mage, and each time after that, I've played as a warrior with different builds (one was a tank, the others were all DW).

On that initial playthrough as a mage, I couldn't wait to unlock arcane warrior because a caster/melee hybrid is excatly the kind of playstyle that appeals to me.  It goes back to D&D when I used to play an epic cleric.  Nuking like a mage and swinging a blade like a warrior is just filthy.  Always has been.

Plus, from just reading these forums, it seemed AWs were god mode.  But I ultimately found arcane warriors to be underwhelming, while just staying as a regular mage, particularly a primal mage, was indeed playing the game on easy mode.

But I thought perhaps maybe I was doing it wrong.  So on my current playthrough, I rolled a mage again.  Already had the AW specialization unlocked from a long time ago, equipped Cailan's armor, got my Starfang sword and started going at it.

Things are moving a lot slower now than when I was just a regular mage and stood back with Morrigan and Wynne and just destroyed stuff.  We had a great mix of builds.  I was primal, Morrigan was spirit/entropy with some primal thrown in, and Wynne was a healer.

I'm playing the game on Nightmare and I'm not exaggerating to you when I said that above combo made the game so easy it honestly became near boring.  Even boss fights didn't last that long.  I also respecced Alistair from a tank to be a DW warrior (the best class and build in the game - trust me), put him in the Warden Commander armor and gave him Maric's blade and Duncan's dagger, and he was off soloing yellow and orange level mobs.

I even threw Leliana in (which I respecced as a DW rogue) and had much the same results.  Just tearing through the game.

Then I started playing as an arcane warrior and it's all been downhill.  The problem is, the AW has no melee attacks.  It's all just auto attack.  And because all the AW abilities are sustained, I don't have much mana for spells.  I'll get off the ocassional nuke or CC, but then it's back to auto attacking.  As a regular mage I'd just stand back and nuke and all fights would seriously last about five seconds.

So what gives?  What makes arcane warriors so strong, OP, and powerful?  Because I'm honestly not seeing it.  It's slow, boring, and plodding.

[Elhanan]

Because that is only one way to play the class, as a buffed tank. Often, I like skipping all the personal buffs, and use my staff to show the cretins that I was a Mage first. I usually save all the Warrior like moves for finishing bosses, Landsmeet, most of the Proving matches, etc.



You may wish to back off of NM to Hard or Normal settings, as I have seen varied tactics on these.

[hexaligned]

AW's strengths isn't it's killing power. It's the fact they are near invincible if built right. Slow compared to a caster mage yes, but 0 chance of dieing, unless you fall asleep at the keyboard watching him auto attack I guess. Of course you can just hang back and cast with an AW too, but you might as well just drop the spec all together if that's your taste.  Or at the very most,  just take the first tier talent so you can equip +stamina gear.

But you are right, later on with higher levels (and horridly designed scaling mechanics)  and stupidly powerfull DLC gear, it's hard to argue they are any more powerfull than any other well built class.

It's like comparing a 45 megaton warhead to a 40 megaton one.  There comes a point in terms of overkill where arguing one is better than the other is just silly.

Modifié par relhart, 23 mai 2010 - 11:27 .

[Gammalfarmor]

AW/BM combo is a very fun to play atleast. That's what I am doing at the moment. I love it.

[bl00dsh0t]

Its almost impossible to kill a well build arcane warrior, but frankly the dps factor is pretty much zero. My AW reached the deep roads and somewhere there it just got too boring. Occasionally casting a spell and then standing there missing far too many atacks with the sword...makes fights take too damn long (and yes I did place a lot into dex and party buffs to atack).



What an AW is best at is tanking, at level 16 its bloody unkillable...but has little to draw aggro with unless you go bloodmage with it. Still a tank with no good aggro skill like taunt just fails really. I agree with the op, couldve been an epic class but in order to become that epic class it would need so damn much more melee power and that would frankly ruin the entire point of the class in the firstplace and just make it imba... ahh well ;D

[DKJaigen]

It sounds to me you build your AW wrong. The AW ,contrary to what the above posters said, is quite capable of doing large amount of damage.



here are the general rules for a melee damage



use daggers ( rose + edge/shanker) skip swords and axes

get dex up to 30

use miasma and haste

[hexaligned]

No one said they couldn't do damage. I just stated they didn't have the damage potential of a pure caster mage, which is true. You can certainly stand there auto attacking and make it work well enough to beat the game (easily), much more efficient to just blow up entire screens full of enemies at one time with aoe spells though. Even on Nightmare a fierball+cone combo will kill an entire group of enemies in about 3 seconds. You CAN walk into the group, taking 0 damage and auto attack them to death in a min or so of course, but an AW's strength is the "0 damage" part, not the minuet of auto attacking.

Modifié par relhart, 23 mai 2010 - 11:54 .

[soteria]

It sounds to me you build your AW wrong. The AW ,contrary to what the above posters said, is quite capable of doing large amount of damage.



here are the general rules for a melee damage

use daggers ( rose + edge/shanker) skip swords and axes

get dex up to 30

use miasma and haste

Isn't that just another way of saying, "auto-attack with dual daggers and haste is strong"? As relhart said, the AW's strength is toughness. They'll be less versatile than a pure mage and do less physical damage than a rogue or warrior, but they're very hard to kill. As relhart said, damage isn't their strength.

[AuraofMana]

^^

AW's are amazing tanks in that they can survive. A caster Mage built right will always beat an AW built right in terms of utility AND damage. A caster Mage can shut down every single enemies 100% of the time. It can also blast them all in several seconds while doing so. An AW cannot do that.

An AW is amazing at surviving, and that's why it is the ultimate solo class. It can be versatile if you somehow get enough Mana to get spells off, but the need to sheath your weapons quickly cause this to be terrible. However, if you solo, there's no other options.

One criticism of AW is that they CANNOT MAINTAIN AGGRO. People claim they can use massive AOE spells that deal damage and spells like Cleansing Aura to generate massive amount of threat to aggro. That is not practical, because if you build your party right, your DPS should be tearing through people, which means they'll quickly draw aggro from you as you will NEVER OUTDPS THEM. This is why a Warrior SnS Tank is preferred because of Taunt mixed with Frightening Appearance if you have Reaver. In Awakening, Warrior gets even more aggro skills that it defeats the entire point of building an AW as a tank.

The only time you need a tank in the game is maybe when you fight a particularly hard boss. Any other time, you can just CC everything to death. I rather have a tank that can keep aggro than one that can survive, but can't manage threat as well.

In a team game, you don't need versatility. What you need is specialization. AW is overrated in a party. In a solo setting, it is probably the easiest to solo with.

[old book]

I like my Arcane Warriors, but I agree that they're not worth playing as melee DPSers. Even the dual daggers build is kind of lame compared to a dual weilding Warrior or Rogue. Yes, you can get a DEX of 30 and give your AW dual daggers to slash away with, but those are points that aren't going into Magic. Elite Bosses fall fast to a Dual Daggers AW, but if you have a full party a pure caster can just switch to CC and Healing while the rest of the team takes down the boss.



I play a no-reloads, dead is dead game. If my main character falls in combat, that's it, he died. I usually blast away as a Mage, and switch on my AW buffs only if enemies are getting past my Glyphs of Repulsion and Warding. Thanks to the AW specialization I can wear all the best gear I find or buy, and if I do end up going toe to toe with an enemy I can switch on "Invulnerable" mode. Mana isn't a problem; I play an AW/BM, and if I layer on sustainables I switch over to Blood Magic and cast with Health. Healing isn't a problem either; when health gets low, I switch off BM and chug a Health Poltice, then blast with my staff or swing my sword until Blood Magic is recharged.

[Tirigon]

ckriley wrote...


So what gives?  What makes arcane warriors so strong, OP, and powerful?  Because I'm honestly not seeing it.  It's slow, boring, and plodding.

A well played AW has 2 modes: When it´s preferable, you play as a usual mage, and when you´re oom or that is useless you switch to meelee and have much higher damage than any warrior, while taking more damage at the same time.

[Tirigon]

bl00dsh0t wrote...

Its almost impossible to kill a well build arcane warrior, but frankly the dps factor is pretty much zero.

Exactly the opposite the way I play AW. But nvm.

[Tirigon]

AuraofMana wrote...

One criticism of AW is that they CANNOT MAINTAIN AGGRO. People claim they can use massive AOE spells that deal damage and spells like Cleansing Aura to generate massive amount of threat to aggro. That is not practical, because if you build your party right, your DPS should be tearing through people, which means they'll quickly draw aggro from you as you will NEVER OUTDPS THEM. This is why a Warrior SnS Tank is preferred because of Taunt mixed with Frightening Appearance if you have Reaver. In Awakening, Warrior gets even more aggro skills that it defeats the entire point of building an AW as a tank.

Plese tell me your build. I played a dualwield rogue recently (finished yesterday) and also had Oghren respecced as AW (with mod of course) and while my dualwield rogue was slightly better at DPS Oghren definitely Out-DPSed every other of my characters while being the best support with his glyphs and haste and bloodmagic.

With regards to tanking, I actually prefer Shale or a Dualwield / 2hand warrior over Sword and Shield.

[Tirigon]

relhart wrote...

No one said they couldn't do damage. I just stated they didn't have the damage potential of a pure caster mage, which is true. You can certainly stand there auto attacking and make it work well enough to beat the game (easily), much more efficient to just blow up entire screens full of enemies at one time with aoe spells though. Even on Nightmare a fierball+cone combo will kill an entire group of enemies in about 3 seconds. You CAN walk into the group, taking 0 damage and auto attack them to death in a min or so of course, but an AW's strength is the "0 damage" part, not the minuet of auto attacking.

Well I disagree. During earlygame spells are stronger than meelee for damage, but in lategame it´s not.

The damage of spells scales so fcking badly that in lategame meelee autoattack is simply better for damage, unless you waste lots of mana with debuffing first.

If you want to have a mage capable of DPS there is no better way than AW; pure mages are only good as support / CC. That doesn´t mean they´re bad, of course; Healing and CC is way more important than tanking and at least as important as dps. Even spells like CoC + fireball (what you mentioned) is only good for freeze + knockdown. I mean, Fireball with 100 spellpower does 120 damage; a good rogue´s backstab easily reaches 130 + 3 damage runes + 20 damage from flaming weapons. Coupled with momentum that means you just don´t NEED spelldamage. Sure, you can nuke a group with a couple of fireball, but in my experiences stunning them all with glyphs and then auto-backstabbing is just more effective and kills them faster.

Even an arcane warrior with haste is more effective with the sword when you want damage; mine reached about 90 damage + runes and buffs with insane attackspeed and high crit chance.

[DKJaigen]

Trigon is correct. Mages, while having excellent aoe and cc, are utterly lacking single target damage. against bosses or yellow mobs the AW are way better then a standard mage.



@old book



You only need 1 mage for buffing or healing. simply spec morrigan or wynne as a spirit healer and your all set.



p.s if you have tanking troubles use bloodwound

[old book]

DKJaigen wrote...

Trigon is correct. Mages, while having excellent aoe and cc, are utterly lacking single target damage. against bosses or yellow mobs the AW are way better then a standard mage.

@old book

You only need 1 mage for buffing or healing. simply spec morrigan or wynne as a spirit healer and your all set.

p.s if you have tanking troubles use bloodwound

Not sure why that one's directed at me, but fair enough. Was it because I suggested that a mage who couldn't hurt a boss was better off switching to healing and CC and letting the rest of the party take the boss down?

Anyway, I agree, more or less. Of course, two or three mages buffing can make for an interesting mix of effects. Flaming Weapons + Telekinetic Weapons + Haste + Whatever. I really prefer teams of 2-3 mages taking turns with CC and keeping the enemy from getting in a shot while those not holding them take them down.

Re:DPS, I'd agree again more or less. For DPS against bosses, an AW switching to Melee is often the best option for a mage. Bosses bounce too many spells, and while you can just cast Storm of the Century and wait with some Boss fights it's pretty dull. More fun to buff, draw your sword, and wade in.

[ckriley]

Tirigon wrote...

relhart wrote...

No one said they couldn't do damage. I just stated they didn't have the damage potential of a pure caster mage, which is true. You can certainly stand there auto attacking and make it work well enough to beat the game (easily), much more efficient to just blow up entire screens full of enemies at one time with aoe spells though. Even on Nightmare a fierball+cone combo will kill an entire group of enemies in about 3 seconds. You CAN walk into the group, taking 0 damage and auto attack them to death in a min or so of course, but an AW's strength is the "0 damage" part, not the minuet of auto attacking.

Well I disagree. During earlygame spells are stronger than meelee for damage, but in lategame it´s not.

The damage of spells scales so fcking badly that in lategame meelee autoattack is simply better for damage, unless you waste lots of mana with debuffing first.

If you want to have a mage capable of DPS there is no better way than AW; pure mages are only good as support / CC. That doesn´t mean they´re bad, of course; Healing and CC is way more important than tanking and at least as important as dps. Even spells like CoC + fireball (what you mentioned) is only good for freeze + knockdown. I mean, Fireball with 100 spellpower does 120 damage; a good rogue´s backstab easily reaches 130 + 3 damage runes + 20 damage from flaming weapons. Coupled with momentum that means you just don´t NEED spelldamage. Sure, you can nuke a group with a couple of fireball, but in my experiences stunning them all with glyphs and then auto-backstabbing is just more effective and kills them faster.

Even an arcane warrior with haste is more effective with the sword when you want damage; mine reached about 90 damage + runes and buffs with insane attackspeed and high crit chance.

Either I'm doing it wrong or you're doing it wrong.  On my pure caster mage, I can burn an entire room of mobs down, including yellow level mobs, in roughly 10 seconds or so.  Alone.  Without anyone else.

A mix of Tempest, Blizzard, and Inferno with a touch of Cone of Cold or Chain Lightning as appropriate, makes the game even on Nightmare retardely easy.  You say pure mages do great AOE and CC, and that AWs or rogues or warriors are capable of higher single target DPS, but to me you just kind of proved my point.

In DAO, all you face are WAVES OF MOBS.  Every single pull or encounter is several mobs rushing at you or nuking all at once.  And they are all CCing like crazy.  Whether it was intentional or just poor game design, or intentionally poorly designed, every single fight in DAO comes down to who gets their CC off first and how fast you can burn down all the mobs at one time before they can nuke you or get their CC off.

In this, the caster mage just owns.

Now, I'm not going to disagree with you about the DPS of warriors.  I said in my OP that the DW warrior was by far the best class and build in the game, and that most of my playthroughs have been on warriors.  Once you start getting all that DLC gear and weapons, DW warriors are just crazy.  But for sheer firepower and getting through the game as quick as possible, caster mages are at the top of the heap.

AWs are just...boring.

[Tirigon]

ckriley wrote...


Either I'm doing it wrong or you're doing it wrong.  On my pure caster mage, I can burn an entire room of mobs down, including yellow level mobs, in roughly 10 seconds or so.  Alone.  Without anyone else.

A mix of Tempest, Blizzard, and Inferno with a touch of Cone of Cold or Chain Lightning as appropriate, makes the game even on Nightmare retardely easy.  You say pure mages do great AOE and CC, and that AWs or rogues or warriors are capable of higher single target DPS, but to me you just kind of proved my point.

In DAO, all you face are WAVES OF MOBS.  Every single pull or encounter is several mobs rushing at you or nuking all at once.  And they are all CCing like crazy.  Whether it was intentional or just poor game design, or intentionally poorly designed, every single fight in DAO comes down to who gets their CC off first and how fast you can burn down all the mobs at one time before they can nuke you or get their CC off.

In this, the caster mage just owns.

Now, I'm not going to disagree with you about the DPS of warriors.  I said in my OP that the DW warrior was by far the best class and build in the game, and that most of my playthroughs have been on warriors.  Once you start getting all that DLC gear and weapons, DW warriors are just crazy.  But for sheer firepower and getting through the game as quick as possible, caster mages are at the top of the heap.

AWs are just...boring.

In theory, I would have to agree with you. In practice, however, my mage is usually dead before getting cast all this. Only exception is when I block a door with glyph of repulsion and / or catch them with blood wound. However, once you have caught them in blood wound or stunned all you can as well kill them one after the other with meelee.

The  repulsion / inferno combo is quite cool, I agree on that, but if the enemy resists the knockback of the glyph it fails spectacularly and personally I have to say that AoE damage of tempest, inferno etc... is not worth it unless you´re on a solo run or play on easy where your party is immune. The fact that your warriors / rogues have to stand back or die from your own spells is just a too big drawback.


On a last note, remember that what really matters is the usefulness against bosses and elite mages. White mobs can be killed by everyone easily - a Caster mage just nukes them, an AW / dualwielder takes close to zero damage and wipes them quickly.

But against most bosses the single target dps is just more important than the AoE damage.

[Gecon]

You have to get all the spells for it to actually make it good.

For example, you need really anything that improves your attack rating. Miasma is like made for the AW (and nobody else) as it does insane aggro.

[ckriley]

Tirigon wrote...

ckriley wrote...


Either I'm doing it wrong or you're doing it wrong.  On my pure caster mage, I can burn an entire room of mobs down, including yellow level mobs, in roughly 10 seconds or so.  Alone.  Without anyone else.

A mix of Tempest, Blizzard, and Inferno with a touch of Cone of Cold or Chain Lightning as appropriate, makes the game even on Nightmare retardely easy.  You say pure mages do great AOE and CC, and that AWs or rogues or warriors are capable of higher single target DPS, but to me you just kind of proved my point.

In DAO, all you face are WAVES OF MOBS.  Every single pull or encounter is several mobs rushing at you or nuking all at once.  And they are all CCing like crazy.  Whether it was intentional or just poor game design, or intentionally poorly designed, every single fight in DAO comes down to who gets their CC off first and how fast you can burn down all the mobs at one time before they can nuke you or get their CC off.

In this, the caster mage just owns.

Now, I'm not going to disagree with you about the DPS of warriors.  I said in my OP that the DW warrior was by far the best class and build in the game, and that most of my playthroughs have been on warriors.  Once you start getting all that DLC gear and weapons, DW warriors are just crazy.  But for sheer firepower and getting through the game as quick as possible, caster mages are at the top of the heap.

AWs are just...boring.

In theory, I would have to agree with you. In practice, however, my mage is usually dead before getting cast all this. Only exception is when I block a door with glyph of repulsion and / or catch them with blood wound. However, once you have caught them in blood wound or stunned all you can as well kill them one after the other with meelee.

The  repulsion / inferno combo is quite cool, I agree on that, but if the enemy resists the knockback of the glyph it fails spectacularly and personally I have to say that AoE damage of tempest, inferno etc... is not worth it unless you´re on a solo run or play on easy where your party is immune. The fact that your warriors / rogues have to stand back or die from your own spells is just a too big drawback.


On a last note, remember that what really matters is the usefulness against bosses and elite mages. White mobs can be killed by everyone easily - a Caster mage just nukes them, an AW / dualwielder takes close to zero damage and wipes them quickly.

But against most bosses the single target dps is just more important than the AoE damage.

Well, like I said, it may be me that's doing it wrong.  I just find primal mages to be very powerful.  With a lot of spellpower, their AOEs do so much damage.  And when coupled with Morrigan, which I always spec as spirit and entropy, we tear through the game.  Throw in Wynne with her healing and glyphs and Nightmare becomes almost trivial.  It's a nasty combination of CC and debuffs (Morrigan), healing and buffs (Wynne), and sheer DPS (primal mage).

Boss fights haven't even been all that challenging either.  One thing I think people forget in video games is one simple principle, the faster you kill stuff, the faster things become less of a problem.  People really forget about this in MMOs, but they also forget about this in single player games, such as this one, which are actually designed to be beaten.

Players get so wrapped up in min/maxing, different builds, stats and rotations, and all that kind of stuff.  They talk about talents and skills, buffs and debuffs and all of that, when really, none of that matters if everything is dead inside of 10 seconds.

Boss fights naturally last longer, but even there, the same rule applies.  In Awakenings for example (which I realize may not be a fair comparison because your character is about level 30 with crazy gear by that time) I was soloing bosses on my DW warrior.  Dead serious. Awakenings really illustrated this in dramatic fasion.  The faster you kill stuff, the faster you move through the game.  What good is an AW that can't be killed if there is nothing around to even attempt to kill it in the first place?

I just find the best answer to any problem is to nuke it from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

[Random70]

ckriley wrote...
...one simple principle, the faster you kill stuff, the faster things become less of a problem. 

...none of that matters if everything is dead inside of 10 seconds.

I just find the best answer to any problem is to nuke it from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

I salute your sagacity.

[Tirigon]

Random70 wrote...

ckriley wrote...
...one simple principle, the faster you kill stuff, the faster things become less of a problem. 

...none of that matters if everything is dead inside of 10 seconds.

I just find the best answer to any problem is to nuke it from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

I salute your sagacity.

You know, I agree with all that. And the fastest way a mage can kill stuff is as arcane warrior.

[Gecon]

I am not aware that Arcane Warrior gives any ability to kill stuff FASTER ... ?

[Elhanan]

Gecon wrote...

I am not aware that Arcane Warrior gives any ability to kill stuff FASTER ... ?

I believe the Combat Magic bonuses increase dmg, and the attack bonsuses could off-set Haste penalties; uncertain of totals.

[Tirigon]

Gecon wrote...

I am not aware that Arcane Warrior gives any ability to kill stuff FASTER ... ?

When Combat Magic is active you get bonusdamage based on magic - to be accurate, magic does what strength would usually do, so with 80 magic your damage equals the damage of a warrior with 80 str. The second passive skills gives another 5 damage. This is the reason why an AW´s meelee damage can easily equal a warrior´s damage, or be even bigger. And haste is helpful for killing stuff too.

There are also big attack bonusses, but I don´t remember the exact number anymore.

Note that, AW is bugged in Vanilla. It uses magic for damage bonusses when it SHOULD use Spellpower. If you use the Combat Tweaks mod, this is fixed, making your damage even higher as spellpower bonusses (like the passive in the mage line or spell wisp / spell might) affect your damage, too.