6 réponses à ce sujet

[SlamminHams]

The Introduction
Mages, as we know, lack the kind of oomph that Warriors and Rogues do, which is attributable to several sources, specifically awkward tree design, lack of auto-attack options, short sticked in CCC set ups, and extremely long CDs on somes abilities.  I'm not trying to argue that Mages aren't fun, or that Mages aren't good.  They're great, but mainly as support and/or control.  I feel that reshuffling and slightly tweaking some Mage abilities will greatly improve the quality of life for DPS Mages and bring them up to the level of Support/Control Mages, and ultimately up the fun value of the entire class.

The Problem(s)

• Mastery Problems - While all (Mage) trees are decent, a few suffer from aggravating layouts that prohibit players.  I believe the three "Mastery" talents are the root problem, from the Elemental, Primal, and Spirit tree.  For the Elemental and Primal tree, it requires not only four prerequisite abilities but an addtional three points spent in the tree for the staggering total of seven points spent.  No other tree has a requirement that high, and only two others cap at 6 (Punishing Lance in Achery and Faith in Spirit Healer).
• Odd Ability Upgrades - Rogues and Warriors have a combined 10 Ability Upgrades that reduce the cooldown of damaging Abilities.  Mages, on the other hand, only have two, with one of them only available to Hawke (on Fist of the Maker no less).  Similarly, the two upgrades for Winter's Grasp and Cone of Cold are so half assed in terms of effectiveness, and when paired with Elemental Mastery, part of the upgrade effect becomes useless.  Another issue here is that some abilities take two upgrades to be fully upgraded (two spells actually need three upgrades to be completely effective).
• Lack of Brittle Applicators - Mages have the least amount of setups for CCCs in addition to having to spend the most points to be able to setup CCCs.  Furthermore, two of the abilities have long cooldowns and two of them are single target.
• Auto-Attacking Woes - Mages get jipped in a couple of areas here.  Itemization is generally either Magic oriented, featuring +Mana or +Mana Regen or +% to a school of magic or Physical oriented, giving +% Physical Damage or +Attack or +Attack Speed%.  I can probably count the amount of items in game that sport both casting benefits on top of +Attack on one hand.  Also, Mages have zero selfish talents that influence AA damage through some capacity, like Lacerate, anything from the Specialist tree, Cleave, Destroyer, etc.

The Solution(s)

Mastery Problems - I believe the solution here is a simple reshuffling of the Elemental, Primal, and Spirit trees.

Elemental's Solution:
We move Elemental Mastery sooner into the tree, swapping the prerequisites from Firestorm to Fireball and Cone of Cold to Winter's Grasp, and reducing the point requirement from 7 to 4.  The bonuses are the same except the Mana Regeneration is reduced to +5.  Pyromancer is moved deeper into the tree and changes it's prereq to Firestorm.  It retains it's no point investment requirement.  The ability is renamed to Controlling Flames and reduces the Friendly Fire caused by Fire damage by X% (whatever is sufficient to not cause serious harm in NM) in addition to increasing Fire damage by 25%.

Primal's Solution:

The tree's layout remains the same, but the Petrify prereq for Galvanism is dropped and the point investment is reduced to 4.  The bonuses to Rock Armor, Stonefist, and Petrify are made baseline, distributed proportionally to the base spell and the upgrades.  The +10 Mana Regen is dropped, however it is replaced with a new effect, "Reduce the cooldown of Tempest and Chain Lightning by 25%."

Spirit's Solution:

Death Syphon and Spirit Mastery change positions, with the Mastery becoming a prereq for Walking Bomb instead of the other way around.  To accomodate Death Syphon new cost, it becomes basically a clone of Wrath of the Elvhen.  The Mana Regen is dropped and replaced with a new effect, "Enemies that attack you while Death Syphon is active have an X% chance to become Brittle and are slowed by X%."

Odd Ability Upgrades - Pretty simple fixes here.

• Winter's Blast and Deep Freeze get a -5s and -10s cooldown reduction, respectively.
• Searing Fireball gains a 25% chance to make Brittle in addition to it's current effects.
• Apocalytic Firestorm has the damage bonus rolled into the base spell, it now reduces movement speed by 50% and increases force by +2x.  It retains the +5m increase.
• Corrosive Walking Bomb becomes Corroded Walking Bomb and the effect changes to a 100% chance to make the target of Walking Bomb Brittle.  This would seemingly synergize well with the what the spell is intended to work.

Auto-Attacking Woes - Elemental Weapons in the Arcane tree gets a rework.  It becomes Arcane Weapon, which is a sustained that only effects the Mage.  While it's active, your attack speed increases by 5% for 10s whenever you cast a spell and this effective is additive (like Adrenaline for Berserkers).  In addition, it also doubles the contribution of Attack from your Magic stat.  

It would have an upgrade that added the effect of the current Elemental Weapon ability.

Conclusion:
I'm done fairycrafting.  You can ridicule me now.  I'mma go get some coffee.

Modifié par SlamminHams, 20 mars 2011 - 12:13 .

[SlamminHams]

[quote]m14567 wrote...

but I really don't prioritize for the mastery talents so where they end up is kinda of irrelevant.[/quote]

I think that is a big problem though.  As they are now, they severly limit your breadth of choices.  If you opt to go for them, you have very little customization.  If you don't go for them, you're out damage and bonus effects you could gain from them.

It's sorta a lose-lose for Mages in regards to the Mastery talents currently.

[quote]I'd rather spirit bolt remain the only prereq for walking bomb[/quote]

The Spirit suggestions were mostly rushed and due to lack of experience with the tree.

[/quote]Also warriors and rogues seem to get stamina back for more readily, as a mage I'm forced to chug lyrium potions or depend on a warrior for rally/unite. I realise the mastery talents give +10 regen, but my understanding is that is like .25% rate increase.[/quote]

I'm actually surprised they didn't give Mages are Martyr talent or something like Bolster for Warriors (which is super awesome and broken).  The +10 Regen on the Masteries just felt like gimmicks that really didn't do a whole lot in actuality.

[Rieverre]

I don't know, I actually found the 5m increase of Apocalyptic Firestorm to be detrimental. You seem to get less focus to your damage than you do otherwise, even if it splashes over a wider area.

And Brittle for Fireball seems a bit counter-intuitive, and does nothing to fix the fact that Fireball, upgraded or not, is a joke and a dump point. Its damage is bad, its physical force is 'meh', and the upgrade present right now does nothing to fix the former and almost nothing for the latter. As it stands, it's something to do when everything else is on cooldown, and with enough spells you don't even use it then. I don't think I used this more than ten times in the course of my game (on act 3 until the attack speed and resistance bugs are gone).

I'm honestly not sure whether your suggestion regarding the Elemental Weapons switch would do anything for the autoattack - for 10s, stacking, sounds like a lot until you think about the spell casting times for the mage. Unless this got reapplied with every staff autoattack, sort of like a rogue's Chain passive does to their criticals, I don't think it would actually do anything. And let's face it, a +50% damage increase for autoattacks wouldn't be anywhere near game-breaking. Maybe it would finally let mages beat the damage output of ... oh, I don't know, defense-specced tanks on autoattack.

I do agree that there's a bit too much investment necessary for the mastery passives, and this speaking from the perspective of getting two of them (Elemental/Primal). Don't get me wrong, it -is- great fun to play, but feels a bit underwhelming at times when I look at what Fenris, Isabela and even Aveline are doing to the mobs. On the other hand, 2 masteries seem to keep me in mana for a decent amount of time, even while throwing spells around often, and I'm absolute murder on trash and normal adds.

[SuicidalBaby]

the 25% bonus to fire damage includes auto attacks. granted near 40% of the game is immune, but the standard applies throughout, making it 4 total spec upgrades for AA damage and 1 spec that improves effects of physical and elemental.

Modifié par SuicidialBaby, 20 mars 2011 - 02:13 .

[Rieverre]

I know, hence my comparing the output of my Elemental Mastery + Pyromancer mage with a fire-staff to that of Aveline with that one Qunari fire-damage sword (with slotted fire rune). So it's not necessarily bad but you won't be killing anything but trash with it. And Varric is faster at it, as he's doing some 400 damage at autoattack compared to my 150ish(on a good day). So yes, we already have one way of stacking +damage on autoattack, it's just that our base damage is small enough that this doesn't matter nearly as much as a, say, +20% on a rogue or warrior would. Not to mention a rogue's all-but-assured critical mechanic.

Although I'm not playing on Nightmare, just Hard, so I haven't really seen that big ole Immune pop up that often. Resistances, though? Oh yeah.

[Aumata]

It is the cool downs which are the problem. Someone stated it earlier. I become useless when I use up my spells at a longer period than DA:O. By the time I'm finish using my spells on DA:O I have one up and ready to go compare to DA2, where I use a spell and have to attack or wait. Less I use a full offensive spell build. But I don't see that working thanks to the power of Force magic. The next mage I build is going to be one spec and the rest turn to a nuke everything class.

EDIT: Did anyone else realize the irony of one of the most useless spells in DA:O that stop health regen happens to be the most usefull spell in DA2?  Just thought of that.

Modifié par Aumata, 20 mars 2011 - 04:15 .