44 réponses à ce sujet

[tself55]

Yes and no. Spirit blade was always going to be the central focus of the class, so it's not surprising it's both a defensive and offensive lynchpin. Did they overdo the focus? Perhaps, but there's a big difference between that and claiming the class just spams it without thinking. You cannot simply click spirit blade forever and have the game just play itself. It needs a very specific build - including spells from other schools - to get into a state where it can reliably rotate through spirit blade/fade cloak and maintain its barrier. Once you get to the stage where you're building a character with the express intention of synergy and power, you can't then start complaining about power. I suspect the main issue with KE is that it's a spec for a class that has to retreat everytime it takes a hit, and for whatever reason, the most vocal can't handle the idea of that switch. I didn't hear anyone screaming their heads off about how OP shield wall is when you can position it in such a way to take 1 damage per tick against a dragon, or tempests using their insane flasks of lightning/focus to slay dragons in minutes.

As for Disruption Field... Tbh, it's both an underrated spell and an oddball. It's as much a shield as it is crowd control and tends to reward experimentation over mindless spamming, which makes sense given the same people who whine about spirit blade spamming are also the ones whining about how useless Disruption Field is.

And speaking of crowd control... I'd have to disagree that there was plenty to go around. Outside of the Specs, crowd control spells in this game are generally poor deals. Static Cage gains it's popularity from its upgrade (which changes its function), Winter's Grasp is considered little more than an early game choice and flashfire is a joke. The reason all the specialisations have their own CC methods is because they can't rely on the standard schools.

There really isn't all that much to the KE build, all you really need is 8 points. Immolate->Flashpoint->Clean Burn in fire, and Spirit Blade->Fade Cloak+->Combat Clarity->Fade Shield in KE. Everything else is superfluous to the build, and just facilitates faster kill times. My favorite additions are Energy Barrage+, Fade Step+, and Fire Mine+. I've beaten the game the whole way solo on nightmare, and it just isn't a challenge once you get KE. Before specs i had to kite, abuse fire wall and static cage in order to survive.

[JaegerBane]

There really isn't all that much to the KE build, all you really need is 8 points. Immolate->Flashpoint->Clean Burn in fire, and Spirit Blade->Fade Cloak+->Combat Clarity->Fade Shield in KE. Everything else is superfluous to the build, and just facilitates faster kill times. My favorite additions are Energy Barrage+, Fade Step+, and Fire Mine+. I've beaten the game the whole way solo on nightmare, and it just isn't a challenge once you get KE. Before specs i had to kite, abuse fire wall and static cage in order to survive.

This was kind of my point, if you build a class specifically so that every point taken synergises with every other point then to start complaining that it's too powerful seems a bit daft. I get that the KE is overpowered once it's got those 8 allocations, and I'm fine with that, because you really do have to be making the effort to create an invincible character. It's when you get idiots yakking on about how they only took spirit blade and fade cloak and they were able to solo nightmare with a tier 1 staff etc etc that it gets annoying, as it's plainly BS, and it's that kind of rubbish that brings on the nerf frenzy.

As for additions - it's hard to fault Energy Barrage+ and Static Cage+, as the damage from that duo is insane. Fire Mine I personally find to be a bit too awkward - in practice, Fade Cloak+ is a lot easier to regen Barrier with and Immolate is just generally easier to use, of course both require a very powerful staff, while Fire Mine, less so.

[Captmorgan72]

My first character was a KE and my barrier never dropped, once I maxed out the spec. Long after my party was on the ground I was soloing huge mobs, dragons, bosses, etc. KE is truly godhood. 

[Arvaarad]

My first character was a KE and my barrier never dropped, once I maxed out the spec. Long after my party was on the ground I was soloing huge mobs, dragons, bosses, etc. KE is truly godhood.

This is not a good thing. I see it held up so often as a sign that KE is OP, when in reality it shows that the KE is dragging the entire team down. And it's not just the quoted poster - almost every time I see a video of someone playing KE, the rest of their team drops on a regular basis.

People say, oh, KE best tank in the game. No! Good tanks can pull aggro, something the KE can't do. While you're swinging your spirit blade around, the rest of your team is getting swarmed. I don't care how awesome spirit blade is against guard, I don't care that you could survive infinite waves of baddies. If the rest of your party wasn't wiped out on the ground, the enemies would already be dead. The only reason you need this crazy regen-ing barrier is because the fight gets drawn out longer than it needs to be.

Infinite survivability is incredibly overrated. You don't need to survive for an indefinite length of time. You just need to survive until the things trying to kill you are dead.

[JaegerBane]

This is not a good thing. I see it held up so often as a sign that KE is OP, when in reality it shows that the KE is dragging the entire team down. And it's not just the quoted poster - almost every time I see a video of someone playing KE, the rest of their team drops on a regular basis.
People say, oh, KE best tank in the game. No! Good tanks can pull aggro, something the KE can't do. While you're swinging your spirit blade around, the rest of your team is getting swarmed. I don't care how awesome spirit blade is against guard, I don't care that you could survive infinite waves of baddies. If the rest of your party wasn't wiped out on the ground, the enemies would already be dead. The only reason you need this crazy regen-ing barrier is because the fight gets drawn out longer than it needs to be.
Infinite survivability is incredibly overrated. You don't need to survive for an indefinite length of time. You just need to survive until the things trying to kill you are dead.

This sounds more like theory crafting than anything else. The situations people talk about when their whole team has gone down are not DPS races, they mean stuff like dragon encounters where the AI simply can't control the other characters well enough to survive on their own and they aren't using the tac cam. It doesn't matter what spec you are in those situations, you're never going to throw enough DPS to outpace a squad wipe (unless you really are min-maxing the tempest abilities) and hence the fact that the KE can withstand this damage is what is noted - it's not 'extending' the fight simply because it didn't shoot out so much DPS that your squadmates never even got a chance to expire. If you played a rift Mage and stood at the back you wouldn't simply explode everything in seconds either.

The assertion that the KE can't draw aggro is also theoretical - it may not have taunt but the array of AoE nukes the base class has means it handles this just fine. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone actually claim a mage can't draw threat.

[Arvaarad]

This sounds more like theory crafting than anything else. The situations people talk about when their whole team has gone down are not DPS races, they mean stuff like dragon encounters where the AI simply can't control the other characters well enough to survive on their own and they aren't using the tac cam. It doesn't matter what spec you are in those situations, you're never going to throw enough DPS to outpace a squad wipe (unless you really are min-maxing the tempest abilities) and hence the fact that the KE can withstand this damage is what is noted - it's not 'extending' the fight simply because it didn't shoot out so much DPS that your squadmates never even got a chance to expire. If you played a rift Mage and stood at the back you wouldn't simply explode everything in seconds either.

The assertion that the KE can't draw aggro is also theoretical - it may not have taunt but the array of AoE nukes the base class has means it handles this just fine. I don't think I've ever heard of anyone actually claim a mage can't draw threat.

I'm not saying that DPS is the only thing that's necessary to keep the party alive, but KEs are bad at the other aspects too. Crowd control, for example, keeps your party up and fighting. Since big bosses are immune to disabling effects, crowd control mostly boils down to aggro control. And sure, dealing damage will attract attention, but the near-party wipes show that it isn't attracting enough attention.

Rift mages have the weakness debuff, which reduces all incoming damage by 30%. On dragons and other hard-hitting bosses, that's a massive survivability bump, and it applies to the entire team instead of a single KE.

Party support is also an important element, things like lowering their cooldown times or shielding them from damage. But the standard KE build doesn't have anywhere near the mana regen of a rift mage, so a rift mage outclasses it at party support.

In short, the KE is worse than rogues at DPS, and worse than warriors or rift mages at crowd control, debuffs, and party support.

Even ignoring the fact that rogue autoattacks deal 10x the damage of a KE's spirit blade,* ending the fight significantly faster, KEs still contribute very little to the survivability of the rest of the party.

* Not an exaggeration, it is actually 10 times as much - and that's not accounting for the rogues' burst abilities or faster attack speed. And this is against armored targets like high dragons, where non-physical damage should have an advantage.

[JaegerBane]

I'm not saying that DPS is the only thing that's necessary to keep the party alive, but KEs are bad at the other aspects too. Crowd control, for example, keeps your party up and fighting. Since big bosses are immune to disabling effects, crowd control mostly boils down to aggro control. And sure, dealing damage will attract attention, but the near-party wipes show that it isn't attracting enough attention.

This is a blatant assumption. There are many reasons why a squad wipe could happen, to actually pick out of thin air the reason that they all happen is the fault of the KE regardless of situation, opponent, planning or character builds is simply ridiculous. You could realistically use the same logic to blame any result on any factor.

I'm also not sure where the idea that the KE is bad at everything other than survivability came from either - crowd control in this game is generally weak, even the Rift Mage has limited capability to CC as you say, and that's supposed to be its focus - despite all this, the KE can still CC the same opponents for the same time with the only caveat being it can't do it at range, and can do it with more precision than the Necro, so that's on shaky ground. Then you consider that it's perma-barrier makes it a better user of fire magic than any other, so the DPS argument is shaky too. And quite frankly, if you can't hold agression on a class that stands in people's faces and can freeze everything around itself, then you're not playing it right.

Practically the only thing the KE can't do very well is squad support, which is the *actual* reason why squad wipes are more common. If the character responsible for keeping up your squad is being run by the AI then obviously, it won't work as well. The only difference is that on any other class/spec, a squad wipe will hit everyone, rather than just the none-KEs. That's why a player-controlled KE can solo a dragon but Vivienne controlled by the AI is almost useless. It's a class that needs human control to function properly, that doesn't make it automatically responsible for every squad wipe.

Rift mages have the weakness debuff, which reduces all incoming damage by 30%. On dragons and other hard-hitting bosses, that's a massive survivability bump, and it applies to the entire team instead of a single KE.

This is irrelevant - if the KE doesn't need it's team to survive, then the fact it can't keep its team intact as well doesn't mean anything. Keeping the team up is a requirement for RMs, it's optional for KEs. Using that to suggest KEs are weaker simply doesn't make sense.

Party support is also an important element, things like lowering their cooldown times or shielding them from damage. But the standard KE build doesn't have anywhere near the mana regen of a rift mage, so a rift mage outclasses it at party support.
In short, the KE is worse than rogues at DPS, and worse than warriors or rift mages at crowd control, debuffs, and party support.

That's just the point, it's only an important element if you need it. KEs don't need it. As for the comparisons, every mage is inferior to rogues when it comes to DPS, Rift Mage's are only slightly better at CC despite being far weaker, KEs only fall behind warriors in crowd control and debuffs if they're not played properly or their build is poor, which leaves the entirety of the argument resting on KEs being useless because they can't support the squad very well...

[Rynas]

KEs have the potential to deal far more AOE damage than any rogue spec, and it's not even close.  It's not surprising that KEs often end up with dead parties, though.  A lot of people don't care about maximizing anything, and a lot of people don't care about keeping their party alive as long as they can win the fight.  Which KEs can do without much effort.

[Arvaarad]

I just checked for some solo videos, and at least the first 10 or so were all against ice dragons. The KE lays down an empowered fire mine - which they can stand on, because they play with friendly fire off - and it deals bonus damage because the dragon is weak to fire. That gives them more barrier regen than they would normally have, which lets them chip away at the dragon's health.

If they tried to cross a similar level gap to fight a fire dragon, or anything that's not specifically weak to fire or spirit damage, they'd be struggling.

[Rynas]

KEs don't struggle, even against fire-immune targets.  You should try it out sometime.

[Arvaarad]

KEs don't struggle, even against fire-immune targets. You should try it out sometime.

Neither do DW rogues.

I guess my point is, if we consider KEs to be OP, by that logic every class and spec would be OP, since any class can solo similar-level dragons fairly easily. If KEs could solo a dragon with a red level gap (the kind where little red skulls appear if you hover over its leg), then I'd be impressed. Short of Thousand Cuts shenanigans, taking on something that far above your level is tough, as they can basically one-shot everything.

So, since KEs are average at soloing but often end up needing to solo, they would have to provide more team utility for me to take interest.

That said, if they're enjoyable for some people, more power to 'em. Games exist for people to have fun, after all.

[Rynas]

Well, my original point was that the KE's AOE damage is far better than that of a rogue, and generally better than any other class.  The ability to constantly, passively refill barrier for Chaotic Focus means they can spam a max-powered Fire Mine as often as possible.  So they bring that role to a group, which is useful in most fights.

 

Buuut since I can't resist a challenge, here's something.  It would have been a lot faster if a) he weren't immune to fire and Combat Clarity weren't bugged:

 

 

I agree that many classes are "OP" by that standard, though.

[JaegerBane]

Neither do DW rogues.
I guess my point is, if we consider KEs to be OP, by that logic every class and spec would be OP, since any class can solo similar-level dragons fairly easily. If KEs could solo a dragon with a red level gap (the kind where little red skulls appear if you hover over its leg), then I'd be impressed. Short of Thousand Cuts shenanigans, taking on something that far above your level is tough, as they can basically one-shot everything.

I agree that the KE is not 'OP' in the strictest definition of the term. The main reason it got the title in the first place is a bunch of people who couldn't tell the difference between powerful and overpowered started the idea, then a whole load of youtube experts who barely played the class jumped on the bandwagon. It *can* be OP with the correct build - which relies heavily on the fire tree - but all this crap about solo'ing nightmare with 2 spells and tier 1 gear is exactly that - crap.

So, since KEs are average at soloing but often end up needing to solo, they would have to provide more team utility for me to take interest.

I think the fundamental flaw in your stance is that you're conflating the ability to withstand a squad-wipe - which the KE can handle - with the idea that the KE seeks it out, which is false. KEs don't need to or favour solo gameplay any more than any other spec, the only difference is that it's a practical option for them. Since they don't need the rest of the team, the player can, if they so wish, let the team do their own thing, and in the situations I mentioned above, this means a wipe.

This doesn't mean for one second that the KE can't keep his team alive, or that it's *forced* to solo - the mere fact it can does not automatically mean it should, that is up to the player.

[draken-heart]

KE does make RP sense, for different Races:

1. Human-it makes sense as you were raised in the circles, and KEs are a Circle tradition, and KE have notably been protectors of the Divine and some of the biggest leaders in Thedas.
2. Elf-It came from elven arcane warriors (I wonder how that happened) and fits the leader of the inquisition role of the dalish mage
3. Qunari-Fits the Role of the Qunari mage being the leader of the inquisition.

Overall, I'd say pick a spec because you like it, not because it is powerful or not.

[zaxen069]

Currently level 16, full KE with Winter's Grasp and Upgraded Barrier from Spirit tree... REALLY not seeing the "OPness" of KE. In fact it takes about 2 hits to knock out my Barrier and my damage on normal mobs is like 200-300 per hit which is just sad. I do so little damage I can't keep a single Barrier up based on damage unless I get to cut through a Guard or Barrier, and if more than one mob turns on me my Barrier gets chewed and I'm dead... Really not getting it. Or did Bioware stealthily nerf a SP game class for the sake of MP "buy our micro crap" balance?

 

Currently using a 97 DPS Tempest Staff, and wearing some normal crafted Battlemage Armor... Starting to wish I would have stuck to my DW or Archer toon I usually go with...

that's weird i played knight enchanter on Nightmare without using spirt blade unless most of my party died and was able to keep my barrier up and while i was using a fire spell in the mix which kill 50% of a barrier also barrage gave me about 50% sometimes more barrier 

[JaegerBane]

that's weird i played knight enchanter on Nightmare without using spirt blade unless most of my party died and was able to keep my barrier up and while i was using a fire spell in the mix which kill 50% of a barrier also barrage gave me about 50% sometimes more barrier

97 DPS isn't that great for a staff. The issue with Fade Shield is that you are absolutely dependent on having the most powerful staff you can get your hands on - I've just crafted my boss staff using First Enchanter staff schematic, blunt staff edge and inscribed grip + masterwork and that came out as ~120+ DPS without a rune. You really do need the best damage you can get.

KEs can get away with using robes but tbh, I saw better performance from Silverite Heavy armour which stacked Constitution bonuses and +Guard on hit. All that HP and Melee defence made for a bit of a juggernaut even if his barrier came down.

[Violetbliss]

I don't really find Spirit blade to be all that awesome for damage (unless they have guard or shield of course), it is a nice AoE but for damage you do a lot more by weaving in damage spells like fire mine or lightning cage, not to mention any CC stuff needed to make things more smooth. It is to me more of a defensive move, and a basic attack that cuts your cooldown times (with the fire passive). Basically it is the staff attack but with better damage. It had better damage when it was a detonator, but not now. You can of course only use that but if you find that fun in the long run you must really like the sound and visual of Spirit blade to prolong fights.

 

Is silverite armour really that useful for KE, unless you make a point of being the party's tank? I just didn't need it at all with my KE, between Fade Step, Cloak, and various other effects. Sure I took damage sometimes but I didn't struggle - but i can't make any comparison defensewise, I just tried to increase my damage since it was weaker than my defense by default.

[zaxen069]

I don't really find Spirit blade to be all that awesome for damage (unless they have guard or shield of course), it is a nice AoE but for damage you do a lot more by weaving in damage spells like fire mine or lightning cage, not to mention any CC stuff needed to make things more smooth. It is to me more of a defensive move, and a basic attack that cuts your cooldown times (with the fire passive). Basically it is the staff attack but with better damage. It had better damage when it was a detonator, but not now. You can of course only use that but if you find that fun in the long run you must really like the sound and visual of Spirit blade to prolong fights.

 

Is silverite armour really that useful for KE, unless you make a point of being the party's tank? I just didn't need it at all with my KE, between Fade Step, Cloak, and various other effects. Sure I took damage sometimes but I didn't struggle - but i can't make any comparison defensewise, I just tried to increase my damage since it was weaker than my defense by default.

Yeah i only find Sipirt Blade useful if i'm being lazy since u can spam it and keep barrier up or if i'm fighting a dragon tho i try to not use it on dragon fights expect to kill their guard cause i feel like i'm kinda cheating by spamming it on dragon fights i forget is the silverite armor or w/e the  guard on hit if it is i find it useful it's always nice to have extra survivability  just in case tho i was on nightmare but it's not like is 2 diffuclt after skyhold on nightmare

[JaegerBane]

I don't really find Spirit blade to be all that awesome for damage (unless they have guard or shield of course), it is a nice AoE but for damage you do a lot more by weaving in damage spells like fire mine or lightning cage, not to mention any CC stuff needed to make things more smooth. It is to me more of a defensive move, and a basic attack that cuts your cooldown times (with the fire passive). Basically it is the staff attack but with better damage. It had better damage when it was a detonator, but not now. You can of course only use that but if you find that fun in the long run you must really like the sound and visual of Spirit blade to prolong fights.
 
Is silverite armour really that useful for KE, unless you make a point of being the party's tank? I just didn't need it at all with my KE, between Fade Step, Cloak, and various other effects. Sure I took damage sometimes but I didn't struggle - but i can't make any comparison defensewise, I just tried to increase my damage since it was weaker than my defense by default.

Spirit blades's main purpose is to shorten your cooldown times and crack guard/barriers. It does fair damage but it's something you use when you're waiting through Fade Cloak's cooldown. Fade Cloak is your main damage dealer when up close. Fade Step is more about crowd control and re-shuffling the situation deck.

I found Silverite armour useful mainly from a convenience or a fail safe point-of-view - KEs are tough but they're all about barrier, if you take a giant boulder or your fire mine fails to do its job or whatever, having something better than a robe can smooth things out. It's difficult to stack constitution on a mage otherwise. You can compensate for the bit of lost damage by stacking will/magic/attack on your staff and hood.

[DreamSever]

its freaking awesome with fade step, I feel like sephiroth zipping around the battlefield and slashing enemies like a badass, shame the sword damage is poor when enemies guard is down