273 réponses à ce sujet

[wowpwnslol]

I hope the devs don't listen to most of these suggestions, based on what had been posted so far, the playerbase is laughably clueless when it comes to game balance. Once devs start listening to suggestions of bad players with who mostly RP or never played any game competitively, you know it will go downhill (see: WoW balancing the game for casuals and scrubs since WoTLK).

[Dr. Explosion]

Victor Wachter wrote...
* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

First off, mages (or mage-ish classes i.e. Adept in ME) are hands down my favorite class in any RPG, and I really like DA:O's mages. They have a good mix of spells and I really like the whole spellcasting system, as well as how you handled staffs

However, I really hate mage specializations. There wasn't one spec. that appealed to me. I play mages to zap monsters with bolts of lightining, torch them with fireballs, and basically make mean things go away in a flash and a bang. But there was not one spec. that supported what I thought of as "the traditional" mage; there's Blood Mage, but I usually play heroic characters and dabbling in "black magic" isn't really something they / I would do. I WAS interested in shapeshifting, but after playing a shapeshifter, I was underwhelmed and won't ever consider it again. Spirit Healer is useful, but I'm not too keen on playing a support character, and as for Arcane Warrior, if I wanted to play a Warrior, I'd play a Warrior.

Also, Mage gear isn't that great, esp.  the hats. Just give us a NORMAL hood (no fringe/puffball/topknoty thing) and maybe a SIMPLE skull cap or a hat like Jarlaxle Baenre's (he's the guy; but I wouldn't mind a crown thingy like the woman was wearing either. That shouldn't be too hard to put in^_^ *waits for kitten punting*)

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

Overpowered -
Apparently Arcane Warriors

Underpowered -
Chain Lightning
Shapshifting
Staffs - they need just a LITTLE more of a kick. Just a little. And maybe a wider variety of effects and enchantments

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
Favorite - None

Least Favorite - All

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

Favorite - Primal, Spirit, Arcane

Least Favorite - Entropy (not usually my style, althought there are some cool spells in it)


I hope this helps and before I go, I'm gonna BEG for a blaster / elementalist / KA-BOOM style specialization.

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE make a spec that helps my mage blow Darkspawn up without having to resort to forbidden magics. I'll be your friend. Or I WON'T be your friend, if you'd like that better:P

Modifié par Conall Cameron, 06 février 2010 - 05:48 .

[Ragna3]

On the likes

Spell combination is probably my favourite feature out of the mage class. It fundamentally changes the way I choose my magical talents; rather than evaluating the spells one by one based solely on their individual merits, I found myself actually thinking about the possible synergies arising from the combination of my current and prospective spells, which, insofar as it is practical under the restriction of limited talent points, greatly expanded the tactical impact behind my spell selection.

To put it simply and bluntly, tactical decisions are no longer constrained in the simplistic realms of “blizzard for CC, stonefist for interrupt, and force field for wtf moments”, rather, I found myself constantly thinking about the diverging choices offered by the same spell in the heat of battle: to maintain blizzard for its CC or to sacrifice it’s CC for greater offensive capability; to use stonefist as an interrupt on an enemy caster or to shatter an enemy warrior who was frozen a moment ago; to use force field on the prison-crushed Alistair or to force the genlock emissary out of battle while we focus on his minions.

The spell combination allows these split-second choices to seriously impact the outcome of a battle- for the better or for the worse- though in the process the battle itself has become all the more engaging for the player.


On the specializations

My favourite specialization is the bloodmage by virtue of his ‘blood wound’ spell which is practically applicable in almost any situation. Enemy warrior rushing towards you? Blood wound. Enemy caster begins casting chain lightning? Blood wound. Ambushed by a large group of hurlocks? Blood wound, again. Beyond the single all-purpose spell though, the bloodmage specialization offers little synergy with the mage class itself. Blood magic is simply an alternative to willpower and lyrium potions, while blood sacrifice is merely a forced replacement for healing. In the end there was not really any significant variance between a blood mage and a circle mage. The manifestation of blood magic allows a blood mage’s chain lightning to be exactly as underwhelming as a circle mage’s chain lightning; and spell wisps still appear as adorable lantern archons- completely bereft of any trace of vampirism. Simply put, the bloodmage specialization is not particularly successful in conveying the menace and consuming power so assiduously accentuated by the chantry as the characteristic features of a maleficarum.

My least favourite specialization is, not surprisingly, the shapeshifter, because, barring any rationally unforeseen circumstances, there is really little reason to sacrifice my whole repertoire of awesome spells for a few lackluster abilities. Maybe the spider would not have been so underwhelming if poison spits actually inject the target with walking bombs on the condition that the mage has learnt the spell prior to transforming. Still, to sacrifice the ability to cast every single spell is an astronomical expense for any spell caster, hence unless the tradeoff is really worthwhile, the entire shapeshifter specialization is hardly worth the effort to unlock- however trivial the effort may be.


On the talents

My favourite talents are those from the primal school, notably the fire and ice sub-schools. Fireball is awesome, but casting a fireball on a bunch of genlocks struggling to escape blizzard before the spell reaches its sub-zero freezing moment is priceless. The lightning school is not as exciting though as the one reason I invested talent points in it was to get the storm of the century. The earth school is great for its shattering effect but nevertheless infamous for its petrify spell which is considered inferior to a lower tier ice spell.

Walking bombs and virulent walking bombs constitute my favourite talents from the spirit school. The interesting aspect about these two spells is that while they are lethally powerful, it takes a lot of precision and incisive use of supplemental abilities, namely, taunt, paralyze and other CC effects to maximize their effectiveness. A single mismanagement may cause the thing to explode right in front of me- and often that means reloading the whole encounter.

Now on to the least favourite school of talent: arcane. Any mage who max the filler school should probably volunteer to become a tranquil. And speaking of useless talents, chain lightning comes to mind rather quickly. At 30ish damage the spell is the perfect choice for wasting casting times- its offensive potential is lackadaisical by itself and its synergy with other spells virtually non-existent. Maybe the electric field produced by the spell tempest could boost the offensive potential of chain lightning. It really is a lonely spell.

Modifié par Ragna3, 06 février 2010 - 05:48 .

[Hyper Cutter]

I really hate the way friendly fire is reckoned. Even on lower difficulties where it supposedly doesn't apply, the secondary effects of spells still work (CoC freezes you, Fireball knocks you down, etc) and for some bizarre reason non-party allies are affected by friendly fire even when your party isn't (nothing like killing more of your own allies than the enemy did!). This tends to make AoE spells less useful, and the "big" ones especially so.

Also, the gear sucks. The basic mage robes aren't that bad-looking, imo, but the Tevinter design is terrible. And the headgear

I like Spirit Healer, mostly because it's got the only revival spell in the game (and give it to Morrigan for this reason, lore be damned). I've got no interest in Arcane Warrior (got enough real ones, both among my characters and as party members), Shapeshifting's pretty terrible (except for the bees one, and that only because it moves FAST AS HELL compared to normal running speed), and I've never used Blood Mage (beyond giving it to Wynne for the lulz).

[LadySeryn]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

I really liked the whole magic system in this game. It was simple, yet effective. I really liked that the mage could cast any of their spells at any time, and all spells simply drained mana from their pool of magic. I also thought that the way party buffs worked, where it simply reserved mana that could not be used for another purpose was great. This was a great improvement compared to the overly-complex D&D rules that were used in NWN and previous BioWare games.

I liked that there were several spells schools to choose from, and that each school had a distinct feel to it. The large variety of spells also made each mage unique, which is always a good thing.

I disliked that some of the spells seemed very similar, especially in the Primal school. They were all basically "Do I cast a cone of element, a single-target element or an area-of-effect element". A little more variety in the spell shapes or effects could have been more interesting.

EDIT: How could I forget spell combinations?! That was a brilliant addition to the mage class. I just wish there were more of them.

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

Over-powered: Arcane Warrior. Heavy armor does not reduce your spell effectiveness enough, and by double-loading both your spell strength and melee strength on one stat, these characters quickly became too powerful. My Arcane Warrior was able to wear Blood Dragon armor before he even left Lothering! While my warriors were still walking around in leathers.

The weapon-enchantment spells that added fire or ice damage to your weapons made other classes over-powered. Put a rogue with 3 elemental runes plus the fire or ice damage from a mage on them, and they did a ridiculous amount of damage for way too little mana cost.

I never used it myself, but from what I've read on the forums, Mana Clash was also ridiculous.

Under-powered: Can't really think of anything. The mage in general was over-powered compared to the other classes.

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

Favourite: Arcane Warrior. I loved being able to equip all the various bits of armor and weapons on my mage. I wish more games allowed a warrior/mage hybrid. Though it perhaps would have been nice to see the Arcane Warrior a bit less powerful, or still geared a bit more towards the Arcane instead of the Warrior. An "Arcane Rogue" that blended magic and rogue skills could also have been interesting.

Least favourite: Shapeshifter. What's the point? Use up your mana then turn into a bear? I found the way that Fade Shapeshifting was done in the Circle of Magi quest for the main character was much more interesting than the one that mage class gets. Why not be able to shift into another magic-oriented form with some unique spells, instead of just changing into a few animals?

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

The Primal school in general was my favourite. It's always good fun to blast things with fireballs, or toss lightning around.

Least favourite was the whole Spirit School. Magic that affects magic is just not that interesting, and I always felt "Why should I take a spell to damage the enemy's mana or dispell effects, when I can just kill the mage quickly with my warriors and use my own magic to take out the melee characters?"

Modifié par LadySeryn, 06 février 2010 - 06:43 .

[draxynnus]

Hooray, mage dev question! Been waiting for this one...

Likes and dislikes:

Mages are generally my preferred class in fantasy games (especially with mana-based systems, as long as the mana doesn't require potions to get back in any efficient manner (coughcoughDiablo1coughDivineDivinitycough), and this one has been no different. Some of my likes and dislikes will come out in answers to other questions, but there are soe "holistic" points I'd like to make:

In the like column - while some have asked for special benefits for specialising in a given school, I actually like the way you can mix and match if you want to. One thing that can often annoy me is that when schools are divided up in fantasy games, some of the divisions are quite arbitrary - to give a Dragon Age example, I would be inclined to have swapped the Sleep and Death lines (since the Sleep line involves messing with the target's mind, something I associate with Spirit, while Death involves exploiting the deaths of others, something I associate more with Entropy). However, because there's no barrier to investing lines in an "off-school", it's perfectly possible, within the limits of spell points available, to make a character that has the capability mix the player feels is appropriate for the character, rather than being put into arbitrary boxes. This also has the effect of meaning that the Mage is probably the class with the most variety in possible builds.

One possible compromise for the people who want some benefit from specialising in a given school is to make that benefit proportional to how many spells you've learned in that school (so you can get some of it without HAVING to take EVERYTHING) - however, I'd be disappointed if that was made so good that you were practically forced to specialise. Dabbling should be just as viable, as should leaving one line unfilled even after filling the other three in a school.

Spell combinations are also a nice way of showing that sometimes spells do interact in strange ways - as well as making sure that effects you'd expect to see by combining certain spells actually do happen even if the engine otherwise isn't coded to handle it.

In the dislike column - the equipment thing as has already been commented on, but possibly more annoying, especially given the variety of possible builds available, is the singularity of origin, while the other classes have 5 origins between them. While I understand that in the lore Dalish magic is quite different to that taught by the Circles, mechanically they're very similar - it strikes me that this might have been better handled by making Dalish magic a specialisation (which is implied to have greater powers than available to the PC, similar to how blood magic is clearly more than the four spells PC dabblers receive) and going ahead and allowing Dalish elves to be mages.

Another general comment is that while we have a lot of spells that can make a given area Unpleasant for an extended period (Inferno, Earthquake, Blizzard, Tempest, Death Cloud, Grease...) there are few good fire-and-forget area spells like Fireball that can be used to bombard enemy archers and the like without risking having your melee characters end up standing around twiddling their thumbs.

Underpowered and overpowered:

You'll be hearing this a lot, I expect, but anti-spellcaster effects are quite...binary. Later in the game, enemy mages often have somewhere on the order of 200+ mana, while most of the spells and effects you have to take that mana away from them only chips away at it at packets of 20-50 at best - I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of an enemy spellcaster being drained out in this matter. On the other hand, however, you have the spells that can drain all the enemy's mana in an instant - a Glyph of Neutralisation at their feet or, even better, a Mana Clash which will often outright kill them as well. I'd like to see a reduction of this binary effect - increase the effects of general mana-denial spells and talents, but there shouldn't be any that instantly remove all of the target's mana: Clash should work like a Cleanse except that it deals damage as well (possibly a 1-1 conversion), while the Glyph of Neutralisation, while draining mana at a rapid rate, should allow a victim who gets off it ASAP to do so with their mana reserve mostly intact.

Other comments will be made in discussions of the individual lines.

Specialisations:

One of the things that annoys me about specialisations, and which I've repeated a number of times elsewhere, is that to a certain extent, there isn't really a specialisation for Mages. You have a specialisation for healers, a specialisation for apostates, two specialisations for mixing it up into melee - but nothing that really meshes nicely with just continuing to behave as a normal Mage. Spirit Healer is closest, since most mages are likely to dabble in healing anyway and Spirit Healer is basically just access to a second line of healing spells, but not necessarily all mages are going to want to be healers (even by dabbling), and they should have specialisation options too without becoming apostates or taking the melee option.

For Rogues who just want to be better Rogues without doing anything strange, they have Duelist and, to a lesser extent, Assassin. Warriors can go with Champion and Berserker - both of which are basically just a new set of abilities rather than being something strange like Templar or Blood Reaver. For mages, though, all of the currently available specialisations are at least a little off-the-wall when applied to a traditional mage.

I suspect this is part of the reason why dipping into Arcane Warrior is so popular - if you want your character to be a more-or-less conventional mage, once you've grabbed Spirit Healer there really is no better option, and when it's possible to get armour sets with negative net fatigue - well, that plus a decent armour score is better than you'd get from the majority of robes that are available. On Arcane Warrior generally - I like the idea of a character that mixes sorcery and swordplay, but having to put the sword away to cast many spells makes this lose some of its lustre, especially since the short-range spells that you'd otherwise expect the AW to concentrate on are the ones worst hit - it'd be nice to see some way to eliminate this penalty, even if this means hitting the AW's power somewhere else (and from comments others have made, this would probably be a good thing. Let's see the AW actually combine magic and swordplay rather than just becoming the ultimate tank!)

Shapeshifter, as people have said, clearly needs some help. More interesting forms would be a step in the right direction (I'm sure it would be more popular if we could do a Flemeth...) but the apparent bug of magic not actually contributing to damage of shapeshifted forms needs to be fixed, and faster shifting between forms would also be a plus - if shapeshifters could flip between the forms the way you can in the Fade, it'd be much more adaptable and useful, but the long cast time means it isn't really useful as a means to adapt to circumstances. As it is, it's only really useful when Morrigan is out of mana and the fight isn't worth drinking a lyrium potion over, and even that's basically just something you do for the heck of it.

Trees:

Okay, this is going to be a long one:

Arcane: No real strong opinion either way. It's a bit meh-worthy, and sometimes I wonder just how much effect it's actually having, but it is supposed to be a support attribute, and once you've got the spells you really want, it possibly is more useful to make what you've got more effective than to add more spells you won't be casting anyway.

Creation:

Healing: This tree seems to have a distinct case of diminishing-returns. Healing is nearly essential, Rejuvenation can be useful, and Regeneration can provide that little bit extra that's needed in a tough situation or keep an ally going under relatively light fire - Mass Rejuvenation, however, tends to be something whose effect I don't really notice.

Enhancement: Haven't really used it enough to form a strong impression of it either way.

Glyphs: Commonly regarded as one of the most versatile lines, and I can't disagree. Once I acquired Wynne with my mage, planting a Glyph of Paralysis or, later, Repulsion in the doorway became an inherent part of my "door procedure". Neutralisation is quite effective at shutting down spellcasters, but as noted above, it's possibly too effective - completely shutting down a spellcaster with the glyph should require being able to keep the spellcaster on the glyph. Paralysis Explosion is quite useful when used correctly, but also means you have to think about what glyphs you use when - I've had it backfire on me at least once.

Summoning: I'd have to agree with the general idea that this is lacklustre, especially at the top end. Spellwisp and Grease certainly have thier uses, but Spellbloom really doesn't seem worthwhile (60 mana over 20 seconds? As long as your mages stay bunched up?). Stinging Swarm I gave a try, but didn't really see it in action enough to form a strong opinion of it - however, the fact that it's not all that spectacular in its effect does indicate that it's not exactly a strong incentive to fill out the tree, even if you've already filled it up to Grease.

Primal:

Fire: This is probable my favourite line - it's both visually and mechanically impressive. All of the spells are effective at what they do (fireball is especially satisfying) and the tendency of fire and cold spells to not play nicely with one another is a nice touch.

Earth: People have derided Earthquake, but I find it quite useful - it's one of the few area-of-effect snares that plays nicely with all the area-of-effect damage spells that you might combine it with (Grease stops being a snare as soon as it gets hit by fire, and Blizzard gives its victims a large amount of fire resistance.) Otherwise, the main benefits of the line seem to be single-target control - Petrify and Stone Fist are both useful on their own for this, and combined to quickly shatter a weaker target.

Cold: Commonly regarded as one of the better, even overpowered lines - like Fire, it's certainly quite effective, and visually impressive enough given that cold effects don't tend to have the different colours that fire does. Cone of Cold, however, could probably survive with a shorter freeze duration.

Electrical: This feels a bit like the "redheaded stepchild" of the Primal lines - although this may be partially due to the issue of mana denial effects not appearing as effective as they might. The main attraction of electrical spells actually appears to be that they "play nicely" with both fire and cold - while the "on fire" and "frozen" conditions from Flame Blast and Cone of Cold seem to neutralise each other (as they should... although sometimes I do think that maybe there should be some extra damage there from thermal shock), Shock makes a good followup to either, and Tempest is good for adding extra damage to either Inferno or Blizzard - unless you have Spell Might running, but that just gives you another option. Chain Lightning, as people have pointed out, is weak period, let alone for a fourth-tier spell - at the very least, it needs a significant reduction in recharge time. Visually, I'd have to say it was a little disappointed that BioWare went for the "teardrop-shaped glob of plasma" representation of 'lightning' - I'd have preferred to see Lightning and Chain Lightning produce genuine lightning bolts, and an instantaneous hit would have distinguished Lightning a little more from Arcane Bolt.

Spirit:

Anti-Magic: Haven't really used this line all that much - when playing my Mage, I always felt as if I had sufficient other options in this area (Alistair, Glyph of Neutralisation from Wynne, Mana Clash, and, as a previous poster said, simply killing or disabling the caster). I may have been missing an opportunity to abuse Anti-Magic Ward with AOE effects, but with the short duration, that might not be so effective anyway.

Mana Manipulation: Top-heavy. Mana Clash really needs a nerf - if not now, every player who uses mages will be screaming for one when the first enemy is introduced in the game that throws it back at them. The very idea scares the living daylights out of me, and that's an indication that it's too powerful. However, if it was nerfed, the lower order spells really need a buff (I'd be inclined to at least double the effect of Mana Drain and Mana Cleanse), or this entire line will basically turn into a tickbox for using Spell Might-induced spell combinations. Spell Might itself is interesting even if you don't use it for combinations - having it allows you to switch between power and endurance - but it isn't worth three spell points on its own, especially when you could have Spell Wisp for one.

Death: Never used it, will leave comments for those who have.

Telekinesis: Quite effective, but I don't think it's as overpowered as people think. Mind Blast is an effective means at taking the pressure off for a few moments, but in Crushing Prison's case...in my experience, high-value targets will often laugh it off, while in the case of low-value targets...well, you'd expect a fourth-tier spell to be able to mess up a weaker target. Force Field is one I particularly like, however - its often quite useful to be able to put an enemy in a box for a while even if you can't hurt them, or even to put your ally in a box if you can't heal them fast enough, and that versatility is quite nice to have. It'd be nicer if you could use Crushing Prison on a friendly force-fielded target to get them out in the PC version, though.

Entropy:

Debilitation: This is one I haven't used much, although I was impresed when the Circle Mage in the Tower of Ishal managed to pull off a Paralyze on the Ogre. It does strike me, however, that Mass Paralysis does lose out a bit to Paralysis Explosion, although the non-friendly-fire may make up for it.

Hexes: The effects of Vulnerability and Misdirection I haven't exactly scientifically tested for their effect, but Misdirection I know from experience of having it cast on me to be quite frustrating - almost as bad as being disabled entirely for a melee character. Death I've rarely used for its designed effect, so I can't really comment, but the Death Hex/Death Cloud combo certainly lives up to its reputation.

Sleep: Disorient I often don't bother with, but Horror is useful at the cost of a short range. Sleep I haven't really used, but there have been plenty of times I've wished I had something like it, so having something like it is certainly a good thing. Waking Nightmare I've had mixed results with, although that seems to be the intent - it's certainly quite satisfying when it works.

Death: Drain Life is nifty, Death Magic less so. Curse of Mortality appears to be one of those spells that's more effective used against you than by you - few enemies rely on healing magics, while access to healing magics and poultices is an important "safety net" for many players. Death Cloud strikes me largely as being "just another area-of-effect-damage-over-time" - effective (especially since it combines well with all the others, and especially well with Death Hex) but its main distinction seems to be that it's the Spirit equivalent of Inferno and Tempest. Not that that's a bad thing.

Well, there's my proverbial 2c. Hope it's useful!

Modifié par draxynnus, 06 février 2010 - 07:00 .

[Lethlar]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

I like the spells. First and foremost my main desire to play mages are the spells. I love the visual effects, the strategic effects and the lore of magic. I like especially the interactions between spells, there should be more spell combos and more ways to interact with the environment using a mages talents. Different spell effects are always welcome. I also like specializations and taking two mages from the same place and ending them in very different ways that reflect the paths they chose.

* Is there anything
that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

The aoe spells and crowd control are overpowered. The healing could use a slight buff, the shapeshifter is deeply underpowered. It takes too long to shift (should be instant) and there's nothing unique in those forms that can't be accomplished better in the base form with more variety and choice.

* What
are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

Favourite is blood mage and spirit healer, least favourite is Shapeshifter. I also think that specializations should shape the rest of your spells and the direction your class takes, a shapeshifters other spells should be altered in some way to differentiate them from a spirit healers. Maybe secondary effects depending on specialization?

*
What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

My favourite is primal for the effects, visual appeal and damage. I also like spirit. None of the rest appeal to me, either redundant or not worth the points they require.

[Andari_Surana]

Felt a bit let down by the mage class.





DISLIKES:



*) Grease Fire - Extremely Underpowered +2 points of damage (tickles) and dissipates as soon as you leave the fire. Not worth getting this combo, or even the using your mana to cast the grease slick.



*) Grease - Fairly UnderPowered - Enemies only fall down once, when entering the grease slick, otherwise they can move around freely. They should have to make a resistance check every few steps (or seconds) for the spell to be useful.



*) Entropic Death - Extremely Overpowered boss killer (600+ damage in gear that wouldn't get 60+ damage with a fireball). I cannot use this spell without trivializing the game.



*) Weapon Enchants (fire, ice, telek) - Greatly Overpowered. Being able to enchant everyones weapon with +10-12 points of elemental damage, when some characters dual wield, translates into 60-70 damage every second for your party from this spell, per spell caster. This makes other sources of damage fairly trivial. I.e. how much strength your warrior/rogues have, how good theere weapons are, etc, are all pretty much dwarfed by the elemental damage being applied.



*) Forcefield - Overpowered. AI not smart enough to deal with complete damage immunity, hence you can creatively tank entire encounters with yor robe wearing mage. Also if you got two mages, you can chain cast this on whoever is "tanking" to provide indefinate no-damage tanking.



*) Forcefield / Crushing Prison - Overpowered. Long Duration spells. Forcefield is 20+ seconds, not sure what crushing prison is after the patch. But if a mage is going to be able to potentially crowd control an opponent that long, the opponent should have a resistance check - and probably be entitled to another resistance check every few seconds.



*) Earthquake - Needs Improvement. Stationary targets (e.g. an archer or mage) are unlikely to fall down due to earthquake, because earthquake seems to only knock you down if your moving around.



*) AntiMage Spells - Highly Overpowered. Doesn't seem right that with an insta cast spell u can glyph another mage draining all their mana, and denying them spell casting. Or with mana clash you can you suck all their mana out and nearly outright kill any mage (as their health is damage by how much mana they have, add a vulnerability hex and pretty much any mage holding mana is going to die). These spells are too much of a hard counter to mages.



*) MissDirection Hex - Too much of a hard counter to melee. Can cast on Elites and somet bosses and completely nullify their damage.



*) ShockWave - Very Dissapointing. Very Small amount of damage for consuming 2 very good crowd control spells. Mage is trading the abiilty to do a tickleish amount of damage, for losing the ability to crowd control 2 enemeies for 20+ seconds.



*) Storm of the century - Too much damage



*) Damage in General - Dissapointingly low. With the exception of entropic death, storm of the century, and weapon enchants (where the mage passively applies damage through allies), the mage has a very tough time becoming a competent damage dealer.



*) Stave Damage - Dissapointingly Low - Increases 4 times slower than weapon daamge per attribute point, beings with low base dmg, and most importantly doesn't benefit from weapon enchants, making a stave a very low damage option for a mage. Not to mention warriors/rogues get criticals.



*) Direct Daamge Spells - Dissapoingly low - These spells tend to have coeficients around 0.3 per magic point, which is about 3 times slower increase in damage that warriors/rogues get per attribute point. Again not counting melee/bow critcals



*) Healing - Don't like the 5 second recycle times on heal and regen. Turns mage into a spam healer for whoever is taking damage. Rather, make the heals bigger, make health potices mroe prevelant, and REDUCE the recycle time to 10+ seconds. Thus mage can help someone being overwhelmed, but it doesn't boil down to a mage trying to out heal spam all the incoming damage. Mage should be making strategic decisions on crowd control, burning down opponents, not out heal spamming incoming damage.





*) Lack of Formulas. We were told that magic increase duration of various spells, but really can't think of any where duration was increased. Arbitrary caps imposed on damage or benefits, preventing you from realizing that spells benefits are limited until you reach higher levels. (e.g. rock armor). Difficult to know what benefit your getting from casting spells like disorient, etc cause you can't see your opponents defense or attack drop. Be nice if some skill allowed you to see these stats. No ability to know beforehand what aspects of the spell improves with higher magic (in many cases no aspect, which is in itself dissapointing).



*) Animated Corpse - Dislike fact you lose your animated corpse everytime you change an area. And often you change an area right before having to face a boss. So you don't always get the benefit of this spell.





LIKES:



*) Curse of Mortality - Excellent Spell for enemy AI spell casters. Really can mess my party up when the warrior gets overwhelmed. Would prefer more damage on this spell, but the mere fact it prevents healing and enemy spell casters are willing to cast it seems pretty good.



Recommend:



*) Get more creative with spells. Spells like TimeStop, Contingency. Auras that reduce AE damage for those close to the mage. Knockback spells to try to keep enemies in Spell Traps.

[draxynnus]

Andari_Surana wrote...

*) Grease Fire - Extremely Underpowered +2 points of damage (tickles) and dissipates as soon as you leave the fire. Not worth getting this combo, or even the using your mana to cast the grease slick.

I've always thought of this spell combination, and others, being a nerf, rather than a buff. Grease is, after all, the lowest-tier spell of its type.

*) Weapon Enchants (fire, ice, telek) - Greatly Overpowered. Being able to enchant everyones weapon with +10-12 points of elemental damage, when some characters dual wield, translates into 60-70 damage every second for your party from this spell, per spell caster. This makes other sources of damage fairly trivial. I.e. how much strength your warrior/rogues have, how good theere weapons are, etc, are all pretty much dwarfed by the elemental damage being applied.

There are tradeoffs involved here - after all, every mage you have (and mages can only maintain one weapon enchant at a time) is one less character taking advantage of the buff - unless, of course, they're an Arcane Warrior.

The bigger problem is the way that anything that adds a static amount of damage interacts with duel-wielding daggers.

*) Damage in General - Dissapointingly low. With the exception of entropic death, storm of the century, and weapon enchants (where the mage passively applies damage through allies), the mage has a very tough time becoming a competent damage dealer.

I've found that single-target spells are quite effective for quickly spiking a target down, and AoE damage spells are usually fairly impressive as well. As a class, I haven't found them lacking in damage - more suited to spiking than pressure, but that's to be expected. They're certainly better at quickly killing a target at range than an archer at lower levels.

[IDontReallyLikePeople]

Opportunity to give direct feedback? Sweet. Matter of fact, that's why I signed up for the forums.

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?
I have to start with the fact that Mages generally aren't my first pick for an almost universally accepted dislike: Low HP and defense scores throughout their lives generally make for the least amount of time on the battlefield, if you get my meaning. There's power to be had there yes, but what's it mean if you don't have the fortitude to stick around and use it? I don't think there's much that can be done about that on the character's own part, they are a Mage after all and therefore haven't committed to training the body, but surely they could get some good stuff and ulititarian spells to do something about that, right? That's a dislike.

But I like Dragon Age Mages because there's a great deal more combination choices for the Mage than any other class/specialization combination, and I like customization like that.

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?
Not sure about overpowered, but definitely staff damage is underpowered in my opinion. Maybe Arcane Bolt is underpowered, too? I mean, it's the Mage's hat trick. It's always there when you need it, so should it not be just a bit more powerful to start? I mean, the Mage's only method of attack when they have absolutely no spells is their staff, and there's no way that's going to fell an enemy, so if they get the ability to use the Arcane Bolt more often than any other spell (nice job on the 2s cooldown, in my opinion), shouldn't it be able to genuinely shore up some of the damage lost by using the staff?

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
My favorite Mage specializations have to be Arcane Warrior and Spirit Healer. Arcane Warrior gives your Mage the ability to wield melee weapons and wear armor, and they just get better at physical combat as they level as Arcane Warriors, albeit at a severe penalty to fatigue, but that's where armor that decreases the activation cost of spells and techs come in.

Then there's the Spirit Healer. That's a very useful specialization because you get a resurrection spell and a spell that heals all allies at once.

It goes without saying that I dislike Shapeshifter and Blood Mage. Blood Mage because you take a penalty to healing and so have to put stuff that afford bonuses to non-Blood Healing healing effects. Blood Mages die a lot, and I like my characters being able to stick around in a fight.

And Shapeshifter just because one of the shapes you can shift into is a spider. *Shudder* Why a bloody spider?! Flemeth can turn into a Dragon, but all I get is a bear, a spider, and a swarm of hornets? Yeah, that's fair. *Sarcasm*

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?
Favorite: Entropy. The Life Drain and Death Magic spells are a life saver early on, though Death Syphon comes in handy later if you play a Spirit Healer. I think Vulnerability Hex is also Entropy, and that's a good spell, too.

Favorite: Primal. Your basic attack magics, like Fireball and Lightning and all that. What could be better?

Least Favorite: Creation. Yes, the Heal and Restoration spells are useful, but you can't use the basic Restoration spell on yourself, needing instead the upgrade that effects all party members to recover your own mana with a spell if I'm remembering this correctly, and the Heal spell is almost rendered useless by the Spirit Healer's Group Heal if not for the fact that Group Heal takes so long to cool down in comparison. Not forever like Crushing Prison, but still long enough to warrant a shot of Heal if a companion is in dire need of healing. The other spells in the Creation school are useful enough, I guess, but it's just that a few of them seem kinda redundant to me, like your Glyph spells.

Modifié par IDontReallyLikePeople, 06 février 2010 - 09:09 .

[KigenBarzhad]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?
Like: The most fun and diverse class to play. The only class that one can truely talor to one's play style.

Dislike: Not enough combos. No earth weapon spell. In general there is a lack of class specific gear. Mage hats look horrible (Please for the love of god implement a hide helmets feature!)

This is a personal request, but I would love to be a Summoner of sorts. With the Blood Mage spec, there isnt really a summon demon spell. I also think this wouldnt break the lore of the game too much as spirits tend to intertwine with the world as we've seen.

Another aside, it would be great if learning more spells of one school buffed the others or something to that effect.
To qoute LightPhoenix "First, there's no benefit to mastering a school like there is a weapon
style; every line in a school is independent of each other, and often
the spells within a line are too.  You gain no benefit to doing so. 
Second, the way the schools pan out, it's infinitely more wise to
diversify, versus specialize.  There's no real need to max out more
than one or two Primal spell lines, for example."

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?
Shapeshifting is horrible underpowered.  Earth, Summoning, the first 2 Mana Alteration, & Anti-Magic line need some reworks. Animate dead would be more fun if the skeleton would stay out when zoning (maybe not in towns or camps).

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
Favorite: Arcane Warrior - this feels like a very heroic class. It is very unique and borderline overpowered.

Least Favorite: Shapeshifting... this is a horrible and useless spec. I really hate how all the forms look. I was sincerely hoping to at least become a wolf or something... I cannot stress enough how much I hate what  the forms look like. Shifting doesnt use Magic as it's "strength" (as it should.) The forms feel like boring and don't provide much versitily to the mage. At best Shapeshifting is like turning your mabari companion in to something more useful when shifiting out (a mage).

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?
Favorite: Telekensis. Good idea behind it and very good on the battlefield. Specifically, Crushing Prison is my favorite and most hated spell (when used on me.)
Least Favorite: At first glance the Spirit school seemed to be the most interesting choice for me but upon learning it, everything outside of the telekenisis line seems useless.

[Aseya]

I really like mage class for versatility of spells however by the end of game I struggle keeping all the icons on the bar so I cant even imagine how to deal with this in expansion

I would prefer lower level speels to gain additional ablities once you reach certain level ( similar to magic missles in bg) or replace some of the higher tier spells with passive abilities (similar to rogue and warrior class) and thus boosting that line of magic but not take a spell slot.

with the huge amout of enemies the game throws at you mage cc abilities seem rather essential instead of overpowered but it also depeds on style of play

though I would not like to go down the route of BG where at higher levels protection spells and breach spells were something you encouneterd every turn/battle something like mirror image spell would give enemy spellcasters that additional power and ability to cast some spells at you before being crushed by your own cc.

regarding specialization I am not excited by any:
blood mage i find contradicts rolepalying on most of my playthrough
arcane warriror - I never felt the need of my mage to go melee
shapeshiftng - again I prefer to just cast spells
healing - is the best thing to boost mage abilities which is the only reason why I usualy take it
( in that respsect I find rogue and warrior specialization much more meaningful/useful)

and I would like to emphasize with everyone else mage clothes are absolutely horrible ( morigan having better/more unique set of clothes than my own pc is not welcome) hats are one of the ugliest thing I saw in long time ( please try to bring some tiaras or normal hoodies in) and mage suitable footwear is very very limited
I know this is Ferelden and not fashion oriantated Orlais but warriors are not suffering because of it so Im sure some love can be extanded to mages as well.

Modifié par Aseya, 06 février 2010 - 10:38 .

[hardvice]

 Overall, mages are really fun to play.  What I like best is the variety of spells available, and that very few of them suck.  One pleasant surprise is that on subsequent playthroughs I've discovered that spells I'd written off as useless the first time around actually ended up being quite good in the hands of the right character.

That's where the mage really shines, in my opinion: moreso than either warriors or rogues, it seems like your choices leveling up allow you to produce a character that really plays very differently from others of their class.

Possible improvements:
People have already said all there is to say about the lack of decent mage (and rogue) gear, and how incredibly, unbearably ugly some of the mage robes (and all of the hats) are.   As with rogues, some item sets might be nice, possibly focusing on something other than boosting damage (there's plenty of rings, gloves, and staves for that already).  Duration bonuses, mana recharge, casting costs, and cooldowns seem like obvious choices.  More specialization-specific gear would be cool, too, particularly for shapeshifters, who really need the help.  Imagine how cool a pair of gloves that add elemental damage and/or effects to a shapeshifted form would be.

Some non-staff options would be interesting.  Wands or mage-specific daggers would give (non-Arcane Warrior) mages a one-handed or even dual-wield option.  I mean, hey, it can't upset the balance any more than Arcane Warrior does.  Maybe even have some spells that rely on daggers.

More summoning spells!  It's a little silly that the ranger has more summon options than a mage.

Instant cast and short cooldown on shapeshifting would make it usable, if not quite useful.

More reason to specialize (at least in large part) in one school would be nice.  Maybe interlocking passive skill bonuses.  While it's nice to be able to pick out a few spells from any school, there's really no incentive to do otherwise.

The spell combos are really fun.  More of them would be great, particularly more that lead to interesting effects rather than merely being really powerful.

Some options in the tactics system to avoid friendly fire would be nice.

Specializations:
All of the mage specs are fun, at least in theory.  

Shapeshifting needs help, but the idea is great and different.  

Arcane Warrior does feel a bit cheap, but I'm not sure there's a specific way to nerf it a bit that wouldn't ruin what makes it fun.  

Blood Mage is good, but there really should be more story consequences for taking it--maybe certain NPCs shouldn't want to have anything to do with you without persuasion or something.  It just feels a bit odd that blood mages are so reviled but you can run around using blood magic willy-nilly sans consequences.

As for new specializations--there don't seem to be any that focus on the traditional offensive spellcaster (kind of like how there's no thief specialization for rogues).  Some kind of "battle mage" would be nice.  A specialization that uses Dalish magic would be good, too.  A mage might even be an interesting and unexpected place to work in some kind of unarmed combat specialist--some sort of monk-type using magically-enhanced punches and kicks sound more interesting than a new weapon(less) skill tree for warriors or rogues.

Similarly, we have an arcane warrior (a warrior-like mage) and the duelist (a warrior-like rogue), but no mage/rogue blend.  That would probably be handled better from the rogue side (a rogue with some small magical or magic-like talent), but some kind of sneaky, stealthy, shadow-wielding mage might also work.

Other:
It would be great if elven mages could choose either the circle mage or Dalish origins.  The Dalish have mages; why not let us play one?  The game already does a good job of treating an elven mage as both an elf and a circle mage for dialogue purposes; something similar should be possible for a Dalish mage.

It would also be cool if we could use all that blank vellum and lyrium dust we pick up to craft some spell scrolls for emergency use.

[Guilebrush]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

"You can do magic! You can do anything that you desire..." I have to say that I was extremely surprised by how the mage class plays in DA:O. It's just the third  RPG ever, (KOTOR and Fable being the other 2) where I actually enjoyed playing a magic oriented character, as I tend to gravitate towards melee combat.

This is the one class where you feel like you actually have a large amount of options open to you, because frankly you do. You're never pigeon-holed into playing one role throughout the entire game. Being able to switch roles on the fly in combat is great for this kind of RPG, yet sadly, only Mages and Shale truly have the ability to do so with a high degree of sucess.

As for dislikes, well it's been mentioned many times but it's worth repeating just to drive the point home: Shapeshifting is extremely disappointing (more on that later.)

Mage gear: Again, already mentioned many times over and I hazard to guess that I won't be the last to stress this point, looks so-so at best, horrible as the norm. The hats, oh lord, the hats.

And my number one pet peeve with mages and the game in general is the severe lack of documentation. How did not being able to see my attack score as an AW or Shapeshifted Animal make it through playtesting? Plus most spell descriptions are vague at best, "improves the bonuses combat magic grants," lol?

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

I feel that this class more than any other suffers from a huge feast or famine syndrome. Some stuff is way too good, while others are borderline useless in any situation. I'll point out a couple of things that stand out for me personally.

Overpowered:

Lyrium potions are severely overpowered. Giving the one class with access to the most tricks an unlimited (for all intents and purposes) resource system is ludicrous. Warriors and Rogues have much fewer and generally weaker abilities which have built in cooldowns to prevent spamming (just like mages do.) They are unable to recoup stamina via items and instead have to rely on dealing a killing blow (conditional for rogues to boot) after choosing a specific talent. Yet mages are free to unload massively powerful spells pretty much non-stop? Just crazy.

Mana Clash is ridiculously overpowered. There's a reason no enemy unit in the game has access to this spell. Instant cast, drains all the target's mana while dealing an equivalent amount of damage? Which for any mana using enemy unit below orange rank also equates to instant death? Just how is this even remotely fair? To rub salt into the wound it's got a medium sized aoe with no friendly fire! L-O-L.

Forcefield can be too powerful in certain situations too. When used "properly" it's a reasonably powerful, very vesatile spell with good tradeoffs, but the fact that a unit under a forcefield still retains any previous aggro it's accumulated is just wrong. This allows for "forcefield tank" abuse. Take one warrior, have him/her cast taunt and have 2 mages rotate forcefields on said warrior, and well you've just removed the need for any semblance of strategy from said encounter.

Underpowered:

There are several spells that are underpowered in general but seeing as you're free to build your mage however you like by dipping into each tree only as far as you're willing to go none of them are game breakers. Disorient is rather underwhelming as is the entire spell-wisp line, as well as the arcane line beyond arcane shield but none of these really bother me too much. Shapeshifting however is just plain wrong (again, more on this later.)

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

The Arcane warrior was easily my favorite Mage spec. As a melee player at heart, this spec just fits into my ideal play style. It's got the potential to perhaps be a little too powerful but in general it's a fun class to play and gives a tangible playstyle shift rather than just adding four abilities on top of the base class. My one complaint though is the severe lack of information given to the player (I can't see my attack score!)

Least favorite, just like everyone else, the shapeshifter. My very first time in Lothering I decided to try it out via Morrigan and well I immediately removed the spider-form from her bar after that very first battle with it. There are just too many faults with this spec. The cast time! The lack of scaling from spellpower! The ho-hum selection of animals to change into! Their lack of abilities! Being unable to maintain sustained spells in shapeshift form! Shapes are dispellable! Oh and the fact that the Fade Shifting abilities are several orders of magnitude superior to the shapeshifting "spec" is a slap in the face! Just a broken, unfun implementation of an otherwise novel idea. There's a reason why you only face 2(?) shapeshifters throughout the entire OC, and one of them "cheats" too just to keep it viable! This tree needs a major rework.

One thing I'd like to point out, I share the opinion that others have said where from a lore sense we seem to be lacking a "make me better mage" spec to choose from. Other than that I think that 3 of the 4 specs work great from a gameplay perspective while the last one falls completely flat on its face.

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

I don't really have a favorite or least favorite tree, this is mostly because of the way the mage talents were designed, which I would say is a good thing. I guess my personal way of answering this would be least favorite: the shapeshifting and the spell-wisp lines. Favorite: everything else. All in all fantastic job with the Mage.

Modifié par Guilebrush, 06 février 2010 - 11:14 .

[Sarevok Anchev]

What do you like and dislike about the Mage?
Mages have the most individual development possibilites, considering their talents/spells. Warriors normally stick to one Weapon-style and the Warrior-talents. Rogues too, but have to choose between the many Rogue-Talents.
But Mages arent bound by Weapons, so they can choose any Talents from the 4 Schools without real penalties.
You can make Defensive Mages, Supporters, Summoners, Crowd-Controllers with Fireball etc. or Paralyze etc.
and Dps-builds. ALSO you can make your Mage a Arcane Warrior and fight in Melee with a Ton of possible Buffs and Debuffs by choosing Sustained-Spells.
In comparison to the "Mundane-classes" Mages are really powerful and can dominate the Battlefield and change with one spell the whole situation. Everyone is careful, when encountering 1 or 2 Emissarys 

What i dislike about them is their dependancy on the Stick(Mage-Staff), Casting-Animations based on the Infinity-Engine would have been more dramatic, then this Poledancing, they celebrate *g
And TEH HATS LOOK AWFUL!

Considering the game-mechanics i dislike nothing in paticular about the Mages
There could have been some more variety in Spells( I WANT MORE spells like the Glyphs! ^^ ; other ideas: Stone Walls created out of the ground, a Spell like Agannazars Scorcher)
and  the Bonus for choosing more Spells for one school would have been a decent extra.

But what i REALLY MISSED were the Spell-Defense Spells from Baldurs Gate 2! The Spell-Reflections, Spell-Absorptions, Spell-Invulnerability, Spell-Immunity, Spell-Resistance etc. etc. gave you soooo much possibilites for Mage vs. Lich  Battles 

Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?
Some Spells like Mana-Clash are very hardhitting, but thats only the case, because the Bosses have too big Mana-Reserves. Spells like Crushing Prisons got already nerfed, because they are a pain, when used against you.
The Crowd-Control spell of Bloodmages is a little bit too powerful. Cone of Cold should do more damage and freeze a little less. The Fire-Cone Spell should knockback enemys and Lightning Spells should have the chance of Paralyze(remember Star Wars? *g). Also some Tlekinetic-Spells like the ones of the Revenant would be cool.
More Summons would be nice.
The One-Shot Spells like Winters-Grasp could do more damage, so that they stay powerful later on.

What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
I like Arcane Warrior. Even when you stay a caster, and doesnt become a Melee, then you can wear sth. like Wades Sup. Drakeskin Armor and wont have any real Fatigue + Bonuses, that work for Mages (Stamina=Mana  , or even the Dragonbone Wade-Armor. The Fighting as a Mage is a nice possiblity because of the Sustains, but the Auto-Attacking makes the character boring in the later game.
But the Weapon-Sheathing for certain spells was really annoying. Made you choose your spells twice and scratching your head, when seeing that Fireball needs both hands, but Inferno can be cast with a weapon... huh??

I think the Specializations should REALLY change the gaming of your character, not just give some minor Stat-bonuses and 4 Extra-spells with so-so usefullness.

Blood-Mages are interesting, but really annoying, because you have always to activate Blood-Magic Sustain at the beginning of a battle.

Shapeshifter is completely useless. Casting Time takes too long. You are more useful with Spells, then as a Monster.
And the Monster-Shape will not make you really a Melee-Monster.

Spirit-Healer. Only usefull because of the Regeneration-bonus( but thats reaaly minor) and the Group-Heal.
Revive is a spell you better shouldnt come in the situation, for using it (on higher difficulties at least), Lifeward is weak and too late. The Sustain is only useful after battles for clearing injuries. In battles it will use up too much of your Mana and really hamper your abilities.

What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?
Primal has the Big-Bang Spells. Most fun to use and looks the best. The sound and graphics ofthe Fireball are always an eye-catcher! ^^
 Spirit and Entropy are good, while the first is more about defense with/against Magice and the latter more about Debuffs and Aggressive.
Creation is imo only useful for the Heal-Spell (a must have) and the Glyph-Spellline. Haste is useful, but its a pain to need 3 points for spells, i never use.
Summoning is never used by me.

But for detail here are my oppinions for every line:

-Arcane: Ueless. Arcane Bolt is too weak, only for Beginning. Arcane Armor is only good for Arcane Warriors, Mages wont profit, because their overall defense will be low(there are 2-3 Mage-items, that give good bonuses on def., but still a mage isnt made for taking a beating), The Passives are okay, but too weak for tier 3-4. Should be more, or else they are too useless, for wasting 3-4 points.

-Arcane Warrior: Overall useful. But Casting Mages need only the first talent for the passive effect.

-Blood Mage: Use only the first Talent, or use 3. Its a matter of taste. The 4th Spell isnt really needed.

-Shapeshifter: Never use it. A shame that Morrigan has this ...

-Spirit Healer: Group Heal is always useful, should beat least one in your Group. Rest isnt really useful.

-Fire: Fire Weapons and Fireball are basics for me. i never waste my time/points on Inferno. Though its good for AW

-Earth: Rock Armor is useful for Mages, needed for AW. Stonefist is only for certain circumstances. Earthquake isnt that good , because there are better CC Spells. Petrifiy is imo weak for tier 4.

-Cold: Winters Grasp is useful in beginning, but later its too weak. Frost Weapons... i think Fire is better... Cone of Cold is reeeally good... maybe too good ^^. Blizzard is too much involved with aiming faaaar away from you, but most times enemys are near to you, so its only for people who use exploits...

-Electrical: i never waste my points on this. Fire and Cold give you a Weapon sustain by the way, damage or freeze is more useful, then some stamina drain.

-Healing: Heal is a basic, take it. The other 3 spells can be useful (especially for Cleric-fans , but i most of the time ignore them. Too minor are the bonuses in comparison ot other spells.

-Enhancement: Haste is veery good (especially in a 3x AW team ^^). But the tiers 1-3 arent used by me... too much micromanagement involved with that (or need Casting routines in the tactics screen, duh)

-Glyphs: I love that! This really makes the Mage stand out between Rogues and Warriors. For every cirmustance sth useful. And always the possibility for using them offensively or defensively!

-Summoning: For me its a wast of points. Spell Might is better then Spell Wisp. Grease is even weaker then Earthquake+ a Fireball is better, when exploding, then making a Grease Fire. Spellbloom can benefit your enemys, its too risky for me. Stinging Swarm is maybe useful like in BG2, but tier4 with the rest is no worthy package imo.

-Anti-Magic: Against Enemys it is all useless, in comparison to Mana Clash! As support for your Characters i never used it, because i have Glyph of Neutralization.

-Mana Alteration: Mana Drain isnt good: Low gain and i will rather defeat a Emissary quickly, instead of letting him live for some Mana. Mana Cleanse is like Anti-Magic: Useless in comparison to the uber-spell. Spell-Might is good, but the drain is annoying and makes it only usefull with certain equipment. Mana Clash... i  think my oppinion sjould be clear   ... pure cheese.

-Death: I hear people saying this is really useful, but i never use this. Involves too much risk for me, as most enemys are near you . Thus: Exploding enemys are risky. Animate Dead is cool, but tier4 with useless Spells; and i hate it when Summons die, because of Area-Transition + this ones have a timelimit. (Spellmight with this is still nice)

-Telekinesis: Mind-Blast is a good emergency spell. Bit i always play on Nightmare, so Stun duration is reaaly short and thus useless for me. Force Field is cool, but... i dunno. i never use it, always forget to. Telekinetic Weapons can be better the Fire/Ice, but i almost never use this tree, so.... Crushing Prison is/was good, but i dont really use it. Normal enemys die faster with less cost and bosses are mostly restant to it... + it got nerfed.

-Debilitation: I only use Miasma on AW, but it annoys me, that it deactivates on Area Transition. The rest maybe useful, especially because Paralyze works longer on Nightmare, then Stun. But thats nothing for me.

-Hexes: Many people love them, especially combined with certain other spells. But i dislike such spells... i like more direct effects, then such debuff-mathematics ^^

-Sleep: Some of this spells are really useful. Sleep stays some time even on Nightmare. but the rest i almost never use. It just effects 1 enemy and dangeous ones are too resistant for that.

-Draining: Death Cloud is only useful (and cool looking , especially with Death Hex ^^
The rest isnt raelly necessary.

-Power of Blood: Dark Sustenance is useful; no potion-chugging ^^. But loosing health as a Mage is always risky .
Bloody Grasp is ok, because Spirit Damage is less resisted. But as a 1 target spell it is maybe only usefull against Darkspawn.

Spell-Combos:

-Advanced Reanimation: Good. But the time-limit/Area Transition + need of Corpse, make it annoying. + you need 2 tier4 spells...
-Entropic Death: Badass combination! Especially with a certain other Hex spell
-Flame-Quencher: Thats just Show-Effect. Its faster to walk out of it, then summoning a Blizzard.
-Grease Fire: Combining to Area Targeting Spells(annoying...) will make them both loose their special effects:
Fireball=high damage and knockdown, Grease=Slowdown. Useless...
-Improved Drain: The Drains are even with this combo too weak. Its easier to kill an enemy with damage and use Heal/Regeneration.
-Nightmare: Okay for "normal" players. On Nightmare the damage isnt enough for even killing a normal enemy with one shot. And for harder enemys... i think its better to use the sleep effect, then waking the badies up ^^
-Paralysis Explosion: Awesome Spell! Just be careful where you aim it
Its incredible how long it lasts, even on Nightmare. And you use one Tier for it > less points needed for it.
-Shattering is good. but i use it nomally with Cone of Cold. Tier 3 and long duration + Area Effect.
Petrifiy is single target and Tier 4. Too weak...
But Criticals are better for me. Stonefist i never take and Crushing Prison is too costly.
-Shockwave: A shame you cant use it (normally)on Companions! ^^
Its cool, but harder to be careful, then with i.e.Paralysis Explosion.
-Storm of the Century: Its veeery strong, but needs two tier 4 spells, that i never choose. Overall needs 3xtier4 spells and the area is too huge for normal battles. But the damage is awaseome, especially with Hexes *g

Modifié par Sarevok Anchev, 06 février 2010 - 11:32 .

[Kevin Lynch]

What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

The mage has the most variety in spells/talents and that makes developing a mage a lot more interesting than any other class. One mage can be designed very differently from any other and still be effective; it's not just a talent tree switch, like a warrior being dual-wielding, sword+shield, or two-handed, which are usually mutually exclusive choices. The ability to choose from among any of the spells in any tree, mixing and matching, that makes mages so interesting to play.

I can't think of a dislike for mages.

Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

Overall, I think the mage is the most balanced of classes. However, this may be due to the fact that I would choose spells from a variety of trees and not stick to just one area. As a result, my mages are always balanced just by the nature of the choices. This is unlike warrior/rogues, which tend to force you to keep to a set of talents in order to be most effective.

What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

Favorite specialization is Spirit Healer. From my poll comment: I always get one mage who has that specialization, at least, and it makes a massive difference in gameplay. In one game, I had both Wynne and my main character as a Spirit Healer and my poultice use was practically nil because Group Heal was in overlapping use. Love it. Interestingly enough, I didn't make use of any of talents/spells from the other specializations much, even though I always had mages with those choices (Shapeshifter because Morrigan always had it). Arcane
Warrior is my second choice to go with Spirit Healer, but I rarely used it other than to wear/use some different items.

The spells from the normal trees that are offered tend to override any usage of the specialization trees aside from Spirit Healer.

What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

I'm not sure I have most/least favorites here; I usually make use of all of them. I'd say that I like the glyphs, hexes, either the flame or cold lines, and the Spirit line with Crushing Prison the most, but only because they were so effective in combination when I played my main character as a mage.

Modifié par Kevin Lynch, 06 février 2010 - 12:02 .

[BlackVader]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

Like:
- Many interesting spells and overall very good selection of different effects (damage, healing, CC, buffs, specialized spells like Mana Clash and so on).

- Spell combinations are just awesome as a concept. Would really like to see MANY more of them.


Dislike: 
- Equipment. Even if ignoring the bad looks for a moment, mage equipment is simply underpowered compared to armors. The best "mage" equipment is Wade's Superior Dragonskin set (the medium armor one), as it grants the mage +2 mana-reg, +25 mana and even LOWERS the mana-costs of all spells with it's -25% fatigue set bonus. There's no "real" mage equipment that's even close to give such an improvement in casting power. And it get's even worse if you add DLC items like Cailan's Sword'n'Shield with its rediculous +5,75 manareg in total.

- Inconsistency in stats between seemingly similar spell. Example: Arcane Shield has 10 seconds cooldown and Rock Armor only 0,5? I know the CD of RA was lowered with the patch - which I appreciate -, but why not Arcane Shield, too?

- Mages can use all weapons in the game, 2 of 4 Mage specializations in the game focus on physical combat, yet we have no display of a mage's attack score.


*Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

Underpowered:
- Well, Equipment, I guess

- The effect of Spellpower on many spells is too small and some spells are not effected by spellpower at all. It should have a much greater influence on damge, healing, buff effects, spell duration and so on. I would consider "real" mage equipment much more often if the +13 spellpower I can get from the best staff in the game would mean more than +3 or +4 damage.

- Rune slots in staves would help, too. And while you're at it, add some mage-runes like +spellpower, manareg, +x% elemental damage.

Overpowered:
- Cone of Cold and Manaclash are probably the most overowered. Blood Wound could need a longer cooldown.

- High tier spells should have a level requirement. Stuff like Crushing Prison shouldn't be available at level 5.

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
Favorite
- Arcane Warrior, even if I play a mage as a caster. Simply because it's the only reasonable way to use the best "mage" equipment.

- Blood Mage is ok-ish. I don't really need my health to cast spells when my AW has +15 mana-reg, though, making Blood Wound the only reason to take this spec.

- Spirit Healer is only useful for Group Heal. If I need Revive, the battle already went wrong and Lifeward heals for LESS than Heal despite having almost 3 times the cost. Cleansing Aura requires the mage to be in the heat of battle to work, but doesn't heal himself at all. Adding the Mana-Drain and High Upkeep make it almost useless and not worth 3 talent points.

Least favorite:
- Shapeshifter. I'm a BIG fan of the idea but a shifter should adapt his fighting style to the situation but that's totally impossible with the 3 seconds casting time and the WAY too long cooldowns on all forms. No potions in animal form just hurts. I mean, even Dog and Shale can use potions so why not a shifted mage? The deactivation of all sustained abilities on shifting hurts, too.

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?
Favorite:
- Glyphs, hands down. I love the whole line. The concept, the execution, the versatility, the spell combo, EVERYTHING. Probably my favorite spells of all time. ... Just the ability to lay multiple Paralysis Glyphs seems a bit useless with it's long cooldown.

- Heal line: I love healing spells. Heal goes without saying, Regeneration is pure mana efficiency and Mass Rejuv is a great second wind for longer battles. I was a bit disappointed when I first noticed that Rejuv can't be used on the mage himself but I do understand the balancing reasons behind that.


Least favorite:
- Spell Shield line. Never found any use for it. Not once.

- Weakness line. Weakness itself is ok, and Miasma is useful for an AW. But Paralysis and Mass Paralysis are totally inferior to many other more useful spells (Gyphs, Blizzard, CoC, Crushing Prison,) in just about every way.

- Spellwisp Line. With spellpower lacking overall usefulness, Spellwisp just isn't worth the upkeep. Grease is ok, but there are other spells that do almost the same in more useful spell lines (like Blizzard as an example). Spellbloom is a good idea but doesn't pay off unless you have at least 2 mages in your party. Giving it some additional benefit besides the mana-reg would be nice (maybe -x% fatigue and/or a spellpower bonus). Stinging Swarm is actually quite good but not worth 4 talent points by itself and with 50 mana it might be a too costly. Some additional effect (like an attack/defence malus) would be nice here, too.

- Heroic Offence line. Haste is said to be broken in combination with Momentum and doesn't seem to affect archers or mage staff attacks. The heroic spells should affect the whole party or have a longer duration (balanced by higher costs/cooldowns). As they are now, it's chain-casting the same spell over and over even if you just want to keep Heroic Attack running on a single specific character. Get's old VERY fast.

[TheOriginalDopefiend]

Ah the mage usely the most underestermated of chars how-ever this mage was decidly lacking in some areas which i will explain below..

1. Not powerfull enough... I play alot of sword and sorcery games and in all of them right form the start the mage is pretty powerfull.. I fnd the starting lvl spells r not really powerfull enough for the job.. they work great on small creatures like wolves and grimlocks. How-ever when it comes to the larger creatures e.g the Orge when you have to light the beacon fires? I may as well not exsisted.....

2. Armour: in most of the other games i've played wearing armour has never made a driffrince to the mages skills/ powers wearing armour in this game causes fatuge which increases the time to cast spells which isint very good in mass battles or aginst lots of enermys. it would b better if the armour only increased defence.. eg made the mage tougher.

3. Mana Pool: In contrast to most sword and sorcery games the manna pool allocated to the mage at the start isint very big and can cause signifficant distress when ya m8's r over whelmed and ya outa mana. it also takes longer to get a decent size manna pool scince u only get 3 points to lvl up.

4. Mana Drain Again conteray to a lot of other sword and sorcery games i play none of the spells cause mana drain.. e.g when u cast Rock armour for example ya mana is depleeted and stays depleted so if you have a few passive active spells u quickly fnd ya out of manna and the only way to get it back is to use mana potions..

5. Magic lvls.. In this game u dont seem to have regular magic lvls. in most of the other games 1ce u get a new spell u usely have a few lvls of the spell befoure u cant lvl it any more.. this is great as if u have a fav spell the spell becomes stronger as u lvl up....

TheOriginal Dopefiend

[AndreaDraco]

What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

Mages are my favorite class without a single doubt. I can't tell how much grateful I am that with Dragon Age you ditched the ridiculous magic system of D&D for a mana-based one, which I found more fascinating and compelling. The spell choice is great and the lore background about Magic, the Fade and Lyrium really, really intriguing. As many others have said, the gear could have been better, and especially the caps, which were downright horrible to the point that I never use them for my Warden (even if I always put the Liberarian Cowl on Wynne).

Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

1. Lyrium potions should be less available, or much more pricey and rare. For a rogue or a warrior it's tough to replenish their stamina pool, while for a Mage it's fairly easy.

2. The Lightning Chain, while it provides the useful Tempest, is hampered by the severely underpowered Chain Lightning, which takes too much time to be casted and does forgettable damage.

3. As many other mentioned, the Spell Wisp starting chain is pretty useless, aside for the Grease + Fire combo that it allows, but it was not worth it in my opinion. Same goes with the Anti-Spell Spirit Chain, whose sole useful purpose is to clean from Curse of Mortality.

4. On the overpowered side, the crowd control ability of the mage - while I completely and utterly adore it - is a bit too much, and Mass Paralysis, Crushing Prison, Force Field and the like could do with a little shorter duration time or a longer cooldown.

What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

Favorite = Definitely Spirit Healer, even when I'm building and roleplaying an heavy caster who deals every possible kind of damage. Every single SH talent is just perfect and spot-on. Great work on this one.

Least Favorite = Shapeshifter is completely useless. It takes too much time, it negates the Mage's primary characteristic (Mana and Spells), it deals forgettable damage and, all in all, it does nothing that other various, non-spec spells couldn't do way, way, way better.

What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?

Least Favorite = Pretty much everything in the Entropy School, aside from the Hex Chain which is good. And then, without a single doubt, the Anti-Magic Spiric Chain and the Wisp Creation Chain.

Favorite = Primal (Fire), Primal (Cold), Spirit (Mind), Spirit (Mana; the chain with Mana Clash, that is)

[AndreaDraco]

draxynnus wrote...
One of the things that annoys me about specialisations, and which I've repeated a number of times elsewhere, is that to a certain extent, there isn't really a specialisation for Mages. You have a specialisation for healers, a specialisation for apostates, two specialisations for mixing it up into melee - but nothing that really meshes nicely with just continuing to behave as a normal Mage. Spirit Healer is closest, since most mages are likely to dabble in healing anyway and Spirit Healer is basically just access to a second line of healing spells, but not necessarily all mages are going to want to be healers (even by dabbling), and they should have specialisation options too without becoming apostates or taking the melee option.

I completely agree. I'd love to have a pure caster, non-melee specialization focused on sheer power and spellcasting potency, something like the Elementalist achievement.

Death: Never used it, will leave comments for those who have.

Walking bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb do a great damage,  and the combo Virulent Walking Bomb in the midst of a tightly-packed mob + Fireball = everything explodes, is just priceless. However, the four tier is slightly useless, even with Spell Might.

[Andat]

* What do you like and dislike about the Mage?
Like:  They have some great effects (Inferno looks amazing), and to really get the best out of them you do have to think hard about how you link up the spells. 

Dislike:  The game becomes much easier when you play as a mage, so it seems like they tilt the balance a little too much.  Everyone seems to get forced down the healer route to some extent.  I had to really hunt for the AW specialisation (which is cool, though not quite as cool as the Blood Mage / Reaver specs).

* Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?
Underpowered:  Nope, though it should be easier to get Lyrium
Overpowered:  Not really anything specific.  Maybe some of the spells do a lot more damage than equivalents in the other classes.

* What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?
AW and BM are the faves at the moment, simply for the all-out coolness factor.  (Though to be fair I haven't played BM yet, but I have taken a look at the talents and me likee  )

Spirit Healer and ShapeShifter are ok.  SH just seems to build on what a healer mage already does, though.

* What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite?
Faves :  Flame, Creation.  Some of the spirit and lightning spells are pretty good.  Mind Blast is great stuff, even if the cooldown is waaay too long.
Least Faves:  Arcane is disappointing, with just Bolt being a nice fallback if Lightning is on cooldown.  Chain Lightning is also disappointing for the amount of time it takes to cast.

[draxynnus]

TheOriginalDopefiend wrote...

2. Armour: In most of the other games I've played, wearing armour has never made a difference to the mage's skills/ powers; wearing armour in this game causes fatigue which increases the time to cast spells which isn't very good in mass battles or against lots of enemies. It would b better if the armour only increased defence.. eg made the mage tougher.

Most I've played either didn't allow it period or had some factor that made it impractical (heavy armour in Diablo 2 affects the rate at which you lose stamina while running, for instance, and a D2 sorceress is likely to spend more time running than a Barbarian or Paladin). I actually like the fatigue system - it says that a mage who fulfills the requirements can wear armour if they choose, but there is a reason why they usually don't. (And, incidentally, a reason why other classes might prefer to wear lighter armours, although a Warrior often can get away with massive armour...as they should!) Even then, however, browsing over the defensive spells also shows a reason why mages may want to wear armour regardless, since using the defensive spells can well end up with a similar level of fatigue plus mana upkeep.

The fatigue system gets a little corrupted when you can get armour sets that leave you with negative fatigue, but when we have more specialisations that can compete with Arcane Warrior, I suspect that issue will go away on its own.

Anyway, the point is - it's good that there is a reason not to wear the heaviest armour you can.

(Idly, I thought fatigue increased the cost of spells and talents, not the activation times?)

4. Mana Drain: Again, contrary to a lot of other sword and sorcery games I play, none of the spells cause mana drain.. e.g when you cast Rock armour for example your mana is depleted and stays depleted so if you have a few passive active spells you quickly find you're out of mana and the only way to get it back is to use mana potions..

Well, in my experience, in most of them spells of this type simply have a duration and need to be recast after the duration is expired. In the case of sustained spells, it's basically a case of the mage allocating some of their energy towards keeping them active instead of letting them expire and having to recast them. IMO, it's a better system then one where you're having to keep a constant eye on your buffs in order to refresh them.

AndreaDraco wrote...

Walking bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb do a great damage,  and the combo Virulent Walking Bomb in the midst of a tightly-packed mob + Fireball = everything explodes, is just priceless. However, the four tier is slightly useless, even with Spell Might.

So I've been told.

As I said, though, I've never used it at all, so I didn't feel qualified to comment. I probably will when I go through with a "darker" mage than the one I used for my first run.

Andat wrote...

Dislike:  The game becomes much easier when you play as a mage, so it seems like they tilt the balance a little too much.  Everyone seems to get forced down the healer route to some extent.  I had to really hunt for the AW specialisation (which is cool, though not quite as cool as the Blood Mage / Reaver specs).

Did you play mage on your first playthrough?

The game usually feels easier after you've gone through it the first time. My first time through was with a mage, and I've been finding it easier with the warrior and rogue playthroughs, except in specific cases when I'm thinking "you know, Spell X would be really useful right about now..."

Modifié par draxynnus, 07 février 2010 - 05:01 .

[Andat]

draxynnus wrote...
The game usually feels easier after you've gone through it the first time through. My first time through was with a mage, and I've been finding it easier with the warrior and rogue playthroughs, except in specific cases when I'm thinking "you know, Spell X would be really useful right about now..."

That's a good point - I played a DW Warrior the first time.  On my second playthrough (which is as a mage) I also have the patches, which make it easier (for example one patch gives bonuses to mana / stamina regeneration when you're running out which makes long fights much easier).  However, I think I also just find it easier to use a mage that I've build from scratch with the spells that I find useful.

[Aratham Darksight]

What do you like and dislike about the Mage?

Like:
* Power: The lore, the crowd control abilities and flashy effects. Finishing moves are impressive, but they aren't quite as satisfying as sending a fireball into an approaching group of enemies.
* Versatility: Mages can be shaped and customised in the most varied ways. Unlike the other classes, diversification results in strength, not weaknesses.
Dislike:
* Maybe too much power: Compared to the other classes, anyway. Too often I felt that my Mage(s) were carrying the entire group on their shoulders. The idea of tackling the mid-to-end game without a Mage is scary.
* Too much healing: Even my attack/debuff oriented Mages end up spending half their time healing. I feel like there needs to be a little more non-magical healing or damage mitigation in the game.
* Sucky equipment: Even rogues have it better. There is little of it, most of it looks the same, only a few are actually useful and the best items look the most horrible. The staff selection is okay if not ideal, but robes and headgear are just dire. What's with those pointy hats? Why are some really good items called a "cowl" and still use the pointy hat model?

Is there anything that you feel that is underpowered or overpowered on the Mage?

Mana potions are probably a little too good. They are affordable and instantly effective without tradeoffs. Because of this, there is no reason for Mages not to blasting at full force the whole time and chugging potions when they run out.

At least one line of Primal spells seems to be effectively required and I'm not sure if that's good or not. Ice spells in particular appear to be a superior choice to all the other Primal spell lines. Winter's Breath is amazing for a tier 1 spell and a single well aimed Cone of Cold is all it takes to doom even player characters.

I haven't personally encountered anything that felt underpowered, but my experiences are limited.

What are your favorite Mage specializations? What are your least favorite?

Favourite: Spirit Healer - Chosen by elimination. It's kind of lacking flavour, but it's much more useful to me than the rest.
Least favourite: Shapeshifer. Seriously, what the heck? This is less useful than just standing around a shooting your staff.

Arcane Warrior: I don't like specialisations that require such specific planning from the start. I do like the concept itself, but I wish it was implemented differently.
Blood Mage: I haven't played one yet, but it looks interesting. It's a pretty small and limited set of abilities, however.

What are your favorite Mage talent trees? What are your least favorite? 

I like Entropy, especially the Sleep and Hex lines. Primal spells are great, too.

Arcane spells are kind of lacking and the Spirit tree could use more variety.