696 respuestas en este tema

[tonnactus]

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

I do not understand the purpose of this thread. Mages have always been incapable of high survivability devoid of a party, be it a Final Fantasy game, Dragon Age or MMO.

Never played as an arcane warrior then...
After turning morrigan into an arcane warrior she almost never died anymore.Even with just robes on.

[Graunt]

tonnactus wrote...

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

I do not understand the purpose of this thread. Mages have always been incapable of high survivability devoid of a party, be it a Final Fantasy game, Dragon Age or MMO.

Never played as an arcane warrior then...
After turning morrigan into an arcane warrior she almost never died anymore.Even with just robes on.

Fade Shield/Shroud or whatever was bugged as hell too initially.  I'm also not sure why anyone thinks Arcane Warriors were "fun".  They were not.  You basically put the group on hold while you cast everything, and you replaced your Warrior on boss fights since you could tank better than they could.  Another issue is that you always had to stop and put on a staff to use 2/3 of your spells and then re-equip your other weapons to continue on.  You also required Miasma to actually hit anything.

Editado por Graunt, 29 marzo 2011 - 01:27 .

[snackrat]

While I agree mages are nerfed, that's not a good proof, because the classes have JOBS.

Rogues - damage
Warriors - tank or damage
Mages - support

Mages are useless on their own because they have no one to support but themselves. However defeating the Arishok with just my mage was possible, so maybe it's just about skills and tactics. (Personally I love "Horror" in the entropy tree.)

[Roxlimn]

Defeating the Arishok on any difficulty level is dead easy as Mage. It's more boring than anything else. As long as you have the right build, the poor guy is totally incapable of attacking you.

[ezrafetch]

Graunt wrote...

tonnactus wrote...

Bourne Endeavor wrote...

I do not understand the purpose of this thread. Mages have always been incapable of high survivability devoid of a party, be it a Final Fantasy game, Dragon Age or MMO.

Never played as an arcane warrior then...
After turning morrigan into an arcane warrior she almost never died anymore.Even with just robes on.

Fade Shield/Shroud or whatever was bugged as hell too initially.  I'm also not sure why anyone thinks Arcane Warriors were "fun".  They were not.  You basically put the group on hold while you cast everything, and you replaced your Warrior on boss fights since you could tank better than they could.  Another issue is that you always had to stop and put on a staff to use 2/3 of your spells and then re-equip your other weapons to continue on.  You also required Miasma to actually hit anything.

Yeah.  AW was kind of unnecessary, since the good specs were Blood Mage and Spirit Healer anyways.  The only thing AW was useful for was to wear Evon's + Wade's set if you had survivability issues...but even on Nightmare survivability was not an issue.  You could also just dump in the 25-30 points into Strength for it if so inclined, it didn't make a significant difference in Origins.

That being said, I'm blazing through Nightmare, just killed the Mature Dragon at level 10.  I think I encountered a bug, however, because after an instance of Gravitic Ring the Mature Dragon just...stopped doing anything altogether.  I figured "might as well" and just pewpewpew'd it to death (I was doing ok beforehand, so I figured saving time was more worth it ).  I have Aveline and Merrill for maximizing CCCs (Aveline just got Claymore and has up'd Shield Bash, Merrill has up'd Chain Lightning), and it's rather easy.  I can usually eliminate mobs in 30 seconds no problem.

I've been debating on a second tree after Primal.  Spirit or Elemental are the obvious choices to me.  I have yet to pick a second spec (leaning towards Spirit Healer to avoid having to cart around Anders), but I know that's about 5-6 points, which leaves me room for another tree.  Thoughts?

Editado por ezrafetch, 29 marzo 2011 - 04:00 .

[Jman5]

I had to kick Anders out for Fenris to do his companion quest in act 2. Then I suddenly realized that I had never really played without at least 1 mage in my party.

It's hard to appreciate how many options a mage brings to a party until you're knee deep in abominations and don't have one. Sure wave 1 is fine. The Rogues and warriors do their clutch abilities and kill them fast. Then we get into wave 2 or 3 and all you have is your auto attack.

[Graunt]

I've been debating on a second tree after Primal. Spirit or Elemental are the obvious choices to me. I have yet to pick a second spec (leaning towards Spirit Healer to avoid having to cart around Anders), but I know that's about 5-6 points, which leaves me room for another tree. Thoughts?

This was my final build for my 3rd Blood Mage: biowarefans.com/dragon-age-2-talent-builder/#mSihuGrPQwH1cYawVPQhurteElBCv

I ended up saving 3 points for the longest time and then just dumped them into Spirit Bolt/Walking Bomb/Imp Spirit Bolt. I find Pull to be too unwieldly/unecessary most of the time (it has it's uses, just not many) and Maker's Hammer is much better on paper than in practice. It too found it's uses, but more often than not, unless it was against Qunari, Chain Lightning or Hemorrhage were ready again by the time I was actually free to cast more damage abilities.

I'm honestly not sure how anyone would really be able to play without two Mages in a group unless your Hawke is nothing but a buffer/healer.  Your mana pool just won't be large enough to cast all that much if you're running Valiant/Rock Armor/Elemental and also occasionally having to use the Healing Aura.  Your actually group killing speed may be perfectly fine, but I think that would have more to do with having two archers (or Merrill) than you actually contributing much outside of Chain Reaction.

Rumination seems to advocate Elemental/Spirit Healer/Primal:social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/6652644/27#6809574

I doubt I could handle the mana problems running Valiance in place of Anders, nor would I want to have to rely on staff attacks nearly as much.

Editado por Graunt, 29 marzo 2011 - 04:44 .

[PainOfInsanity]

On my 2nd nightmare playthrough, going mage again, well 2nd successful playthrough. My very first try was with mage, but since I didn't read the skills I dropped it for a 2H warrior. Now I'm gonna do it again with a mage.

For some reason I'm having an easier time. The first ogre I had Aveline die when the ogre was around 1/3 hp with no darkspawn alive. None of my playthrough was able to accomplish this, all but 1 died while I would kite the ogre and have it kill the other darkspawns then kite it to death.

I'm not very far, I just picked up merril, but again, I'm finding this playthrough going a lot smoother than my first one with my 2H warrior.

I don't think mages are gimped, they're just different from DA:O.

The thing I find is gimped is your team running infront of your 2h warrior .

[snackrat]

Placing the Force mage gravity ring thing, and then pulling all the enemies in with that move I can never remember the name of into the epicentre helped me deal with endless mobs.

[wowpwnslol]

Teknor wrote...

ebx wrote...

My mages in NWN, NWN2, DA:O were much more impressive than the mages in this game.

Mages trivialized those games. If you are impressed by that then i'm sorry.

DA:O, agreed. NWN/NWN2., not so much. Mages actually became quite weak as you reached epic levels, because spells stopped scaling at level 20 and epic spells were once a day only and mostly crap. Warriors, meanwhile, got amazing super enchanted weapons, overpowered immunity items and in case of NWN2, attack bonus scaling into epic levels. For a game, which was mostly based around combat, mages fell very short when compared to any good dev crit weaponmaster in NWN1 or dual wielder in NWN2 - especially considering the outrageous amount of hitpoints monsters had to keep warriors in check.

The only game where mages were truly god like was in BG2.

/offtopic

[DKJaigen]

wowpwnslol wrote...

Teknor wrote...

ebx wrote...

My mages in NWN, NWN2, DA:O were much more impressive than the mages in this game.

Mages trivialized those games. If you are impressed by that then i'm sorry.

DA:O, agreed. NWN/NWN2., not so much. Mages actually became quite weak as you reached epic levels, because spells stopped scaling at level 20 and epic spells were once a day only and mostly crap. Warriors, meanwhile, got amazing super enchanted weapons, overpowered immunity items and in case of NWN2, attack bonus scaling into epic levels. For a game, which was mostly based around combat, mages fell very short when compared to any good dev crit weaponmaster in NWN1 or dual wielder in NWN2 - especially considering the outrageous amount of hitpoints monsters had to keep warriors in check.

The only game where mages were truly god like was in BG2.

/offtopic

exalted sorcerer build says : YOUR WRONG! The improved mage mod is exactly where i want a mage to be in terms of damage.  their base damage is increased but their ccc decreased.

[wowpwnslol]

DKJaigen wrote...

wowpwnslol wrote...

Teknor wrote...

ebx wrote...

My mages in NWN, NWN2, DA:O were much more impressive than the mages in this game.

Mages trivialized those games. If you are impressed by that then i'm sorry.

DA:O, agreed. NWN/NWN2., not so much. Mages actually became quite weak as you reached epic levels, because spells stopped scaling at level 20 and epic spells were once a day only and mostly crap. Warriors, meanwhile, got amazing super enchanted weapons, overpowered immunity items and in case of NWN2, attack bonus scaling into epic levels. For a game, which was mostly based around combat, mages fell very short when compared to any good dev crit weaponmaster in NWN1 or dual wielder in NWN2 - especially considering the outrageous amount of hitpoints monsters had to keep warriors in check.

The only game where mages were truly god like was in BG2.

/offtopic

exalted sorcerer build says : YOUR WRONG! The improved mage mod is exactly where i want a mage to be in terms of damage.  their base damage is increased but their ccc decreased.

Are you an idiot? How does that build address the fact that spells under DnD rules stop scaling at level 15-20? The exalted sorc build doesn't fix that. It's a lol pvp build, which needs magic immunity items to be absent from the game to work.  PvE-wise put him into high level campaign where every monster has hundreds of HP and try to grind through them with your lame ass 15d6 fireballs, while a weaponmaster will put out 500+ damage per round easy on non crit immunes, exalted sorc is basically a useless tank.

Amusingly enough level 20 exalted sorcerer does exactly the same damage as level 40 exalted sorcerer. The diffierence is a few more spells per day. While monsters' HP and saving throws double and triple.

[mykeme]

I fail to see the problem here. Does this masterpiece of a game prevent the author from playing a game with yet another overly taxing and pointlessly handicapping mental mod? I remember those from the JRPG days when people would make ridiculously oversized abbreviations for the challenges where you would go the entire game without leveling up, using only starting gear, no buffs, healing potions or spells and tackled the final boss with a letter-opener etc. Nice to see the kids still have some free time to burn. If you want a challenge go play chess with your dad. Now that's something to brag about if you win. Be sure to post screenshots and upload a YT video or two otherwise the community won't acknowledge your achievement.

[ezrafetch]

Graunt wrote...

I'm honestly not sure how anyone would really be able to play without two Mages in a group unless your Hawke is nothing but a buffer/healer.  Your mana pool just won't be large enough to cast all that much if you're running Valiant/Rock Armor/Elemental and also occasionally having to use the Healing Aura.  Your actually group killing speed may be perfectly fine, but I think that would have more to do with having two archers (or Merrill) than you actually contributing much outside of Chain Reaction.

Rumination seems to advocate Elemental/Spirit Healer/Primal:social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/305/index/6652644/27#6809574

I doubt I could handle the mana problems running Valiance in place of Anders, nor would I want to have to rely on staff attacks nearly as much.

I'd be running Merrill in addition to myself as my 2nd Mage, and even so far without the second spec I've found it manageable to not have more than a 1pt Heal + 1 Health Potion to get through most fights.  So I'm leaning a bit towards Blood Mage to up the offense, but Merrill will also get that chance (I will probably give her Elemental + 1pt wonders after Primal).  It'll probably be that later in the game I'll need more than a 1pt Heal so Spirit Healer may be worthwhile.

Since using so many sustains really crimps mana, I may just forego anything in the Creation tree outside of the 1pt Heal.  Sure, +Attack and +Defense are helpful, but even if I'm running Merrill it's not worth the mana cramp (plus, CCCs from Stagger don't require +Attack for that).  Force Mage/Spirit Healer probably looks like this.  Simply not enough points, so upgraded Spirit Bolt it is, for the last bit.  Basically take the 6 points out of Blood Mage and put them into various Spirit Healer abilities.  Given that you leave the majority of sustains to party members, I don't think mana is ever an issue since you either have A. Blood Magic or B. Lyrium Potions (if you run out of mana AGAIN before Lyrium Potions come off of cooldown...yikes).  So taking Spirit Healer doesn't really concern me a whole lot.

[ezrafetch]

double post...yikes.

Editado por ezrafetch, 29 marzo 2011 - 06:10 .

[frisbee dewd]

i don't care that you can solo with the other two classes, the mage can heal your party and do good ranged damage as well. here's a fun challenge, play the game without a mage on nightmare and again with a good healer, tell me how much easier it was without the burden of having someone heal you every battle and revive fallen allies.

[tonnactus]

Graunt wrote...

Fade Shield/Shroud or whatever was bugged as hell too initially.  I'm also not sure why anyone thinks Arcane Warriors were "fun".  They were not.  

For me,they were fun.Had only fireball to get aggro.Other spells,like miasma,paralyze,blood wound,the hexes nether did any friendly fire damage.They were versatile tanks and debuffers. Miasma,rally and bard songs make me hit things often enough(and even without,put everything in magic).And with death hex,they also died very fast.(combined with the great amount of damage the arcane warrior just with one sword)

You basically put the group on hold while you cast everything, and you replaced your Warrior on boss fights since you could tank better than they could.

Because warrior tanks just sucked in the first game.Even in their main function.Some bosses had perfect striking,other destroyed alistair with autoattacks(oger). No such thing like stonewall.

  Another issue is that you always had to stop and put on a staff to use 2/3 of your spells and then re-equip your other weapons to continue on.  You also required Miasma to actually hit anything.

Depends on the spells.

[tonnactus]

ezrafetch wrote...



Yeah.  AW was kind of unnecessary, since the good specs were Blood Mage and Spirit Healer anyways.

What???
The best healing spell,regeneration,didnt required spirit healer.With that and the basic heal spell,there was no need for a spirit healer on any difficulty.The only good thing the spirit healer was good for was to save some money for injury kits.

[ezrafetch]

tonnactus wrote...

What???
The best healing spell,regeneration,didnt required spirit healer.With that and the basic heal spell,there was no need for a spirit healer on any difficulty.The only good thing the spirit healer was good for was to save some money for injury kits.

I felt Regeneration was lackluster.  Why wait the duration of the Regeneration for the full benefits when you can just Heal up instantaneously?  And Spirit Healer had good spec boosts (+Mag and +Health Regen vs. +Dex and +Attack...I think there's a clear winner there), Group Heal was beyond excellent.  Also, by choosing Spirit Healer + Group Heal you actually also save a skill point that would have been utterly wasted in Rejuvenation.  Everything past Group Heal is superfluous, really.  If you've got the spare points, sure, but there are better uses of those extra points.  In reality all you need as a pure Mage in Origins was Blood Mage for Blood Wound and an extra pool to cast from, but Spirit Healer worked as complimentary spec better in Origins where you could cast from Health a ton, then turn it off and Heal, thus fueling the cycle all over again with very little time taken.  With the bad Heal cooldowns in DA2 you can't do it much anymore which is a bummer.  And then there's the crappy Fortitude introduction that makes life difficult for those who don't run Force Mage (especially at lower levels).

Editado por ezrafetch, 29 marzo 2011 - 07:26 .

[knownastherat]

Lifeward .. and there were so many 'spare points', at least for my no-HD monitor and taste, that "passives" rocked my boat. Interesting how opinions vary.

So .. still no methodology, just bickering? No community could exist without it

As as side note: Everyone is eager to show how to exploit game mechanics. Fair enough, knowledge and/or skill needed. How about showing some "ownage" without it? Without absurd 100's % nonsensical bonuses for CCC? I really hope there will be CCC^2, where one gets 1000's % bonus to damage for doing a combo regular way, then adding another one on top of it.

/rant

[tonnactus]

ezrafetch wrote...


I felt Regeneration was lackluster.  Why wait the duration of the Regeneration for the full benefits when you can just Heal up instantaneously?

Heal one companion,put regenration on another.The arcane warrior him/herself rarely ever need healing.

  And Spirit Healer had good spec boosts (+Mag and +Health Regen vs. +Dex and +Attack...I think there's a clear winner there),

Must be kidding.That laughable additional healthregeneration was not worth any point( there were armor that give far greater bonuses to that).The same is true for the additional magic.
I also pick specialisations for the abilities,not the bonuses. The arcane warrior get shimmering shield with great elemental resistances,the option to do huge damage with ordinary weapons,25 percent dodge with fade shroud.
What the spirit healer get? Group heal/lifeward,that isnt needed(heal and regeneration are enough),reanimate and the healing aura that saves money on injury kits.Not worth it.

Also, by choosing Spirit Healer + Group Heal you actually also save a skill point that would have been utterly wasted in Rejuvenation. 

Doesnt matter.I have enough points for everything and in the end i even put a point in arcane mastery.

Editado por tonnactus, 29 marzo 2011 - 08:31 .

[Roxlimn]

knownastherat wrote...

Lifeward .. and there were so many 'spare points', at least for my no-HD monitor and taste, that "passives" rocked my boat. Interesting how opinions vary.

So .. still no methodology, just bickering? No community could exist without it

As as side note: Everyone is eager to show how to exploit game mechanics. Fair enough, knowledge and/or skill needed. How about showing some "ownage" without it? Without absurd 100's % nonsensical bonuses for CCC? I really hope there will be CCC^2, where one gets 1000's % bonus to damage for doing a combo regular way, then adding another one on top of it.
/rant

I wouldn't be averse to that if that were only applied to boss enemies.  At the present, the main way to deal with boss enemies is lockdwn + autoattacks.  That's not fun.