174 réponses à ce sujet

[Roxlimn]

Zan Mura:

A 2H Hawke isn't just some normal Merc. He's still the Champion of Kirkwall, so anything he can do doesn't really say what other 2Handers can do. Fenris is pretty special as well.

You were asking for a setting where a Mage would be a holy terror. Normal would do it. A Mage on Normal will clear rooms faster than a Warrior, if only because he doesn't have to walk all over the place to kill everything.

So yes, Normal Hawke would meet your narrative consistency issue.

Finally, most Normal/Critter fights, even on NM, can be soloed by a Mage Hawke.

Grumpy Old Wizard:

He will outkill YOUR Mage Hawke, who doesn't have any relevant synergies, probably doesn't change his elemental setup to take advantage of vulnerabilities, and avoids damage powers like the plague. Yeah, that's totally expected.

That is exactly what you said in ME2. "If you want biotics to be effective turn down the difficulty level." I would not be surprised if you also did not play thorugh ME 2 on Insanity level either. I prefer a more balanced game rather than telling people that want to play a mage that is just as powerful as warriors and rogues to turn down the difficulty level.

Newsflash: both games were balanced around the Normal settings. Shocking, I know.

Also, I did not say that biotics are only effective at Normal. You wanted them to be insta-win. That happens on Veteran and lower. They remain effective at higher diff settings, though for some reason, you don't want to use them the way EVERYONE told and showed you how (through vids, even).

Pull + Warp is still the most devastating combo in ME2. This discussion does not belong here. Talk about Fireball - you know? The topic?

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

Roxlimn wrote...

You were asking for a setting where a Mage would be a holy terror. Normal would do it. A Mage on Normal will clear rooms faster than a Warrior, if only because he doesn't have to walk all over the place to kill everything.

Actually, we were talking about Nightmare mode, where mages are clearly far less powerful than warriors and rogues. I'd bet that almost all DA:O players who played excusively on NM play on NM in DA2 also. Saying people should just play on lower difficulty levels rather than expecting the game to be balanced is just silly.

He will outkill YOUR Mage Hawke, who doesn't have any relevant synergies, probably doesn't change his elemental setup to take advantage of vulnerabilities, and avoids damage powers like the plague. Yeah, that's totally expected.

Please don't lie about how I play the game or about my mages. I played through one mage and ended up level 24, and he does have "synergies." My blood mage is at level 16. Fenris is more powerful than both.

. You wanted them to be insta-win.

That is a lie.

That happens on Veteran and lower. They remain effective at higher diff settings, though for some reason, you don't want to use them the way EVERYONE told and showed you how (through vids, even).

Actually, there have been hundereds of pages of complaints about the adepts being less powerful than the soldier classes. Of course on the ME 2 boards you lied about and insulted people there who made such complaints too. And of course the polls show the adepts to be far less popular than the soldier classes (soldier, vanguard, infiltrator.)

Modifié par Grumpy Old Wizard, 05 avril 2011 - 02:57 .

[Darqion]

I played my play-trough as a mage on hard and for most the game i felt the only damage i was dealing to anything worth fearing was with CCC combos. Tempest was quite nice but i ended up liking it more for the crowdcontrol it had then the damage, which was nice but nothing like a warrior WW clearing half the screen.

The only skill i find that had potential to do mass damage was walking bomb, which as has been mentioned is hard to use on nightmare due to FF.

My current rogue on nightmare can 1/2 hit a mage and it takes like 2 seconds. My mage on hard could only hope for a stagger (meaning my tank had to get near it first) then lightningbolt his ass and pray its dead... What did 10X more damage was petrify him and have varrick just lance the mage for 10X its health

Its a single player game. People like options. If the mage was overpowered, dont use it like that?

[Nerivant]

It all comes down to how you gauge a classes power. You don't need to CC something it's dead, but you focus on other things if you CC something. As a giblet generator, mages have less output. As a controller, they're peerless.

Saying that mages aren't as powerful as the other classes based on a scale that you made up is pointless.

Also, Fireball is weak.

[Darqion]

If you dont wanna scale them on a power base, remove all those useless damage skills that barely register? I see no harm in being able to build a mage into a damage dealer. They can be usefull in all manners of ways but i simply fail to see why my rogue, and im sure a warrior too, should be able to 1/2 dangerous targets (and both could just as easily CC it) while the mage cant hope to onehit a decent target

Modifié par Darqion, 05 avril 2011 - 04:46 .

[A Forgotten Tome]

Darqion wrote...

If you dont wanna scale them on a power base, remove all those useless damage skills that barely register? I see no harm in being able to build a mage into a damage dealer. They can be usefull in all manners of ways but i simply fail to see why my rogue, and im sure a warrior too, should be able to 1/2 dangerous targets (and both could just as easily CC it) while the mage cant hope to onehit a decent target

With the right setups and knowledge of resistances; its still possible to do very high damage as a mage, close enough at least that you can kill things in a hurry, I won't make delusions that mages aren't as strong as warriors or rogues in sheer killing power, but thats not what a good mage does solely.

Also; fireball is seriously weak, and firestorm should never be upgraded.

[Fruit of the Doom]

I am having a hard time seeing how the gameplay is improved by requiring mages to jump through three hoops, do a pirouette, pinch their nose, look left and right, hop four times, and recite the Czech anthem in reverse in order to deal the same damage as a warrior using whirlwind.

Notice, I did not say "balanced", because this is NOT AN MMORPG.

Modifié par Fruit of the Doom, 05 avril 2011 - 08:54 .

[Zan Mura]

A Forgotten Tome wrote...

Darqion wrote...

If you dont wanna scale them on a power base, remove all those useless damage skills that barely register? I see no harm in being able to build a mage into a damage dealer. They can be usefull in all manners of ways but i simply fail to see why my rogue, and im sure a warrior too, should be able to 1/2 dangerous targets (and both could just as easily CC it) while the mage cant hope to onehit a decent target

With the right setups and knowledge of resistances; its still possible to do very high damage as a mage, close enough at least that you can kill things in a hurry, I won't make delusions that mages aren't as strong as warriors or rogues in sheer killing power, but thats not what a good mage does solely.

Also; fireball is seriously weak, and firestorm should never be upgraded.

I find an upgraded Firestorm works wonders with Gravitic Ring. Delivers more flat damage boost over a wider area than the +25% fire damage at any rate, on your way to Elemental Mastery to get the guaranteed freeze + BRITTLE from Winter's Grasp and the boost to those spells in general. Granted it's not a gamechanger, but not a waste either.

[Fruit of the Doom]

Modifié par Fruit of the Doom, 05 avril 2011 - 08:53 .

[Zan Mura]

To get back on this, I'm honestly starting to feel that the *biggest* problem with mages right now, is that stupid final staff attack animation. IF the mages could be relied upon to deliver those damn CCC's, stuns, AoE's and other utility effects (you know, the effects the mages excel at) when required, then it would be much easier to accept their loss of direct power relative to the other classes. As it stands, it's a phenomena I bump into in pretty much every fight. The 2 second delay is enough to completely miss out on the very *very* narrow window for those CCC's, lets the enemies slip past the intended AoE range, or the target too close to the warrior producing a friendly fire forced Load Game, etc. In boss fights it's practically guaranteed that you'll miss half of those STAGGERs and whatnot because someone figured that the nice twirling dance is far more important than reliable and fluent gameplay.

Sorry if I let my emotions get the better of me there. I just have a very personal problem with this particular issue. It must've insulted my dad or something.

[Fruit of the Doom]

I think I would prefer it if they took staff attacks out of the game completely, and buffed spells to compensate. The twirly crap looks silly and gets old after you've seen it 23,943 times.

At least then you wouldn't feel depressed realizing that twirling your walking stick at an enemy does more damage than throwing a massive Fireball at him.

[Zan Mura]

Well I absolutely love the animations. They just shouldn't get in the way of gameplay. I don't think I've ever actually liked staff attack animations before, typically they look like boring club matches from some 5$ budget 70's TV series, or some stupid virtual basketball devices like those things in Guild Wars that basically just flop ballistic balls at their enemies. Totally unremarkable and just plain stupid. In DA2, they look and sound cool, are fast, and deliver that sense that even a mage isn't just some withered-boned slacker who sits on a chair all day long, but actually has combat experience and the mobility and acrobatic skill that comes from it.

Modifié par Zan Mura, 05 avril 2011 - 09:52 .

[Fruit of the Doom]

I think it looks like something a Power Ranger would do.

Flashy, lame, and pointless. Looks like they are swatting at a bee to a choreographed routine.

[Sabotin]

I don't have a problem with staff attacks, just that last one in the chain that paralises you for a few seconds while the animation plays. Like for Zen Mura it was a source of some rage for me too.

I also find mages to be lacking in the damage department. Somehow I think developers were expecting high base damage on the staffs or something, to put such low multipliers.On the other hand, there's a mountain of +fire damage gear in the game, anyone tried abusing that?

[Fruit of the Doom]

I don't know why they based spell damage on staff damage at all. Why not just base it on your damn magic stat like in Origins?

[rumination888]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

I agree. Mages are over-nerfed. Fireball is crap. Enemy immunities make no sense on NM.

Which is why we have mods. :-)

One additional point though: A very strong reason why Mages are weaker than the other classes is that they have no abilities to boost the damage of their personal auto-attacks, unlike Warriors/Rogues (Vanguard/Specialist/Berserker, Unforgiving Chain/Blindside/Twist The Knife, Passives from all Warrior/Rogue Specializations). However, the cooldowns on powers are so long that Mages have to rely just as much on auto-attacks. This combined with unreasonably high mana costs on spells forces every DPS Mage to play as Blood Mage, both for Mana reasons and to get one more decent DPS spell (Hemorrhage).

...what?

[rumination888]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

What Mage ability increase its basic attack speed? Its basic attack damage? Its basic attack criticals? Something like Speed/Barrage/Fervor, Cleave/Bravery/Assail/Destroyer/Massacre/Blindside, Pinpoint Strikes/Accuracy/Sunder/Pinpoint Precision/Predator/Bravura/Unforgiving Chain?

You can say Haste/Heroic Aura, but those are party buffs, while all the abilities I listed are personal buffs. And Haste sucks fireballs because of the Magic Resistance bug.

Elemental Mastery, Galvanism, Spirit Mastery, Pyromancer.
And Mage gear typically carries a whole lot of +damage boosters.

(If it wasn't for the Black Emporium, Warrior's wouldnt even have access to an elemental weapon until Act 3. Mages, on the otherhand, were given crappy physical staffs with stats that have god awful synergies with their abilities. WTF?)

Modifié par rumination888, 05 avril 2011 - 11:25 .

[Ace Attorney]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

rumination888 wrote...

Elemental Mastery, Galvanism, Spirit Mastery, Pyromancer.

That is 4 compared to the around 20 or so I just listed (I didn't even try to be exhaustive - I can go up to 30 if I want). Very few uses Fire extensively on NM, and you can get at most 2 out of those 3 Mastery spells due to talent point limits. Seriously, I wonder who get Spirit Mastery - Walking Bomb sucks on NM not because of the FF, but because of the insanely small blast radius/infection rate. Sure, Pull of the Abyss into Walking Bomb you say. But with Pull I'd rather freeze the group with Cone of Cold for Bursting Arrows or Stagger them into Paralyzing Hemorrhage. Way more effective and reliable than Walking Bomb.

So realistically, most people would only get Galvanism by the end of the game, while a few Elemental masters might get Elemental Mastery/Pyromancer.

Compare these to the standard end game AA boosters of a 2H Berserker/Reaver Vanguard, for example: Cleave + Giant's Reach + Berserk + Barrage + Sunder + Destroyer + Massacre + Fervor + Blood Frenzy + Sacrificial Frenzy + Adrenaline + Assail. And they have Sundering, Bloom, Celebrant, Blade of Mercy. Compare those weapons' basic damage to say, Eye of the Storm, Cold-Blooded, Voracity, Torch of Falon'Din, or even The Final Thought. And Warrior weapons do AOE damage on their basic attacks.

Oh, and finally, damage boosting abilities >>>> damage boosting gears. Perhaps the best damage boosting gear is the Robes of Unblemished Cleanliness. Huge damage boost you say! Compare that to a simple, unupgraded Cleave, or Fervor, which a single point-passive. Tell me this is not a joke.

Mages are a Support Crowd control class. DPS isn't their primary job.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

rumination888 wrote...


Elemental Mastery, Galvanism, Spirit Mastery, Pyromancer.

Nah, those don't stack and don't keep amplifying each attack like the warrior/rogue abilities do. Well, pyro will help fire and elemental mastery will help fire. Plus the Spirit tree sucks big time because it only has spirit bolt and walking bomb for damage.  In NM walking bomb is seldom usable. And of course the individual masteries only affect spells of that particular tree.

And of course different immunes are often mixed together forcing the mage to go into his inventory to switch staffs quite frequently. How tedious.

And Mage gear typically carries a whole lot of +damage boosters.

Mostly +fire damge is what you'll get from random gear. Fire is the most resisted and a number of creatures are immune to it. And of course the champion mage armor gives no bonuses at all to any spell school.

Yeah, Final Thought even has +Nature damage when the mage has NO nature spells. Heh.

[Grumpy Old Wizard]

T3hAnubis wrote...

Mages are a Support Crowd control class. DPS isn't their primary job.

Not many people want to play a healbot/'buffboy.  Also,  that is not in line with the lore for the class OR the official description of the class.

But perhaps the main reason Mages are feared is that they command the
battlefield with incredible area-of-effect damage. Enemies who are not
incapacitated or countered with empowered allies are simply obliterated. All of
the classes in Dragon Age II are masters in their own discipline, but it’s Mages
who truly leave the earth scorched in their wake.

That does not sound like a class tha is just supposed to be there to help the actual heroe. A Hawke mage should not be a  "sidekick" character.

Modifié par Grumpy Old Wizard, 06 avril 2011 - 12:08 .

[rumination888]

iOnlySignIn wrote...

rumination888 wrote...

Elemental Mastery, Galvanism, Spirit Mastery, Pyromancer.

That is 4 compared to the around 20 or so I just listed (I didn't even try to be exhaustive - I can go up to 30 if I want). Very few uses Fire extensively on NM, and you can get at most 2 out of those 3 Mastery spells due to talent point limits. Seriously, I wonder who get Spirit Mastery - Walking Bomb sucks on NM not because of the FF, but because of the insanely small blast radius/infection rate. Sure, Pull of the Abyss into Walking Bomb you say. But with Pull I'd rather freeze the group with Cone of Cold for Bursting Arrows or Stagger them into Paralyzing Hemorrhage. Way more effective and reliable than Walking Bomb.

So realistically, most people would only get Galvanism by the end of the game, while a few Elemental masters might get Elemental Mastery/Pyromancer.

Compare these to the standard end game AA boosters of a 2H Berserker/Reaver Vanguard, for example: Cleave + Giant's Reach + Berserk + Barrage + Sunder + Destroyer + Massacre + Fervor + Blood Frenzy + Sacrificial Frenzy + Adrenaline + Assail. And they have Sundering, Bloom, Celebrant, Blade of Mercy. Compare those weapons' basic damage to say, Eye of the Storm, Cold-Blooded, Voracity, Torch of Falon'Din, or even The Final Thought. And Warrior weapons do AOE damage on their basic attacks.

Oh, and finally, damage boosting abilities >>>> damage boosting gears. Perhaps the best damage boosting gear is the Robes of Unblemished Cleanliness. Huge damage boost you say! Compare that to a simple, unupgraded Cleave, or Fervor, which a single point-passive. Tell me this is not a joke.

All of the good staffs in each Act are fire, cold, or spirit based. Galvanism helps the least.

You listed end game gear and a LOT of warrior abilities. Did you play the actual game, or did you cheat with levels and equipment and derived a conclusion based on a faulty premise?

Almost every enemy you meet is either weak to fire, cold, or electricity.(the ones that don't, like Mercenary or Darkspawn types, arent difficult at all). A mage can already deal twice the damage against every enemy without spending a single ability point, no matter how low their level.(if you want an RP reason why Mages are feared, there it is... even the lowliest Mage can deal twice the damage if they hit a weakness)

Unupgraded Cleave is basically a +50% DPS boost. Even less when you factor in its animation time.

Modifié par rumination888, 06 avril 2011 - 12:14 .

[wowpwnslol]

Grumpy Old Wizard wrote...



Not many people want to play a healbot/'buffboy.  Also,  that is not in line with the lore for the class OR the official description of the class.

That's what Bioware's vision for the class is. If you want to be a badass superhero, play 2H warrior. Given Bioware's history with balance patches, mage's role will not change anytime soon.

That does not sound like a class tha is just supposed to be there to help the actual heroe. A Hawke mage should not be a  "sidekick" character.

I agree. But Bioware had a typical "knee jerk" reaction to DA:O mage, which was hideously broken. Mages lost damage, utility and survivability going into DA2. Overnerfed, forced to rely on team members to take damage for them and set up CCC's. Nothing you can do about it, sadly.