137 réponses à ce sujet

[XOGHunter246]

In DAO everyone was saying they was overpowered now in this game they underpowered guess can't please everyone. I find Merill to be a beast with Cross class combos that just me though, I will try a mage after my warrior.

[Zan Mura]

7he0ch0 wrote...

Well with my spirit/entropy/force mage i was able to do over 30k worth of aoe damage heres the scenario.

Highest damage ive done was with a combo with anders, varric, and myself and first thing i did was pull the abyss a group of 5 and then cast gravatic ring, then anders uses winters blast to brittle one of them while varric disoriented the other 4 then i used maxed out bomb on the brittle enemy and then proceeded to basically one shot kill them with varric using archers lance on the brittle guy and doing 9875 damage with the lance taking out 2 other guys behind him for 790 damage and the 4 other disoriented guys with maxed out bomb damage of 4765 on all of them and thats including the main guy that it was on as well. so thats around 35280 damage total.

Mages are not underpowered by all means you just need to be smart and tactical on how to combo with them

This however is the problem. By your own admission, your mage did not do this. It required special circumstances by arranging the mobs to one place, multiple different spells and abilities, and three party members to accomplish this.

The numbers look nice, but when he fact is that you can take a single Fenris and have him Cleave his way through 30 trash mobs and lieuts and kill them all with 20k+ damage total within 5 seconds, then the 3-person multiple spell tactic starts to seem a whole lot too encumbersome by comparison. It's just easier, faster, and leaves the rest of your party to do whatever they please.

There's another example for singletarget damage. A 2h or a tank can cause STAGGER effect as desired. A mage can exploit that with a nice little Chain Lightning and fry up a few of your teammates while at it, but a Pinpoint Strike + Vendetta rogue can cause a single 10k crit in an *instant*, then proceed with the crit guarantee from Pinpoint and gather a little combo ending in another STAGGER + Explosive Strike, producing a nice combined mount of damage in the range of "anything less than a boss is dead". Sure, a mage can add to that by setting Petrify for the BRITTLE which the rogue can then exploit through Ambush for another nice 10k+ crit. But even in that case, it's the rogue doing the work. And as said, BRITTLE isn't reliable.

The point I'm trying to make here is that it doesn't matter if mages can be specced for damage, when it requires far more effort, resources and time than it would for any other class. A 2h can single-handedly destroy a screen full of mobs with as little as activating cleave and diving in. Can a mage do it faster or more safely? A rogue can with the slighest aid of a single Shield Bash, Pommel Strike or any BRITTLE ability solo down anything less than a harder than average boss in mere seconds. Can mages exceed that were the roles reversed, in the same time and with the same amount of effort?

If there's a way for mages to exceed the sum total of AoE speed, damage, independence and ease of use of a 2h... or the same in sum total single target DPS of a rogue, then colour me curious and extremely interested, and willing to learn should someone tell me how. If not, then they will always be secondary to those two. And as such, the best mages could hope for is backup AoE, backup damage, or just utility and heal. As said, their role in those things is essential, but in the end it always comes down to using the best tools for the right job.

[Malanek]

Zan Mura wrote...
There's another example for singletarget damage. A 2h or a tank can cause STAGGER effect as desired. A mage can exploit that with a nice little Chain Lightning and fry up a few of your teammates while at it, but a Pinpoint Strike + Vendetta rogue can cause a single 10k crit in an *instant*, then proceed with the crit guarantee from Pinpoint and gather a little combo ending in another STAGGER + Explosive Strike, producing a nice combined mount of damage in the range of "anything less than a boss is dead". Sure, a mage can add to that by setting Petrify for the BRITTLE which the rogue can then exploit through Ambush for another nice 10k+ crit. But even in that case, it's the rogue doing the work. And as said, BRITTLE isn't reliable.

Although I don't really disagree with the main thrust of your argument there are several individual points I strongly disagree with.

Firstly Chain Lightning does not cause friendly fire does it?  And it doesn't really matter who sets it up and who finishes it off, they are both doing the work. If you want to Anihilate something brittle, you NEED a mage. And I repeat Brittle is 100% realiable on 2 spells.

[SuicidalBaby]

Pull of the Abyss
Grav or Sleep upgraded (Sleep casts much faster)
Walking Bomb
Wintersgrasp or Spirit Strike (I would prefer SS over WG because you are filling the Spirit Tree and have more bonus capable items that work with both bomb and strike but if the pile is perfect WG will hit everyone.)

Thats 4 seconds if you use sleep, about 6 with grav but you get the perm lock down effect.

Considering our abilites are mainly seperated and dont stack on to single moves or sustain the passive tract of warriors I'd say thats fairly reasonable.

Modifié par SuicidialBaby, 17 mars 2011 - 10:34 .

[Rhys1984]

Mages are great, theyre designed for control, not damage. that said, if you control the battlefield for your weapon using club monkeys, you are increasing the parties overall damage. Force mage powers are great. primal tree and frost powers are great for triggering brittle. and lightning and force powers are great to take advantage of staggering and other effects, i think its more along the lines of people from dao liking to just spam and pew pew and everything explodes. but now you have to be say...more tactical.

[Rhys1984]

petrify and wintersgrasp are your bread and butter for petrify, unless you delve into the crappy fire spells to get to elemental mastery, to get a 100% brittle cone of cold.

[Malanek]

Rhys1984 wrote...

petrify and wintersgrasp are your bread and butter for petrify, unless you delve into the crappy fire spells to get to elemental mastery, to get a 100% brittle cone of cold.

Cone of Cold is never 100% brittle according to the info I am looking at. You need elemental mastery to make winters blast 100%.

[wowpwnslol]

Mages are almost perfect. The only complaint I have is knockback/stun/knockdown until you get unshakeable. If that was baseline or at least could be acquired earlier, mages would be 100% balanced.

People are trying to compare mages to 2H warriors, which isn't fair. That class is broken right now.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

If there's a way for mages to exceed the sum total of AoE speed, damage,
independence and ease of use of a 2h... or the same in sum total single
target DPS of a rogue, then colour me curious and extremely interested,
and willing to learn should someone tell me how. If not, then they will
always be secondary to those two.

Yeah, somebody got carried away with the nerfstick.

[Altima Darkspells]

wowpwnslol wrote...

People are trying to compare mages to 2H warriors, which isn't fair. That class is broken right now.

Are rogues broken too?  Because they can pretty much kill anything they like at any time they like, when built properly.

Problem is, an optimally built mage is not so different from one where a person just randomly selects talents.  Warriors and Rogues, however, turn into Scrambles the Death Dealer when properly built.  Mages really have nothing that they can exploit to compensate.

[Palathas]

I find that a Pull of the Abyss, Gravitic Ring, Firestorm and finally Tempest can wipe out a lot of bad guys. Although Pull of the Abyss seems to bet getting resisted a lot of late. Then spells like Crushing Prison, Stone Fist and Winter's Grasp are good against single bosses. Except maybe the really tough ones like the High Dragon and Varterrals. But Gravitic Ring is good for those, well until they jump away or fly off.

[Zan Mura]

Malanek999 wrote...

Firstly Chain Lightning does not cause friendly fire does it?  And it doesn't really matter who sets it up and who finishes it off, they are both doing the work. If you want to Anihilate something brittle, you NEED a mage. And I repeat Brittle is 100% realiable on 2 spells.

The Winter's Grasp Brittle works on "Normal" enemies. Though granted I haven't exactly tested it extensively. And I already admitted to the fact that as utility and support, mages are very important. There is something fundamentally different however between a class that uses various talents and a lot of gameplay to produce tens of thousands of damage, and a class that simply casts one ability that makes that damage possible. From a GM's standpoint, 2h warriors, tanks, and rogues all have their 15 minutes of fame moments all over the game. Mages however do not, unless built in a way that will simply be sub par compared to the other classes anyway.

But you're right about Chain Lightning FF. I was sure I'd tested it on my first playthrough, I picked it up on my new mage run and it really doesn't seem to cause FF. While I love the ability descriptions compared to DAO where you had no idea which ability did what... I'd really love some consistency here too. Like *clearly* wording out whether the ability causes friendly fire or not. As it is, most abilities speak of damaging "enemies" when in reality they also affect allies.

[iLogic]

Everyone is aware that every 2h warrior ability knocks down or knocks back in an AOE? That's CC with a purpose. Not a 3-4 seconds single target paralyze.

[wowpwnslol]

Altima Darkspells wrote...

wowpwnslol wrote...

People are trying to compare mages to 2H warriors, which isn't fair. That class is broken right now.

Are rogues broken too?  Because they can pretty much kill anything they like at any time they like, when built properly.

Problem is, an optimally built mage is not so different from one where a person just randomly selects talents.  Warriors and Rogues, however, turn into Scrambles the Death Dealer when properly built.  Mages really have nothing that they can exploit to compensate.

Difference is, rogues have weaknesses. Weak armor, low HP pool, low fort (this is huge).

Warrior can output huge damage and have 3 times the survivability than the other 2 classes. They are the closest thing to having no weaknesses.

[Naitaka]

2-handed warriors aren't what's broken. Warrior's specialization trees are what're broken. Game is very imbalance in this respect. Warrior specs are ridiculous, Rogue's spec are good and pretty balanced, Mage spec...well...pretty much sucks, in comparison. Mages are religated to a much more support role than they were in DA:O.

[Naitaka]

Malanek999 wrote...

Rhys1984 wrote...

petrify and wintersgrasp are your bread and butter for petrify, unless you delve into the crappy fire spells to get to elemental mastery, to get a 100% brittle cone of cold.

Cone of Cold is never 100% brittle according to the info I am looking at. You need elemental mastery to make winters blast 100%.

Correct, 100% BRITTLE when frozen is only 100% when you can freeze normal enemies 100% of the time. So Cone of Cold only has a 60% chance of BRITTLE with elemental mastery, against normal enemies.

[Crocodiles]

Mages remind me very much of the adept class in mass effect 2, great for setting up combos and cc, but alone they can't stand up in a firefight

[FedericoV]

Gage123 wrote...

 So just a quick information to those who have played mages and other classes: Do you think that mages are underpowered this time around in terms of their damage compared to warriors and rogues?

Numbers and stats would be helpful.

I have no stats but while I really don't understand that issue in a single player game based on managing a party, I really think that DA2 has reached a better balance between the 3 classes and that Mages while nerfed in comparison with DA:O are not underpowered. And I play a mage in DA2 while I've played a warrior in DA:O.

Every class has a role and the mage shine in the ranged AOE and controll aspect of the game. But I manage to mage some nice damage with the staff too on regular attack.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

FedericoV wrote...

I have no stats but while I really don't understand that issue in a single player game based on managing a party, I really think that DA2 has reached a better balance between the 3 classes and that Mages while nerfed in comparison with DA:O are not underpowered. And I play a mage in DA2 while I've played a warrior in DA:O.

Show me some videos of a mage dominating Nightmare like warriors do.
Sword and Board
Two-handed Beserker

[Stammwuerze]

 I will try an elemental/spirit/force build. Depends if Pull of the Abyss continues to underwhelm me or not.
Basic idea is a tank with high fire resistance and a upgraded stonewall.

Pull enemies to a bunch, throw in walking bomb, and focus the bomb.
While Primal has nice +% against staggered targets, I found it unreliable and often wasted.

Spirit provides you with crushing prison and walking bomb, both very sexy.
Elemental simply for nuking and pushing the damage output of your staff.

25% more staff damage is very very useful. I although don't know if the elementary mastery
is contributing to it too.
With this build, you want to bring a second mage for support/debuff.
I would suggest primal+entrophy+something.

To answer the OP question: yes. Warriors and rogues are incredible. Warriors are superior in AoE and
rogues in single target damage. 
And this is a "hit hard, ask no questions" game, which is great, and not a "I wanna play with ponies over there" one.

So either be fine to play a supporter and let your party do the heavy lifting or be prepared to be underwhelmed.

Modifié par Stammwuerze, 18 mars 2011 - 11:31 .

[Tomark]

Mages are very very good at quick crowd control (especially with force specialization) and AoE ranged damage.

As long as you know what you are doing, even in nightmare you can use walking bombs on disoriented enemies (thanks to your saboteur varric) and pretty much walk over any enemies.

They are also the only ones who have FF friendly AoE, some of those being CCC.

Modifié par Tomark, 18 mars 2011 - 11:56 .

[Wompoo]

Unimpressed by the force mage specialisation, never ever enjoyed Blood mage, that leaves me with what, a support specialisation. The trees are a little bland, but Force specialisation really is far to weak to warrent to many points being spent on it. Merrill as a CC specialist allows for some very fast fights, however I am not a fan of mini maxing. A mage in DA2 is not as much fun as DA:O. Finished as a support mage, yes high survivability, but I do not like playing MMO based support in a single player game.

[termokanden]

Force Mage is weak when you only have a few points, but it becomes incredibly overpowered once you get Gravitic Ring. Pull of the Abyss doesn't make a lot of sense unless you have the Ring spell either I think, because they can just run right back.

Fist of the Maker is all about the combo with staggered enemies. Not particularly worth casting without it but deadly in that combo.

[Lucazius]

Well... I lovED playing as mage... on hard...

My first playtrhough was on hard difficult. It was very enteraining to unleash all your AoE spells and deal with legions of enemies quickly.

Assassins were an annoyance, but nothing that couldn't be managed.

Used a Force/Pimal/Elemental build and I felt like a true mage.

*****

Now, on my second playthroug I decided to finish the game on Nightmare... And playing a mage on this difficult is TOTALLY BULL****!

Everytime I face mobs with double immunities like dragons immune to Fire/Nature, Qunari immune to Primal/Fire etc... So its very common for me to have to pause the game and change my current staff to a crappy one and be obligated to Auto-attack an enemy from 100% to 0%.

Assassins... well, no matter what party your bring they preety much forced me to reload the game countless times. In the end I was able to predict their movements and use mind-blast to bring them out of stealth (like 50% of the times) and avoid them one-shot my whole party. The times I couldn't do that I fatally had to reload.

Your AoE spells are gimped. The damage is too weak compared to monsters health pools and the only way to do some kills is using CCCs (chain lightning), so your mage is a 20 secs wonder. Sure, everytime you use Chain Lightning you get very satisfied... but that is preety much the only thing you can do... and, have I said there are some monster immune to Pimal spells (hello Qunari!) ?

So, basically as Mage I realized the best way to play on NM was to focus on single-target killer spells, like Crushing Prison and Horror to make quick work of enemies like Assassins and Mages (yes, npc mages are 10x stronger than your mage). However, playing like that you lose the most fun aspect of the mage: AoEs.

One point to consider is: Warriors are tough and do excellent damage, Rogues are squishy (well, not exactly) but compensate that with even more damage. And mages? Both squishy and underpowered. You can say mage is about CCCs, but, have you ever saw the numbers of a rogue CCC?

********

TL'DR: Due to all the micro managing involved and the unfairness you'll face through the game (assassins, immunities etc), playing a Mage on Nightmare is a very tiresome and frustrating experience.

After all, I tried a Rogue on NM, and, LOL... I kept cheching the game diffficult to see if was the right one. Almost a walk in the park...

Rogues > 2H Warriors >>>>>>>>>> Mages.

Modifié par Lucazius, 18 mars 2011 - 05:06 .