45 réponses à ce sujet

[OR3GONIZ3D]

On my Arcane Warrior I found a way to have fire, frost, shock and telekinetic weapons damage active all at the same time so I am pretty much invincible, MUAHAHAHAHA!

[T0paze]

Too bad I've already uninstalled Dragon Age, I could've run some tests. Anyway, the Wicked Oath also gives you +1 regeneration. BTW, check that figure for Andruil's Blessing, please. I have a feeling it's +2 regen, not +1. As already mentioned, the new patch also increases the regeneration rate, so I think that in the end that mana drain will be almost negligible. Unless the fight is enourmously long or your Willpower is very low, you should have more than enough mana.

Modifié par T0paze, 18 décembre 2009 - 08:59 .

[T0paze]

SfHell wrote...
But with Wade's medium dragon skin armor you can't go wrong.
Also it's the only armor to get that will maintain it's value, the supreme dragonbone is crappy since you get other 3 armors that are better than it, thus becoming useless.

Hmm, I prefer his Heavy Armor. The full set adds only 3.5% fatigue. Besides, an Arcane Warrior with all sustainables (Arcane Shield, Rock Armor, Miasma, Shimmering Shield) shouldn't probably rely on his mana pool to cast spells. He should use Blood Magic instead.

[Alphakiller]

T0paze wrote...

Too bad I've already uninstalled Dragon Age, I could've run some tests. Anyway, the Wicked Oath also gives you +1 regeneration. BTW, check that figure for Andruil's Blessing, please. I have a feeling it's +2 regen, not +1. As already mentioned, the new patch also increases the regeneration rate, so I think that in the end that mana drain will be almost negligible. Unless the fight is enourmously long or your Willpower is very low, you should have more than enough mana.

that's the displayed regen purely for the benefit of any other class wearing it.

in truth, the stamina/mana regen stat is the same exact thing when you look below it in the code. The GUI merely displays it differently to keep it appearing seperate.

don't equip andruil's blessing hoping for +2, it'll always by +1

[Kal Choedan]

T0paze wrote...
Hmm, I prefer his Heavy Armor. The full set adds only 3.5% fatigue. Besides, an Arcane Warrior with all sustainables (Arcane Shield, Rock Armor, Miasma, Shimmering Shield) shouldn't probably rely on his mana pool to cast spells. He should use Blood Magic instead.

You are missing the point, with 1.02 Shimmering Shield now turns off when your mana pool runs dry, regardless of whether you then switch to Blood Magic to cast new spells.  When shimmering shield drops, you lose the lion's share of your defense.  This thread is about ways to mitigate that and Blood Magic only helps peripherally.

[DragoonKain3]

Note that Stamina/mana gives you a +0.5 bonus at 10-50% total stamina/mana, and +3 bonus at <10% from casual observation. So with the OP's equips, you can conceivably always have SS on assuming you don't put too much sustains. Don't know exactly if that helps though, since you can't have a lot of sustains up since its 10% of your current max mana (so more sustains means smaller thresholds), and you still don't have much mana to cast with even at 10%.

[sandboxgod]

T0paze wrote...

Too bad I've already uninstalled Dragon Age, I could've run some tests. Anyway, the Wicked Oath also gives you +1 regeneration. BTW, check that figure for Andruil's Blessing, please. I have a feeling it's +2 regen, not +1. As already mentioned, the new patch also increases the regeneration rate, so I think that in the end that mana drain will be almost negligible. Unless the fight is enourmously long or your Willpower is very low, you should have more than enough mana.

How mjuch willpower should a Mage have before they are considered pretty good? I think my Will was bout 42 or so when I beat the game on my AW. I didn't run shimmering shield much though because I noticed after I cast a fireball / inferno combo and a few other spells I'd be running out of mana pretty quickly

I always wondered if I should have put more into my willpower....

[sandboxgod]

SfHell wrote...

Why all that???

I don't see why you are stressing with the regen.

The best thing you can with do arcane warrior is to equip him with Wade Medium Dragon Scale Armor. It leaves you with -10 fatigue. By the time you activate shimmering and combat magic your fatigue will be nowhere near as high had you used an heavy armor. I used to run with Combat magic, shimmering shield, rock armor, arcane shield on and never ran out of mana. And still had some left for cone of cold....

Don't see where you guys are comming from...
I had my armor above 60 if I remember well,

Nice to know I did the right thing when I picked Wade's medium dragon scale armor for my AW. Was really fun to use, etc

[Besetment]

This is one of those things where you obsess way too much about getting enough mana regen to break even on Shimmering Shield that you end up making your build worse trying to get there. It means you can't run Spell Might or Haste for instance both of which I think are more useful than Shimmering Shield.

Also, just because you have +8 regen doesn't mean you have to use it all. I sometimes like to just run with Spell Might and the excess regen in combat means you can periodically cast in the middle of a fight even when most of your mana is reserved in sustainables. It means that spells such as Fireball aren't just openers but it goes for any spell that gives you along of bang for a short cooldown timer.

You only need to survive long enough to end a fight faster than the mob can kill you. Having Shimmering Shield on permanently would be nice but the mana penalty is so big that its clear it was never designed to be something you leave on for the entire game. If its going to stop you using Spell Might and Haste, lower your Spellpower significantly and limit the number of sustainables you can use at any one time then its not worth it.

Shimmering Shield right now is a situational thing. You turn it on if you have the mana reserves and you have a short time in which you are basically a wall and then you have to end it. How much uptime you have depends on how much mana you decide not to reserve.

I'm in the middle of a solo run through Nightmare with an Arcane Warrior and I haven't even used Shimmering Shield thus far. The only things that will give you real problems are packs of baddies where more than one of them can use 'Overwhelm' against you. Ogres are also a problem because of repeated charge/knockdowns and that grab attack they use which is a death sentence. Broodmother is also rough. Shimmering Shield doesn't help there.

If you want to you can choose to fight in your own Spell Bloom which gives +3 mana regen. It lasts 20 seconds and has a 30 second cooldown but the biggest problem is that it restricts your movement if you want to get the most benefit out of it.

Modifié par Besetment, 20 décembre 2009 - 11:44 .

[Alphakiller]

I plan on having my arcane warrior always rushing in the front lines, and it helps to not be the slightest bit squishy.

my battle plan as it is now is oghren/sten, leliana, zevran, and my arcane warrior. leliana and zevran (generally) will be sneaking in and out, here and there, striking when needed, but mostly stealthed. they will always have bard talents running, which give oghren/sten and my AW their stamina regen to make them last in a fight. Oghren/Sten will be specced to templar and given 100% immunity, and good equipment so that no spells, stuns, or knockdowns will work. sten/oghren will also be making good use of taunt and disengage, to manage aggro between the aw and the 2h as necessary.

i'm making this party based on survivability, not kill ASAP.

[DragonPrawn]

where do you get Fade Wall from.

Thanks in advance

[Alphakiller]

gaxkang, random drop.

the search function is your friend.

[CognitiveDissonant]

Alphakiller wrote...

Sword: Spellweaver/veshialle = +1 (reccomend spellweaver. axe's only advantage is strength mod... which does AW nothing)
Second hand: Fade Wall = +1
Helmet: (forgot name) = +0.5
Amulet: ?
Gloves: wade's superior dragonbone = +0.5
Boots: wade's superior dragonbone = +0.5
Armor: wade's superior dragonbone = +1
Belt: Andruil's blessing = +1
Ring1: ?
Ring2: ?
bonus: 4th AW skill - +1

party bonus: +1/+2 from song of courage

total: +7.5/+8.5

I've been attempting just this in fact. I've tested a lot of the stuff you mention here. In all of my experiments, fatigue has never affected regen, I think the other poster was missing the stamina (which is mana) regen on wades stuff. Andruils blessing, as of 1.02a, does in fact give you +2, I think this is an accident and may be fixed in a future patch. What it says it does is +1 stamina regen, +1 mana regen. But the game treats these as identical I think whoever made the item had forgotten this or something. I've tested it a couple times and it always comes out with +2 to mana regen. Song of valor gives .5 + .01x(Cunning-10) so about 1 for an upper level cunning rogue. Supposedly the bonus from combat tactics is .5, wasn't able to test before I had already taken it so I can't give any info there.

So thats (assuming you didn't pay for the DLC ring)

Wades Stuff: +2
Combat Tactics:+.5
Song of Courage:+1/+2 (if two bards)
Fade Wall: +1
Spellweaver:+1
Fade Shroud Spell:+1
Helmet:+.5
Andruil Belt: +2

Which is 9/10 + natural mana regen. Which I honestly don't know how its determined or what it is. At the moment I don't have the fade wall or the helmet (which I hadn't heard of, what is it?). I'll post here again if I hit the magic number 10.

PS: I should note that I've never noticed an effect of having low mana on mana regeneration. So either it doesn't exist despite what bioware says, or more likely its always on when I'm testing, or always isn't. I'm usually less than half mana due to sustainables, but I'm rarely testing at say, less than a tenth, so maybe it kicks in there.

[Alphakiller]

CognitiveDissonant wrote...

Alphakiller wrote...

Sword: Spellweaver/veshialle = +1 (reccomend spellweaver. axe's only advantage is strength mod... which does AW nothing)
Second hand: Fade Wall = +1
Helmet: (forgot name) = +0.5
Amulet: ?
Gloves: wade's superior dragonbone = +0.5
Boots: wade's superior dragonbone = +0.5
Armor: wade's superior dragonbone = +1
Belt: Andruil's blessing = +1
Ring1: ?
Ring2: ?
bonus: 4th AW skill - +1

party bonus: +1/+2 from song of courage

total: +7.5/+8.5

I've been attempting just this in fact. I've tested a lot of the stuff you mention here. In all of my experiments, fatigue has never affected regen, I think the other poster was missing the stamina (which is mana) regen on wades stuff. Andruils blessing, as of 1.02a, does in fact give you +2, I think this is an accident and may be fixed in a future patch. What it says it does is +1 stamina regen, +1 mana regen. But the game treats these as identical I think whoever made the item had forgotten this or something. I've tested it a couple times and it always comes out with +2 to mana regen. Song of valor gives .5 + .01x(Cunning-10) so about 1 for an upper level cunning rogue. Supposedly the bonus from combat tactics is .5, wasn't able to test before I had already taken it so I can't give any info there.

So thats (assuming you didn't pay for the DLC ring)

Wades Stuff: +2
Combat Tactics:+.5
Song of Courage:+1/+2 (if two bards)
Fade Wall: +1
Spellweaver:+1
Fade Shroud Spell:+1
Helmet:+.5
Andruil Belt: +2

Which is 9/10 + natural mana regen. Which I honestly don't know how its determined or what it is. At the moment I don't have the fade wall or the helmet (which I hadn't heard of, what is it?). I'll post here again if I hit the magic number 10.

PS: I should note that I've never noticed an effect of having low mana on mana regeneration. So either it doesn't exist despite what bioware says, or more likely its always on when I'm testing, or always isn't. I'm usually less than half mana due to sustainables, but I'm rarely testing at say, less than a tenth, so maybe it kicks in there.

mana/stamina regen bonus is covered in this post:

DragoonKain3 wrote...

Note that Stamina/mana gives you a +0.5 bonus at 10-50% total stamina/mana, and +3 bonus at <10% from casual observation. So with the OP's equips, you can conceivably always have SS on assuming you don't put too much sustains. Don't know exactly if that helps though, since you can't have a lot of sustains up since its 10% of your current max mana (so more sustains means smaller thresholds), and you still don't have much mana to cast with even at 10%.

interesting... so andruil's blessing isn't actually what it says it is? can anybody familiar with the toolset verify for us?

and with minimal sustained abilities affecting the aw, and the equipment and abilities cancelling out the shimmering shield's effect, the low mana pool regen effect actually helps the AW cast like any other mage... but with lots of fatigue and killer swordsmanship.

which begs the question... should I go for blood mage or spirit healer? blood mage is offensive, but amazing crowd control, while spirit healer actually allows to revive the rogues and the 2h if they die...
decisions, decisions...

[bas273]

If your Arcane Warrior is the only Mage in your team, go for Spirit Healer.

But it's better to go for Blood Mage and let Wynne serve as a Healer.

[Besetment]

The funny thing is that by the time you get all of that gear the game is practically over anyway. Whats the point of this exercise? I really don't get it.

[CognitiveDissonant]

Besetment wrote...

The funny thing is that by the time you get all of that gear the game is practically over anyway. Whats the point of this exercise? I really don't get it.

You can actually get most of it about 2/3rds into the game. The latest item is probably the fade wall, but even then you can get that immediately after going to orzammar (to get the last piece of evidence) if thats the last place you go. So you still have a whole treaty area and the landsmeet and all the post-landsmeet things, and all the sidequests you haven't done yet. Thats quite a bit of game. You get a huge chunk of them as soon as you do the urn of sacred ashes, wades stuff and the spellweaver.

[Alphakiller]

Besetment wrote...

The funny thing is that by the time you get all of that gear the game is practically over anyway. Whats the point of this exercise? I really don't get it.

right now i'm level 11 and i've already gotten alistair 92% spell resistance. it IS quite possible to get lots of high-end gear early on if you know what you're doing. i'm planning on skimming as much as possible until I get all the equipment I need, then i'll run through everything thoroughly once my AW is the invincible character that AW's tend to be.

btw... anybody know the mana drain of the spirit healer's last ability?

[CognitiveDissonant]

Alphakiller wrote...

btw... anybody know the mana drain of the spirit healer's last ability?

Not from personal experience, but supposedly -10, just like shimmering shield.

[CognitiveDissonant]

Just thought I'd update, with wades stuff (+2), spellweaver (+1), andruils belt (+2), combat tactics(+.5), fade shroud (+1) and Leliana singing (about +1 on mine) I never run out of shimmering goodness. Total on that is 7.5+ natural, so I'm at -2 (8-10) until I get way low, at which point I start going up again, just as predicted. So yes it is possible, at level 16 in fact (assuming you end up with enough gold for the fancy belt and do the urn before this point fairly soon).

[Alphakiller]

nice!

now... to consider other possibilities of this build:
mana regen is insane: remember how fast shimmering shield would make your mana go down? imagine that process in reverse.

whatever shall a mage do with near-limitless mana? mana that can probably keep up with all your important cooldowns?

I think that the kind of build we're talking is the ultimate in versatility: a crazy-dps/cc mage who doesn't care about fatigue and wears armor with impunity. what's that? drew a bunch of aggro? *bam* shimmering shield. take practically no damage, use this time to wack at the baddies while they still pay attention to him. aggro is eventually lost, turn off shimmering shield and continue using your near-limitless mana to your advantage.

I actually think that spirit healer will, indeed, be better for this build. if worse even comes to worse, you can sit there with shimmering shield on, heal yourself with your extra mana whenever it happens to fall low enough, and finally revive any number of times necessary. the uber-survival can be played to a huge advantage in this way, by making any cooldown pointless.

if you have a large mana pool, it's also good for this because the amount that makes up the bottom 10% is also bigger: you could concieveably cast a spell every so often even when shimmering shield is activated.

I'm thinking, that in a min/max approach, 30 dex for that added attack bonus to make sure you don't whiff, 30 willpower to give you that extra amount of mana pool so that you're more effecient at the lower levels where you're mostly operating, and the rest into magic, to increase the damage rating and effectiveness of spells. all equipment that doesn't increase mana regen should be given towards increasing the effectiveness of spells, which would mean either magic or spellpower, or perhaps percentage increases.

in fact one may consider taking the AW spec simply because it allows access to so many stamina regen items without having to invest into strength... (not to mention shimmering shield)

Modifié par Alphakiller, 22 décembre 2009 - 09:21 .