63 réponses à ce sujet

[Takrandro]

Well i must admit your the first player i know who uses the shapeshifter class at all for end-game play. witch is pretty inpressive, i tried it also when i made my first mage, but unless u have eliminated every weak spot that shapeshifting gives u(like u seem to have), and while we both have a different opinion conserning the term "powergaming" i always try to use what works best without looking to much to the tiny details like u do, and still have alot of fun.
And yes, i know there are 3 types of resistances, but physical and mental are my main conserns since they are easyer to boost and u dont find much items aside from neck items(not counting runes) to boost your spell res, yes there is armor with it, but i usually give it to my companions since as an AW i'm already well defended against it, and i find getting knocked down or getting crushing prison cast on me more worrysome then overwhelm(unless i'm still very low lvl...)

Arcane warrior may be the easy road to succes when it comes to powergaming, but it sure is fun!! besides, i always loved making fighter/mages in games so can u blame me?

Btw, what are your thoughts on the Keeper Spec? i used it with Anders and i must say it works quite well if u want to build a defensive barrier that does damage and other cool effects while still shooting fireballs all around only downside is that it does't deacivate automaticly, witch can be problamatic if u are in a hurry

Modifié par Takrandro, 22 mars 2010 - 06:16 .

[AuraofMana]

You have no idea just how much you damaged your credibility with your
last few statements there.
Can someone else please help explain the
concept of Spell Resistance in
more understandable terms?

Okay, my mistype.  I keep referring to physical + mental resistances collectively as spell resistance.  Yes, I am aware of how spell resistance work.  However, if you don't raise your Spellpower, enemies will resist you through Mental / Physical resistance.  In addition, AFAIK, there is no way to lower enemies' spell resistance (wherein as elemental resistance can be lowered through vulnerability hex and affliction hex), so I assumed you were using my terms.

The game has so many +spirit damage mods because there are very few
spells that deal spirit damage. On top of that, so many enemies in
Awakening are heavily resistant towards spirit damage.

Yep, but Blood Wound is still my primary spell.  As I explained earlier, I don't run primal spells for damage because of friendly fire.  Even if you target certain spells carefully to avoid those (cone spells), it's pretty hard to hit everyone, especially when they aren't grouped up to attack the tank because they are all CC'd.  CC / Nuker Mage implies CC is top priority.  I could play a plain CC Mage if I wanted to, since a Rogue is the one that deals damage, but you can just use certain spells to CC people for so long I should do something else to contribute in that time.
You also can't deny the fact that Blood Wound is pretty much the best CC spell to use against a large group of enemies.  It also deals rediculous amount of damage and pretty much kills an entire group by itself.

I've been playing the game and doing more tests and I've just discovered
that Draining Aura is actually capped at a certain damage.

It was obvious when Draining Aura never hits triple digit damage despite all the +spirit and spellpower mods I could find.  But it doesn't mean I am not going to use it.  I could probably be dealing more damage with Elemental Chaos, but that requires me to switch gear, and I am already using Blood Wound as my major spell.  I could switch after using Blood Wound, but that's too much work.

Your claims that  your CC/Nuker mage is superior to my Shapeshifter
interests me.

I am surprised.  Pretty much the entire forum believes Shapeshifter is the worst specialization for the Mage and there are multiple threads petitioning it for change.  This shouldn't be the first time this has happened.  Even the stickied build thread doesn't mention anything about Shapeshifters (if it does, I never saw it).

Know that I am a powergamer - and I have very, very high standards.

To be honest, from the current situation where mostly everyone believes Shapeshifter sucks, I honestly don't know how you are a powergamer and promoting that to be the top build.  I figured if your build was really that top end and beats all other Mage builds, most people wouldn't be complaining about Shapeshifters.  That being said, I could be completely wrong about all of this since all we have been is discussing it.  However, from personal experience, I've found Shapeshifters not effective.

My Shapeshifter using Reaper's Vestments, the Spellward, the Mage's
Running Boots and the First Enchanter's Cap has 40% base dodge, not including the bonus from Arcane Shield.
In human form I walk around with 33 armor thanks to Rock Armor, Shifter
and item bonuses, with 423 health from Master Vitality, Shifter
bonuses, and items (my other ring is Lifegiver). With Key to the City I
have 52% Spell Resistance on at all times, which I combine with Spell
Shield against mages. I took Spirit Healer as my second spec, so I have
more than enough heals. Combined with Elemental Mastery, I only have 20%
fatigue, 30% with Draining Aura/Elemental Chaos on so I can cast nukes
to go with with my auras. This fatigue is reduced to 1% with Invigorate
from another mage. I only have 607 mana with Master Clarity and Staff of
the Lost, but since I'm taking most of the aggro the Battlemage's Stoic
and the mana regeneration from my items actually give me a higher mana
pool in practice. And unlike a Blood Mage, I can use a poultice or use a
Heal whenever I feel like it (rarely have). My spellpower is 202 by
level 35, 226 with Spell Might for casting Inferno/Blizzard/Tempest
(lazy spells).

Why do you keep mentioning tanking?  Like I said, my Mage has never needed to tank.  With all the enemies CC'd, no one is even getting a hit on anyone in my party.  Even if they do get loose for some reason and tries to hit me, Glyph of Repulsion and Mind Blast serves as emergency panic buttons, and I can move back and/or throw additional CC's.  I haven't met any enemies to spell immunity until the tentacles during the ending Broodmother fight in Awakening.

In short, I can lead my party's charge and nuke to my heart's content
with little to worry about. Each of my cone spells currently hit for
100-130 damage and with Fireball I can hit for 400-500 damage total per
combo, and it is ready again after 15 seconds. All the while Elemental
Chaos is hitting things around me for 40+ damage every 2-3 seconds. Hand
of Winter finishes off with 250+ damage. In practice I can repeat the
combo twice and pull off Hand of Winter before needing to use a mana
potion, so as long as mobs don't resist I can basically do 1450-1650
total damage within 30 seconds, without Time Spiral. With so much aggro
from my damage spells most mobs usually focus on me, so friendly fire is
minimized (and Stoic is optimized). I use Group Heal to deal with
friendly fire and other companion emergencies, or cast Force Field on a
party member.

You know what I do?  I throw Blood Wound, and everything dies within 5 seconds.  I turn on Draining Aura just to speed it up because I have nothing else to do.

To top it all off, after spending all my nukes I can shift to Bear to
Overwhelm survivors (usually a boss) for 600+ damage (yes I recently
broke my own record). Before shifting back to human form I use Slam
(Bear's Taunt) to draw Boss aggro so it focuses on me - Stoic turns each
of its hits into mana for my mage. Against monsters with Overwhelm (the
problem with Overwhelm is not the damage - Overwhelm disables my mage
for 6-8 seconds preventing me from doing my job) I shift to Flying Swarm
(immune to knockdown, knockback, Overwhelm). Swarm with Stoic is near
invincible (it regenerates mana almost as fast as it loses it, and my
40% dodge complements the Swarm's natural evasion. Swarm also draws
neaby aggro to it automatically - it draws so much aggro it can even
aggro Taunted enemies, optimizing Stoic) and with the Spirit of the
Woods gloves (+30% nature damage) my Swarm can hit for 60+ nature damage
per tick - unlike Elemental Chaos, the Swarm's does damage every 1 second. There are enough Balms
around that I don't have to worry bout Swarm's negative fire resistance.

You know what I do against a boss?  I throw Petrify / Glyph of Paralysis and spam Cone of Cold and Hand of Winter.  The boss is practically completely CC'd for the majority of the fight, and the Rogue is constantly backstabbing, which means the boss drops in less than 10 hits from the Rogue.

So basically my Shapeshifter/Spirit Healer/Battlemage is a
nuker/tanker/aggro-er/utility all in one, and all I need from teammates
is DPS and warrior/rogue-specific utility.

My Mage CC and nukes.  CC being the primary role and nuking being a secondary role.  I do two things and these two things only.  I don't buff (well, I guess Glyph of Warding is technically buffing), I don't heal, and I don't tank.  I don't do any of these things because someone else does it better.  That's the basis of teamwork and it has been in RPGs since the early days.

That is powergaming. I'm not
saying it's the best setup, as there should be several more powerful
setups out there, but please do not take the term  "powergaming"
lightly.

How is it power gaming if it isn't the best setup?  Now, what exactly are you defining as the "best" setup?  I have no idea if my party setup is the best, however, I believe my Mage is the best setup because he provides the best way to ease the entire party through the game as a Mage.  I believe the Mage does three things the best, CC, AOE Nuke, and Heal.  CC is my primary role, and AOE Nuke is my secondary because I have enough CC as it is to basically "stunlock" everything.  Your definition of the best Mage is versatility, which in my eyes, is not worth much in a team-based game in reasons I've mentioned multiple times.

In addition, I still don't understand how Arcane Warrior is a superior tank than a Warrior.  Maybe in your eyes it's more versatile, but like I've repeatedly said, versatility is not worth much in this game.  Warrior has better aggro management abilities than an AW, and this is further increased in Awakening.  I don't know if Arcane Warrior can withstand more damage than a Warrior, but without better aggro control, that is nothing.  Furthermore, with Awakening, Warrior can tank even better now, both in terms of aggro control and damage resistance.  I've never ran the math for the damage resistance part, it just seems like it.  While that may sound irresponsible, I hardly care, since I am not about to run tests to see if AW is better than Warrior when Warrior tanking has worked and sufficed.  If there are evidence against this, I'll gladly switch over, but I am not about to go datamine it myself.  Again, I've only played AW for a short time before I gave up due to boredom.  I've also ran Shapeshifter and it didn't work out because I find the aspect of not casting spells while being a Mage very counter-productive.

And I'll mention that I don't powergame, not in the same way you do.  I don't bother to run repeated tests to maximize my power.  I pick equipments I deem useful, look online for any information, and go with it.  If it doesn't work out, I'll repeat and find something else.  If it does, I'll compare it to anything that has worked out and see which is better.  While that sounds like testing, I play the game to do this.  I don't go out my way and find specific monsters to test on.  There is not much testing anyway, there are not that many gear that boosts certain aspects.

And I still don't understand how you are a powergamer when no one accepts your theory on here about Shapeshifter.  Furthermore, I can't fathom why you would promote versatility over specialization in a team based game.  It feels like you are trying to min-max on a concept that wasn't top end in the first place, there's no point.

Modifié par AuraofMana, 22 mars 2010 - 06:28 .

[Takrandro]

Well AuraofMana, good response, i agree with u on many things, but About the Arcane Warrior, it is about versatility, almost all specialisations are in 1 way or the other, and its true that in some way AW are better then tanks couse they are't depending on gear all the time for support, while a AW can use his spells first and then run into the fray with all armor spells on witch makes him/her almost unstoppalbe to both spells as well as normal attacks, as i said in another post, getting overwhelmed might be deadly for most mages but for a AW its a walk in the park, hell, with the battlemage's Stoic talent its even beneficial!
But u like to CC everything to death, and i like to throw in a few fireballs and then run in to mop them up, both tactics work very well and as the main character enemies will go for u first anyway so u don't need aggro-pulling talents like warriors have. and if they do ignore u... then they pay the price for it even faster hehe.

Modifié par Takrandro, 22 mars 2010 - 07:15 .

[AuraofMana]

AW is amazing for solo plays, but not as efficient as other builds you could be doing for team plays is all I am saying. That being said, nothing is stopping you from doing whatever you find fun. I didn't like Fireball much because I get spoiled by Blood Wound. Every Mage spells looked fun until I got Blood Wound. I remember I maxed out all 4 branches of Primal on my first Mage, then I got Blood Wound and I had to respec because I wasn't using anything other than Petrify and Cone of Cold :/

[Takrandro]

Well, i have't done it Solo, but i like the fact that the class ads Durability to your mage, and i always spread out the spells to the mages available in the game so that i can get as many spells available to my party, for example, my AW has the complete fire tree,the glyph tree up to glyph of repulsion, full hex tree, mage tree up to arcane shield, rock armor and some other single target damage spells like drain life, crushing prison tree. and ofc the AW tree and Blood mage tree.
i let my other mage take the frost tree and anything else i think that might come in handy, i don't tend to go for a specific spec unless i need the CC, for example, i have never taken spell might or the grease spell, simply couse fights usually are over before u can use them, while boss fights usually involve supporting your fighters/rogues and getting the boss his resistances down.

And in all honestly, i only use fireball for the knockdown and dot effect, allowing me to put a glyph of repulsion on a bottleneck position before the fools rush in
And i love blood wound also, but i only use it when i get either overrun with many low lvl mobs or if any other CC fails to work. and when there are multible casters that need to be kept busy.

Modifié par Takrandro, 23 mars 2010 - 04:39 .

[AuraofMana]

Fireball is too limited in my taste as you can only use it right before the mobs gather around your tank. You could just throw it and hit your tank as well if you built your tank to resist spells. You still need to be somewhat far away from your tank to do this, and I just find Blood Wound much easier. The 20 seconds cooldown on it is also amazing, which practically means you can use it every fight. The only real drawback is that it never seems to work on bosses, but you have other spells for that.

[Takrandro]

using fireball is all about timing, just pause, guess how long it would take to cast the spell and for the enemies to reach the target area, keep your warrior back and unpause!
Also, glyph of repulsion also works wonders if u want to avoid being overunned, and gives u time to cast fireball and maybe some other spells. btw, the lower cooldown of fireball makes it more versitile then blood wound for all fights. and 2 mages with that spell can clear a army very fast!!
As for bosses, blood wound does seem to work(if it gets trough the boss res) but only the damage part, same goes for strong elites, same applies to crushing prison as well, with some rare exeptions, it just does the damage but not the CC part, then again, this can be countered by spells like Paralyse and CoC, so just keep your options open if choosing new spells.
Btw, hex of misdirection and hex of death work wonders on bosses! misdirection works great against dragon bosses, since it gives u some seconds to recover some health and get in some free hits(assuming u don't get knocked down or something)

Modifié par Takrandro, 25 mars 2010 - 05:17 .

[Skadi_the_Evil_Elf]

Arcane warrior is my fave, and spirit healer goes nice with it, especially if you cast lifeward on yourself . The spirit school is the best school to focus on for AW/SH, followed by entropy.

[AuraofMana]

Btw, hex of misdirection and hex of death work wonders on bosses! misdirection works great against dragon bosses, since it gives u some seconds to recover some health and get in some free hits(assuming u don't get knocked down or something)

Yeah, Hexes are ridiculous. I think I ran a 2h Warrior through Origins, and before someone gets Mana Clash in my party, Misdirection Hex = I can't do anything for a while now :/

[Takrandro]

I never have spendt any points in the dispel trees, usually u have a templar character in your party to take take of that, and the rest i just take, so i get AOe´d, crushing prison and he´s done!

[TBastian]

The Templar also dispels any friendly spell effects and sustaineds while he's at it, so no thanks. Dispelling Regenerate on an ally also counts as a death sentence. The Templar's dispel is only more useful in really desperate situations/start of combat.
Dispel also gets rid of most disables including paralysis, hexes, weakness, burning effects, freezing, Force Field (when you don't need it anymore) etc. Cast on an enemy mage it removes their sustaineds (ie enemy Miasma, Regenerate, Blood Magic, Shimmering Shield) and other buffs/magical effects
Taking Dispel (possibly Anti-Magic Ward, for 1 more point) eliminates the need for your warriors to have to aim for spell resistance setups, while also making him immune to friendly fire from spells.
Finally Spell Shield, it's sole prerequisite, makes your mage immune to single-target disable/nuke spells like Hand of Winter, Paralyze and Crushing Prison.
For just 2-3 spell points that's a lot of utility. It's a good alternative to setups several others have to work hard for, especially when you're gaining so much for so little.

Modifié par TBastian, 26 mars 2010 - 06:18 .

[Takrandro]

Well, u do make some good points, but i never had any need for them, i barely used the templar dispel! and since u find healing pots with the dozens, there really is't a need for them. and any enemie casters i take out asap, so by the time they recover my melee chars are already chopping them up, i have no doubt that the spells are very usefull, but i rather make sure all my chars have high mental/spell resistence so that they avoid the effects alltogether, and for friendly fire spells, well, good party control takes care of that problem.

Modifié par Takrandro, 26 mars 2010 - 06:44 .

[miltos33]

I am not the greatest fan of the dispel tree either but Dispel can be a useful power as it is on a 2 seconds cooldown.



You can use area of effect crowd control spells like cone of cold or paralysis explosion without worrying too much about friendly fire as you can instantly remove the effect from your companions.



Back to topic, I really love my arcane warrior/battlemage/spirit healer.

[Takrandro]

Don't we all? best and most overpowered class combo's in the game,