You are basically trading the most powerful class in the game for a semi-fighter. Bear, spider, swarm do good damage and they can tank well. But so does Shale, Alistar, Sten, Ogren, and Dog. Anything Bear/Spider can do - Any of the Melee toons I listed can do it better.
But can they cast Inferno? Blizzard? Tempest? Can they use the Paralysis Explosion combo, or plant Glyphs? Do they have access to mage armors, which have among the highest bonuses to defense in the game? Do they have a choice of being able to trade criticals for high armor penetration and automatic hits? It's a pretty good tradeoff.
Especially if you're mage is not sitting there as a bear and is instead dropping buffs onto the tank or crowd control spells.
There's nothing preventing you from using spells that remain useful even as you change forms, so long as you choose your spells well. Death from nukes is quite permanent. And a Shapeshifter will only be too happy to oblige an enemy target who escapes from the AoE with a welcoming bear hug - Overwhelm, heh.
To me a few things just kills the shapshifter class.
1. No potions - Brutal. That means you must have a healer. You basically need another character to just save your butt. Sorry, but give me a tank that is not sucking up my mages spells. A con tank who can not heal himself.
It doesn't mean you
must have a healer. It just means you can't stay in a particular animal form for extended periods without one. But you can change back to human form instantly when you need to.
2. No Spells or Sustains while shifted - All of those spells that are great? Pure junk once you shapeshift.
Note that the most powerful spells in the game are
not spammable, and we should thank our lucky stars they aren't or none of the specializations would be useful at all.
3. Needing to pump other stats - Why are you a mage if you are taking magic to 35 and putting the rest into strength? Play a warrior.
The Shapeshifter needs to invest in strength, dexterity and magic (or strength and magic, for this build) because that's just how it is. The specialization
claims to be a warrior mage (yep, says so in specialization descriptor).
4. Long Shapeshift Times + Cooldowns: Bioware got it right when they designed the Fade Shapeshifting. The shapeshifting forms would be so much better if you could switch between forms quickly and the cooldown was short. That way you could cast some spells, shift, melee, then shift back to a a mage cast some more and then shift again.
And they are overpowered. Note that you can shift between Burning Man and Golem indefinitely and never die.
The cooldown can be dealt with, because unless you brought a healer you'll also be fighting bosses in human as well as animal forms. Nothing wrong with nuking Branka's party and then personally Overwhelming her. Twice. Heh. Dragons and similar powerful bosses are kind of a unique deal though - you're not really expecting a Shapeshifter to tank them single-handed are you? That would be rather... extreme. Without lots of cheese.
But Shale and Dog can ignore the Boss Grabs. Dog can overwhelm. And they can all self-heal. What are you as a shapeshifter bring to the table?
Depends on what you want. First off notice that Dog and Shale only have two item slots. Shapeshifters, being normal characters, come with all 10, not including the arrow/bolt slot and the weapon switch slot. Whatever items you wish to put into those slots depends on what you want accomplished. Next, Shapeshifter can cast spells and nuke. Finally, you have 3 very different forms to choose from, besides your human form, each with different strengths. More versatility, although Shale comes close. Sadly he doesn't have Overwhelm. Rocks don't like to hug people.
The cooldown on a AW for Combat Magic is only 10 seconds which is more reasonable. Plus he can still cast + heal even at +50% fatigue. And he can chug mana potions to get thorugh the tough fights. To hit may be a problem, but Heroic Offense + Combat Magic will give you a dependable hit rate
He doesn't have Overwhelm and warrior-like talents. His attacks don't auto-hit. He has to deal with enemy armor. And most importantly, his spell choice is wildly different (it would be really interesting to see an AW build with an all-nuke spell list heh).
Shapeshifters will need to draw heavily from the primal spells line because their magic attribute will be lower, so their debuffs will be easier to make a check against. Obviously the Shapeshifter will want to avoid those kind of spells as much as possible, along with almost all sustained spells - all the spells which the AW will only be too happy to take, basically. So they're quite different.
Sure the Shapeshifter can equip a staff and auto-hit. But playing around with a high spells score, max staff dmg build I can tell you it is not that hard to build a mage who can auto-hit for 80+ damage with a staff + afflection hex. Going even farther it took very little effort to have Wynne hit for 140+ dmg per staff attack. Granted it was late game, but still.
You forgot to mention that your weapon did cold damage. Lots of enemies are immune to cold. Affliction/Vulnerability could also get resisted. Affliction/Vulnerability also have decently long cooldowns. Then there's the slow staff attack speed, which can get canceled if you move. Your DPS would also be different in actual combat because people are flying around, using spells, using skills, or doing something else besides just standing and attacking (unless you're a warrior/tank/damager). Wynne would be probably be flying around in combat too due to the mage's default low physical resistance, or running around after having drawn aggro, or healing someone.
Remember the guy who made that topic only wanted his healer to be more effective in combat, not replace a damager.
Modifié par TBastian, 18 février 2010 - 07:02 .
Retour en haut
You are basically trading the most powerful class in the game for a semi-fighter. Bear, spider, swarm do good damage and they can tank well. But so does Shale, Alistar, Sten, Ogren, and Dog. Anything Bear/Spider can do - Any of the Melee toons I listed can do it better. Especially if you're mage is not sitting there as a bear and is instead dropping buffs onto the tank or crowd control spells. Sure swarm can get a nice defense with a couple of spells/gear. But Alistar can have an unbelievable defense with a couple of spells/gear.
