1. You don't have to use a melee weapon. In fact, the best thing you get out of being an Arcane Warrior is survivability, not melee damage. You can wear massive armor, and just use a staff and play like a normal mage would, except you're a hundred times more durable in every way, even more durable than a Sword/Shield Warrior. Leave Combat Magic off and blast away. Turn on Shimmering Armor (Massive armor bonus and max resists) if you're in danger of being overwhelmed (it doesn't turn off when you run out of mana, just chug lyrium potions while its up).
2. Don't worry about Armor fatigue. Lyrium potions are so easy to make and come by that its irrelevent - just buy 99 lyrium dust (~3g) from the Circle Tower and 99 flasks (~1.5g) from camp and make 99 lesser lyrium potions. This is almost enough to last you the whole game.
3. Don't worry about building your talents around Melee. In fact, just getting normal mage spells like Fireball, Cone of Cold, and Earth Quake gets you all the spells you need to melee well (Rock Armor and Fire/Ice weapons).
4. Don't bother with melee until later in the game. Melee single target damage eventually way outscales Mage staff/spell single target damage, but not by a lot until the mid teens. In fact, Staves are incredible against high armor/defense bosses like Revenants early in the game because they ignore armor and always hit (just don't use a nature or ice staff against them).
5. Fireball and Cone of Cold are amazing. Fireball can two shot most crowds of white level mobs consistently throughout the entire game, and Cone of Cold is amazing for freezing crowds, as the freeze length is the same as its cooldown timer.
6. Single target debuffs (like the Hex line) aren't very useful, as white mobs die too fast for them to matter much and Bosses resist them too often, and they have reduced duration against them
7. Force Field is insane, both for crowd control and defensively. Casting it on a friendly who is getting hit by a mob or boss will not cause the mob to stop attacking it, even though the party member is immune to damage. Just make sure the party member has enough hostility on the mob before doing it or you might peel it off.
8. Get Dispel around level 15. Casters start getting Curse of Mortality (unable to heal debuff for 30 seconds) around then, and getting hit by it is almost always certain death if you can't remove it.
9. The Glyph line is great. Glyph of Repulsion is great in any situation with a choke point (which is a lot) and the Spell Combo with Glyph of Paralysis is a Mass Paralysis. Glyph of Warding is nice because you're always running into mobs of archers, but its mostly filler for Repulsion.
Edit:
10. By the end of the game its definitely worth it to go Melee. In the late teens, with 70 magic points and 2-3 slot weapons, melee single target damage way outscales magic single target damage. You just need a few +attack buffs like Leliana's Song of Courage, Wynne's Heroic Offense, or some +attack/+str/+dex equipment to make sure you hit. Start fights by throwing out a Fireball, Cone of Cold, and maybe some crowd control and switch to melee.
11. Sometimes your Arcane Warrior just needs to sit back and be a healer/support caster. Don't be afraid to just let Alistair or Shale tank a boss and play heal bot when you need to.
12. Casting offensive spells and debuffs at a boss is seldom worth it - they don't do that much more damage than your regular staff attacks and way less than your melee ones, and they're usually resisted or have reduced durations. Just save your mana for heals, buffs, or sustained abilities.
Modifié par Jephery, 20 novembre 2009 - 04:31 .
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