G_Admiral_Thrawn:
The question is "What is a mage's job?" In every game except for this one, mages are the almost Jack-of-all-Combat-Trades class. Need a high powered DPS? Sure, a rogue had a 8d6 sneak attack (at level 15), but that only works if the enemy is flanked. They NEED a warrior to take the damage. Whereas a 15 mage can do 15d6 damage with a fireball or Ice Storm to ALL enemies in the area. Need a battlefield controller? Hold Monster and Dominate Monster (among other spells) allow you to disable enemies. Need buffs? Mages can cast Improved Mage Armor (adding up to +6 AC) on the Party, they can Mass Haste, they can do a lot. In this game, Mages RELY on Warriors and rogues. sure, you do 150 damage with that FotM, but it's not as effective if the enemy isn't staggered (900% damage) Cone of Cold and Winter's grasp is less about damage and more about Brittle, making them weak to a Warrior or Rogue's next attack. For all the fear about mages in Thedas, they can't do a damn thing without a warrior to stagger or a rogue to disorient an enemy.
I think that the main point of the OP and various critics of the mage class in DA2 is this right here. In games that they prefer, the mage is NOT the Jack of All Trades, but in fact, Master of All Trades. Why settle for 8d6 to one opponent, situationally, when you can do 15d6 to everything at once?
Mage preeminence and power has traditionally been a problem in game design. 4e in D&D has fixed this. Mages are now more or less balanced, in 4e. This is also true in DA2. Mages are balanced in DA2 - more on par with other classes. Mage Hawke is about as powerful as Fighter Hawke, which is to say, not super-powerful.
In DA2, Mages are more effective when paired with Fighters and Rogues, but the converse is also true. We have AreleX here bearing witness to this fact. His Fighter is only as potent as it is because he has Mage support. It stands to reason that for Mages to be equally powerful, they ought to have Fighter support.
There is nothing special about Fighter specials or Fighter weapons that make them superior. They have equivalent damages in DPS, and their specials have comparable damage as well. It's the cross-class-combos where the money lies. Mages are, in fact, some of the best exploiters and setters of CCCs because they can do so often, at range, and reliably, if designed right.
Rogues have Disorient, but to take Disorienting Criticals requires Specialization, two points in the power, and additional requirement of Obscuring. Mages can reliably set up Brittle at range just with Winter's Blast, and the cooldown on the power is relatively short.
These are Mage powers that Brittle:
Petrify
Winter's Grasp
Cone of Cold
With set up, you can achieve near 100% proc on these powers, even on most bosses, and definitely 100% on Normals. Cooldowns are reasonable. Petrify is long at 45s, but WG is only 20s. Between the three powers, Mages are second only to Fighters in terms of setting up CCCs.
But what Mages truly excel in is in exploiting CCCs. Fully upgraded, Fist of the Maker has a ridiculously low cooldown of 10s - easily enough to spam it every time Fenris procs a Stagger on some enemies. Chain Lightning has a cooldown of 20s - longer, but able to arc to multiple enemies in the middle of a scramble on NM, and the damage is good, and it stuns to boot.
The best combos combo successively, which is what you want as a Mage. The most devastating series I've pulled is this:
Pull of the Abyss (set up)
Deep Freeze (Cone of Cold - enemies Brittle and frozen)
Fenris rushes in with Reaper (Scythe), procs mass Staggers, manually ordered out.
Fist of the Maker (exploit Stagger, nail them to the floor)
Fenris lunges, Whirlwind, mass Stagger again
Chain Reaction
The damage output per target here easily exceeds 4000, well enough to kill any Normal caught in the initial Pull of the Abyss, and it reserves Gravitic Ring and the abilities of the other two party members (in fact most of the party's abilities) for subsequent waves.
As good as AreleX is, his videos do not show such wholesale, quick destruction of a bunch of Normals - this is largely because he is not primary Mage so he's content to proc Stagger one target at a time and to have his Mages exploit with Chain Reaction one target at a time.
When I played as Mage, I considered such extravagance wasteful. Any Chain Lightning that wasn't going to exploit at least two Staggered enemies is not worth casting. Aveline's PS + Shield Bash makes sure you have at least two, but if you have Fenris, too, you should have more.
If Grumpy Old Wizard really does easily achieve 273 damage with Chain Lightning, then I can't see how he's NOT outputting massive damage in every battle. Even with just 4 targets on Stagger, that's over 1600 damage apiece, and unlike a 75,000 damage Assassinate, this actually eliminates multiple Normals. He should be doing something this devastating on every single enemy wave.
No Fighter is going to match that kind of damage output.
Modifié par Roxlimn, 26 mars 2011 - 04:44 .
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