6397 réponses à ce sujet

[Patchwork]

It seems I can't let this go, with the amount of spell trees so vastly reduced I'm just not seeing the logic of having two separate trees for fire and ice. The basis of their spells is even the same! Wouldn't it make more sense to have it be the same spell, in the same tree but the player can choose whether it burns or freezes?

 

Maybe whoever said it is right and fire/ice is a weapon choice like bow or daggers for a rogue but as earth and lightning still need to be worked in somewhere surely the better way to do it is to keep DA2's Primal/Elemental split.

 

My guess is that Spirit will have some Arcane and Creation spells with maybe a combined Death Syphon/Death Magic as the final powerful spell. I suppose it could even work as a Focus ability if they insist on doing things that way.      

[PillarBiter]

It seems I can't let this go, with the amount of spell trees so vastly reduced I'm just not seeing the logic of having two separate trees for fire and ice. The basis of their spells is even the same! Wouldn't it make more sense to have it be the same spell, in the same tree but the player can choose whether it burns or freezes?

 

Maybe whoever said it is right and fire/ice is a weapon choice like bow or daggers for a rogue but as earth and lightning still need to be worked in somewhere surely the better way to do it is to keep DA2's Primal/Elemental split.

 

My guess is that Spirit will have some Arcane and Creation spells with maybe a combined Death Syphon/Death Magic as the final powerful spell. I suppose it could even work as a Focus ability if they insist on doing things that way.      

 

I said that. It kinda makes sense the more I think about it (one 'weapon' type stopping enemies outright, another weapons time causing confusion). They do different 'things'.

 

Although this sounds limited and like they do the same thing, remember that in DAO you had basically 4 of the same spells (a normal bolt spell, a cone spell and a aoe spell, and a continuous aoe spell) which were repeated for many different elements or status inflictions. But in their core, they were the same tactical spells. Maybe they're going to vary their spell core more this time around (glyphs, aoe, wall, single damage, ...) I don't know. But i'd rather have different core spells, than a 100 elements of the same. 

 

In any case, now I'm seeing: inferno and winter, spirit and a fourth which I'm going to gamble is something primal. I think the specialisations will make up for more variation (and i look forward to finding them out ).

And I think passives will be a LOT better this time around, actually adding strategy.

 

 

 

 

 

However, even though that is what I think it is now, what i would have preferred is: 

 

For me, not all elements should have every strategy, they could have combined all the elements in one tree.

 

Lightning being the chain lightning one, earth has stonefist, fire has fireball (or some sort of aoe), ice has the wall. That would have been enough imho. 

 

 

But as I said, I trust bioware. They do their thing and I'm sure I'l love it.

[wowsuper]

I acknowledge that what most of you say about quality over quantity is true (even though from a so called "biggest bioware rpg ever made" I would demand both), and I know that I made a big fuss about the number of spells, but what actually worries me most, as I already said and Sanrya and Ishten stressed, is the lack of non-elemental spells and the redundancy of the elemental ones. If things are as they seem I won't be able to build anything other than a nuker or a crippled healer, and that I find disturbing. 

 

But as I said, I trust bioware. 

 

I do not. Way too many disappointments from mass effect 2 all the way down to Inquisition. The only people I trust among the devs are Gaider and the other writers who work on the DA series.

[In Exile]

 There were certainly some junkers, but most spell lines were pretty useful. The pretty awful ones were the Awakening arcane field line, lightning line excepting Storm of the Century use, Spell Wisp line, and Shapeshifter. Otherwise, the only real problem you could face was not selecting the stupidly-overpowered stuff that trivialized the game (e.g. Mana Clash).

 

I really disagree with you there - the lightning line was great in terms of damage output, since it was easy to build a mage that had infinite casting pools and was only restricted by cooldown (although I totally disgaree with you on spell wisp itself; because of the way spellpower stacked and how blood magic worked, a Spell Might + Spell Wisp mage would have an insane boost to spellpower while casting out of HP pools). It was too easy to damage enemies, and they were too weak overall, so nothing beside pure DPS was ever worth it. 

 

I found all of "Anti-Magic" worthless, mind blast and telekinetic weapons were both duds (as were the flaming weapons, etc.). The "Earth" line outside of rock armor was a waste. As was the "Mastery" line, except for Arcane bolt. 

 

Everything in Entropy was just window dressing - it had uses, but it was useless in comparison to the insane raw damage output of a mage with spellpower buffs and all stat points to MAG. Enemies were so weak buffs in general were worthless - you were actively gimping yourself if you picked them. That was the same problem that the enhancement line had - there was no point to ever casting those spells, because your regular party could obliterate enemies on pure DPS, even in boss fights. 

[Gamemako]

The one farthest to the left is exactly the same icon as the Horror spell, so I'd say it's either the Entropy school or they reappropriated the icon for the Necromancer spec. No idea about the purple one.

Those are believed to be specs; all specs were lined up over there for warrior Inquisitor as well. The purple icon (with a goat skull in the middle) is believed to be Necromancer and the Horror icon to be a placeholder for Rift Mage, but we can't say for sure -- could be the opposite, and perhaps the Horror icon is not a placeholder at all. No telling, especially since we don't even know what Rift Mage does.

Maybe whoever said it is right and fire/ice is a weapon choice like bow or daggers for a rogue but as earth and lightning still need to be worked in somewhere surely the better way to do it is to keep DA2's Primal/Elemental split.

Doubtful. From what we've seen, mage trees are composed of 4 basic and 1 focus spell where non-mage trees are just 6 talents, leaving the only Focus ability to spec.

If things are as they seem I won't be able to build anything other than a nuker or a crippled healer, and that I find disturbing.

Healing is minimal: it is at best two spells and perhaps only one focus-restricted spell. You won't have the ability to spec support unless the lightning tree goes poof and one of the specs comes up as a support spec. I find it unlikely that either will happen.

I really disagree with you there

Unless you specced blood mage in every single game you played, then no. Fireball scaled at 0.6 per spellpower including the DoT, and your normal-rank opponents had over 300 HP toward the end of the game. Even after the DoT ticked through, it was less than half their HP with a pure magic build. You had to use 3 mages spamming AoEs to really make that work, and that isn't a matter of "DPS" being anything, that's just mages in general being overpowered -- you'd have to deliberately **** up every build to not faceroll with 3 mages. At the same time, you could always Cone of Cold -> shatter everything with guaranteed one-shots, no need to care about "DPS" at all. Hell, before the patches, you could down lieutenants that way was well. Fun times, those. Doesn't mean the alternative is useless, just means they made mages totally ridiculous.

Similarly, anti-magic was only made "useless" by the ridiculous Mana Clash spell. Without that, you'd have to actually face mages, their buffs, glyphs, paralysis, Crushing Prison, Curse of Mortality, etc, etc.

The second half of the Earth line was a waste, mainly because Earthquake sucked and Cone of Cold obsoleted the hell out of everything. I took it in my first playthrough and still used Petrify as a cleanup for shattering when enemies resisted Cone of Cold.

As for Entropy, Death Cloud was as good as any wide AoE spell (being basically identical to Tempest with a different element), Waking Nightmare was hilarious, Sleep was the largest instant ground-targeted AoE CC in the game, Death Hex turned your dual striking DW warrior into the highest-DPS machine in the game and detonated the most powerful damage combo in the game (excepting broken Mana Clash on high-mana opponents), Miasma was your AW aggro generator and part of stacking defense in addition to boosting DPS for backstabbing rogues and AWs, Misdirection Hex was one of the messy overpowered abilities that turned anything without auto-hits into fodder.

[In Exile]

Unless you specced blood mage in every single game you played, then no. Fireball scaled at 0.6 per spellpower including the DoT, and your normal-rank opponents had over 300 HP toward the end of the game. Even after the DoT ticked through, it was less than half their HP with a pure magic build. You had to use 3 mages spamming AoEs to really make that work, and that isn't a matter of "DPS" being anything, that's just mages in general being overpowered -- you'd have to deliberately **** up every build to not faceroll with 3 mages. At the same time, you could always Cone of Cold -> shatter everything with guaranteed one-shots, no need to care about "DPS" at all. Hell, before the patches, you could down lieutenants that way was well. Fun times, those. Doesn't mean the alternative is useless, just means they made mages totally ridiculous.

 

I specced every mage as a bloodmage/spirit healer, unless I was going to roll an AW. We're talking power-gaming here, not RP. But I avoided talking about how broken the abilities in that tree are, to focus on how useless the rest of the spells are. 

 

You're missing part of the fireball formula, because of the base damage of the spell. It was (100+spellpower)*0.3 initial + (100+spellpower)*0.3 fire damage/5s, meaning that it was quite easy to hit 150 damage in 5 seconds with 100 since with Spell Might + Spell Wisp endgame spellpower is easily around 150, meaning doing 50% of enemy HP damage in one fireball. When you combine that with Arcane Bold, Winter's Grasp and Lightning, you could wipe out an enemy immediately. That's ignoring the fireball + cone of cold combo, to mop up the enemies that you just shaved off to half health.  This is just focusing on one mage. 

 

You are also forgetting that fireball has a knockdown effect. By the time an enemy gets up, you've already peppered them with Arcane Bolt and Winter's Grasp, which just about kills them. 

 

Similarly, anti-magic was only made "useless" by the ridiculous Mana Clash spell. Without that, you'd have to actually face mages, their buffs, glyphs, paralysis, Crushing Prison, Curse of Mortality, etc, etc.

 

No. Fireball rendered that obsolete, because of the knockdown. On Nightmare there was spell resistance which makes this a bit hit or miss, but unleashing an AOE storm of spells would usually quite easily kill the mage before they even had a chance to cast a single debuff. Enemy mages were jokes. Mana Clash was OP not because it hurt the generic garbage mages in a random encounter, but because it could do 600-900 damage to a boss enemy. 

 

As for Entropy, Death Cloud was as good as any wide AoE spell (being basically identical to Tempest with a different element), Waking Nightmare was hilarious, Sleep was the largest instant ground-targeted AoE CC in the game, Death Hex turned your dual striking DW warrior into the highest-DPS machine in the game and detonated the most powerful damage combo in the game (excepting broken Mana Clash on high-mana opponents), Miasma was your AW aggro generator and part of stacking defense in addition to boosting DPS for backstabbing rogues and AWs, Misdirection Hex was one of the messy overpowered abilities that turned anything without auto-hits into fodder.

 

Death Cloud and Tempest were worthless - they barely did any damage and through FF made the whole combat area unapproachable. There was absolutely no point in hitting them these AOE spells unless you tried to cheese the encounter by hiding behind a closed door. 

 

You talk about boosting other party members, but if we bring in others here, then we just roll the 3 mage fireball combo and nothing in existence can even come close to approaching you. Without spell resistance you're doing 450 damage in 5 seconds, plus the veritable deluge of single hit spells to mop up enemies still on their backs. Take one warrior - doesn't even matter which kind - and you've cleaned up every single encounter in DA:O. To say that Misdirection Hex had value because a warrior could hit the enemy just ignores how much a single warrior is outclassed by mage spells. 

 

With an AW you don't need to generate aggro because you're basically impossible to kill - there's no point to even keeping the rest of the party alive.  

[Gamemako]

I specced every mage as a bloodmage/spirit healer, unless I was going to roll an AW. We're talking power-gaming here, not RP. But I avoided talking about how broken the abilities in that tree are, to focus on how useless the rest of the spells are.

...by comparing to how overpowered the alternative is. You have not even stated a single case for how something is not useful. I started to do a complete debunking of all the BS that is this post (tell me all about the 3500-damage Arcane Bolt that killed Ser Cauthrien), but it's not even relevant because you haven't even begun to justify how spells are useless at all except to claim that there are certain other spells that are ridiculously overpowered and completely break the game.

[In Exile]

...by comparing to how overpowered the alternative is. You have not even stated a single case for how something is not useful. I started to do a complete debunking of all the BS that is this post (tell me all about the 3500-damage Arcane Bolt that killed Ser Cauthrien), but it's not even relevant because you haven't even begun to justify how spells are useless at all except to claim that there are certain other spells that are ridiculously overpowered and completely break the game.

 

That's exactly what makes other spells useless. You're acting as if there isn't an opportunity cost to picking abilities. That's the BS at the heart of your post - looking at things in isolation at acting as if that's how we're supposed to compare abilities. Now you've come up with an incredibly contrived benchmark - a 1-hit KO for the toughest boss in the game.  

 

It's like saying $100 is a lot of money without looking at what $100 gets you. In 1814, $100 was a lot of money. In 2014, it isn't. It's all about the opportunity cost. 

[Gamemako]

That's exactly what makes other spells useless.

Let's see what Merriam-Webster has to say about this:

use·less
adjective \ˈyüs-ləs\

: not at all useful : not doing or able to do what is needed : not producing or able to produce the effect you want
Full Definition of USELESS
: having or being of no use:
a : ineffectual <a useless attempt>
b : not able to give service or aid : inept

So no, you're either knowingly wrong, or you're completely redefining a word and might as well just post in Swahili because it'd make just as much sense to everyone here. TMPR and SABR in FF1 are useless. They are useless because they do nothing at all. Most DA:O spells are quite effective and useful, even if they are not optimal. Worse, you're making claims about incomparables that are easily rejected. If you want to kill Cauthrien, you are infinitely better off with Death Hex, Miasma, and Misdirection Hex than with Fireball, Lightning, and Arcane Bolt. One of these will not only potentially kill her more quickly, it will afford you a much greater chance of surviving the fight at all.

It's clear in any case that the spells are far from useless. There were certainly too many (for a lot of reasons) and there were a few really terrible ones, but there were certainly far more useful spells than were transferred into DA2. DA:I is paring the list down even further, and the vast majority of the useful spells are now left behind.

[Icy Magebane]

Games like this need to have some variety in spell choices.  Otherwise they might as well scrap player controlled leveling and automatically give us only the "optimal" spells and upgrades.  Using the same build every time and picking the "best" abilities is no fun.  As long as you can survive every battle, that's all that really matters.

[The Morning Star]

Looks like the Fade Mark has it's own skill tree!

 

 

 

[wowsuper]

Games like this need to have some variety in spell choices.  Otherwise they might as well scrap player controlled leveling and automatically give us only the "optimal" spells and upgrades.  Using the same build every time and picking the "best" abilities is no fun.  As long as you can survive every battle, that's all that really matters.

 

I couldn't agree more with you. When I play an RPG I want to roleplay.

[Eelectrica]

Does anyone know if re-speccing our characters will be an option?

With so many choices in character development, there's bound to be a few mistakes made, or skills selected that don't quite work out as we hope.

[themageguy]

Solas using that static cage spell.....
loving it.

I don't care what branch of magic that spell is in, arcane, primal whatever, im using it :)Electrical cc.....dragons ages submission net???

[themageguy]

Does anyone know if re-speccing our characters will be an option?
With so many choices in character development, there's bound to be a few mistakes made, or skills selected that don't quite work out as we hope.

i hope so.

[llandwynwyn]

Does anyone know if re-speccing our characters will be an option?

With so many choices in character development, there's bound to be a few mistakes made, or skills selected that don't quite work out as we hope.

 

They've confirmed respec in the raptr qa

[In Exile]

So no, you're either knowingly wrong, or you're completely redefining a word and might as well just post in Swahili because it'd make just as much sense to everyone here. TMPR and SABR in FF1 are useless. They are useless because they do nothing at all. Most DA:O spells are quite effective and useful, even if they are not optimal. Worse, you're making claims about incomparables that are easily rejected. If you want to kill Cauthrien, you are infinitely better off with Death Hex, Miasma, and Misdirection Hex than with Fireball, Lightning, and Arcane Bolt. One of these will not only potentially kill her more quickly, it will afford you a much greater chance of surviving the fight at all.

It's clear in any case that the spells are far from useless. There were certainly too many (for a lot of reasons) and there were a few really terrible ones, but there were certainly far more useful spells than were transferred into DA2. DA:I is paring the list down even further, and the vast majority of the useful spells are now left behind.

 

Let's actually unpack what useless means, because it seems you've ignored the definition you posted. The first option is "not producing or able to produce the effect you want".  We also have: 

 

1. "not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the intended purpose or desired outcome." 

2. "having no practical use or advantage" 

 

Now let us define opportunity cost: "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen." 

 

The opportunity cost of these other abilities is substantial because the direct damage spells are obviously and painfully superior. Even if you were right about Cautherin - which you are not, as I will discuss below - the fact that one encounter with an enemy that soaks extreme damage makes otherwise high opportunity cost spells on par with the otherwise better in every other situation spells does not make them "useful".

 

Now let us focus on Cautherin. A BM with Blood Wound will paralyze her. Then, all you need is to unload a substantial amount of damage to put her down before she even has a chance to fight back. It's comically easy to take her down without ever bothering with a single buff. The direct damage abilities will both kill her quickly and the more useful BM spells will keep her from doing anything other than choking on her own blood as she dies. Three mages will outright obliterate her, with the warrior just standing around to soak damage from her. 

The only person being deliberate obtuse here is you - there is no point to taking any of those spells other than for the sake of variety, and out of a desire to struggle or play some alternative and painfully sub-optimal style. 

[andar91]

Well, I'll say this: the new Mind Blast sure as heck was amped up (I believe it's Mind Blast). We see Solas cast it at around 5:40 after Flashfire, and WOW (you can see the purple brain icon mapped to the R1 button).

 

 

 

I'm going to chime in on the useless argument, but it's from the side; I don't really want to get embroiled in a debate.

 

For me, DA:O's abilities were...alright. I don't honestly think any of them were utterly useless; they all functioned in some way. However, the problem for me is: How useful are they when compared to other abilities? There was also the problem of having to go through abilities you maybe didn't want to get to ones you did. Every time I take Flame or Frost weapons, I have to grit my teeth because I NEVER use those spells, but I love the other spells in the trees.

 

In DA2, EVERY ability felt like it did something that other abilities didn't do (at least in my opinion). I mean, just considering the damage abilities:

 

-Spirit Bolt: Not incredible damage but very fast, low cooldown, and cheap to cast over and over.

-Walking Bomb: Very high damage but requires careful timing, party control, and proper set up (sometimes it was wasted, in other words).

-Fireball: Basic reliable damaging spell over a moderate area that becomes bigger once upgraded. Mostly about the damage though.

-Firestorm: Devastating damage over a good area, but you had no control over where the damage fell so you could hurt inconsequential targets (or no one) or yourself on Nightmare.

-Winter's Grasp: High damage and great control (by freezing), but only single-target, and the AoE is so small once upgraded that it won't always work.

-Cone of Cold: Decent damage and control, but the control was tempered from being too abusive (no freezing at all at first).

-Chain Lightning: Moderate damage but bigger area if done right; upgrade needed to make AoE easier to pull off; no friendly fire

-Tempest: Even distribution of low damage over time over a HUGE area; unlike Firestorm, it's lower damage but far more stable.

-Stonefist: Single target moderate damage (lower than Winter's Grasp), but faster recharge and has light control elements (knocks enemies back and away).

 

My point is that each of these spells had far more of an identity than the spells in DA:O. In Origins, Flame Blast and Shock, for instance, seemed like the same spell (to me, anyway) but with different appearances. Even if lightning drained Stamina, it wasn't apparent so there was little reason to differentiate.

 

DA2 took spells that were already similar and just combined them to be more streamlined and efficient. I think the best example of this is Dispel Magic; you got an AoE dispel from the very start in DA2 and it basically upgraded into a weaker version of Mana Clash. It eliminated a lot of fluff and got to the core of what the ability did, and it balanced the abilities in the process.

[falconlord5]

Question: do we have a complete overview of the skill trees yet?

[wowsuper]

Question: do we have a complete overview of the skill trees yet?

 

Is it rhetorical? Anyway: not that I know.

[falconlord5]

Is it rhetorical? Anyway: not that I know.

 

Yes, and no. More, it's me dropping into various complaint threads to see if I missed anything.

[Adhin]

@themageguy : That man, that right there is what im talking about with more interesting and tactical spells. Everything we've seen so fars just more interesting on an individual spell by spell basis then past games. At least it has been to me, that spell really lets you lock an area around to keep enemies in. You could make a Knight Enchanter, and while they may not get a taunt they can lock shiit in around them with that cage and go to town.

 

Between all of that + the new story trailer I really need this game already. Waitings such a pain in the butt, with all its not doing stuff and whatnot.

[LexXxich]

Based on Gamescom footage, it looks like there are some active abilities not in any trees. Like almost active dodge and almost active block. It also looks like Armour Penetration stat is back.

[Tevinter Rose]

I love electric spells, Static Cage looks awesome