33 réponses à ce sujet

[DrekorSilverfang]

Not sure where people get the idea AW's do bad damage... you're likely to have well over 100 spellpower and should have bloodmage to allow casting while shimmering shield is active. Also I can combine my hexes(specifically death and misdirection) to boost my 2 DW warrior + 1 rogue DPS squad. Everything is attacking me I can heal myself by either dropping blood magic and using heal or a poultice(which are stupid effective when you have 70+ magic, you'll rarely need anything above a lesser one) or by using blood sac and taking some from a groupmate.



I'm sure you can likely be more effective as BM/SH but it requires a lot more attention to detail and less margin for error, if **** hits the fan with an AW you just solo everything without issue.

[DragoonKain3]

@OP

The strength of the Arcane Warrior right now lies with the fact that Shimmering Shield does not turn off even if you ran out of mana. I mean, sure you won't have mana, but fact is you're still nigh invulnerable (100 physical/mental resists, 75 elemental resists, massive armor/defense increase, etc.), and you can keep this up indefinitely. Partner this up with Blood Mage, and you can actually still cast under no mana and under shimmering shield.



Outside of that exploit though, as you have said, AW trades in effeciency for survivability. If your mages aren't getting hit, then AW is useless to you. In fact, its actually hindering your overall party effectiveness, since you're better off not having fatigue and use less mana per spell, which means less potion chigging.



Really, if you have a proper tank that can keep aggro and survive said aggro, then you're better off with another specialization.

[Spyndel]

Jinnth wrote...

 Also this dicussion is only about nightmare (as I never played any other difficulty).

Ok. Well, I think this is skewing your vision a little bit of the "baseline game".  It is not the way the DEvs intended most  people to experience the game.

BUT.

I will then backpeddle and agree somewhat.  AWs lose some of their shine in Nightmare, because the game unfairly  favors defense over armor at those levels since damage scales but accuracy doesnt. The AW is no longer as "unkillable" as they are in the baseline game. (Being able to turn on Max resists to everything is always nice though) . In this case, in order to beat they very skewed and distorted Nightmare experience, it would be considered "optimum" to simply make use of a mage that tries not to get hit at all and focus on casting and casting potency.

Of course this means that many of the game's character archetypes lose their appeal as well.    Of course, by this logic, many of the game's character archetypes are equally "invalid", and you  have been reduced to sheer metagaming, and the DEX tanks you build to cater to this arent going to be much better melee-ers either, having sacrified damage to get defense up to the extreme levels it has to be to be "unhittable"....and they don't offer you Blood Wound, FF, CoC, Miasma yada yada yada


I still, however,  don't see why every mage in the game doesnt take at least a single point in AW even if theyre never going to turn Combat Magic on and melee just for the free 25+ Damage reduction.  The  20-30% spell cost increase is only really punitve in theory.  In reality, your mage generally runs through a normal cycle of 4-6 spells per encounter, and the armored mage runs through the same cycle more or less.  For extended battles, mana pots are unlimited in the game.  It's an easy trade.

The AW is the winning version of the Versatility Mage in the game...Shapeshifter is the losing one. If your concern is metagaming  to distill all the individual abilities and make sure that every individual ability is taken care of as potently as it can possibly be, AW probably isnt for you.  If you are running a single mage group on Nightmare, you probably dont want it.  If you are running two mages, it becomes much more appealing for one of those slots.

Modifié par Spyndel, 23 novembre 2009 - 02:51 .

[RamsenC]

From my personal experience my AW/BM is an awesome tank on nightmare. So far the strategy has been blood wound and fireballing myself for aggro. Even with losing health whenever I cast, my AW does not die, and everything dies extremely quickly. My other party members are all ranged, Leliania, Morrigan, and Wynn. Wynn is my healer and blood sacrifice battery, she also wears plate.



This way of playing arcane warrior is also fun since you can cast all you want, just watch your health when casting. I have con around 30 and magic around 50.

[higuain20]

Spyndel wrote...

I still, however,  don't see why every mage in the game doesnt take at least a single point in AW even if theyre never going to turn Combat Magic on and melee just for the free 25+ Damage reduction.  The  20-30% spell cost increase is only really punitve in theory.  In reality, your mage generally runs through a normal cycle of 4-6 spells per encounter, and the armored mage runs through the same cycle more or less.  For extended battles, mana pots are unlimited in the game.  It's an easy trade.

Not only that, you can pick up AW and just Combat Magic just to wear +sta pieces to give a boost to the mana pool that makes the 20-30% fatigue totally insignificant. You can almost ignore willpower and still have a substantial mana pool coupled with very high spellpower means that you can outnuke any other mage as well. You can get +100 mana with just 3 item slots and that is already worth 20 willpower which is being invested into magic instead.

[SnowHamster]

I did a AW/BM, never ran out of health/mana to cast. Start encounters by using your mana pool for spells, when you run out, turn on combat magic for fade shroud to take effect while your mana regens. If that is not fast enough for the fight, switch to blood magic mode and use your HP pool instead for spells.



I had Leliana in the party summoning bears and wolves for me to drain for HP, so I never ran out of mana and was substantially protected in my plate armor , really cool build in my book. Currently in my second nightmare run with a 2H warrior, not really working out for me.

[Jinnth]

Yeah, 2h warriors are fail, especially in nightmare. Almost no CCs, bad survivability and damage isn't all that either.

Modifié par Jinnth, 23 novembre 2009 - 03:56 .

[Zenthar Aseth]

GilgameshXD wrote...

Jinnth wrote...

DrekorSilverfang wrote...

Your group needs to be built with an AW tank in mind. Your AW should be throwing on CC and hexes, this will draw aggro very very easily. You can also combine with ageless 2h sword to generate additional threat.

Ok, but since your
need your AW to activelly cast CCs and hex to get aggro, doesn't that mean that your other mages, who should teorically be able to cast CCs and hexes more activelly than your AW due to better mana efficiency and the fact that they aren't tanking/beingknocked down don't they have to reduce the amount of CCs they cast below the level of the AW so they don't generate more aggro than the AW, resulting in a less effective team ?

I don't think anyone claims AW are effcient, just hard to kill and capable of chipping everything to death, sooner or later.

They are the most efficient class. 70-80 damage per swing(1h weapon), invincible, swinging like crazy because of Haste, CC, AoE dmg...

Modifié par Zenthar Aseth, 23 novembre 2009 - 11:24 .

[SirValeq]

Zenthar Aseth wrote...

They are the most efficient class. 70-80 damage per swing(1h weapon), invincible, swinging like crazy because of Haste, CC, AoE dmg...

I disagree. If you think their melee damage is high, then you must have never played a properly built melee character. Haste is far from being AW-specific... It's a group buff, any character can take advantage of it (not that everybody needs it, since DW melees have the non-stacking momentum). Any well built pure-caster will CC better or AoE better.
I'd prefer a diverse party instead of one consinting of 4 AWs, both for efficiency and for fun's sake.