I'm finding the frost tree to be mostly useless on the damage front. Most of the abilities are utility in nature, to simply slow or weaken enemies for others to take them out.
Why has Bioware made the tree so one sided? Fire and Storm talents are easy to pickup over this?
To avoid having 3 damage trees. Instead splitting it up: 1 made for pure damage, 1 for mostly control and last on a mix (Fire, Frost and Storm respectively)
All about balancing gameplay and giving variation, to give you see illusion of choice.
Hell, you can even dispel the freeze for bonus damage.
Shatter does great damage. Just try it with stonefist as a detonator. /sarcasm
Fade Step. Worth it.
Anyway, I use the tree for Fade Step and Winter's Grasp/Chill only. As far as actives anyway. The passives are great and it compliments other stuff well.
Fade Step, increased mana regen, and tons of combo primers. The combo primers alone make it worth taking.
Shatter does great damage. Just try it with stonefist as a detonator. /sarcasm
It was even better in the real olden days where it basically was pure CC.
Bring back Cone of Cold!
It was even better in the real olden days where it basically was pure CC.
Bring back Cone of Cold!
Psh, my glyph mage laughs at Cone of Cold. So many cheesy things you could do with Glyph of Repulsion + the many narrow corridors/doorways in DA:O. Especially if you had multiple glyph mages.
Line of repulsion glyphs (or the paralyze+repulsion mass paralyze combo), and you could stack AoE on dozens of trapped enemies. And for higher-willpower enemies, you could Force Field one of your party members in the doorway to make an unavoidable "glyph of repulsion".
People who think KEs are broken have never played a mage in Origins. Enemies literally didn't get within eyesight of the party before falling over dead.
Yep, when I was feeling like being cheap in DA:O I would cast gyph of repulsion at a choke point and then (with Morrigan's or Wynne's help) use Strom of Century on the trapped enemies. I like to imagine my party just sat outside the room playing cards while everyone dies.
Psh, my glyph mage laughs at Cone of Cold. So many cheesy things you could do with Glyph of Repulsion + the many narrow corridors/doorways in DA:O. Especially if you had multiple glyph mages.
Yeah glyphs were great too. But CoC worked on every enemy, which was nice. 
As for KE in this game, I might agree with you. In DAO there usually wasn't a reason to skip Arcane Warrior spec, and I think it does seem like back then you could unload a lot more damage spells, then pop Combat Magic to cleanup and overall be better than KE in this game. Then again, I did end up respec'ing my KE to depower it around 16 or 17 so maybe I would feel differently if I kept spamming Fire Mine and some other things later in the game.
Then again, while Spirit Blade is pretty decent, Spellweaver + Rose's Thorn + Poison might have been better.
Yeah glyphs were great too. But CoC worked on every enemy, which was nice.
As for KE in this game, I might agree with you. In DAO there usually wasn't a reason to skip Arcane Warrior spec, and I think it does seem like back then you could unload a lot more damage spells, then pop Combat Magic to cleanup and overall be better than KE in this game. Then again, I did end up respec'ing my KE to depower it around 16 or 17 so maybe I would feel differently if I kept spamming Fire Mine and some other things later in the game.
Then again, while Spirit Blade is pretty decent, Spellweaver + Rose's Thorn + Poison might have been better.
The winter tree is my favorite. Even if I end up taking a couple of items from the fire tree just for balance, I always spec from winter as a compliment to Dorian who maxes out the fire tree. It's not flashy like storm and fire, but it's a good support tree.
If you are a Rift Mage then Frost tree can be used for damage and debuff every effectively.
Pull of the Abyss goes really well with Ice Mine, especially and upgraded Ice Mine.
Rift Mage's mana regeneration allows them to actually use Blizzard to do useful without running out of mana.
Other mages should stick to using Frost tree for Winter Stillness, for Fade Step and to trigger Ice Armor.
Not to mention the Blood Mage + Spirit Healer combo. It was literally impossible to run out of health or mana. Refill mana with blood magic -> refill health with spirit healing -> repeat.
And if something messed with that rotation, you had 1000 potions on your belt anyway. I still chuckle when people wish for "more challenging combat, like Origins." That's some serious nostalgia goggles right there.
"more challenging combat, like Origins."
Compared to DAI, DAO had more difficult combat.
In DAO, you needed to have a good understanding of gameplay mechanics and how the abilities work to be truly powerful. In DAI it's extremely easy to become overpowered, even when not striving towards meta builds.
When DAO first came out it was brutal. It even got A PATCH that made Easy difficulty EASIER (or maybe they even ADDED an easy mode, I can't remember). The Combat Strategy part of the DAO forums were full of people asking for strategies against the Spider Queen, Flemeth and the High Dragon. I don't see any of that for DAI; I only see general build ideas and questions.
My first playthrough of Origins was on Normal difficulty, and it was WAY HARDER than my first playthrough of Inquistion, which was on NIGHTMARE difficulty.
TL;DR: it took way more knowledge to become overpowered in DAO compared to DAI. I guess not having to spend attribute points is a big part of that.
DA2 had the Ancient Rock Wraith in the same category.
TL;DR: it took way more knowledge to become overpowered in DAO compared to DAI. I guess not having to spend attribute points is a big part of that.
It really didn't take that much. It boiled down to:
"Do I have a mage in my party?"
"Yes? Cool, I win."
"No? Well, at least I'll get to use some of these 5000 health potions, then."
There were a couple factors at play. First, there was a ridiculous amount of access to potions, just absurd amounts of potions. The different "levels" of potions didn't share cooldowns, so you could bathe yourself in potions way faster than enemies could deal damage.
Second, mages. Ah, mages. It doesn't take a whole lot of insight to realize "oh hey, if I CC everything and drop AoE on their faces, they will die and I will take no damage." Mage abilities were just way out of proportion with the other classes - which, let's be clear, makes sense lorewise, but did make the combat a bit of a cakewalk if your party contained one or more mages.
Friendly fire was enforced, but FF doesn't even matter if everything dies while they're paralyzed 100 feet away from you. DA:I has the option to turn on FF, and it has much more of an impact (IMO, a positive impact) on the gameplay than it did in Origins.
It's not like the game told you that mages were overpowered in the description. On the contrary, mages are often the harder classes to play in RPGs. You had to figure out that mages were overpowered by yourself - and most people got their first mage as Morrigan (not counting the temporary Ostagar mage) at around level 7. And after getting to Lothering people might've dumped her in favor of Leliana or Sten, as she had kind of a crappy line of spells (Shapeshifting, ugh). Or maybe they just didn't like her personality. The next mage that can join your party is easily killable if you agree with the templar solution, and might be obtained very late game depending on player choices. That means that some people will play through the game with only 1 mage in their party - one they might never use.
Potions weren't that plentiful if you were actively using them and not crafting them. Not to mention that in order to use potions you had to be free from crowd control effects; stuns and knockdowns, which were very common in Origins.
Forcing a player to use a companion they don't like in order to be overpowered isn't that good of a trade off. In DAI, any party combination can be overpowered. And it's not like DAI doesn't have an abundance of potions... 12 potions + a ton of resupply stations everywhere during story missions... Oh and then the personal potions like regeneration potions...
I still think DA2 had the best combat balance out of the 3 games.
Origins had big flaws, on Nightmare for sure. Spending attribute points basicly came down to put all points in strenght for Two-Handed Warriors, as an example, because otherwise Elite and Boss Enemies would simply resist attacks like Pommel Strike and your own attacks would miss. The duel with Loghain is an example for this.
"more challenging combat, like Origins."
Compared to DAI, DAO had more difficult combat.
In DAO, you needed to have a good understanding of gameplay mechanics and how the abilities work to be truly powerful. In DAI it's extremely easy to become overpowered, even when not striving towards meta builds.
When DAO first came out it was brutal. It even got A PATCH that made Easy difficulty EASIER (or maybe they even ADDED an easy mode, I can't remember). The Combat Strategy part of the DAO forums were full of people asking for strategies against the Spider Queen, Flemeth and the High Dragon. I don't see any of that for DAI; I only see general build ideas and questions.
My first playthrough of Origins was on Normal difficulty, and it was WAY HARDER than my first playthrough of Inquistion, which was on NIGHTMARE difficulty.
TL;DR: it took way more knowledge to become overpowered in DAO compared to DAI. I guess not having to spend attribute points is a big part of that.
I thought about doing a CC Rift Mage build for Solas (Ice, maybe a bit of Spirit, and definitely the rift mage spec). Decided against it, as it made no sense.
I thought about doing a CC Rift Mage build for Solas (Ice, maybe a bit of Spirit, and definitely the rift mage spec). Decided against it, as it made no sense.
That's the same build I used for Solas. How did it not make sense?
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