26 réponses à ce sujet

[Bi_Winning]

 The type of mage I'm aiming for my Hawke be is an AoE/Healer character. The specializations I'm looking towards is obviously the Spirit Healer and the Force Mage. I chose the Spirit Healer for obvious reasons, but as for the Force Mage, I'm still hesitant on choosing it. I checked out the Blood Mage's abilities and they seem really effective, especially that Hemorrhage ability, but I haven't seen it in action.

- How effective is Hemorrhage?
- How effective is the Blood Mage generally in battle? 

**On a side note, the school that my mage is learning on is Primal (Chain Lightning, Tempest, Petrify, etc). Does that mean Force Mage will be more suited for me than Blood Mage?  

[Bi_Winning]

bump

[Rieverre]

Blood mage can either be effective or suck horribly. It varies. Force Mage generally has better AOE. Or, keeps the enemies controlled so your normal AOE can hit them better/more often. Unshakable is a bit of a must also, and Fist of the Maker, fully upgraded, gives you another Stagger exploit and has a ridiculously small (for a mage anyway) cooldown of 10s.

If you take Spirit Healer, you eliminate one big reason for taking Blood Mage, which is Grave Robber. Generally, Force Mage seems to be worth more.

[termokanden]

Force Mage seems to be the most powerful specialization from what I've seen. Not immediately but when you get Gravitic Ring and Pull of the Abyss. Preferably upgraded too.

Blood Mage depends on your gear. I am currently wearing 6 items that boost blood magic. That means I'm getting 9 mana per 1 health. Furthermore this gear has relatively low willpower requirements. You can get more than that too. But if you're only getting 3 mana per health and still have to boost willpower a lot to wear good gear, I don't think Blood Mage is all that great.

[Clonedzero]

i couldnt imagine not having forcemage, its just awesome.
even if just for the +100 fortitude so you dont constantly get knocked around and interrupted

personally i dont like blood mage at all. it forces you down a very specific playstyle where you have to micromanage your health carefully and gear yourself in a very specific way.

[Rieverre]

Eh. Not really. Not unless you're totally min-maxing.

I play a Force/Blood Mage on hard, and I basically just use that 32 will (well, + item boosts, but that's beside the point) to put out as much damage/CC as I can until the mana pool is dry/all the aggro I'm pulling has my health down. Then switch to Blood Magic, start off with Grave Robber, follow up with Hemorrage (I only grabbed BM, Grave Robber, and Hemo - when you respec with Maker's Sigh you can select and upgrade those three, then just deselect Sacrifice). Cooldowns should be reset by then, and if it's a long fight I pop another Grave Robber, then switch out of Blood Magic and work a bit more conservatively with my mana pool. Repeat as needed.

[Bi_Winning]

Rieverre wrote...

Eh. Not really. Not unless you're totally min-maxing.

I play a Force/Blood Mage on hard, and I basically just use that 32 will (well, + item boosts, but that's beside the point) to put out as much damage/CC as I can until the mana pool is dry/all the aggro I'm pulling has my health down. Then switch to Blood Magic, start off with Grave Robber, follow up with Hemorrage (I only grabbed BM, Grave Robber, and Hemo - when you respec with Maker's Sigh you can select and upgrade those three, then just deselect Sacrifice). Cooldowns should be reset by then, and if it's a long fight I pop another Grave Robber, then switch out of Blood Magic and work a bit more conservatively with my mana pool. Repeat as needed.

When using Grave Robber, is the HP regen unlimited when you absorb it from fallen enemies?

[Rieverre]

It nets you 10% health for every nearby corpse. The upgrade expands that to getting you 10% for every nearby enemy as well. Don't know what you mean by 'unlimited'. Unlike the Spirit Tree passive Death Syphon it isn't a sustained ability, and I think it uses up the corpses. But since the upgrade affects living enemies as well, that's less of an issue (they do need to have blood, though, which the corpses don't. At least I recall Grave Robber working on corpses of undead.)

Generally, whenever I pop it I go from around 1/3 to close to maximum . Also, it deals 10% your maximum health in spirit damage to surrounding enemies. The only thing that could be better would be some fifteen seconds less of a cooldown.

[Atmosfear3]

termokanden wrote...

Force Mage seems to be the most powerful specialization from what I've seen. Not immediately but when you get Gravitic Ring and Pull of the Abyss. Preferably upgraded too.

Blood Mage depends on your gear. I am currently wearing 6 items that boost blood magic. That means I'm getting 9 mana per 1 health. Furthermore this gear has relatively low willpower requirements. You can get more than that too. But if you're only getting 3 mana per health and still have to boost willpower a lot to wear good gear, I don't think Blood Mage is all that great.

The beauty of Force Mage is that excluding Fist of the Maker, all the abilities are good and/or amazing straight out the box. No upgrades necessary. The aoe for gravitic ring and pull of the abyss are huge as is. Personally, I got Maker's Hammer upgrade since Fenris was keeping everything staggered, figured I might as well capitalize!

[termokanden]

I don't get this "no upgrades necessary". No they're not strictly necessary, but from my experience they are very important if you want to get the most out of it. I actually found Pull of the Abyss a bit too small for the average fight. With the upgrade it's just right.

Oh and Fist of the Maker really seems to be all about that one combo. It does knock down enemies but only so briefly that it's not worth the time.

[Rieverre]

Fully upgraded Fist of the Maker has the lowest cooldown on a spell (I think only Spirit Bolt and Mind Blast have 10s other than FoM), it's damage ignores armor, it's AOE, has a small chance to stun, _and_ does 900% damage to staggered enemies. Oh, and one of the fastest casting animations. It's really pretty awesome.

[Derrick1011]

It should be noted that grave robber will eat corpses with loot on them, so be careful who you point it at. You don't want the elite mob with upgrades to your companions or nice armor to go Poof on you for a little extra health.

^ That's pretty much why I gave up on Blood Mage. Force mage spec is better in every capacity, unfortunately.

[Brutus2]

I'm thinking of taking Force Mage & Spirit Healer but I'm wondering about the fact that you have to activate the sustained ability that stops you from using Offensive magic in order to use your healing spells. Is this really annoying or no big deal?

I mainly want to CC & pull then aoe nuke but would still like to be able to revive a fallen party member as needed. Is this reasonable or would it be frustrating turning that healing sustained on & off every time I want to nuke or heal?

[Rieverre]

Derrick1011 wrote...

It should be noted that grave robber will eat corpses with loot on them, so be careful who you point it at. You don't want the elite mob with upgrades to your companions or nice armor to go Poof on you for a little extra health.

^ That's pretty much why I gave up on Blood Mage. Force mage spec is better in every capacity, unfortunately.

Strange, never noticed that happening. The corpse doesn't just get replaced with a loot marker like it would if it disappears due to timeout? Does it also happen with Death Syphon?

[Amioran]

Derrick1011 wrote...

It should be noted that grave robber will eat corpses with loot on them, so be careful who you point it at. You don't want the elite mob with upgrades to your companions or nice armor to go Poof on you for a little extra health.

^ That's pretty much why I gave up on Blood Mage. Force mage spec is better in every capacity, unfortunately.

Apart that I've never see that happen (the corpses fade away but the "treasure" is kept) can you not take both specs? You know, it's not that if you take Force Mage you cannot take Blood Mage...

Actually Force Mage + Blood Mage is the better DPS mage by far. Force Mage to be taken first, later Blood Mage. Force Mage + Spirit Healer is fine, but if you want to go for damage nothing beats Paralyzing Hemorrhage on staggered enemies (actually it's the most powerful combo a mage has, either more than Walking Bomb on an elite, and surely less tricky).

[Graunt]

Bi_Winning wrote...

 The type of mage I'm aiming for my Hawke be is an AoE/Healer character. The specializations I'm looking towards is obviously the Spirit Healer and the Force Mage. I chose the Spirit Healer for obvious reasons, but as for the Force Mage, I'm still hesitant on choosing it. I checked out the Blood Mage's abilities and they seem really effective, especially that Hemorrhage ability, but I haven't seen it in action.

- How effective is Hemorrhage?
- How effective is the Blood Mage generally in battle? 

**On a side note, the school that my mage is learning on is Primal (Chain Lightning, Tempest, Petrify, etc). Does that mean Force Mage will be more suited for me than Blood Mage?  

Hemorrhage is just awesome, and so far it's literally worked on everything in the game except something like a Golem/Profane and an Arcane Horror.  It does however work on "skeletons" and rage demons (who seem like fire elementals) but whatever, I'm not complaining.  It does require something to be staggered to be truly worth it though.

If you're for sure going to be a Spirit Healer, Blood is probably the best secondary for you...they just play nice together, and you can literally keep healing forever and never run out of mana, and the +100 health regen never hurt either.  The only really great things in Force are Unshakeable and Gravitic Ring.  Gravitic pretty much makes the tree, and the other abilities aren't "useless" by any means, but they are just completely eclipsed.  It also depends on what difficulty you're playing on.  If you do pick Blood though, you'll definitely want to go for +health gear over +mana as much as possible as well as the blood : mana items.  Right now on my Mage I have 377 health and get 7 mana per 1 health -- my heals are free to myself, so I never run out of "mana".

If you're playing below Nightmare, Gravitic is pretty much "cheating" since you can keep super elites and everything except an end act boss or high dragon rooted (regular dragons get rooted) for 20 seconds and they are not able to do anything but instant abilities, and even those end up getting slowed -- while your melee happily beat them to death.

If you take Spirit Healer, you eliminate one big reason for taking
Blood Mage, which is Grave Robber. Generally, Force Mage seems to be
worth more.

Grave Robber is NOT why Blood is any good.  Blood is so good because it makes your character way more durable than they would have been otherwise, and they literally have infinite mana.  Fist of the Maker is decent on it's own, but you really need to dump three points into it before it actually gets "really good", and if you play on Nightmare, you have a really hard time landing it on top of more than 1-2 enemies at once without hitting Aveline/Fenris.  Chain Lightning and Hemorrhage do much more consistent stagger damage too, but Fist isn't bad either -- it's just hard to hit as many enemies.  If you don't play on Nightmare, then I wouldn't see any reason NOT to get it upgraded and go to town with it though.

Modifié par Graunt, 21 mars 2011 - 12:27 .

[KallDay]

Bi_Winning wrote...

 The type of mage I'm aiming for my Hawke be is an AoE/Healer character. The specializations I'm looking towards is obviously the Spirit Healer and the Force Mage. I chose the Spirit Healer for obvious reasons, but as for the Force Mage, I'm still hesitant on choosing it. I checked out the Blood Mage's abilities and they seem really effective, especially that Hemorrhage ability, but I haven't seen it in action.

- How effective is Hemorrhage?
- How effective is the Blood Mage generally in battle? 

**On a side note, the school that my mage is learning on is Primal (Chain Lightning, Tempest, Petrify, etc). Does that mean Force Mage will be more suited for me than Blood Mage?  

Blood Mage is very effective. Sacrifice has been for me a more reliable method of self-healing than Graverobber ever was. I also suggest dropping Willpower altogether and stacking Strength/Con. This lets you wear up to par tank armor, which is important since keeping your armor levelled is necessary for keeping the Armor percentage up. Tank armor also tends to have +HP, which is the most important buff aside from +Blood Magic. Further, high Strength, armor percentage, and the vast health pool make Force Mage's Unshakeable redundant for anti-knockback purposes, which is great, cause Spirit Healer is the most synergistic second spec for Blood Mages, imo. It's actually pretty easy to spot rez and party heal by toggling Healing Aura.

Edit: Primal is a great tree for Nightmare, but around Act 3 I started to feel underwhelmed by it. Imp. Chain Lightning was the only real damage I could get out of it, Petrify has a long cooldown, and by that time I had more effective CC elsewhere. I eventually bit the bullet and dropped Primal except for Rock Armor and Imp. Chain Lightning, teching into Cone of Cold instead.

Modifié par KallDay, 21 mars 2011 - 01:20 .

[Graunt]

KallDay wrote...

Blood Mage is very effective. Sacrifice has been for me a more reliable method of self-healing than Graverobber ever was. I also suggest dropping Willpower altogether and stacking Strength/Con. This lets you wear up to par tank armor, which is important since keeping your armor levelled is necessary for keeping the Armor percentage up. Tank armor also tends to have +HP, which is the most important buff aside from +Blood Magic. Further, high Strength, armor percentage, and the vast health pool make Force Mage's Unshakeable redundant for anti-knockback purposes, which is great, cause Spirit Healer is the most synergistic second spec for Blood Mages, imo. It's actually pretty easy to spot rez and party heal by toggling Healing Aura.

Edit: Primal is a great tree for Nightmare, but around Act 3 I started to feel underwhelmed by it. Imp. Chain Lightning was the only real damage I could get out of it, Petrify has a long cooldown, and by that time I had more effective CC elsewhere. I eventually bit the bullet and dropped Primal except for Rock Armor and Imp. Chain Lightning, teching into Cone of Cold instead.

I need to see a collection of plate gear that actually gives you back more than you invested compared to Mage gear.  My Mage has 377 health and 78% damage reduction (80% is the cap) by just wearing cloth.  If you are not taking Force (which he can't if he's considering Blood and is already doing Spirit), the strength may actually be an adequate replacement for Unshakeable -- although I would still need to see a set that gives back 115 health and also has a lot of mana/health regen.  On top of that, there's no plate that has blood to mana conversions nor any plate that gives you a bigger boost to healing.

Also, Improved Stone Fist on a disoriented enemy actually does pretty good damage.  It does decent damage by itself and is pretty awesome against Mages/Rogues.  The only other single target spell that really beats it for damage:mana and cooldown is the upgraded Spirit Bolt.

Modifié par Graunt, 21 mars 2011 - 01:32 .

[KallDay]

Graunt wrote...

I need to see a collection of plate gear that actually gives you back more than you invested compared to Mage gear.  My Mage has 377 health and 78% damage reduction (80% is the cap) by just wearing cloth.

My BM is in an awkward itemization position right now: she's outlevelled her plate armor, and I'm having trouble finding really good replacement pieces (just getting into Act 3 in a big way, level 21). Back in Act 2, when my gear was closer to appropriate item level, I was pushing armor cap with Rock Armor up. Now I'm at 45%. The only really decent piece I have is Monolith's Heart, with +34 Health and +5 Health regen rate, and it's getting anitquated. The one really nice piece of armor for sale in Hightown... I had the stat requirements... but it added Warrior only as a condition! And here I thought that kind of thing had been done away with. Basically, I need to do more Act 3 shopping before I can give you a decent plate loadout.

That said, the important thing is that Willpower is a total stat dump for Blood Mage. This was really hit home for me when I saw that cloth basically comes in increasing flavors of +Mana and +random elemental damage. Mana and mana regen are superfluous. No cloth I saw had significant +HP, and frankly I can get to 18% Blood Magic mana cost through accessories and a +Blood Magic staff. The other benefit of Strength stacking, as I mentioned, is that it provides more than enough Fortitude to make Unshakeable superfluous, which allows guilt free speccing into Spirit Healer.

[Graunt]

If you have the money for it, nothing can really replace the Emporium cloth chest.  Not only does it essentially give you a free upgrade to your heal (meaning you don't need to bother with the 80% version), it also helps with the other primary elements.  The only thing that's really missing is spirit and physical, but I don't use spirit that much anyway, and Chain Lightning/Tempest are my most used spells.

I have no idea what spells we have that are considered "Nature" though.  Entropy isn't listed as Nature, and none of the Primal spells are either -- even though one would think lightning is...

Modifié par Graunt, 21 mars 2011 - 06:33 .

[Jman5]

I have no idea what spells we have that are considered "Nature" though. Entropy isn't listed as Nature, and none of the Primal spells are either -- even though one would think lightning is...

As far as I can tell, Merrill has the only two nature spells in the game. It makes me wonder why they even bothered adding it as a damage type. It was really frustrating playing as a mage because I kept running into amazing items with +X% to nature damage.

[Arkalezth]

Graunt wrote...

I have no idea what spells we have that are considered "Nature" though.  Entropy isn't listed as Nature, and none of the Primal spells are either -- even though one would think lightning is...

Lightning sounds more like electricity to me. If it was nature, fire and cold should be nature too.

What about Stonefist? Wasn't it nature in Origins?

[rabidhellhound]

Graunt wrote...

My Mage has 377 health and 78% damage reduction (80% is the cap) by just wearing cloth.  If you are not taking Force (which he can't if he's considering Blood and is already doing Spirit), the strength may actually be an adequate replacement for Unshakeable -- although I would still need to see a set that gives back 115 health and also has a lot of mana/health regen.  On top of that, there's no plate that has blood to mana conversions nor any plate that gives you a bigger boost to healing.

Also, Improved Stone Fist on a disoriented enemy actually does pretty good damage.  It does decent damage by itself and is pretty awesome against Mages/Rogues.  The only other single target spell that really beats it for damage:mana and cooldown is the upgraded Spirit Bolt.

How did you actually manage this?  What are your stats, what are your abilities, how did you level up, and what gear did you use in each act?  I've concidered BM, but since I *HAVE* to have willpower for my armor stat (which takes away from adding CON, like I would for Merril) I never thought that BM would really be that effective.  The health to mana convertion items seem good, but most of them don't appear until Act 2 and Act 3, making BM good for only a secondary specializaton... if that.  Compared to Merrill, who can have all willpower into CON, having the main character as a blood mage just seems like you will be playing a gimped version of something that should have been good.

[SlamminHams]

Jman5 wrote...

I have no idea what spells we have that are considered "Nature" though. Entropy isn't listed as Nature, and none of the Primal spells are either -- even though one would think lightning is...

As far as I can tell, Merrill has the only two nature spells in the game. It makes me wonder why they even bothered adding it as a damage type. It was really frustrating playing as a mage because I kept running into amazing items with +X% to nature damage.

This.  I'm almost positive there aren't any Nature staffs either.

[Arkalezth]

There are a couple nature staves, Merrill comes with one I believe, and at least another one can be found. I still haven't found a powerful one, though.