94 replies to this topic

[Commander Michael]

Immune to magic? Who cares. In DAO you can go blood mage and arcane warrior, immortal and good damage, that's how you beat bosses. Period. The mother in awakening can be soloed with you having FULL HP all the time if you go arcane warrior, blood mage and battle mage and yes on nightmare. That was the most overpowered combination DAO had to offer.

 

That build requires a ton of sustainables; face one templar or mage with cleansing aura and you'll just be a gimped warrior.

 

And being immune to magic was pretty huge in DAO. Makes all mages go from highest priority threat to no threat at all.

 

The mother in awakening can be soloed with pretty much any build since awakening gave players such powerful abilites regardless of class.

 

Try to solo The harvester on nightmare in Golems of Amgarrak with your blood mage / arcane warrior. For a rogue, it's a cake walk with stealth.

[Shahadem]

So far my mage is super underpowered. I do less damage than the other classes, have less damage reduction than the other classes, and get screwed because the long uncancellable autoattack animation roots me in place in a pool of bad on the ground.

 

And my mage doesn't really bring much to the party to make up for this.

 

Maybe they moved all the actually good abilities to the specializations? If so that was a terrible design decision. All the abilities should be good and should make everything go BOOM!

 

And I HATE when games make bosses immune to CCs. Bosses should not be immune to CCs since in many instances they are just normal mobs with cheating stats.

[finc.loki]

I first rolled an Archer and played for about 8 hours grinding hard for abilities, barely scratched hinterlands. In the first boss fight, the pride demon I sailed right through and didn't get damaged at all (played normal), did hardly any damage to the pride demon tough, except of course after the fade disrupts.

 

Then I now recently rolled a mage, and the boss fight was like night and day. Also normal difficulty, yet it felt like Archer was casual vs mage hard difficulty. Several times party members fell and even my quizzy too.. No potions left and by a hair I defeated him.

 

The biggest issue I feel is the "rooting" when attacking as a mage. In the beginning I had pretty pitiful damage as well. Later on some spells do more damage like Immolate and energy barrage and a better staff (the preorder staff), I can pretty easily kill those "buffalo creatures". Still I must say you can hit pretty hard with Archer.

 

I am thinking of rolling a two-hander as well, just to have all 3 past the start area and into Hinterlands.

 

 

I just wish on the Archer that Explosive shot was WAY higher damage, it's basically the only AOE ability and it's damage is really weak, 200%, with a bonus of 100% or something. Yet other abilities hit for 800-1600% damage. I just love the effect of the explosive arrow.

[Wissenschaft 2.0]

Mage feel more like a support class. A lot of mage spells are focus on CC and not damage. Archers are a DPS class though.

[Khevar]

On what difficulty? Bosses are immune to everything on nightmare and have a large chunk of damage resistance. Mages are always more useful on higher difficulties. Always has been the case. The longer the battle lasts the more the mage thrives. Mages are pretty useless and redundant on easy.

 

In Origins?  Bosses were still susceptible to paralyze in Nightmare mode.  3 paralyze runes in The Rose's Thorn, with a high Cunning, Coup De Grace, Lethality, Momentum, Song of Courage and The Tainted Blade was embarrassingly overpowered.

 

Mages were definitely powerful in DA:O, but in my personal experience, a properly set up dagger rogue was even more so.

[Wissenschaft 2.0]

The OPness of mages in Origins came from the ability to do the glyph combo that caused mass paralysis with one mage and at the same time cast Inferno with another mage. Most encounters in the game where made trivial by doing this. Storm of the Century was usually massive overkilled compared to just casting Inferno on paralysed enemies.

[lastpawn]

Guys, guys... all classes were OP in Origins, at least with the expansion. Anyway...

 

My sense so far (still not playing deep into the game till first patches are released) is that mages have very strong AoE damage. Not like "oh I just destroyed everything" amazing but... you know, good. Immolate is great, especially because it is also a detonator.

 

So ranged AoE damage + utility = Mage. Ranged single target damage + ??? = Rogue. Wonder what the ??? is.

[Wissenschaft 2.0]

utility. Rogues can throw sleep which can be used to set up combos. Rogue traps are also useful utility.

[Lulupab]

That build requires a ton of sustainables; face one templar or mage with cleansing aura and you'll just be a gimped warrior.

 

And being immune to magic was pretty huge in DAO. Makes all mages go from highest priority threat to no threat at all.

 

The mother in awakening can be soloed with pretty much any build since awakening gave players such powerful abilites regardless of class.

 

Try to solo The harvester on nightmare in Golems of Amgarrak with your blood mage / arcane warrior. For a rogue, it's a cake walk with stealth.

 

You face less than 5 of those enemies who remove sustainables in the whole game, that is a very flawed argument, not to mention your can CC them before they do so. I have in fact soloed everything with that combo, followed a guide which still exists on youtube. 

 

The enemies are not "immune to magic", bosses have high resistance to effects such as stuns or other CC, they still take magic damage. Flemeth can grab your rogue and eat him and there is nothing you can do about it because she is chewing you up and you do not have the endurance of arcane warrior, in matter of seconds you are dragon food, an a yummy one at that. Where as once inside her mouth your sustainable are quite active and you are taking over 80% less damage with each bite if you are an arcane warrior.

 

In Origins?  Bosses were still susceptible to paralyze in Nightmare mode.  3 paralyze runes in The Rose's Thorn, with a high Cunning, Coup De Grace, Lethality, Momentum, Song of Courage and The Tainted Blade was embarrassingly overpowered.

 

Mages were definitely powerful in DA:O, but in my personal experience, a properly set up dagger rogue was even more so.

 

The rogue is utterly powerless to slay group of enemies due of lack AoE, you will go down once enemies are all around your, you'll have to go though then one by one. No one is disputing the rogue's power against a single enemy.

[Rolfgang]

As said before: Mages in Inquisition are - pre-specialization - most effective as Support and/or AoE Damage Dealers. The Winter Tree has massive amounts of CC, whilst the Inferno Tree has a wide variety of AoE-spells. The Storm Tree is a mix of both, and has some nice passives (auto-attacks chip away 0.5 second cooldown with every attack).

 

After you gain a specialization it can change the whole game. For example: a Knight-Enchanter has the tools, and the means, to face-tank bosses, with an unstoppable amount of barrier (every attack gives you 30% barrier of the damage dealt). Or combine it with the Inferno Tree to become a melee DPS (take the passive that takes away half of your barrier with every offensive spell, but gives a damage bonus based on the amount removed (100% barrier --> takes 50% barrier away --> 50% extra damage)).

 

The Force Mage on the other hand can become an insane AoE beast, by pulling everyone together and make a Combo and/or Firestorm/Immolation.

[Commander Michael]

You face less than 5 of those enemies who remove sustainables in the whole game, that is a very flawed argument, not to mention your can CC them before they do so. I have in fact soloed everything with that combo, followed a guide which still exists on youtube. 

 

The enemies are not "immune to magic", bosses have high resistance to effects such as stuns or other CC, they still take magic damage. Flemeth can grab your rogue and eat him and there is nothing you can do about it because she is chewing you up and you do not have the endurance of arcane warrior, in matter of seconds you are dragon food, an a yummy one at that. Where as once inside her mouth your sustainable are quite active and you are taking over 80% less damage with each bite if you are an arcane warrior.

 

 

The rogue is utterly powerless to slay group of enemies due of lack AoE, you will go down once enemies are all around your, you'll have to go though then one by one. No one is disputing the rogue's power against a single enemy.

 

You face less than 3 of those enemies who can one shot you with Overwhelm/grab in the whole game, that is a very flawed arguement.

 

Rogue can easily kill a group of enemies. Just one at a time. The enemies can't hit him EVER, and the rogue never misses his attacks either. 

 

There are plenty of solo videos on youtube for each class, but Rogue is still the BEST class to solo the game with. Would be pretty infuriating to not be able to pick locks, at least for me...

[Bayonet Hipshot]

Mages in Dragon Age Inquisition, at least prior to gaining a specialization, are versatile area of effect and crowd control casters. 

 

The reason I think most people find Mages to be underpowered is because they focus too much in one tree when there are 4 tree, each with their own good abilities and passives. 

 

Inferno has Immolate, Fire Mine and Clean Burn. Winter has Fade Step, Blizzard, Ice Mine, Mana Surge, Winter Stillness and Ice Armor. Storm has well...everything in Storm is outstanding except for Stormbringer. Spirit has the all important Barrier, the super useful Dispel, the awesome Revival (get it with its upgrade to make the most out of it) and Peaceful Aura. 

 

So if you want to be more than just a support mage in DAI prior to getting your specialization, invest in multiple spell trees. Then later when you are specialized, you can respec yourself with the amulet. 

[Lulupab]

You face less than 3 of those enemies who can one shot you with Overwhelm/grab in the whole game, that is a very flawed arguement.
 
Rogue can easily kill a group of enemies. Just one at a time. The enemies can't hit him EVER, and the rogue never misses his attacks either. 
 
There are plenty of solo videos on youtube for each class, but Rogue is still the BEST class to solo the game with. Would be pretty infuriating to not be able to pick locks, at least for me...

Except units who use cleanse are scrubs who can be killed in a blink, bosses who grab you are not. Also with rogues you abuse with kiting, you have to keep running around. With arcane warrior you stand and watch them die as you take your hands off the controller/keyboard and laugh at them. No need to kite, no need to stealth like a coward, no need to do anything.

[Battlebloodmage]

My mage protect everyone and basically solo the dragon by himself. The others just play support. I only use one potion on my mage, and it was because I made a careless mistake. Yup, I would say that mages are still as dangerous as ever and I love it.

[wicked cool]

Any low level suggestions?

[Bhaal]

After level 10, mages get better but before that they are very weak as a damage dealers. 

 

By the way Firewall does great damage without friendly fire, it's such wonderfull ability i can't believe people don't mention it; fire-mine acts like a nuke, immolate is a decent damage dealer. Rift Mage works wonders with Lightning tree; Necromancer has the best passives a mage can ask for.

 

Also as a mage it's important to get passives from all trees'

[Back Lot Basher]

I tried the first 6 hours of the game with a Mage, Archer, and 2HW.  Mage wins out in the battle between those three, for sure.  But I suppose it depends on your own playstyle.  Maybe you could make another class work better than I could.

[Sevitan7]

People gushing over Mages in Origins must have never played on Nightmare. Mages were only impressive early on, because your warriors and rogues weren't durable enough survive on their own, so CC was useful. Their damage was also ok, since it started high but scaled poorly, opposite of melee.

Dual Wielding Rogues and Warriors were so strong in Origins when properly built it put Mages to shame and they could never reach comparable sustained dps. The only offensive capability Mages had late game was Storm of the Century (pretty unwieldy though it did work) and mana clash on mages. Aside from that they were just there to bring haste and cast death hex to buff the melee classes even more. You could make a mage an arcane warrior, in which case you just ended up with a warrior that can't pull agro to help the rogue backstab and has far inferior dps to a dual wielding warrior. All it had going for it was slightly higher armor, in a game where survivability was hardly a concern (and even then dex based warriors/rogues could mitigate damage like crazy too).

Similar case in DA 2. Except since nightmare reduced the duration of CC so drastically they couldn't even do that, they just stood on the side lines casting haste with heroic aura up as Two-Handers and Dagger Rogues slaughtering everything in seconds.

I don't have much of an opinion on them in Inquisition yet, but I'm been disappointed with the combat system pretty heavily to care. I sure hope they patch those hitboxes. Sure is fun to kill my own teammates that are behind me with Mighty Blow or watch Cole get mauled by a Bear's tail when it's targeting Cass.

[Bhaal]

Well also a necromancer can take control of an Pride Demon... O.O

[Commander Michael]

Except units who use cleanse are scrubs who can be killed in a blink, bosses who grab you are not. Also with rogues you abuse with kiting, you have to keep running around. With arcane warrior you stand and watch them die as you take your hands off the controller/keyboard and laugh at them. No need to kite, no need to stealth like a coward, no need to do anything.

 

No idea how you build your rogues, but a well built rogue doesn't have to kite normal mobs; you just have to stand still and let him kill everything with auto attack.

 

I wouldn't call Gaxkang a scrub by any means; he is one of the hardest fights in Origins who uses Dispel Magic.

[Lulupab]

No idea how you build your rogues, but a well built rogue doesn't have to kite normal mobs; you just have to stand still and let him kill everything with auto attack.

 

I wouldn't call Gaxkang a scrub by any means; he is one of the hardest fights in Origins who uses Dispel Magic.

 

That's impossible, rogues have zero resistance against magic attacks and very small dodge chance for ranged attacks. They are untouchable by melee though. Also dispel magic does not dispel Anti-Magic Ward which protects you from dispel itself. Only templars can dispel arcane warrior with cleanse magic otherwise if you use Anti-Magic Ward correctly you are pretty safe from mage and demon dispels.

[Commander Michael]

That's impossible, rogues have zero resistance against magic attacks and very small dodge chance for ranged attacks. They are untouchable by melee though. Also dispel magic does not dispel Anti-Magic Ward which protects you from dispel itself. Only templars can dispel arcane warrior with cleanse magic otherwise if you use Anti-Magic Ward correctly you are pretty safe from mage and demon dispels.

 

You can become magic immune with any class with the proper equipment. Ranged attacks always miss aswell, except scattershot.

[Velathriel]

Mages in DA:I are pretty underpowered and lack all the fun variety previous games had and instead we got the generic fire, ice lightning clichee. The only somewhat redeemable thing is the Knight-Enchanter specialization and that only because it's ridiculously broken.

[Saresi]

Fire, Ice and Lightning as basic schools are mainstream and boring, seen in 100000 other RPGs out there already.

Any special form of magic is, for no good reason at all, handed out by the specializations and require you to suffer through stupid fetch quests to get them with, with annoying drop rates (Tomes....).

 

And the three basic schools don´t even make sense any more.

Why is "Earth" entirely lost (and Stonefist put to Spirit mage? Seriously?).

What does Fade Step have to do with WATER (Frost) Magic? Rofl?

Why is there an ARCANE barrage spell in lightning???

 

And why, the ****, is the seeker Cassandra a templar by default, and not a new class seeker also available for the player INSTEAD of the already used-to-death-templar? Just a side note, though.

[themaxzero]

How do you even get those skulls? I'm trying to become a necromancer but I can't find those skulls

 

Heh I managed to get two of them before I even got Skyhold. They dropped off the Apostate Mages in Witchwood.

 

Otherwise head to Storm cost. Probably the easiest specialization to get.