59 réponses à ce sujet

[SomeoneStoleMyName]

After having tried all mage builds i must say i find fire the least usefull one. The damage, even with +25%+dmg skill, is... unsatisfactory. The AOE is ok`ish, and the special effects like knockdown on fireball is weak also. 

Do you guys feel the same? Anyone with positive experiences when it comes to fire spells? Particulary mid-late game.

[Talladarr]

I have to agree with you. After my first playthough I hardly touch the fire spells other than to get Elemental Mastery(or wahtever it's called) for my ice spells. Personally I'll take Primal magic over Fire anyday, Stone fist and Chain Lightning are insanely useful

[Atmosfear3]

Fireball is lackluster yes but Firestorm does a lot of damage. In addition, setting enemies on fires causes them to dance around making it a decent form of CC. I think my mage's firestorm was doing upwards of 300 dmg per hit on Firestorm and this was without a +fire staff.

[Talladarr]

While Firestorm is powerful, I find it fairly dissatisfying due to it's ability to actually end up missing every enemy. I find it's only REALLY useful on larger enemies, and only really when you can paralyze them. Either that situation, or alot of enemies in a small space.

[G_Admiral_Thrawn]

And it REALLY sucks toward the end of act 3. Course, mages in general need a warrior to stagger their opponents to do damage, but that's a different topic. One I think the devs are content to ignore.

[Spartansfan8888]

The primal tree has so much more potential for cross class combos and no friendly fire. Force/primal mage worked well for me.

[x-president]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

Fireball is lackluster yes but Firestorm does a lot of damage. In addition, setting enemies on fires causes them to dance around making it a decent form of CC. I think my mage's firestorm was doing upwards of 300 dmg per hit on Firestorm and this was without a +fire staff.

Yea Firestorm destroys mid to late game.  You can set your entire party on hold and just wipe out those mass enemy attacks on your own. 

Fireball is pretty much useless.  I never upgraded it or barely used it. 

[Ahglock]

The issue is the really big damage comes from ccc moves. Fire neither sets up nor ends a combo, this lets firestorm get decent damage against mooks, but never great damage unless the target is vulnerable to fire. It is fine on lower difficulties but when many mobs become massive hit point sinks you need the ccc to end a fight in a reasonable time.

[godlike13]

Fireball is useless, but Firestorm is awesome. Especially with a 90% bonus to fire.

[Artillis22]

Firestorm is awesome especially if you use it in cramped narrow hall ways, your fighting in a place run back and gather everything up from the big room into a narrow space and plant that firestorm in the narrow space, the game automatically adjusts the landing of all fire balls to fit in the required available space, so all of them hit the cramped up guys.

But yes fireball is probably one of the most worthless spells in the game.

Modifié par Artillis22, 25 mars 2011 - 06:59 .

[We Tigers]

The ice spells are great, the fire ones are not. I only use fireball if everything else is on cooldown and I have mana to spare. Unfortunately, the ice spells require elemental mastery to be really great, which means sinking 3 into fire. Generally, I'd only look at the elemental tree if you're running 2 mages or love freezing people. If you're running 2, the expenditure to max the cold spells is worth it since you should have plenty of talent points between two characters to grab all the good spells.

[Esther]

After having experimented with all the spells, I find the tempest spell much more satisfactory than the fireballs. Have you tried these?

[Morocius]

Fireball only really excels at killing your own party members, little control and relativly low damage possibilities. Still the elemental tree is very good currently running full primal + elemental.

[Talladarr]

I would take the "Stone"/Lightning spells over the Fire any day of the week. It's true that at about lv 16-17+ Firestorm(for whatever reason, I really can't explain it) gets a massive boost to damage, but as it's been mentioned before, the Fire spells can really be a "Party smasher", in the end doing more damage to your party than the enemies.
The Primal tree is much more effective, and in the end I always end up sinking 9(minimum 8, but nearly always 9) points to max the entire tree. While Tempest in the end will do a little less damage per hit(UNless you have a nice lightning staff) and hits a little less often, it ONLY hits enemies, and it hits EVERY enemy in the target area. The only thing worth getting in the Elemental tree is this ice spells, which are DEFINITELY worth it, and if you get as much money as you can and get every spell book/extra spell point provider available, you will have more than enough to do get both of the masteries(Wasteing three points in the fire side of the elemental tree to get a +25% damage boost to Ice, which in the end is worth it) as well as having the points for hte other good skills/specializations.

[Zan Mura]

 I quickly disregarded the whole fire branch as a whole. But when I got Gravitic Ring on my third playthrough, second mage one, I had to change my mind. The traditional problem is that any enemy that actually cares about a Fireball, can be mowed down by a 2h in an instant because of how weak a Fireball is. If that's not the case, then the last thing you want is for the mage to grab aggro with that Fireball, putting the 2h in there to begin with, or just using other spells instead tends to be the smarter move.

Fire Storm on the other hand is a HUGE aggro grabber, completely unfeasible with Friendly Fire, and because the mobs in there will just move out of the way it doesn't really even do enough damage. Again, mostly because there are other alternatives to killing those mobs.

But with Gravitic Ring, you can create wide bottleneck areas where the enemies will be forced to stop, or slow down to such speeds, that they cannot get away from the Fire Storm at all. Since Gravitic easily outlasts Fire Storm even when cast first, you will be controlling the situation from beginning to end. And there the slight extra damage even from a Fireball Plays as a rather nice bonus.

The Gravitic Ring -> Fire Storm -> *Fireball (*= not compulsory) combo will completely shut down an area as a killzone for the mobs, pretty much *NOTHING* will get through, not even elites, rogues, or even bosses since Gravitic doesn't make exceptions. If anything survives, the knockbacks from Fire Storm and slowdown from Gravitic makes sure they cannot even fight back, which means your ranged toons can have free target practice and make short work of them too. And if something does survive, it's a simple matter to walk in with your tank and grab the aggro safely without ever risking your softies.

Basically, it's a decision of course since there are a lot of other useful mage spells too. But for anyone going for elemental mastery (for the BRITTLE CCC) and Gravitic anyway, a mere single extra talent (the Fireball area increase talent is pointless in my opinion) is enough to empower this combo. When you have an impenetrable zone of death on one side, and a crazy tank / 2h team on the other, even the unpredictable combat situations with strong waves from multiple directions can get surprisingly easy. Also, some dual mage teams often focus on the lightning elemental mastery too, which gives you Tempest also 1 talent away from an upgrade. Agreed it tends to be overkill, but that thing can support this rather well.

Modifié par Zan Mura, 25 mars 2011 - 03:44 .

[Lumikki]

SomeoneStoleMyName wrote...

After having tried all mage builds i must say i find fire the least usefull one. The damage, even with +25%+dmg skill, is... unsatisfactory. The AOE is ok`ish, and the special effects like knockdown on fireball is weak also. 

Do you guys feel the same? Anyone with positive experiences when it comes to fire spells? Particulary mid-late game.

I think fire spells are fine. Fireball isn't really that strong, but firestorm is very effective. Remember there is alot of items what also add fire damage, more than other kind.

I how ever, find it nice that player can look also damage from other kind of type of spells.

Modifié par Lumikki, 25 mars 2011 - 04:01 .

[Atmosfear3]

There is a mod over at Nexus Dragon Age where some user buffed Fireball's damage to be equal to that of Firestorm. Its rather nice actually.

[Ahglock]

Lumikki wrote...

SomeoneStoleMyName wrote...

After having tried all mage builds i must say i find fire the least usefull one. The damage, even with +25%+dmg skill, is... unsatisfactory. The AOE is ok`ish, and the special effects like knockdown on fireball is weak also. 

Do you guys feel the same? Anyone with positive experiences when it comes to fire spells? Particulary mid-late game.

I think fire spells are fine. Fireball isn't really that strong, but firestorm is very effective. Remember there is alot of items what also add fire damage, more than other kind.

I how ever, find it nice that player can look also damage from other kind of type of spells.

Firestorm is fine in that it is competative with tempest.  Good mass AoE spells.  Fireball kind of needs what chain lightning has a CCC extra. 

[Artillis22]

Atmosfear3 wrote...

There is a mod over at Nexus Dragon Age where some user buffed Fireball's damage to be equal to that of Firestorm. Its rather nice actually.

The mod also buffs other spells since the modder figured many mage spells are rather lack luster on the damage side on nghtmare difficulty.  The mod adjusts some other things too like chance for brittle to happen or stunn the mod also increases the chance for walking bomb to infect other targets.

I was thinking of getting it but it sounds almost too good, though if I start playing nightmare more and think my spells are crap compared to my melle counterparts then I may get it.

[Grimling]

Primal/force seems to be a great way to go but Bethany doesn't get access to either, and I'm playing a shield/sword hawke. Using Anders for Panacea and support. Bethany I wanted as my DPS mage but she seems to suck. Is there another mage companion?

[Talladarr]

You guys keep suggesting all these mods, and I don't think you realize(No offense intended) That not everyone has the money to drop on a new video card/monitor (Or in my case a whole new computer) just for a game that is also available on the PS3 and 360, which most people have at least 1 or the other, and anyone that DOESN'T have it on the computer can't get mods.

[Talladarr]

Grimling wrote...

Primal/force seems to be a great way to go but Bethany doesn't get access to either, and I'm playing a shield/sword hawke. Using Anders for Panacea and support. Bethany I wanted as my DPS mage but she seems to suck. Is there another mage companion?

Merrill. she doesn't have access to Force, but she has a kind of Blood Magic/sustained AoE that's really quite effective on the whole and has access to Primal

[Rieverre]

Actually, I have a question about Firestorm. Has anyone tested whether or not the unupgraded version does more focused damage? 5m smaller radius makes me think that it would hit more consistently rather than being a bit all over the place like the upgraded version, but I haven't actually gotten around to testing it yet (waiting on patches).

[Zan Mura]

Talladarr wrote...

You guys keep suggesting all these mods, and I don't think you realize(No offense intended) That not everyone has the money to drop on a new video card/monitor (Or in my case a whole new computer) just for a game that is also available on the PS3 and 360, which most people have at least 1 or the other, and anyone that DOESN'T have it on the computer can't get mods.

Obviously mods are for PC only. Missing them is just something you have to live with if you get a game console.

[DirewolfX]

Well, one of the loading screen tips seems to imply that fire spells can set enemies on fire, but even with maxed elemental tree and force mage specialization (which should be 2x fireball + 2x searing fireball + 25% => 5x elemental force), I never noticed this effect... and fireball certainly never caused any noticeable knockback.

This was on normal difficulty for my first story playthrough, so it's not like the mobs would have high resistance/fortitude.