109 réponses à ce sujet

[Gloxgasm]

Bloodmage it!

[Rylor Tormtor]

Grumpy Old Wizard wrote...

Rylor Tormtor wrote...

Xewaka wrote...

Ruben Thomas wrote...
I wonder what happens if you go magic, dexterity, cunning, 1:1:1?

Then you cannot equip armor as you lack willpower.

Or you equip rogue armour with more +crit and + crit damage stats.

But what do you do for mana in that case?

Interesting question. I have yet to run into anything resembling mana problems, and alot of items can up your mana. Also, the warrior stamina/mana regen shouts help, and passive regen boni can fix things as well.

Just a thought though.

[Diego Vargas]

Spells Crit.

More importantly on nightmare where you are fighting elite mobs like rogues / casters you need to quickly spike them to death. Disorient / Stagger combos that crit are going to obliterate things since you have +XXX% from the combo then multiplied / boosted by your crit damge. I have had fenris run in with the sunder/giants reach passive and cause a group of high hp enemies all become staggered, when that happens I will let lose a chain lightning which will mostly crit for damage in excess of 3-4k.

Spike damage is a big big deal in DA2 Nightmare, it is certainly used to full effect on the player.

Spirit Bolt crits are absurd when you combo them with disorient as they also bypass armor.

Stone fist crits are equally impressive since the crit appears to also effect the force damage sending the enemy hurtling backwards much further then normal.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

There are a couple of nice rings for a crit build, both in Act 2, so you would have to chose between them due to their cost.

Rings

Etched Ring of Twins

+2 strength
+4% critical chance
+9% critical damage
+15% healing to this character
Immunity to knockback

Puzzle Ring of the Black Fox

+2 dexterity
+2 cunning
+9% critical chance
Bonus to lockpicking
Enemies drop better equipment

Modifié par Grumpy Old Wizard, 31 mars 2011 - 05:44 .

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Here is a good (high priced)  amulet for a crit build.

Four fingered Eddie's Lucky Tailisman

+2 dexterity
+2 cunning
+8% critical chance
+4% attack speed
Enemies drop better equipment
Enemies drop more coin

So for a crit build you might focus on getting one of the above rings and this necklace rather than the Final Thought staff. Maybe take Magic to 42 and Willpower to 32 and dump everything else in dex and cunning.

[rumination888]

I've been running tests on a mage for the past hour, and I gotta say, having 50% crit chance is a huuuuuuge boost in overall burst damage and dps.



The Templar in that screenshot has over 2k health, and Winter's Grasp just one-shotted him without any outside help. Didn't even land an Arcane Poison on him either.
I also had 320 health, so I wasn't pushing for extreme damage when allocating attribute points.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

My current mage who is almost ready to switch over to a blood mage got Ring of the Archmage as loot. I don't remember where it dropped. I wonder if it is possible to shop for rings with critical chance on them?

Ring of the Archmage

+4% critical chance
+3% physical damage
+3% magic resistance

Warden's Promise is identical and is a quest reqard for Demands of the Qun.

Modifié par Grumpy Old Wizard, 31 mars 2011 - 06:20 .

[Gloxgasm]

That is from the arcane horror at the alter on sundermount

[Diego Vargas]

Grumpy Old Wizard wrote...

My current mage who is almost ready to switch over to a blood mage got Ring of the Archmage as loot. I don't remember where it dropped. I wonder if it is possible to shop for rings with critical chance on them?

Ring of the Archmage

+4% critical chance
+3% physical damage
+3% magic resistance

Warden's Promise is identical and is a quest reqard for Demands of the Qun.

Whats kind of cool about those rings is if you are using a staff that does physical damage, those rings will increase your mages auto attacks as well.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Here is a list (I don't know if it is complete) of some unique armor you can buy or get from quest rewards. Some have very nice stats a crit build if you can swing the dex/cunnnig requirements. It may also be possible to shop for nice crit chance gear.

[rumination888]

m14567 wrote...

@Rumination888 What are your stats overall for most of your testing?

19 str, 33 dex, 66 mag, 31 cun, 34 will, 49 con
I'm using gear that you won't normally have enough money to buy:

Cold-Blooded, Regret, Robes of Cleanliness, Gauntlets(from the High Dragon), Four-Fingered Eddie's Lucky Talisman, Ring of the Ferryman, and Puzzle Ring of the Black Fox

I was testing what kind of damage a mage could do with the right build and equipment. Half of my auto-attack damage against enemies weak to cold hit for 400-600 damage, btw.

And now for something offtopic, but relevant to mage damage:

Staffs are seriously underleveled(not underpowered, but underleveled) compared to other weapons. The item level on unique Act 1 staffs are on par with other unique weapons, but it seems BioWare screwed the balance during the later acts.
The best staff you can find tops out at level 20, whereas you can find level 25 1hers, 2hers, daggers, and bows. I'd be doing over 3k damage with Winter's Grasp if Cold-Blooded was a level 25 staff instead of level 17-18.

Modifié par rumination888, 31 mars 2011 - 06:36 .

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Diego Vargas wrote...

Whats kind of cool about those rings is if you are using a staff that does physical damage, those rings will increase your mages auto attacks as well.

Elemental staff attacks can crit too. Keep staffs of different elements and use whichever one your enemy is weak to.

[Diego Vargas]

Some things to note regarding mages and the lack of crit damage passives.. mages actually get passives that are better then crit damage boosters because they affect regular hits too:

Pyromancer +25% fire damage on reg and crit hits for spells and elemental staff hits.
Elemental Mastery: a fourth +25% damge on fire reg/crit hits and +25% cold damage on reg/crit spell and staff hits.
Galvanism: +25% damage on stone fist reg/crits, +25% damage on electric spells / staff hits.

So yeah if you think about it this way mages have some very powerful passives for stacking up hits.

[Nathan Redgrave]

I did a little dexterity-boosting on my spirit healer. Staff attacks go pretty fast, so if you have a decent critical damage rating and a decent critical-hit rate, you can get some good damage out of that. Combine that with a Haste spell and it makes up for a lack of offensive magic.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Diego Vargas wrote...

Some things to note regarding mages and the lack of crit damage passives.. mages actually get passives that are better then crit damage boosters because they affect regular hits too:

Pyromancer +25% fire damage on reg and crit hits for spells and elemental staff hits.
Elemental Mastery: a fourth +25% damge on fire reg/crit hits and +25% cold damage on reg/crit spell and staff hits.
Galvanism: +25% damage on stone fist reg/crits, +25% damage on electric spells / staff hits.

So yeah if you think about it this way mages have some very powerful passives for stacking up hits.

The downside to those is that they require you to pretty much invest almost fully in the tree (except for Pyromancer) so you may have to take spells you don't want. I would like to see the masteries selectable without taking evrything in the tree. Make them a middle branch instead so you could be an ice mage without taking fire and still have your ice spells be as powerful as possible.

[Diego Vargas]

Grumpy Old Wizard wrote...

Diego Vargas wrote...

Some things to note regarding mages and the lack of crit damage passives.. mages actually get passives that are better then crit damage boosters because they affect regular hits too:

Pyromancer +25% fire damage on reg and crit hits for spells and elemental staff hits.
Elemental Mastery: a fourth +25% damge on fire reg/crit hits and +25% cold damage on reg/crit spell and staff hits.
Galvanism: +25% damage on stone fist reg/crits, +25% damage on electric spells / staff hits.

So yeah if you think about it this way mages have some very powerful passives for stacking up hits.

The downside to those is that they require you to pretty much invest almost fully in the tree (except for Pyromancer) so you may have to take spells you don't want. I would like to see the masteries selectable without taking evrything in the tree. Make them a middle branch instead so you could be an ice mage without taking fire and still have your ice spells be as powerful as possible.

Well I know a lot of people dont initially like the elemental tree because untweaked it appears to be low damage / hard to use on nightmare.  I think if you shift your character to a crit spike build the tree becomes very strong as evidenced in some of the earlier screenshots.

Seems there are 3 solid ways to lean your mage.

Healer/Buffer
Control/Disable
Spike/Nuker

[x-president]

So what kind of dex or cunning numbers do you need to have?  Right now I've been boosting wp and magic together so I can get whatever armor I want.

I was gonna start boosting con for blood mage, but I'd test out some dex and cunning.  I'm around lvl 7 palying on nightmare so if I'm gonna go a dex/cunnign route I'll start doing it now.

[SuicidalBaby]

suggesting the use of a physical staff is quickly proven to be lacking when compared to the proper use of elemental damage applied to enemy vulnerabilities

Modifié par SuicidialBaby, 31 mars 2011 - 10:56 .

[maegi46]

SuicidialBaby wrote...

suggesting the use of a physical staff is quickly proven to be lacking when compared to the proper use of elemental damage applied to enemy vulnerabilities

No actually physical is the only thing that no one resists if you look at the resists charts so Physical Pwns all. Plus base damage is added to spell damages. Higher base damage = bigger crits. Nuff said.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

maegi46 wrote...

SuicidialBaby wrote...

suggesting the use of a physical staff is quickly proven to be lacking when compared to the proper use of elemental damage applied to enemy vulnerabilities

No actually physical is the only thing that no one resists if you look at the resists charts so Physical Pwns all. Plus base damage is added to spell damages. Higher base damage = bigger crits. Nuff said.

Base staff dps affects spells regardless of if it is physical or elemental. By carrying staffs of different elements you can take advantage of the elemental weakness of enemies, doing a lot more damage with your staff attacks.

Resistances

If you are not going to switch out your staff for different weaknesses you are going to lose out on a lot of damage. But in that case, yeah, a physical staff would let you damage whatever enemy you encountered, just less than if you used a staff of the element the enemy is weak to.

For example, templars are weak to cold and to spirit. So you would want to use cold or spirit against them. If you used your physical staff their armor would mitigate part of the damage.

[maegi46]

Yeah I just hate to carry around 3-4 staves...I see your point. I was looking more at overall, no one resists physical, but yes some are more vulnerable to cold, spirit etc....