64 respuestas en este tema

[JFarr74]

I'm wondering how to build my mage, mostly on the offensive side.  I'm planning to be a Force Mage and Blood Mage or Spirit Healer, and focus mainly on the Elemental Tree, unlokcing every spell and upgrade there.  Then, I will choose Rock Armor, Tempest, and Chain Lightning (and upgrade the two) from the Primal Tree, and Mind Blast and Crushing Prison (both upgraded) from the Arcane Tree.  i will also focus on filling in spells for my specializations.  How does all that sound?  

Editado por JFarr74, 29 marzo 2011 - 04:45 .

[i love lamp x3]

that sounds good. if you're on consoles.. well it's just so much flipping through menus when you toss in specializations. that said, i recommend the following:

i map these spells to the x,y,b and slots (no order)

spirit bolt
stone fist
fireball
winters breath
cone of cold
crushing prison


and then for AoE spells go with:
pull of the abyss
gravitic ring
firestorm
and tempest if you level up enough

save the specialization spells for later on. by act 3, basic mage attacks are useless so you'll need need the upgraded single-target spells to do any real damage. when you're surrounded, use cone of cold and remember stonefist has a chance to shatter frozen enemies.


also.. if you want to be a complete monster.. i literally discovered this 5 minutes ago.

you will need:
at least one maker's sigh
28 gold sovereigns

there's a merchant in the top left corner of the map at the wounded coast. there's a hammer there called the void's hammer and it does not require two handed or any other weapon skill tree (the only one i've seen)

buy it and use the maker's sigh. put your strength attribute up to 33 so you can equip it, and fill in willpower and magic as you normally would with the remaining points.

the special thing about this hammer is you can swing it and beat enemies mercilessly like a warrior, and most powers don't have cooldowns while using this.

also note: if you get the spirit healer specialization and upgrade to the skill that gives you +10 constitution, you can equip pretty decent armor, such as the blood dragon armor.

[DungeonLord]

In my opinion spirit healer is useless for almost all encounters. It's far better to focus on AoE control and whittle down the battle field rather than prolong the fights through the slow healing offered by spirit healer. Remember, you cannot cast offensive spells while in spirit healer mode.

[City6]

I found a full primal and full entropy allows you to solo most of the game on Normal.

[JFarr74]

DungeonLord wrote...

In my opinion spirit healer is useless for almost all encounters. It's far better to focus on AoE control and whittle down the battle field rather than prolong the fights through the slow healing offered by spirit healer. Remember, you cannot cast offensive spells while in spirit healer mode.

Really?  So should I go Blood Mage instead?

[IRuleLeviathan]

@i love lamp x3 wow man thanks for helping me discover the Void Hammer! your awesome... and Spirit Healer is good if used right!! It has many passive and activate abilities that increase the parties vitality. You kinda need a big pool of mana though if you want to be able to be offensive but also supportive too.

[MegaToxic]

Nice this will help me as i am on my second playthrough act 1 using a mage and i wanna be a DPS mage so i am going Force mage for specialty. I have the Staff of Parthalan too. I got Rock armor which is awesome.

So i guess I should only put points into Magic and Willpower right? I think i put 1 into Constitution.

[DAFerelden91]

Force Mage is particularly helpful when dealing with giant bosses.
Also,Primal magics(especially Petrify)always bring wonder when facing some tough opponents.
You might need Spirit Healer if you don't take Anders with you much.

[hexaligned]

Difficulty setting? Less than Nightmare, just use whatever spell that has the animation you enjoy the most. For Nightmare, I'd recommend planning out your build to include CCC's, I'm partial to Stagger+chain lightning, and Stagger+crushing prison, but there are a lot of different things you can play around with, really what spells you should use depends on how you have the rest of your party built.

[Dark83]

Blood Mage + Spirit Healer is a crazy combo. Stack up on Sustains (I believe you can actually go past 100%) and rely purely on your Health for casting. Spirit Healer gives +10 Con +40 Health Regen, and with enough blood magic+ items you'll see pretty much no health loss. Of course, for this route, you only put in the minimum Willpower for equipment prereqs, and crank Con/Magic otherwise.

Then you bombard the crap out of things. Crushing Prison is junk. Without the upgrade it's crap, you get a bit of slow that may not even proc. Even upgraded it's only really useful against Staggered enemies.

Horror, especially upgraded, is a much better replacement.

I'd rather crank out the Element tree rather than have Petrify, too. Nothing in that tree is bad. Unlike, say, Petrify.

Editado por Dark83, 24 marzo 2011 - 07:13 .

[JFarr74]

Dark83 wrote...

Blood Mage + Spirit Healer is a crazy combo. Stack up on Sustains (I believe you can actually go past 100%) and rely purely on your Health for casting. Spirit Healer gives +10 Con +40 Health Regen, and with enough blood magic+ items you'll see pretty much no health loss. Of course, for this route, you only put in the minimum Willpower for equipment prereqs, and crank Con/Magic otherwise.

Then you bombard the crap out of things. Crushing Prison is junk. Without the upgrade it's crap, you get a bit of slow that may not even proc. Even upgraded it's only really useful against Staggered enemies.

Horror, especially upgraded, is a much better replacement.

I'd rather crank out the Element tree rather than have Petrify, too. Nothing in that tree is bad. Unlike, say, Petrify.

I'm playing the game on Normal.  I'm mostly a Damager, and plan to get the Heal Spell and upgrade it.   I carry a ton of health potions I find.  I like being a Force Mage becuase of the extra force it gives spells.  Which 2 specializations make a good combo?

[bwaha54]

I Love the void hammer. hot key chain lighting, stone fist, spirit bolt and  become a force to be feared.

Editado por bwaha54, 25 marzo 2011 - 01:04 .

[F-C]

if you are playing on something harder than normal i recommend another class.

honestly, on hard and nightmare as a mage you are just a weak link in the group and should be used to maintain buffs and crowd control while you hide in the back and hope nothing attacks you, ever.

on just hard ive watched merrill get pummeled from full life to dead without being able to act because even simple basic attacks render her unable to do anything except this minor knock-back effect.

its really, really stupid.

that one thing alone makes warrior and rogue a billion times more fun to play.



on normal though, have at it, you can be pretty godly.

[silentassassin264]

Easy, become dps spirit healer. You will never die.

[JFarr74]

What is the best specialization combo?

[JFarr74]

Which 2 specializations will go well with mostly offensive and attack spells?

[threefootwang]

To each his own. Ultimately it's up to your own personal preference for the "best" mage build..it all depends on how you play the game, however to help out anyone here's my current set up:

I beat the game as a warrior so im trying out the mage now, i just hit lvl 15 literally seconds ago lol:

Maxed out Primal:

Stonefist is effective against single enemies and can be used frequently. Chain Lightening somewhat effective against single enemies but of course is meant to AOE, good nonetheless. Tempest, does decent AOE damage and has a wide range. Petrify one of the best CC's in the game. As for rock armour i've been hearing alot of controversy behind it however when you fully upgrade primal, R.A goes from 25% armor to 125%; quite a nice boost. Also, when comparing R.A to Arcane shield, R.A uses 10% of your mana where as A.S uses 20%. By enabling R.A. I chose to use the telekinetic weapon upgrade which is also 10%. Don't get me wrong arcane shield is still pretty good when fully upgraded but i'd rather take the armor bonus (for myself) + the weapon upgrade (for my party) using the same amount of mana.

Healer:

If you know how to effectively control your party members during fights, you don't really need to spec into Spirit Healer. As a mage i fully upgraded the heal in creation. As long as your tank is taking all the damage, the creation heal + health potions are good enough.

Secondary Spells:

I spec'ed into Force Mage and I am not regretting it, Fist of the maker (imo) is more effective then mind blast, + you can also learn unshakable which practically makes you immune to knockdowns or "other effects that interrupt combat."

I plan on maxing out Horror in entropy for 2 reasons: first because its a good CC, and second when fully upgraded it does incredible damage over time.

For Arcane, besides telekinetic weapons, I also want to max out crushing prison as it's one of the best single enemy attacks in the game.

And lastly if i become high level enough i want to fully upgrade walking bomb, another decent dot.

[JFarr74]

threefootwang wrote...

To each his own. Ultimately it's up to your own personal preference for the "best" mage build..it all depends on how you play the game, however to help out anyone here's my current set up:

I beat the game as a warrior so im trying out the mage now, i just hit lvl 15 literally seconds ago lol:

Maxed out Primal:

Stonefist is effective against single enemies and can be used frequently. Chain Lightening somewhat effective against single enemies but of course is meant to AOE, good nonetheless. Tempest, does decent AOE damage and has a wide range. Petrify one of the best CC's in the game. As for rock armour i've been hearing alot of controversy behind it however when you fully upgrade primal, R.A goes from 25% armor to 125%; quite a nice boost. Also, when comparing R.A to Arcane shield, R.A uses 10% of your mana where as A.S uses 20%. By enabling R.A. I chose to use the telekinetic weapon upgrade which is also 10%. Don't get me wrong arcane shield is still pretty good when fully upgraded but i'd rather take the armor bonus (for myself) + the weapon upgrade (for my party) using the same amount of mana.

Healer:

If you know how to effectively control your party members during fights, you don't really need to spec into Spirit Healer. As a mage i fully upgraded the heal in creation. As long as your tank is taking all the damage, the creation heal + health potions are good enough.

Secondary Spells:

I spec'ed into Force Mage and I am not regretting it, Fist of the maker (imo) is more effective then mind blast, + you can also learn unshakable which practically makes you immune to knockdowns or "other effects that interrupt combat."

I plan on maxing out Horror in entropy for 2 reasons: first because its a good CC, and second when fully upgraded it does incredible damage over time.

For Arcane, besides telekinetic weapons, I also want to max out crushing prison as it's one of the best single enemy attacks in the game.

And lastly if i become high level enough i want to fully upgrade walking bomb, another decent dot.

What about blood mage?

[Baelyn]

JFarr74 wrote...

threefootwang wrote...

To each his own. Ultimately it's up to your own personal preference for the "best" mage build..it all depends on how you play the game, however to help out anyone here's my current set up:

I beat the game as a warrior so im trying out the mage now, i just hit lvl 15 literally seconds ago lol:

Maxed out Primal:

Stonefist is effective against single enemies and can be used frequently. Chain Lightening somewhat effective against single enemies but of course is meant to AOE, good nonetheless. Tempest, does decent AOE damage and has a wide range. Petrify one of the best CC's in the game. As for rock armour i've been hearing alot of controversy behind it however when you fully upgrade primal, R.A goes from 25% armor to 125%; quite a nice boost. Also, when comparing R.A to Arcane shield, R.A uses 10% of your mana where as A.S uses 20%. By enabling R.A. I chose to use the telekinetic weapon upgrade which is also 10%. Don't get me wrong arcane shield is still pretty good when fully upgraded but i'd rather take the armor bonus (for myself) + the weapon upgrade (for my party) using the same amount of mana.

Healer:

If you know how to effectively control your party members during fights, you don't really need to spec into Spirit Healer. As a mage i fully upgraded the heal in creation. As long as your tank is taking all the damage, the creation heal + health potions are good enough.

Secondary Spells:

I spec'ed into Force Mage and I am not regretting it, Fist of the maker (imo) is more effective then mind blast, + you can also learn unshakable which practically makes you immune to knockdowns or "other effects that interrupt combat."

I plan on maxing out Horror in entropy for 2 reasons: first because its a good CC, and second when fully upgraded it does incredible damage over time.

For Arcane, besides telekinetic weapons, I also want to max out crushing prison as it's one of the best single enemy attacks in the game.

And lastly if i become high level enough i want to fully upgrade walking bomb, another decent dot.

What about blood mage?

Blood mage is a far step down from its glory in DA:O. The animations are 100% better in DA2 though, but the mechanics are weak. I went Blood simply for RP reasons and the passive bonuses aren't terrible. Plus Spirit Healer was usless to me as I wanted to be 100% offensive-damage based. (I didn't take any shield/armor spells either)

Blood Slave is kind of fun, and Hemorrage can do decent damage (plus an aoe stun) when upgraded. I found Blood Splatter hardly ever doing anything though. My Blood Slaves would always die after my mind control broke.

[Altima Darkspells]

Primal is a good spell school, except at the end of Act 1, where you'll face a whole dungeon full of critters immune to your damage spells. Primal also has the benefit of being able to take advantage of other CCCs through upgraded chain lightning and stonefist as well as setting other characters for CCCs through upgraded Petrify.

Several mage trees benefit greatly from a small dip into them. Entropy can get your Horror and Hex of Torment rather easily. You can pick up Heal immediately from the Creation Tree.

Of course, the problem with mages are their horribly un-synergetic specializations. Heck, Spirit Healer and Blood Mage might as well be anti-synergy.

Spirit Healer requires you to give up offensive casting if you wish to use any spells from there. What that means is, you better really, really like the Creation Tree, because that's all you'll get. Sure, you don't have to have Healing Aura on, but then, what's the point of getting the specialization? May as well put those points into other less circumstantial skills.

Plus Healing Aura is currently bugged. It adds health regeneration every time a new area is loaded (and this persists through saves). So the player will end up with truly massive health regeneration, possibly beyond the damage creatures cause. Why is this bad? Because the bug is (hopefully) gonna be fixed and relying on it is folly.

Blood Mage is less awful than Spirit Healer, but still pretty bad. Mostly because of the Willpower requirements for equipment. This means you will HAVE to put many, many points into Willpower (31 or 32 required for end-game). This means that you'll have less constitution. But it gets better! Because sustainables now eat a percentage of mana, you'll have half the mana pool given by all those points into willpower. Add on to those the sustainables you'll need or want for combat, and you'll be lucky if you have 20% of your max mana available if you have to turn off blood magic.

Nothing (overtly) wrong with the Force Mage, though.

There's nothing wrong with Mages or Hawke as a mage. But there's nothing especially good about them, either. Hawke is fairly mediocre as a mage, compared to the potential of a rogue or warrior. The NPC mages do nearly as good (or better) job of magery than Hawke can, so the whole exercise becomes somewhat moot.

[v_ware]

My mage was almighty. Seriously with all those area of effect spells. BOOM

So basically Full primal and Force mage, also some spells frome Elemental.

And Mind blast and heal too.

[JFarr74]

So...what would you guys recommend to go with a Force Mage: Blood Mage or Spirit Healer?

[Apechild]

Personally I found my Mage was lacking for damage for most of the game until the end of Act 3 where something snapped into place, namely a few levels where I specc'd into some AoE and a new staff which gave +fire damage and into which I slotted two fire enchantments, and he became a walking God in battle.

By the end I'd specc'd into;

Arcane: 
Mind Blast + Improved
Crushing Prison + Improved 

Elemental:
Winters Touch + Improved
Fireball + Improved
Firestorm + Improved
Pyromancer

Spirit:
Spirit Strike + Improved

Force Mage:
EVERYTHING I COULD GRAB!

As a Force Mage I just gathered opponents up for AoEs (Mage & Rogue AoE's combined are pretty tasty), dispersed them from my healer/party members in danger, and did some damage on the side. Maker's Fist is just brilliant. I got into a little routine - gather opponents up with Gravity Well (I think it was), hit them with a Fireball. Makers Fist. Firestorm. Seperate 'em with the other Force Spell. Any left were now on extremely low health so quick to finish off and Mind blast is just useful for keeping those rogues & company off of your back.

I had quite some fun with those Force spells, I'd recommend them to anyone. As for going for two specialisations? I felt this would have made me too diverse so I didn't bother. I had my role in my party and that was to control the battlefield and I had it sewn up from the start of each fight.

Editado por Apechild, 29 marzo 2011 - 12:34 .

[DraCZeQQ]

Well this game is pretty poorly designed, so if you like mods ... just use the one to remove requirements and go nuts with blood mage ... running around with 500+ HP, casting spells in ratio 1 hp = 6 mana is pretty awesome ... and on top of that ... you have 50% mana free to use sustainables (like shield, heroic aura, elemental weapons) coz you dont care for having 0 max mana (all reserved) since 100% of casting is done by blood ... but cant say how viable this is in vanilla game ... mine is slightly modded =)

On top of that, running around with Merrill as duo blood mage lovers is pretty hilarious lore / plot wise ... =)

Editado por DraCZeQQ, 29 marzo 2011 - 12:40 .

[threefootwang]

I never used Blood mage, even in DA: Origins (or DA2) though I do know it serves as good DPS I didn't like the idea of sacrifing your health to do damage..then again my set  up as a mage is also part healer so it wouldn't work for me. As for DA origins Wynne was my healer, and all of my DPS was through Alistair (Tank), myself (2H Warden) and Leliana (DPS+bear spawn)...I have seen some pretty effective BM specs nonetheless... once again, it's how you prefer to play

JFarr74 wrote...

threefootwang wrote...

To each his own. Ultimately it's up to your own personal preference for the "best" mage build..it all depends on how you play the game, however to help out anyone here's my current set up:

I beat the game as a warrior so im trying out the mage now, i just hit lvl 15 literally seconds ago lol:

Maxed out Primal:

Stonefist is effective against single enemies and can be used frequently. Chain Lightening somewhat effective against single enemies but of course is meant to AOE, good nonetheless. Tempest, does decent AOE damage and has a wide range. Petrify one of the best CC's in the game. As for rock armour i've been hearing alot of controversy behind it however when you fully upgrade primal, R.A goes from 25% armor to 125%; quite a nice boost. Also, when comparing R.A to Arcane shield, R.A uses 10% of your mana where as A.S uses 20%. By enabling R.A. I chose to use the telekinetic weapon upgrade which is also 10%. Don't get me wrong arcane shield is still pretty good when fully upgraded but i'd rather take the armor bonus (for myself) + the weapon upgrade (for my party) using the same amount of mana.

Healer:

If you know how to effectively control your party members during fights, you don't really need to spec into Spirit Healer. As a mage i fully upgraded the heal in creation. As long as your tank is taking all the damage, the creation heal + health potions are good enough.

Secondary Spells:

I spec'ed into Force Mage and I am not regretting it, Fist of the maker (imo) is more effective then mind blast, + you can also learn unshakable which practically makes you immune to knockdowns or "other effects that interrupt combat."

I plan on maxing out Horror in entropy for 2 reasons: first because its a good CC, and second when fully upgraded it does incredible damage over time.

For Arcane, besides telekinetic weapons, I also want to max out crushing prison as it's one of the best single enemy attacks in the game.

And lastly if i become high level enough i want to fully upgrade walking bomb, another decent dot.

What about blood mage?