100 réponses à ce sujet

[Wynne]

What they really need to do is buff the other specializations. Primal seems... basic, to me. You could make a case for it being the easiest to learn, and what students first use, and to be fair it can be awesome. But damn, is the Spirit tree ever a useless snooze now except for the mandatory Barrier, and damn if Necromancy isn't useless except for Walking Bomb, and damn if Rift Mage isn't boring compared to what it could have been. It makes me sad that KE is the only awesome mage spec. 

 

The abilities...  I like it when things seem to matter personality-wise and are addressed, but if it isn't reflected in the gameplay then it becomes dull anyway. I wanted to be that wise, compassionate spirit healer on my elf. Sort of filling the Wynne-void could be fun. I find it sad that healing magic was so unnecessarily removed, particularly when it glares so harshly in the very beginning of the game that other mages still have healing magic. Why not let it be a choice? I wish they'd balanced it rather than take it out altogether.

 

I don't know. It could be better. I can see the effort they put in but I'd like to see a more balanced effect, if nothing else. Mages feel a bit too weak right now, unless you go totally Primal/KE with a Barrier. But the flavor could be more interesting as well.

 

They could totally revamp things and I wouldn't be unhappy, assuming they didn't change much about KE or dagger rogues. KE feels like a not so wildly overpowered version of AW from Origins, but other classes should get to have the awesome, too.

 

The system isn't bad. I can see why they did a lot of what they did. But the balancing could use more work, and the focus on elemental magic is a bit heavy here.

[Wynne]

I actually did a Nightmare run using this party. My Warden (mage), Morrigan, Wynne, and I substituted the last slot with Shale. This effectively made an all-mage party. I have to say, it was one of my most enjoyable playthroughs. While I couldn't open locked chests or doors, I've played through Origins so many times that I didn't feel like I was missing out.

 

On topic though, a tiny part of me can't hope but feel sad at the step away from Origins' mages, it is only a tiny part. I still have Origins, I can still play it anytime. I personally like that Bioware has continued moving forward with the series, rather than making the same game over and over. Origins is my favorite game of all time, but that doesn't mean that I don't love Inquisition. That is because Inquisition isn't it's predecessors, it's its own game. I am currently at the end of my second mage playthrough, and I am really enjoying the mages in this game. Also, If you'd rather not use any elemental magic, go with a "Knight Enchanter/Spirit" build, and always use you're spirit blade.

 

The way I see it, if I want Origins' mages, I will pop into Origins and play my Warden Mage. If you enjoy Origins more, than play that. Praise the games strengths on the Origins forums. I will see you over there, as I still try to frequent the DAO forums myself

 

Cheers guys!!! 

I wish everyone who liked Origins better than Inquisition was this thoughtful and cool. That's a really constructive and wonderful attitude. You make me kinda want to go back and try that all-mage playthrough, remind myself what it felt like to play an Origins mage and compare it to Inquisition a little more closely... wasn't it difficult to manage approval with Wynne and Morrigan together? 

[Ashevajak]

archers in particular aren't sucking like they did in DA2.  

 

Archers sucked in DA2?

 

They were a bit boring to play, especially if you skipped out on the Shadow specialisation, but archers pretty much wrecked enemies.  The trick was not to get distracted by the shiny "archery" tree.  It's an easy mistake to make, as one would assume the archery tree would be best for an archer, as opposed to maxing out the specializations, specialist and subterfuge trees.

[AlanC9]

They were a bit boring to play, especially if you skipped out on the Shadow specialisation, but archers pretty much wrecked enemies.  The trick was not to get distracted by the shiny "archery" tree.  It's an easy mistake to make, as one would assume the archery tree would be best for an archer, as opposed to maxing out the specializations, specialist and subterfuge trees.

I'm starting to think that part of the problem with DA2's reception is that it really rewarded analysis of the system. A lot of people here claim to want "complexity," but the point seems to be just having a lot of abilities rather than thinking about them.

[Abraham_uk]

What they really need to do is buff the other specializations. Primal seems... basic, to me. You could make a case for it being the easiest to learn, and what students first use, and to be fair it can be awesome. But damn, is the Spirit tree ever a useless snooze now except for the mandatory Barrier, and damn if Necromancy isn't useless except for Walking Bomb, and damn if Rift Mage isn't boring compared to what it could have been. It makes me sad that KE is the only awesome mage spec. 

 

The abilities...  I like it when things seem to matter personality-wise and are addressed, but if it isn't reflected in the gameplay then it becomes dull anyway. I wanted to be that wise, compassionate spirit healer on my elf. Sort of filling the Wynne-void could be fun. I find it sad that healing magic was so unnecessarily removed, particularly when it glares so harshly in the very beginning of the game that other mages still have healing magic. Why not let it be a choice? I wish they'd balanced it rather than take it out altogether.

 

I don't know. It could be better. I can see the effort they put in but I'd like to see a more balanced effect, if nothing else. Mages feel a bit too weak right now, unless you go totally Primal/KE with a Barrier. But the flavor could be more interesting as well.

 

They could totally revamp things and I wouldn't be unhappy, assuming they didn't change much about KE or dagger rogues. KE feels like a not so wildly overpowered version of AW from Origins, but other classes should get to have the awesome, too.

 

The system isn't bad. I can see why they did a lot of what they did. But the balancing could use more work, and the focus on elemental magic is a bit heavy here.

 

Agreed

[Sylvius the Mad]

I miss the crowd control mage abilities from DAO.

[Lanavis]

I actually did a Nightmare run using this party. My Warden (mage), Morrigan, Wynne, and I substituted the last slot with Shale. This effectively made an all-mage party. I have to say, it was one of my most enjoyable playthroughs. While I couldn't open locked chests or doors, I've played through Origins so many times that I didn't feel like I was missing out.

 

On topic though, a tiny part of me can't hope but feel sad at the step away from Origins' mages, it is only a tiny part. I still have Origins, I can still play it anytime. I personally like that Bioware has continued moving forward with the series, rather than making the same game over and over. Origins is my favorite game of all time, but that doesn't mean that I don't love Inquisition. That is because Inquisition isn't it's predecessors, it's its own game. I am currently at the end of my second mage playthrough, and I am really enjoying the mages in this game. Also, If you'd rather not use any elemental magic, go with a "Knight Enchanter/Spirit" build, and always use you're spirit blade.

 

The way I see it, if I want Origins' mages, I will pop into Origins and play my Warden Mage. If you enjoy Origins more, than play that. Praise the games strengths on the Origins forums. I will see you over there, as I still try to frequent the DAO forums myself

 

Cheers guys!!! 

I do agree on that. I still love Origins and am forever grateful to Bioware for making the DAO toolset available, which has allowed the game to still be new if I ever get tired of the vanilla version. Heck, on my next playthrough I even plan to romance Ser Gilmore.

[Morroian]

I can't say that I agree with you here. I don't know if you have played MP yet, but there is very few similarities, thus making it hard to blame one's faults on the other. As some someone (who was ignored) was kind enough to point out earlier, the MP was made by a separate team, and had a separate budget. The skill trees were different than their SP counterparts, making it hard to draw comparisons. Hell, even some of the specializations had different names *cough* Arcane Warrior *cough*. I find it difficult to understand why people are blaming the things they dislike in the SP on the entirely separate MP. Oh well.... 

 

The game actually began life as a multiplayer game apparently. They then decided to turn it into DAI with a MP component.

[Warden Majere]

I wish everyone who liked Origins better than Inquisition was this thoughtful and cool. That's a really constructive and wonderful attitude. You make me kinda want to go back and try that all-mage playthrough, remind myself what it felt like to play an Origins mage and compare it to Inquisition a little more closely... wasn't it difficult to manage approval with Wynne and Morrigan together?

Thank you. It makes me sad that so many people on these forums seem to hate the game so badly due to it being different. The all mage playthrough is definitely worth it. It really puts a new twist on the games mechanics, and forces you to think about battles differently. It was a bit difficult to juggle both of their approval ratings at the same time. The way I managed, was going through their dialogue, and gaining approval that way, and holding onto their gifts until I did one of their big "NO NOs".

Another one worth doing is the" all melee", or even "all warrior" party. Doing this right after the 4 mages party gives it a refreshing take again.

Cheers!

[Klystron]

When I think of Necromancy only 2 games EVER did it right(that I played and I play every game that has the word necro in it)

Diablo 2 and Age of Conan.

 

Necromancers are Death mages who raise the dead and have an ARMY of undead. Ok sure cheese mode but Seriously I don't want to play a Witch Character, which is what they should have called the necro as hes got a few dot spells and fear. I want a Goddamn Undead Army next time you use the Word Necro. Seriously that is watered down more then water itself.

Seriously I'm serious about this.

Baldur's Gate didn't have a true Necromancer, but I beat the final boss by filling the room with skeletons to keep him off my squishy *** while I and my team, especially the archer, cut him down.  Awesomeness!

[TristynTrine]

I don't mind seeing more Skill Trees

This is an idea I've had in mind. Spoilers are not actual spoilers.

This post would look really long if they weren't there.

 

 

Warrior Class

Spoiler

 

Pick 1 Weapon upon choosing warrior class:

You can switch between primary weapon and secondary weapon just like you could in Dragon Age Origins.

1. 2 Hand (with crossbow as backup weapon)
2. Weapon and Shield (with crossbow as backup weapon
3. Crossbow (with backup 1 handed weapon)

 

Regular Skill Trees:

 

1. Attacking: Revolves around using a diverse array of moves to overwhelm your enemies and deal additional damage.
2. Defending: Revolves around protecting your allies, drawing aggro and being able to take more hits.
3. Channelling: Revolves around regulating your stamina, making your attacks use up less stamina, or using additional stamina to deal extra damage.

 

Pick 1 Specialisation Later On:

 

1. Templar: This specialisation is about weakening your foes, damaging their stamina, and magicka, dispelling both active magical effects and neutralising enchantment runes. This is great against mages but also physical attackers who rely heavily on their special abilities.
    
2. Ash Warrior: You can bring a pet Mabarri Hound into battle and send commands to it. Using Ash Warrior abilities do not consume the Warrior's stamina but instead consume the hound's stamina.
    
3. Reaver: Damaging dealing warrior, who sacrifices defence for greater offence. When health is low, that is when they strike hardest. When surrounded by enemies that is when their damage output and area of effect peaks. In addition the Reaver can strike fear into their enemies, making the task of mass slaughter even easier.
    
4. Juggernaut: This warrior can take a lot more hits than regular warriors. They benefit from additional health and passive health regeneration. Furthermore they gain bonuses to armour rating.
    
5. Spirit Warrior: A fast paced warrior who gains help from fade spirits to buff damage output and durability. However the biggest buffs come in the form of speed. They can sprint incredibly fast for a short period of time. Not even teleporting mages can out run a Spirit Warrior. (Different to Spirit Warriors from DAO).
    
6. Champion: This warrior can inspire and lead a team. When you have the champion on your side, the rest of the party will be performing better than usual. They can benefit from increased damage output, accuracy, greater chance to evade, higher critical chance, higher critical damage as well as faster movement speed.

 

 

 

Rogue Class

Spoiler

 

Pick 1 Weapon Type upon choosing Rogue class:

You can switch between primary weapon and secondary weapon just like you could in Dragon Age Origins.

Rogues can use long bows and short bows.

1. Fencing (with bows as backup)
2. Dual Wielding (with bows ad backup)
3. Archery (with 1 handed weapons as backup)
    

Regular Skill Trees:

 

1. Sabotage: Weaken your foes with poisons, flasks and powders. Also reduce the distance between you and your foes by using a grappling chain.
2. Subterfuge: Stealthy tree, that enables you to sneak around and perform critical hits.
3. Dirty Fighting: Be it going for a low blow to stun your foes, feigning death before performing a surprise attack, or diverting attention to your tank, dirty fighting uses dishonourable tricks to exploit your enemies.

 

Pick 1 Specialisation:

 

1. Assassin: Skilled in getting the best possible critical hits. They can perform mark of death to make enemies vulnerable to all attacks, enter a precision mode to increase rate and damage output of critical hits, perform marksman assassination kills and a deadly shadow strike. Against single targets, no other specialisation from any class can match the damage output of an assassin.
    
2. Illusionist: Using decoys to lure enemies, hallucinogenic smoke to cause enemies to attack one another make the entire party look blurry to reduce odds of enemies hitting the party or using a hypnosis ability to take complete control of an enemy. The Illusionists has a useful bag of tricks commonly used by performance artists to fool enemies and take control of the battle field.
    
3. Tempest: Coating their weapons in alchemical concoctions they can devastate foes with the powers of poison, fire, ice and lightning magic to destroy enemies and exploit elemental weaknesses. Since mages can only pick 1 element, the tempest can potentially out perform the mage class.
    
4. Artificer: Uses traps to make enemies fall over, get stuck in mechanical traps, choke in poisonous gas or even get caught in explosions. The best artificers are the ones who plan ahead, thinking where best to place their traps. With timing and precision, enemies can be overwhelmed and overpowered by a party that clearly has the upper hand.
    
5. Daemon's Hand: Daemon's Hand takes it's origins from a grim tale from Qunari folklore. Qunari talk about deadly agents who used specialise in flanking and stealth. These special assassins are said to have the power of teleportation, the ability to reverse and slow down time. The Daemon's Hand are said to be myths, however Dwarven scholars have found ways to mimic the tactics used in these tales.
    
6. Bard: Like the Champion, bards can buff the party, however they are not as good as Champions here. Their true strength comes in debuffing and distracting foes. Unlike Illusionsts, they can debuff the durability and damage output of enemies by tricking them into lowering their guard. Trained bards can disarm foes and detect weaknesses that can be exploited.

 

Mage Class: 

Spoiler

 

Pick a Weapon:

 

1. Earth Calling: Combine the power of Earth and Fire to deal heavy damage. Shake the ground to stagger foes, hurl flaming stone fists to knock back enemies, petrify and suffocate foes with pyroclastic smoke and unleash infernos to incinerate your enemies.
    
2. Storm Calling: Combine the power of the skies, sending forth tornadoes, use the wind to pull enemies towards you, and send forth tempests that will shock and freeze your foes. Let the wind charge you into opponents, then follow up with an ice blast or stun multiple foes with chain lightning.
    
3. Power of Nature: Unleash swarms of bees, slow down foes in vines, call animals to your aid at any time, use spider webbing to trap foes so spiders can attack them. Make an area of the battlefield vulnerable to explosions with methane gas. Or you can hurl corrosive fluid to deal serious damage to enemy armour. 
    

Regular Trees: 

 

1. Spirit: Protect your party with barriers, or enhance enchantments on weapons or maybe unleash the iconic walking bomb spell.
2. Entropy: Physically weaken your foes both in terms of damage output and durability.
3. Creation: Heal individual party members, remove negative effects, cast haste or slow down enemy advances with glyphs.

 

Pick a Specialisation:

 

1. Spell Sword: With a spirit blade, you gain a diverse array of melee attacks as well as the ability to parry and riposte enemy attacks. To compensate for the fact you're fighting at close range, you gain buffs that reduce damage taken and slightly increase evasion chance.
    
2. Arcane Cleric: Benefit from defensive spells, as well as the ability to heal and revive fallen party members. Clerics unlike Spirit Healers have special abilities and dealing with undead, fade daemons and darkspawn. These special anti-darkspawn/undead/daemon abilities will still deal damage and debuff regular foes so they're not entirely situational.
    
3. Blood Mage: Using their own health as their life source, Blood Mages can deal special area of effect attacks as well as using their power to raise the dead, merge dead bodies to form abominations, sacrifice ally health to heal themselves and inflict heavy bleeding damage over time effects on enemies.
    
4. Shape Shifter: You can shape shift into a stealthy wolf who fights like an assassin, a spider who can trap and consume enemies to restore health, a swarm of bees to overwhelm foes or a bear with lots of hit points. Each shape shifting form has a long cooldown. When using abilities you only use up the manna of that shape shifting form instead of the mage's manna pool. In addition if you take damage in your shape shift form your mage will not take damage and if your shape shifting form runs out of health, you'll revert back to your mage form with your health and manna intact.
    
5. Shadow Mage: A mage who is able to turn invisible and use an arcane dagger. They can teleport and perform spells whilst sneaking. However when "invisible" they are more vulnerable to taking damage from all sources. Also some foes can detect "invisible" foes. That said regardless of whether or not you're seen you'll still get damage bonuses from being "invisible".
    
6. Fade Dancer: These Mages are able to conjure portals across the battlefield. They can bring creatures from the fade onto the battlefield, or send portals to transport themselves and allies from one end of the battlefield to another. They are often described as "wild" and "unpredictable".

So what do you think?

Omg I love it... It's amazing especially the mage. omg the power of nature.. I WANT IT OMG, YOU'RE AMAZING,WHY DID THEY RUIN MAGIC Q_Q

[laudable11]

The reason for such a simplified model is the Multiplayer Component of DAI. That is my view.

Yep. I was one of the many people who wanted multiplayer in DA.

Dear God, what have we done? I thought it was going to rock just like ME3 multiplayer. It seems like the main objective is to force grinding so we will just say "screw it. I'll just buy the damn chest."

ME3 was about fun. It was soo fun I spent real money. DAMP...Its about that grind.

I love Inquisition. I really do. It's just hard to sit still and not speak my mind. I hope people don't think I'm being a jerk.

[Frond]

Baldurs Gate 1&2 dide mages extreamly well. Especially Fighter/Mages. For mages fans who have never played the series I highly suggest them.

[Sartoz]

I can't say that I agree with you here. I don't know if you have played MP yet, but there is very few similarities, thus making it hard to blame one's faults on the other. As some someone (who was ignored) was kind enough to point out earlier, the MP was made by a separate team, and had a separate budget. The skill trees were different than their SP counterparts, making it hard to draw comparisons. Hell, even some of the specializations had different names *cough* Arcane Warrior *cough*. I find it difficult to understand why people are blaming the things they dislike in the SP on the entirely separate MP. Oh well.... 

Interesting.

However, a seperate team and budget does not mean a disconnect from the main game.  I have no special knowledge of the internal workings of Bio, but have worked in large development areas. The thing is, the MP component has to work with the game. I don't see it as a stand alone unit.

 

On the last sentence. I'm merely pointing out a possible reason why the main game only has eight slots, no ai and no tactics to speak of. Ergo, dumbed down.

 

Just saying

[pasmith31]

The mages are adequate, that's it. It's alright. I loved playing mages in the other game. It's my class 90% of the time. I'm still playing mage now but it's more meh now. I'm finding archer a lot more fun now and I never played archer in the other games. I hate how much they took away from the classes especially the mage.

The Archer was the last class I tried and it turned out being the best IMO and is the class I finished the game with. I liked that I could move while shooting, stealth, vault away from enemies and I felt no frustration at all while playing it. Sadly all other classes have one or two issues I have problems with not just the mages, but if mages could move while doing auto attacks I'd like them a little more.

[Rocambole4]

Mages went from most powerful AND more interesting class in DA:O (where spell combos were mage exclusive and completely bonkers, mage damage was unpaired, crowd control lasted minutes and you only needed one tank alongside them to taunt during long fights) to kinda balanced in DA:2 to a support class you shouldn't control directly in DA:I.

 

Mages are not even glass cannons, archer rogues do that. They are used for crown control and barriers mostly (and Barriers are even more needed than heals were because of the lack of out of combat regen) while warriors tank and rogues kill.

 

I really hoped more spells unlocked during the game like in DA:O, because the initial spells were so blatantly standard. But no luck here. Meh, no love for the spellcasters.

 

Ah, and considering the bad controls and terribad tactical view, you're pretty much forced to play a bland class on the PC. Damn, this game looks so good I WANT to like it, but so many bad choices :/

[StrayChild83]

Mages went from most powerful AND more interesting class in DA:O (where spell combos were mage exclusive and completely bonkers, mage damage was unpaired, crowd control lasted minutes and you only needed one tank alongside them to taunt during long fights) to kinda balanced in DA:2 to a support class you shouldn't control directly in DA:I.

 

Mages are not even glass cannons, archer rogues do that. They are used for crown control and barriers mostly (and Barriers are even more needed than heals were because of the lack of out of combat regen) while warriors tank and rogues kill.

 

I really hoped more spells unlocked during the game like in DA:O, because the initial spells were so blatantly standard. But no luck here. Meh, no love for the spellcasters.

 

Ah, and considering the bad controls and terribad tactical view, you're pretty much forced to play a bland class on the PC. Damn, this game looks so good I WANT to like it, but so many bad choices :/

 

I always considered warrior most OP in DA:O because magic resistances went so high that I was immune to everything.

[mutantspicy]

I don't mind seeing more Skill Trees

This is an idea I've had in mind. Spoilers are not actual spoilers.

This post would look really long if they weren't there.

 

 

Warrior Class

Spoiler

 

Pick 1 Weapon upon choosing warrior class:

You can switch between primary weapon and secondary weapon just like you could in Dragon Age Origins.

1. 2 Hand (with crossbow as backup weapon)
2. Weapon and Shield (with crossbow as backup weapon
3. Crossbow (with backup 1 handed weapon)

 

Regular Skill Trees:

 

1. Attacking: Revolves around using a diverse array of moves to overwhelm your enemies and deal additional damage.
2. Defending: Revolves around protecting your allies, drawing aggro and being able to take more hits.
3. Channelling: Revolves around regulating your stamina, making your attacks use up less stamina, or using additional stamina to deal extra damage.

 

Pick 1 Specialisation Later On:

 

1. Templar: This specialisation is about weakening your foes, damaging their stamina, and magicka, dispelling both active magical effects and neutralising enchantment runes. This is great against mages but also physical attackers who rely heavily on their special abilities.
    
2. Ash Warrior: You can bring a pet Mabarri Hound into battle and send commands to it. Using Ash Warrior abilities do not consume the Warrior's stamina but instead consume the hound's stamina.
    
3. Reaver: Damaging dealing warrior, who sacrifices defence for greater offence. When health is low, that is when they strike hardest. When surrounded by enemies that is when their damage output and area of effect peaks. In addition the Reaver can strike fear into their enemies, making the task of mass slaughter even easier.
    
4. Juggernaut: This warrior can take a lot more hits than regular warriors. They benefit from additional health and passive health regeneration. Furthermore they gain bonuses to armour rating.
    
5. Spirit Warrior: A fast paced warrior who gains help from fade spirits to buff damage output and durability. However the biggest buffs come in the form of speed. They can sprint incredibly fast for a short period of time. Not even teleporting mages can out run a Spirit Warrior. (Different to Spirit Warriors from DAO).
    
6. Champion: This warrior can inspire and lead a team. When you have the champion on your side, the rest of the party will be performing better than usual. They can benefit from increased damage output, accuracy, greater chance to evade, higher critical chance, higher critical damage as well as faster movement speed.

 

 

 

Rogue Class

Spoiler

 

Pick 1 Weapon Type upon choosing Rogue class:

You can switch between primary weapon and secondary weapon just like you could in Dragon Age Origins.

Rogues can use long bows and short bows.

1. Fencing (with bows as backup)
2. Dual Wielding (with bows ad backup)
3. Archery (with 1 handed weapons as backup)
    

Regular Skill Trees:

 

1. Sabotage: Weaken your foes with poisons, flasks and powders. Also reduce the distance between you and your foes by using a grappling chain.
2. Subterfuge: Stealthy tree, that enables you to sneak around and perform critical hits.
3. Dirty Fighting: Be it going for a low blow to stun your foes, feigning death before performing a surprise attack, or diverting attention to your tank, dirty fighting uses dishonourable tricks to exploit your enemies.

 

Pick 1 Specialisation:

 

1. Assassin: Skilled in getting the best possible critical hits. They can perform mark of death to make enemies vulnerable to all attacks, enter a precision mode to increase rate and damage output of critical hits, perform marksman assassination kills and a deadly shadow strike. Against single targets, no other specialisation from any class can match the damage output of an assassin.
    
2. Illusionist: Using decoys to lure enemies, hallucinogenic smoke to cause enemies to attack one another make the entire party look blurry to reduce odds of enemies hitting the party or using a hypnosis ability to take complete control of an enemy. The Illusionists has a useful bag of tricks commonly used by performance artists to fool enemies and take control of the battle field.
    
3. Tempest: Coating their weapons in alchemical concoctions they can devastate foes with the powers of poison, fire, ice and lightning magic to destroy enemies and exploit elemental weaknesses. Since mages can only pick 1 element, the tempest can potentially out perform the mage class.
    
4. Artificer: Uses traps to make enemies fall over, get stuck in mechanical traps, choke in poisonous gas or even get caught in explosions. The best artificers are the ones who plan ahead, thinking where best to place their traps. With timing and precision, enemies can be overwhelmed and overpowered by a party that clearly has the upper hand.
    
5. Daemon's Hand: Daemon's Hand takes it's origins from a grim tale from Qunari folklore. Qunari talk about deadly agents who used specialise in flanking and stealth. These special assassins are said to have the power of teleportation, the ability to reverse and slow down time. The Daemon's Hand are said to be myths, however Dwarven scholars have found ways to mimic the tactics used in these tales.
    
6. Bard: Like the Champion, bards can buff the party, however they are not as good as Champions here. Their true strength comes in debuffing and distracting foes. Unlike Illusionsts, they can debuff the durability and damage output of enemies by tricking them into lowering their guard. Trained bards can disarm foes and detect weaknesses that can be exploited.

 

Mage Class: 

Spoiler

 

Pick a Weapon:

 

1. Earth Calling: Combine the power of Earth and Fire to deal heavy damage. Shake the ground to stagger foes, hurl flaming stone fists to knock back enemies, petrify and suffocate foes with pyroclastic smoke and unleash infernos to incinerate your enemies.
    
2. Storm Calling: Combine the power of the skies, sending forth tornadoes, use the wind to pull enemies towards you, and send forth tempests that will shock and freeze your foes. Let the wind charge you into opponents, then follow up with an ice blast or stun multiple foes with chain lightning.
    
3. Power of Nature: Unleash swarms of bees, slow down foes in vines, call animals to your aid at any time, use spider webbing to trap foes so spiders can attack them. Make an area of the battlefield vulnerable to explosions with methane gas. Or you can hurl corrosive fluid to deal serious damage to enemy armour. 
    

Regular Trees: 

 

1. Spirit: Protect your party with barriers, or enhance enchantments on weapons or maybe unleash the iconic walking bomb spell.
2. Entropy: Physically weaken your foes both in terms of damage output and durability.
3. Creation: Heal individual party members, remove negative effects, cast haste or slow down enemy advances with glyphs.

 

Pick a Specialisation:

 

1. Spell Sword: With a spirit blade, you gain a diverse array of melee attacks as well as the ability to parry and riposte enemy attacks. To compensate for the fact you're fighting at close range, you gain buffs that reduce damage taken and slightly increase evasion chance.
    
2. Arcane Cleric: Benefit from defensive spells, as well as the ability to heal and revive fallen party members. Clerics unlike Spirit Healers have special abilities and dealing with undead, fade daemons and darkspawn. These special anti-darkspawn/undead/daemon abilities will still deal damage and debuff regular foes so they're not entirely situational.
    
3. Blood Mage: Using their own health as their life source, Blood Mages can deal special area of effect attacks as well as using their power to raise the dead, merge dead bodies to form abominations, sacrifice ally health to heal themselves and inflict heavy bleeding damage over time effects on enemies.
    
4. Shape Shifter: You can shape shift into a stealthy wolf who fights like an assassin, a spider who can trap and consume enemies to restore health, a swarm of bees to overwhelm foes or a bear with lots of hit points. Each shape shifting form has a long cooldown. When using abilities you only use up the manna of that shape shifting form instead of the mage's manna pool. In addition if you take damage in your shape shift form your mage will not take damage and if your shape shifting form runs out of health, you'll revert back to your mage form with your health and manna intact.
    
5. Shadow Mage: A mage who is able to turn invisible and use an arcane dagger. They can teleport and perform spells whilst sneaking. However when "invisible" they are more vulnerable to taking damage from all sources. Also some foes can detect "invisible" foes. That said regardless of whether or not you're seen you'll still get damage bonuses from being "invisible".
    
6. Fade Dancer: These Mages are able to conjure portals across the battlefield. They can bring creatures from the fade onto the battlefield, or send portals to transport themselves and allies from one end of the battlefield to another. They are often described as "wild" and "unpredictable".

So what do you think?

Love it!!  I would love to play a spell sword.  Sweet.  Reminds of one of my favorite prestige classes from DnD of the same name.  That's good stuff.  The thing is I wouldn't add this to the mage class, I would just take something like this and replace it completely.  I gives more variety and keeps the spell list short as intended by the game design.  All we can do is hope the modders get some support.

[Taleroth]

The more options, the harder it is to balance. Spirit simply sucked aside from healing spells. And entropy took a while until it got good, having a single damage spell and relying on the party to take advantage of your CC. Which means the mage is either CC, damage, or healer. And in later levels it becomes all three.

 

Designing interesting encounters for that becomes a bit difficult. Low level encounters become boring, solo encounters even more so. Later encounters become reliant on archers spread out so they're not all caught in the same area effect.

 

The goal here seems to have a spread of abilities that try to be interesting at all times and have enough focus that the classes role isn't too spread out and unpredictable. And I think they're succeeding.

[mutantspicy]

Agreed.  I think they did well with creating more focused skill trees.  The problem with mage in my view is not lack of choice, but lack of creativity.  Mage is essentially, buff, anti buff, two primal trees.  Kinda boring. They could have done alot more with 4 trees as abraham_uk's post shows.  

[Paul E Dangerously]

. I personally like that Bioware has continued moving forward with the series, rather than making the same game over and over. Origins is my favorite game of all time, but that doesn't mean that I don't love Inquisition. That is because Inquisition isn't it's predecessors, it's its own game. I am currently at the end of my second mage playthrough, and I am really enjoying the mages in this game. Also, If you'd rather not use any elemental magic, go with a "Knight Enchanter/Spirit" build, and always use you're spirit blade.

 

The way I see it, if I want Origins' mages, I will pop into Origins and play my Warden Mage. If you enjoy Origins more, than play that. Praise the games strengths on the Origins forums. I will see you over there, as I still try to frequent the DAO forums myself

 

Cheers guys!!! 

 

See, I'd normally agree with this - if we were on Dragon Age 4 or Dragon Age 5 and the series hadn't evolved a bit. The problem is, though, Bioware immediately threw Origins out the door, shot it in the back of the head a few times and wants to pretend it doesn't exist - except when they're trying to con everyone about the new game. How'd that tactical view pan out, again? Or the tactics system? Or the UI? ..oh. Right.

[Morroian]

And as far as one person said, about why limit it to just mages, well for one we had the most taken away. But i do agree the other classes are stripped down as well, save for maybe archer which i think is actually done alot better in this game more so than any other in the series. But to be honest you could give the other classes the ability to have more than one weapon and im sure alot of those players would be happy with just that. Mages again never had that option. We swing sticks...lol. Thats what we do.

 

With the other classes the thing is rather than cut back mages they could have added to the other classes, there are plenty of other class trees that could be added eg. ranger and bard to rogue, spirit warrior to warrior.

[Grondoth]

I played a spirit healer in the first game, and I miss is dearly. But I understand why they removed healing magic, because I also played Dark Souls before.

 

I still hate that there's only elemental magic and spirit stuff now. I like lightning bolts and fireballs as much as the next guy, but that was always only part of the mages in the Dragon Age universe. You could build a mage, even in DA2(the title that combined with ME3's ending almost destroyed all credibility bioware had), that didn't HAVE any elemental spells. I doubt you could do the same here. The simplification of skill trees is partially at fault, but mostly it's that someone decided the identity of mages was their elemental affinity. There just as easily been the 4 schools as the 4 trees, with all the primal abilities in one. But it was decided that mages are fireball slingers.

 

Oddly I think the best hope for that sort of magic appearing again is the multiplayer. Sure, DLC could add back in those trees, but it'd be easier to add a Senior Enchanter who uses glyphs and force fields than it would be to create a whole DLC.

 

Also I blame the rebel mages who broke the circles and now no one remembers ****

[Wevryn1]

What I dislike about the new mage (pretty much all classes really) is the lack of variety. What happened to the Debilitator mage? Even rogues, the masters of crippling their enemies with effects, are now focused as critical hit machines.

Bring back varies spells/talents.
Bring back decent rogues
Bring back archer/dual-weilder warriors

Don't know about you Assassins skill tree is in a very good place right now.  Well once they fix the Deathblow Dance of death issue (not regaining 50 stamina after killing something with Deathblow is annoying since you know, deathblow has no cooldown when you kill something but if you have no stamina whats the point)

 

OH and the Stealth not recharging after killing something (I know for a fact this doesn't work because I wear Life on kill rings that activate but my stealth does not)

 

Other then a few bugs, Assassin tree is godly, well except for the poison tree which needs heavily retooled(ok assassin still could use alittle work)  

 

Seriously though, retool the poison skills in multi-player to be more useful.  Maybe make poison a passive instead of an active skill  ( we have no room on skill bars for a minuscule damage buff compared to all the other heavy hitters we have choice of.)

 

Seriously though, make poison weapons a passive.  Only way it'll be useful.

[Rocambole4]

The more options, the harder it is to balance. Spirit simply sucked aside from healing spells. And entropy took a while until it got good, having a single damage spell and relying on the party to take advantage of your CC. Which means the mage is either CC, damage, or healer. And in later levels it becomes all three.

 

Designing interesting encounters for that becomes a bit difficult. Low level encounters become boring, solo encounters even more so. Later encounters become reliant on archers spread out so they're not all caught in the same area effect.

 

The goal here seems to have a spread of abilities that try to be interesting at all times and have enough focus that the classes role isn't too spread out and unpredictable. And I think they're succeeding.

Unfortunally, to me at least, this just means fights are boring start to end. Throw 2 CC spells, run from enemy melee, spam damage spells. If I started all over, I'd play a bow rogue, at least they can vault and cloak and so interesting stuff. Mages are bubble bots :/