6397 réponses à ce sujet

[Icy Magebane]

I'm guessing its a middle ground spell that you can use especially well on minibosses for instance. I don't think its meant to be a powerhouse spell, just one that you can use a lot. I'm guessing BW put a lot of time into balancing out the skill trees so I don't fear that it will be completely worthless. I typically make builds with a lot of disabling effects so dragons are going to be that much harder for me.

My problem is that I have been going out of my way to avoid spells that I won't have mapped at all times so that I can instead focus on powerful passive abilities... I think it might be best if I skip Ice Mine and the upgrade and use those points for either Chain Lightning or Immolate so that I can get to Stormbringer, Flashpoint, and/or Clean Burn... that way I get the passives I wanted and also have a non-Ice damage spell.  In the case of Immolate, it even costs the same as Ice Mine (35 mana) while doing a ton of damage and acting as a Detonator... hm...

 

I'll have to think about this, but I get the feeling that Ice Mine has to go.  Since I will also be taking Conductive Current, it's in my Inquisitor's best interest to cause damage with most of his spells (since that one gives a damage boost based on mana lost... Ice Mine would receive no benefit from this).

[UniformGreyColor]

My problem is that I have been going out of my way to avoid spells that I won't have mapped at all times so that I can instead focus on powerful passive abilities... I think it might be best if I skip Ice Mine and the upgrade and use those points for either Chain Lightning or Immolate so that I can get to Stormbringer, Flashpoint, and/or Clean Burn... that way I get the passives I wanted and also have a non-Ice damage spell.  In the case of Immolate, it even costs the same as Ice Mine (35 mana) while doing a ton of damage and acting as a Detonator... hm...

 

I'll have to think about this, but I get the feeling that Ice Mine has to go.  Since I will also be taking Conductive Current, it's in my Inquisitor's best interest to cause damage with most of his spells (since that one gives a damage boost based on mana lost... Ice Mine would receive no benefit from this).

 

I see what you're saying. You want direct damage over other things with your mage is that correct? I'm guessing that this particular spell is good for a particular occurrence now that I think about it more. Like you said in another thread BW are not amateurs. I try to give them credit when I think something that can work well. But yeah, their build balance -making more builds viable- has never been the best thing about their combat. Maybe this game will improve that. Here's hoping.

[Shevy]

My problem is that I have been going out of my way to avoid spells that I won't have mapped at all times so that I can instead focus on powerful passive abilities... I think it might be best if I skip Ice Mine and the upgrade and use those points for either Chain Lightning or Immolate so that I can get to Stormbringer, Flashpoint, and/or Clean Burn... that way I get the passives I wanted and also have a non-Ice damage spell.  In the case of Immolate, it even costs the same as Ice Mine (35 mana) while doing a ton of damage and acting as a Detonator... hm...

 

I'll have to think about this, but I get the feeling that Ice Mine has to go.  Since I will also be taking Conductive Current, it's in my Inquisitor's best interest to cause damage with most of his spells (since that one gives a damage boost based on mana lost... Ice Mine would receive no benefit from this).

 

Sure, high damage numbers are always satisfying, but if the Ice Mine freezes effectively and allows for crush combos afterwards I think it'll be worth it. With the limited health regeneration possibilities,cooldowns on barrier and guard generation you'll need time on higher difficulties, so CC > damage.

[Icy Magebane]

I see what you're saying. You want direct damage over other things with your mage is that correct? I'm guessing that this particular spell is good for a particular occurrence now that I think about it more. Like you said in another thread BW are not amateurs. I try to give them credit when I think something that can work well. But yeah, their build balance -making more builds viable- has never been the best thing about their combat. Maybe this game will improve that. Here's hoping.

 

Sure, high damage numbers are always satisfying, but if the Ice Mine freezes effectively and allows for crush combos afterwards I think it'll be worth it. With the limited health regeneration possibilities,cooldowns on barrier and guard generation you'll need time on higher difficulties, so CC > damage.

Yeah, I'm sure it serves a purpose, and there seems to be a frozen/chilled duration passive right past Fade Step... pure speculation, but it's an hour glass, so it's probably related to duration... I had every intention of focusing on freezing enemies so that the party could use combos on them, but there are two problems here... first, I did not realize that Ice Mine was single target.  Second, that Ice Dragon's immunities are worrying me...  While I have no problem with some crowd control, I don't want that to be the focus of my Inquisitor...  Blizzard and Winter's Grasp are probably good enough for the PC, since other party members will have CC options as well.

 

If I had a mage who was more focused on support, I could see the appeal... right now, however, the team is lacking someone dedicated to that role...

 

One other thing... if "shocked" is considered "incapacitation," then I might be more interested in using Chain Lightning to set up combos since it does damage and hits multiple targets... and it seems to have an 8 second cooldown as well... o.O

[UniformGreyColor]

In DA:O when I was playing a mage I at least got winters grasp, mind blast and glyph of paralysis before lvl 6. The way I see it, the more enemies I can keep from attacking me while I pick them off one by one the better. Thats why I really like the winter tree I think

[andar91]

Sure, high damage numbers are always satisfying, but if the Ice Mine freezes effectively and allows for crush combos afterwards I think it'll be worth it. With the limited health regeneration possibilities,cooldowns on barrier and guard generation you'll need time on higher difficulties, so CC > damage.

 

I think the instant freeze will be very nice. What worries me is the duration - 6 seconds just doesn't seem very groovy. If I go in and attack quickly, it might be, but I wish it were longer. But maybe the upgrade accounts for that.

 

I do think it could be used defensively. As in, place the mine underneath you so an enemy that attacks you is frozen (while you reap Ice Armor's benefits from the glyph in the first place).

[UniformGreyColor]

I think the instant freeze will be very nice. What worries me is the duration - 6 seconds just doesn't seem very groovy. If I go in and attack quickly, it might be, but I wish it were longer. But maybe the upgrade accounts for that.

 

I do think it could be used defensively. As in, place the mine underneath you so an enemy that attacks you is frozen (while you reap Ice Armor's benefits from the glyph in the first place).

 

Yeah, I found mind blast + bomb worked pretty well. Also lightning bolt looks good for taking out the closest enemy quickly without taking much damage.

[Icy Magebane]

I think the instant freeze will be very nice. What worries me is the duration - 6 seconds just doesn't seem very groovy. If I go in and attack quickly, it might be, but I wish it were longer. But maybe the upgrade accounts for that.

 

I do think it could be used defensively. As in, place the mine underneath you so an enemy that attacks you is frozen (while you reap Ice Armor's benefits from the glyph in the first place).

I was thinking of hitting a frozen target with ranged detonators (Energy Barrage, Long Shot, etc)... Lunge and Slash might also be effective if your warrior is at mid-range when the mine triggers...

[Hellion Rex]

Re: Ice Mine

 

I'm running a very Winter heavy build, but even I am skipping over that spell entirely. It sucks, cause I like glyphs, but it's not worth investing in.

[Kage]

Is anybody else concerned about Ice Mine? I'm afraid it won't be a very effective ability.

 

We create one mine, it freezes an enemy for only 6 seconds (which is okay, I guess, but 10 would be nice, at least), has a delay of 3 seconds, and an 18 second cooldown time. It doesn't do any damage at all, and it only works on one enemy, which seems fairly limiting.

 

The thing that saved Glyph of Paralysis (one of my favs) in DA2 was that it could affect multiple targets, but it only became useful when upgraded (imo). Same thing with Ice Mine? It doesn't do any damage at all, and it only works on one enemy, which seems fairly limiting.

 

I hope its upgrade changes it to some type of wave of cold that can freeze anybody in a small radius.

 

Secondary Observation: The ice tree is not a tree for blasters. The only abilities that do damage at all that we know of so far are Winter's Grasp and Blizzard. That doesn't include upgrades, of course - Fade Step or Ice Mine might deal damage once upgraded for all we know. But still, this hit me last night.

 

Keep in mind that in this game the encounters have much less enemies in them. You can find easy encounters with just 1-3 enemies, and the difficult encounters never show more than 4 enemies at the same time.... Even rifts, or the boss battles we have seen, those are 5-6 enemies tops.

 

So CC in DAI is going to be much more powerful than in DA2. In DA2 it was quite stupid since there were millions of enemies raining everywhere, so CCing a couple was just "meh". It was good as a way to prevent a couple enemies from attacking your squisshies, but not as a way of getting rid of 1 enemy from the battle, that was not worth it so much.

 

In DAI using a CC ability that allows you to keep 1 enemy from attacking is much better. 1 enemy in DAI can be like 5 enemies in DA2 easily, in terms of numbers. And every enemy in DAI counts, there are no "ultra trash" enemies.

 

So I think you will love using Ice Mine as much as you loved Glyph of Paralysis in DAO. Forget DA2, it is not a good comparison.

(A DA2 glyph in DAI would so broken lol)

[Icy Magebane]

Re: Ice Mine

 

I'm running a very Winter heavy build, but even I am skipping over that spell entirely. It sucks, cause I like glyphs, but it's not worth investing in.

Yeah, if it at least hit multiple targets I might let this slide, but it looks like there are better ways to spend points in my build... also, if that passive right past Fade Step is duration-focused, I might skip it and instead save myself 2 points that can be used elsewhere... like in the Inferno or Storm trees.

[Hellion Rex]

Yeah, if it at least hit multiple targets I might let this slide, but it looks like there are better ways to spend points in my build... also, if that passive right past Fade Step is duration-focused, I might skip it and instead save myself 2 points that can be used elsewhere... like in the Inferno or Storm trees.

I thought the Hourglass one might be a cooldown related passive, cause we don't have any in Winter as of now, right?

[Kleon]

For me the mage trees kinda suck. We are pushed to "the best" trees by the design which are: Fire and barrier (I called it barrier instead of spirit because it seems to exist only for barrier spell).

 

Fire got the highest damage potential (fire mine 1600% weapon damage compared to avarege of 300% - ridiculous), as much cc and combo potential as other trees and best offensive passives, while barrier seems to be a must for every mage. While lightning seems somewhat ok, frost is most underwheling. With little to no damage, it offers no better cc then the other trees. Wall of ice seems to be painfully situational and blizzard's damage is most disapointing. 

 

Had there been no 8 active abilities limit, I would see the ice mine (ice mine, fire mine? since when are there mines in DA universe?) as a glyph of paralysis, useful. However the 8 active abilties limit makes me think of it as useless, there are several other spells from other trees that offer far more for a lot less points required to unlock them. Besides, whatever happened to ice burst (was shown in PAX 2013 demo) is it an upgrade to winters grasp?

 

I planned to make a winter/storm mage (or winter/rift mage), but looking at the trees I can't help but feel like taking spells like wall of ice and ice mine makes sense only in preparation for combat. Placing ice mines on the field (I wonder if we can create more than one) block some enemies with wall of ice and then swap with spells that actually can be useful to me in fight. Which means SWAPPING ABILITES BEFORE ALMOST EVERY FIGHT if I want to play tacticly. 

 

However by the looks of gameplay vids, resistances and immunities are very popular throughout the game making more specialized mages useless a lot of the time. Which reduces the mages to be reliable only as barrier spammers.

 

From game to game  BioWare is weakening mages more and more as if Dragon Age was an MMO with PvP. Gives rogues and warriors ridiculous flashy abilities that make them look like mutants or mages (warriors making walls of fire and summoning rocks form the ground?). In DAO besides the graphic representation of auras warriors and rogues seemed more like skilled combatants rather than mutated frogs or wannabe mages.

 

After all this I am yet again reminded of gameplay vids and their new healing system (you can't use healing spells, besides the focus group heal, but you have potions with no CD that you can just fasttravel for, plus they said that there will be healing granades too). I get an impession that in the end character's buld wont matter, because whatever could work since there is really not that much actual dfficulty, Inqusition perks will give you more potions, you spam barrier enough and the autoattack will do the work for you, spells and abilites are there for a pinch here and there but you MUST have warrior, rogue and mage in your party. Not only you need them to complete side quests (mage energize, rogues picking locks and warriors kicking walls), but their even more seperated into roles LIKE IN AN MMO. 

[Icy Magebane]

I thought the Hourglass one might be a cooldown related passive, cause we don't have any in Winter as of now, right?

Correct, and it might be cooldown based... it will be related to time in some way, but as for what that will specifically entail, your guess is as good as mine.

[Kleon]

Correct, and it might be cooldown based... it will be related to time in some way, but as for what that will specifically entail, your guess is as good as mine.

 

If casting upgraded Icemans slide, I mean "fade step", reduces or resets CDs be prepared for adding ridicule to your game, cause you're going to use Icemans slide just to lower/reset cds most of the time. 

[andar91]

I thought the Hourglass one might be a cooldown related passive, cause we don't have any in Winter as of now, right?

 

See, I thought it would increase freeze/chilled duration. But I guess we'll know in Nov.

 

Keep in mind that in this game the encounters have much less enemies in them. You can find easy encounters with just 1-3 enemies, and the difficult encounters never show more than 4 enemies at the same time.... Even rifts, or the boss battles we have seen, those are 5-6 enemies tops.

 

This is a good point, Kage. Freezing one mage or shielded warrior or whatever will be a handy advantage.

 

 Wall of ice seems to be painfully situational and blizzard's damage is most disapointing. 

 

Well, I have to disagree on these two points. I agree that Wall of Ice won't be needed in every situation, but I can think of several situations where it would have been nice in the latest videos, for instance. Mostly for blocking off enemies or buying the party time to deal with a difficult combatant. It's true that Blizzard's damage isn't extremely high, but it's also over time until turned off (or mana runs out - 5 per second is the cost) and damage is per second, so that adds up to quite a bit. It also slows and freezes enemies, so it's damage and CC. Finally, I'm pretty sure it's the only sustained damage effect besides Wall of Fire that we know of.

[Icy Magebane]

Mark my words, Blizzard is going to own.  Not only does it do a lot of damage for very little mana cost, frozen/chilled enemies can be hit with combos from ranged allies as well as the Inquisitor.  If the Inquisitor is a KE, there may also be some Spirit Blade-based detonators... I'm not really seeing a downside to the spell besides the possibility of friendly fire, which is not that hard to avoid.

 

Let's also keep in mind that this spell will make the mage casting it 50% resistant to damage due to Ice Armor...

[Hellion Rex]

Mark my words, Blizzard is going to own.  Not only does it do a lot of damage for very little mana cost, frozen/chilled enemies can be hit with combos from ranged allies as well as the Inquisitor.  If the Inquisitor is a KE, there may also be some Spirit Blade-based detonators... I'm not really seeing a downside to the spell besides the possibility of friendly fire, which is not that hard to avoid.

 

Let's also keep in mind that this spell will make the mage casting it 50% resistant to damage due to Ice Armor...

Idk...I don't know if I can allocate even more points to Winter lol.

[Lumix19]

Mark my words, Blizzard is going to own.  Not only does it do a lot of damage for very little mana cost, frozen/chilled enemies can be hit with combos from ranged allies as well as the Inquisitor.  If the Inquisitor is a KE, there may also be some Spirit Blade-based detonators... I'm not really seeing a downside to the spell besides the possibility of friendly fire, which is not that hard to avoid.

 

Let's also keep in mind that this spell will make the mage casting it 50% resistant to damage due to Ice Armor...

Absolutely. Just stand in the middle of the Blizzard (assuming no FF). You deal damage, reduce damage to self and regenerate mana all in one neat package.

[andar91]

Mark my words, Blizzard is going to own.  Not only does it do a lot of damage for very little mana cost, frozen/chilled enemies can be hit with combos from ranged allies as well as the Inquisitor.  If the Inquisitor is a KE, there may also be some Spirit Blade-based detonators... I'm not really seeing a downside to the spell besides the possibility of friendly fire, which is not that hard to avoid.

 

Let's also keep in mind that this spell will make the mage casting it 50% resistant to damage due to Ice Armor...

 

They have been marked.

 

One thing I will add: mana seems to go down darn quickly with Blizzard. Check out 11:20 when Dorian casts it and watch his mana (and it was apparently faster here than in the final ship on regeneration).

 

Edit: Thought I had said this already, but this is definitely an old build, so things may have changed. Still, it's what we have, which is why I mention it here).

 

[Lennard Testarossa]

Absolutely. Just stand in the middle of the Blizzard (assuming no FF). You deal damage, reduce damage to self and regenerate mana all in one neat package.

 

Who would willingly play without FF, though?

[The Elder King]

They have been marked.
 
One thing I will add: mana seems to go down darn quickly with Blizzard. Check out 11:20 when Dorian casts it and watch his mana (and it was apparently faster here than in the final ship on regeneration).
 

The demo is older then the video where We saw the talent trees. We don't know if the spells had the same mana cost.

[Icy Magebane]

They have been marked.

 

One thing I will add: mana seems to go down darn quickly with Blizzard. Check out 11:20 when Dorian casts it and watch his mana (and it was apparently faster here than in the final ship on regeneration).

 

Spoiler

Tbh I'm not that worried about spending 5 mana to gain 50% damage reduction and deal 150% AoE weapon damage as well as inflict chill/freeze status...  If this is active for 10 seconds, it's already gone far beyond the utility of Lightning Bolt, for example, which costs 65 mana for a mere 200% single target damage and chance or paralysis...

[UniformGreyColor]

Winter stillness looks really good in combination with ice wall. Add blizzard and you will be able to cc like nobodies business.

[andar91]

The demo is older then the video where We saw the talent trees. We don't know if the spells had the same mana cost.

 

I was going to say I knew that but thought it was still worth pointing out, but I realize I did not, in fact, say that in my original post.

 

So I shall edit and add here that, yeah, fair point. 

 

@IcyMagebane: Yeah....I think that's the advantage of mana that comes back so much quicker. Higher costs so you can't chain things like crazy, but you generally won't be totally tapped out for more than a few seconds.