Among these discussions have come some strategies for playing each mage that i thought might be useful for other players going through their first effort at this extraordinary game, as they were extremely helpful for me and I am not even done with my first playthrough yet. Still, I feel extremely confident in my parties abilities after following these strategies.
I will only cover the two mages present in DA:O because they are what I know best, and in the expansions/DLCs which mage you choose is either streamlined (there is only one) or unimportant (you can reinvent them through an item to re-map their abilities to your liking whenever you want).
General: For those who are new the party mage has some rather important criteria to fulfill. The mage needs to heal, deal damage, and either focus on stunning enemies or buffing the party. Healing is an essential job for the mage, without it you will be unable to regain health while stunned, or grabbed, or knocked down, etc. Stuns and the like happen often, the primary warrior (I.E. "Defender") of the group will have one of these status afflictions plagueing him 90% of the time, highlighting the importance of secondary, magical, healing.
Damage is a secondary job for the primary mage. You should have two other characters fully devoted to damage and one other character partially devoted. It is not a horrible thing for a mage to fire off a couple attack spells, spells are often extremely damaging, but the primary mage will likely help you more if you do not focus too heavily on them as they tend to expell mana quickly.
The last criteria is best viewed as an either or. If you are buffing your main warriors defense with spells you will hardly need to stun the enemies on top of that, and if you are stunning enemies they can't attack and so... well you see where i'm going with this. If you are making a mage it is best to pick which direction you want to go and follow it through. Regardless your first level should go toward heal, to cover the healing portion of your job. Then you should cover this portion.
If you are going for the stun-type I suggest picking up forcefield next. Which is, basically, a group stun if you are smart with its effects. Force field will also help your warrior when he's in a pinch. From there hit cone of cold, regeneration, waking nightmare, and mass paralysis and you are set.
If you are going for the buff type mage you are going to be a spirit healer. Or at least you should be a spirit healer. Although buffing your main warrior does wonders for his damage avoidance there are often a lot of enemies who are swarming unchecked. To handle this spirit healer brings a lot of nice emergency spells. Group heal is great if a group becomes uncontrolable and begins attacking other members or debuffs your main warrior. Revival is useful for obvious reasons. Lifeward is nice if your main warrior is grabbed or just as a precaution. The last spell in the line tops it off with a nice continuing stream of healing magic.
As a buffing mage you will want to grab heal, again, then go ahead and get the second spell in the glyph line. Which raises the defense of any allies standing on it. After that I recomend grabbing regeneration then go into the second line of creation and work up to heroic defense. These two defense spells combined with spirit healer spells basically make your main warrior a creature that Kratos would wheep and cower from.
Morrigan: This "swamp witch/heartless shrew/witch-theif/snake/any other name she may have been called by a character" is just pleading to be a stun mage. Grant her wish... after a level or two. Her first level should be dedicated to the heal spell. she already has a few minor stuns so this is the lacking area for her. After heal I recommend grabbing forcefield. As noted above if forcefield is used in a clever manner (Attract all attention with main warrior, then use this when his health gets low) it acts as a saving grace for the warrior and a group stun all at once. Giving you time to heal the main warrior and your teammates time to pick off the crowd.
After level 9 or 10 is achieved and you have heal and forcefield go ahead and grab cone of cold. At this point you should be able to hold down the majority of a group taking minimal damage, using both cone of cold and forcefield if your main warrior's health reaches semi-critical levels. These two spells give you a nice base to hold off for the two levels of investments it takes to reach regeneration.
After regeneration I continue to suggest you grab waking nightmare. From this point you are literally set for anything the game could throw at you. If its a group that cannot be lured to sleep you have cone of cold and forcefield to protect your group, more than enough I assure you. as there is no truly dangerous mass of corpses or spirits to ambush you. The rest of the enemies in the game can all be lured to sleep.
From here you can either continue her focus with mass paralysis or just tink around with all the spells available. Pick whatever you choose without fear of "gimping" your mage. She's already completely capable.
Wynne: Wynne is a buff mage more pure in the art than any could be. She begins overloaded with all the necessary heal spells but initially lacks the buff spells. If you grab her early this will be a non issue (by early I mean level 7 or 8, 9 is pushing it) as the enemies do not deal massive damage and she can heal through it all quit easily. If you grab her later and wish to change it up and go the buff mage rout, i suggest training her two levels (to grab heroic defense and the second glyph spell) before making her your primary. In this time either take morrigan with you or just leave her at camp till she grows. Or, if you'v got the cash, go and buy some spell books to hasten the process.
The first thing to teach wynne out of the gate is heroic defense. It will double the effectiveness of your primary warrior (increasing defense by a wopping 20 points, which would be the same effect if you had spent an extra 20 points on your warriors dextarity as well as increasing all elemental resistances). Then grab the second glyph spell for increasing defense even further.
Now you can relax. Just keep up with the spirit healer spells when you reach their requirement levels and get whatever spells you deem fit. Casting those two defense spells will make your primary warrior some kind of super being; he will catch claws in his teeth while blocking the dagger behind him with his foot, the incomming arrow with his shield, the sword to his right with his gauntlet... or something, to be honest it doesnt matter how exactly the warrior dodges/blocks so many incomming attacks. All that matters is that he does, effectively.
Conclusion: At first glance at the number of spells required to effectively perform these two roles one would think the buffing role is easier. One would be wrong. It is actually harder to go with wynne than it is with morrigan. Locking down enemies completely erases damage delt and makes them vulnerable to attacks. Going with morrigan you will hardly even need to heal in comparison. Playing with a buff primary mage takes a lot of movement of your warrior (if he doesn't have shield tactics you have to keep him from being surrounded) and a lot of paying attention to the mob of enemies, to ensure threat is equally spread and you don't have stragglers running off to attack your other party members.
I'm not saying one way is better than the other, they are both excellent methods that have been proven, you can easily get through the game (and all of its optional battles, including ser cauthrian) with either of the two. But common misconception seems to be that a spirit healer is the way to go. If you are looking for ease of use on your first playthrough, go with morrigan.
FOREWARNING!:
Following these two strategies will give you an incredable party.. with time. comming out of lothering and going straight to orzimmar will be difficult no matter your path. It is important to realize humbly that you do not have a party worthy of greatness just because you have followed my advice through one level and tought morrigan heal. heal will not save you. The effectiveness of the two comes from a combination of healing as well as crowd response, whether the respons be to increase defense or to decrease aggression (buff/stun respectively). If this "guide" has inspired you, keep this in mind. Some areas are more difficult than others.
Modifié par Thailan, 10 février 2011 - 08:26 .
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