195 réponses à ce sujet

[Integrity]

lol, nah, if Firestorm were the less commonly used option I'd be rooting for it. Too bad its not. I'll admit I have a weakness for people going, "What? Why is a [class] wearing/doing [equipment/action]?" It makes the game more fun for me. Sure he's still nuking things, but the alternate armor is fun (I'll not wear Mage armor at the end, even if his guide suggests it. He sold me on the thief armor, and warrior armor is too similar to the AW in DA:O).

[mr_afk]

@integrity heh, glad to hear you found it useful.
And you're somewhat in luck. I read some person complaining about the time-differences between the high dragon fights between Origins and DA2 so I'm going to attempt to figure out a way to speed-run it using this crit-mage build

I'm thinking of modifying it a bit, in protest of those ridiculous patch changes. I might try a non-bloodmage (using spirit healer just for spec bonus) and focusing a bit more on other damage spells. The main problem is I don't have enough quick-slots to have that many spells but I think I'll figure out a way to skip the fireturds from the sky hahaha

[Integrity]

I love the concept. Not sure how you'd execute it. You'd have to rely on mana again, but don't let that stop you. I was kind of sad that the build included Blood Mage, to be honest, and if you can come up with an alternate build for SH/FM, even if not as effective (which really doesn't matter with damage caps, now does it?) I'd be more likely to enjoy it.

[AreleX]

mr_afk wrote...

@integrity heh, glad to hear you found it useful.
And you're somewhat in luck. I read some person complaining about the time-differences between the high dragon fights between Origins and DA2 so I'm going to attempt to figure out a way to speed-run it using this crit-mage build

i can tell you what to do and save you hours of failure and embarrassment, if you want

and while searching for new things to do is a worthy goal, myself, the worst player, and others have pretty much milked this game for all it's worth, so now, it's just a matter of choosing which school of play will be the least shameful to conform to. this patch only made things worse, in the dept of variety.

Modifié par AreleX, 20 juin 2011 - 07:55 .

[Integrity]

Yeah, I saw that (the worse for variety dept.). I made a post on how we payed for the game, and if I want a warrior in mage armor, a thief with a shield, a mage with daggers, then that should be my prerogative, and that this isn't an MMO that requires balance. The players will decide how to limit themselves. Besides, if they really want to be OP as they play, they can always just cheat, so why bother?

[mr_afk]

I just wish they would remove those damn class-restrictions off the stealth boots.
That and maybe including some decent non-rogue restricted crit-gear would probably be enough to forgive them for completely messing up the game balance (and maybe even inspire another playthrough) haha.

Anyway, in answer to your question about mana, I have ~250 (no points into will) and after two sustains I have 200 to play around with. The general concept is that I'm going to rely quite heavily on death syphon.

I'm pretty happy with my hawke (spent a while playing around with different ability combinations) and her 1206 damage crushing prison (from tooltip). It makes me tempted to get a warrior into my party for that stagger CCC; but since it's DoT I think I'll manage without (no big numbers to seduce me). This is all purely theoretical as I'm just chilling in the black emporium chugging down potions etc. haha

Now I just need to figure out my companion's builds and earn some money then it'll be dragon slaying time!!

Might be a little later though because I think I'm going to go out and have a few drinks now


Update: I just tested it out; My tactics I made for gravitic ring works! Well, problem have to do more testing first, but:
Enemy: Slowed - Use current condition for next tactic
Enemy: Target between medium and long range -

Allowed me to have anders' fireturds and varrics hail of arrows peppering all those hapless people stuck in a gravitic ring. Ahh the joys of having an all-ranged party.

Anyway, I'll see about updating this later.

Modifié par mr_afk, 20 juin 2011 - 09:00 .

[darkly18]

Just to share that I've been having fun with a build inspired by the OP, and with 50 Dex, Malcolm's staff, Eddie's Amulet and Puzzle Ring, have taken the crit chance to >90% with Heroic Aura and Spirit Mastery. Crit damage hovers at 55%, which is sort of ok for a dual elemental/spirit mastery mage with AOE critting - can't compare with my rogue's 300+% but AOE critting is still fun. I do have the Robes of Unblemished Cleanliness and am gathering more gold for the Ferryman Ring. All spells and auto-attacks benefit from the high crit chance, though I too lament that Stealth Boots are rogue only.

[mr_afk]

U-u-u-u-pdatedd

I'll work on it some more later. I'll get down my party setup and their builds and try to make sure it isn't too glassy for people to handy. Also I'll check if any of the new legacy gear fits into the build well

Tell me which legacy fights to record and I'll see about demonstrating this build!

[thendcomes]

The +15-20% crit damage ring beats out Puzzle Ring and Etched Ring on damage (and is free).

Belt with 6-8% crit chance does not beat out Seven Deadly Cinch.

According to Relix28, the key tops out at 59 (!!!) electric damage and can bear 9% critical damage.

Modifié par thendcomes, 27 juillet 2011 - 06:21 .

[thendcomes]

Zoey's Battered Horde-Kickers

Sadly I think these are the best boots in the game for a mage, DPS wise. Generic +6 element% boots barely edge them out in their individual element, and they are only available around level 25.

Modifié par thendcomes, 03 août 2011 - 07:37 .

[thendcomes]

I was bored at work today and came up with a spreadsheet to try and find the best mage staff, but I ended up getting a lot more information out of it. Because it's easiest to get +element% first, whether by skills or gear, as your +element% rises, crit chance and crit damage become equally valuable in increasing damage with spells and with your auto attack. They are even more valuable because crit affects all elements simultaneously, INCLUDING physical (Stonefist, Hemorrhage, Fist of the Maker, and Crushing Prison).

I basically set it up so you can input the player's level, (which affects Malcolm's Honor, Hawke's Key, # of attribute points available, and some stats on Legacy or generic gear), pick which piece you have in each slot* and it spits out average damage for all spells in the game and DPS for autoattacks.

Turns out that most of the crit pieces end up being best-in-slot. Four Fingered Eddie's Lucky Talisman beats out everything, even the new Smite on the elements that it boosts, and Eye of Blue on Fire Damage! Ring of the Ferryman gets beat out by Puzzle Ring of the Black Fox, Etched Ring of the Twins, and the new Graven Circle, on Fire and barely loses out on Electricity. Seven Deadly Cinch crushes Belt of Primevals. etc.

As far as the staff goes, TFT with a RoD is the best for spell casting through around level 24-25, after which THK and MH outpaces it. For pure staff damage, the PLR boosted TFT and ToF crushes everything else, and the ToF easily beats TFT thanks to the massive +fire damage you can get. While hasted, the dominance obviously decreases, but I did not account for that yet in the spreadsheet.

*I took into account all damage boosting stats granted by every piece, including +stats. I restricted it to a selection of the best pieces in the game. For staves, I have Torch of Falon'din w/ Rune of Devastation and Primeval Lyrium Rune, Cold-Blooded, The Hawke's Key, 2 separate entries for Eye of the Storm w/ RoD only and w/ PLR only, The Final Thought w/ RoD only and PLR only, and MH.

Modifié par thendcomes, 04 août 2011 - 03:00 .

[thendcomes]

Best-in-slots are: RoUC, The Apostate's Mask, Zoey's Battered Horde-Kickers, Bloody Butcher's Gloves, Seven Deadly Cinch, and FFELT. The best rings depend on your current levels of crit damage and crit chance, but are PRotBF, ERotT, and Graven Circle.

Of course, this is for an overall best build. If you wanted to build a specific element up to max power, you could switch pieces out to attain max damage in one element. Eg. even the RoUC falls short to a generic spirit armor if you insisted on max'ing Spirit damage. If you really just wanted to boost your Torch and Firestorm, you could use the spreadsheet to customize the pieces you would need to do so.

Tomorrow I'll format and fine tune the spreadsheet to share via google docs, if I can figure out how. Anyway, I guess this is a long way of saying thanks for the crit build inspiration!

Modifié par thendcomes, 04 août 2011 - 03:01 .

[mr_afk]

thanks, that's some pretty interesting info. good to hear that my crit-build has a sound basis behind it. Did you take into consideration crit chance from abilities? There's 20% available for mages.

I think the main problem with the bloody butcher's gloves is that it doesn't have rune slots and has such a low armour rating. In the grand scheme of things some survivability (e.g. extra slots for either runes of valiance or elemental resistance and armour) is worth the slight reduction in damage potential. And that's why gauntlets (+4% fire/cold) is probably the best for an elementalist while hands of fate (+3% spirit) could be good for a spirit-mage. The champions gauntlets are also viable if you just want the magic/mana boost along with a decent armour score.

I think I mentioned Zoey's Battered Horde-Kickers back in my old build/the discussions about it. The main problem in my case is that Fool's Gold doesn't show up if you do finding Nathaniel. And an extra rune slot on Varric could be worth it anyway- but I do admit that the crit modifiers and rune slot (provides a good place for runes of valiance as there is no reduction in effectiveness) make it pretty amazing.

Hmm I might do some calculations and see what the +19% graven circle does for my mage with 77% crit chance. I should also probably check that it's still better to pump dex than cunning (i've capped magic) but I'm pretty certain that my base damage is still too low (91) favouring crit chance.

Modifié par mr_afk, 04 août 2011 - 08:15 .

[thendcomes]

mr_afk wrote...
thanks, that's some pretty interesting info. good to hear that my crit-build has a sound basis behind it. Did you take into consideration crit chance from abilities? There's 20% available for mages.

I don't even know what this means. You mean that abilities have a baseline 20% chance to crit for mages? Does that mean that all you need is 80% to reach the cap?

mr_afk wrote...
I think the main problem with the bloody butcher's gloves is that it doesn't have rune slots and has such a low armour rating. In the grand scheme of things some survivability (e.g. extra slots for either runes of valiance or elemental resistance and armour) is worth the slight reduction in damage potential. And that's why gauntlets (+4% fire/cold) is probably the best for an elementalist while hands of fate (+3% spirit) could be good for a spirit-mage. The champions gauntlets are also viable if you just want the magic/mana boost along with a decent armour score.

The increase in DPS from the BBG is small of course, so you're right. Gauntlets are probably the best combination of DPS and survivability. You could just as easily ignore DPS on the gloves since the increases are so crappy.  A couple things though about your comment that Hands of Fate is good for a "spirit-mage." First, there should be no such thing as a "spirit mage". The only two spells that are relevant to spirit damage boosting are Spirit Bolt and Horror, which are first tier in their trees and thus available to any mage without major spirit investment. Second, the whole notion of specializing in any one element is bad, since no element has enough spells to spam, and stacking any one element is always at the expense of your other elements, not to mention it experiences greater and greater diminished returns. For the cost, I wouldn't recommend Hands of Fate to anyone. 

Modifié par thendcomes, 04 août 2011 - 02:35 .

[ripstrawberry]

^
Looking forward to that excel file. Would love to try it out and tweak my level 50 crit mage w/ it.

[thendcomes]

I just gotta see what AFK meant by the 20% crit on spells lol. He lives in Australia so it might not be for a while.

[mr_afk]

haha I wasn't saying anything that profound. I only meant that you get a 10% from heroic aura and another 10% from spirit mastery- and that 20% critical chance will effect the change in average damage that critical damage gives. E.g. the graven ring (~19% crit damage) will be more useful the more often you crit. This means that certain accessories become better and worse depending on the critical chance and damage you already have..
I don't think it makes that big a deal though.

As for the hand of fate, I wouldn't really recommend it either- it's just that if you were using malcolm's honour (which is what I mainly use) then the extra 3% damage actually adds up - each crit does ~300-500 damage (non-elemental weakness) so I get an extra ~15 damage sometimes. And with double haste it does add up to a considerable amount of damage (though not so much in the grand scheme of things). I suppose it's sort of like using deathroot poisons. So it's just there as one of the gauntlets I can use (with a rune slot for my valiance rune).

and yeah, it's only 11:20 over here- I sleep much later than that haha

[thendcomes]

Oh ok haha. I should be good then. I haven't precisely nailed the formula on The Hawke's Key damage and upgrades, so I may want to go test them some more before I spring the spreadsheet.

I feel dumb even discussing the stupid gloves slot, since the bonuses from any gloves are so pathetic. But the % element increases add together before they are applied to your base damage. The 3% from hands of fate boosts grants a full 3% increase only if it's the only spirit booster you have. For example, if you've already got 30% +spirit, then the Hands of Fate only boosts your damage 2.3%, gaining at most 12 more damage in your scenario.

I actually included the impact of not just one, but up to three hastes on auto attack DPS lol. Malcolm's Honor at level 28 with max spirit gear (96% spirit, 65% crit, 85% crit dmg) would do over 2000 DPS against spirit weak enemies lol.

[ripstrawberry]

*waits like a kid on christmas day for the excel file*

If I stuck to using malcom's honor (I assume best stave for a level 50 game which is where I usually play now because i hate the AI even w/ tactics. *looks at anders*) and spirit + lightning + physical spells what would be the "theoretical" optimum gear? Obviously no nature dmg source and I don't have space in my build for the elemental tree. Playing a blood force mage like this:

http://biowarefans.c...PfrQShuteEsHBCv

[Mr_Raider]

If you repeatedly reload the vendors like the shady merchant in the docks, or the one in the bar in lowtown, you can get generic rogue gear with +x critical chance and decent armor rating for your level. There a few other armor merchants also who can have random good stuff.

[thendcomes]

Ripstrawberry, you will definitely be best off with either Malcolm's or The Hawke's Key if you acquire it at max level. But you don't need to FOCUS on 3 different elements, you will have everything at your disposal.

Mr_Raider, I didn't consider that. However, the best crit chance you can get on gloves or boots is 2%. I don't believe crit damage is a possible modifier. So there will be a DPS/survivability tradeoff if you want to use them.

Also, in case you don't get Fool's Gold in Act 2, there is another unassuming pair of boots called Worn Leather Boots from Shady Merchandise Act 2 with 5% crit damage on it.

Modifié par thendcomes, 07 août 2011 - 11:04 .

[ripstrawberry]

"Ripstrawberry, you will definitely be best off with either Malcolm's or The Hawke's Key if you acquire it at max level. But you don't need to FOCUS on 3 different elements, you will have everything at your disposal."

Yeah that's what I figured though I picked malcom's coz i'm guessing it's better but i'll have to use that excel file you uploaded to be sure. What do you mean though that I will have everything at my disposal? Any suggestions on what other gear should I be making a beeline for asap? Not as well-versed with a mage as I am with a warrior/rogue w/ dps computations/excel-file making.

[thendcomes]

You're level 50, so you'd have every spell and thus every element at your disposal. Any uniques that don't level with you won't help you very much. You could continue to use Robes of UC and other top DPS items, but armor scales exponentially, so you may be much more vulnerable. Improve with level up items and generics are your only real option.

[ripstrawberry]

"You're level 50, so you'd have every spell and thus every element at your disposal. Any uniques that don't level with you won't help you very much. You could continue to use Robes of UC and other top DPS items, but armor scales exponentially, so you may be much more vulnerable. Improve with level up items and generics are your only real option."

False and true. I don't have every spell at my disposal. As mentioned in another post I've had to skip the elemental tree. True the items hat level w/ me are what helps me alot. As a mage though, the 2 improves w/ level up staves don't have rune slots so I suffer slightly vs. fights w/ bosses/elites in the late game due to the inability to put in the primeval lyrium rune compared to rogues and WS warriors. 2H warriors have the same problem on a level 50 nightmare playthrough. Due to this I'm considering downgrading to the final thought when I get to act 3 for my mage. Yeah I use the ROUC but I'm still waiting on your calc to consider trying +crit% and +crit dmg chest gear. I haven't found much generics of use for my mage yet. For my archer, yes. Yes one of the things that makes level 50 nightmare much more difficult than nightmare the normal way is that your armor is usually 0% (less than thousands in armor bonuses don't add anything) and it takes alot of cun to get your def to respectable levels (less than thousands in def bonuses don't add anything). The only exceptions to get over 0% armor are the mage's rock armor and the WS warrior's courage (gets you about 1~3% armor). Def-wise the exceptions are turn the blade, battle synergy, stuff from the duelist tree, heroic aura and arcane shield so it;s a little bit easier. Anyways here's my projected mage build once I get the spell tome in act 2. Any suggestions would be welcome:

http://biowarefans.c...PfrQShuteEsHBCv

Wanted to fit in an upgraded crushing prison there somewhere for more DOT but I didn't have space.

[mr_afk]

Well. I would think that the elemental tree would be one of the first trees to max out. Dropping a firestorm on enemies will still be one of the highest damaging spells and the cold spells will help a lot in CC and brittling- the +50% critical damage from brittles, (including the upgrade to petrify,) will be important in killing elites (who I imagine will have stackloads of hp), especially due to the 100% critical chance you should have.

After that you probably will want to focus on threat management. An upgraded blood slave could be useful in that regards. Stick it on an almost dead elite or something (high hp) then use mind blast to redirect enemy threat at it. This would mean that you'll get enemies crowding around your bomb when it goes off.

I'm also wondering if you could use a walking bomb+barrier strategy; e.g. when getting mobbed by lots of melee enemies you could cast walking bomb on an almost dead enemy, cast barrier over yourself then trigger the bomb via something powerful like one-foot-in, blowing it up on the mob around you.

Otherwise, I think the general strategy of pull of abyss+grav ring --> firestorm+tempest --> walking bomb/standard haste dps would do the trick in most cases.


You're playing solo right?
So yeah, in terms of what to change with your current build I would recommend removing misdirection hex and the upgrade to hex of torment (useless when you already have 100% crit chance), removing the upgrades to maker's fist (since it should be mainly used for threat management rather than damage), and maybe remove your glyphs (though I'm not too sure how useful they are for your playstyle).

Instead you should get your elemental tree fleshed out (everything but the fireball upgrade), upgrade petrify, get barrier (and maybe crushing prison when you have the points), and get blood slave. You may not be able to do that all atm (might use up more ability points than you have) but in terms of firestorm nuking and cold crowd control and brittling, you'll really want to get your elemental tree.


But i'm sure you'll have a better idea of what you need given that you're the one who's experienced with these level 50 builds. I'm happy experimenting with my allure's crook rogue- who's save I just dug up. It seems like if the patched weapon in question is equipped pre-patch it doesn't get 'fixed'.

The only slight downside is that it seems that I forgot to buy the silverite belt during act 1 so I have to pump magic more than necessary....
But as I remembered it's frigging awesome fun to play. It's not exactly powerful but I'll see if I can record a video of it in action. Rapid fire crits anyone?

Modifié par mr_afk, 09 août 2011 - 02:39 .