Mage Discussion Thread!

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Xen

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hammerfyll":2ytzjr9o said:
Although it's still early in release, I think the mage is striking the right balance. So far it seems to be the most powerful class offensively, thanks to disintegrate and lightning, combined with kiting, and the elemental damage from staves/wands. It also has some pretty handy defensive options, the mage armor being great (especially for traps, haha!), and the earth elemental being an effective meat shield. However, it doesn't feel overpowered because of two main reasons; first, it's the squishiest class in the game, and if you micromanage poorly and let the enemies close in on you, you're completely boned. Even at high levels with better armor, you're incredibly vulnerable. Second, it relies on advanced skills more than any other class (in my opinion). This means that, although it ends up being probably the strongest class (again, my opinion), it starts off pretty weak, and it doesn't really kick into gear until you reach icemist.

So yeah, keep up the good work David, I'm loving the mage so far.


I agree, it's already balanced in the initial release so it is not OP or strongest, it is just the most offensive oriented class, second is the rogue with its spike damage and fastest DPS then warrior for the highest durability and cleric for highest survabilty and slowest attack.
 

DavidBVal

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It has to be said the testers did an outstanding job which allowed me to balance a class in weeks to make it enjoyable for everyone on initial release. Without the phenomenal community and active testers, it wouldn't have been the same.
 

toopa

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Austria
I haven't been here for almost 2 years so... hello!

I've always checked the app store for updates and yeah, there is the mage, in all it's glory. I got really excited and played a "little" too much, now I have a level 18 mage on hard difficulty. I must say mage is really strong, maybe even too strong, I don't know. Currently I struggle a bit but the mage is extremely powerful and the shield is almost OP. Btw. I'm using staff and warrior companion.

I'll just tell how I used my skills and some things I don't like too much. Just saying, I'll put this into spoiler so people don't read information they want to find out on their own although the only thing I'll probably spoil are advanced skills but I never know how people are.. I guess they shouldn't read this thread in first place if they want to prevent spoilers :p )

How I used my Skill Points
About my skills and experience. My first skill was Ice Storm. Don't do that, because you won't have a staff early on and Ice Storm is only good in dungeons and tight areas... there it's actually really nice. I ended up going for Lesser Summoning and it's really good in early levels, especially when you are jailed next to Amarisa in the sewers, having no armor or weapons. At ~ level 10, I ended up having Ice Storm LVL 1, Lightning Bolt LVL 2, Mana Surge LVL 2, Mage Armor LVL 1, Lesser Summoning LVL 2 and Staff Mystery LVL 3 or so. Then I completely revamped everything, because lesser summoning became useless and the upgraded version is pretty bad too, more to that later. I also wanted to get rid of Ice Storm and use the skill point for something else.

I went all the way for Mage Armor and spent the remaining points on Staff Mystery, Lightning Bolt and Mana Surge. The armor skill is extremely useful, because everything but archers does like 50% less damage to you and all damage from traps is NEGATED! Additionally, there is more to it. The advanced skill Mage Barrier will deal damage to any creature attacking you in melee. I got this to LVL 3 and I kill all ghosts without any problems. So far, the only problem I encountered are Varannari Mages and anything with high resistances. My other advaned skills are the resitances skills and Body Development. I'll probably also get that skill that's similar to stab (Disintegrate), massively increasing a single attack for a short time.

My next levels will go to resistances, right now I have (with Mage Armor) 90 fire/61 ice/65 shock/76 death and 65 toxic resistance. I also have 13 spirit, but I ignore it cause I don't need it at all. My main interest is fire and death resistance, although I'm trying to increase ice resistance too.

The reason why I wouldn't get Fireball is because you get a fire staff pretty early and this thing is usefull almost all the time. Eventually you will also get a staff with ice damage, so it kinda replaced Ice Storm for me.
What I don't/didn't like
Robes sell for almost no money, why is that?

In early game, it's not possible to upgrade skills too much because they cost so much more mana. If you were to upgrade Lightning Bolt to LVL 2 as a level 3 or 4 mage, you could use that skill maybe 3 or 4 times? You are better off with LVL 1 because you can use it more often and the additional damage is barely needed. Same goes for other skills.

Some skills are just too expensive to upgrade. All these "[xxx] Mastery" Skills that improve Lesser Summoning are just too expensive. It costs 6 Skill Points to be able to cast a LVL 7 elemental that get's quickly killed against level 7-9 and doesn't deal too much damage either. It takes 10 skills points to upgrade it, just to be able to summon a level 13 elemental that's kinda weak? You could buff this with Summoner skill, but to a maximum of 16. Other skills summon a bit stronger monsters, but are so damn expensive to upgrade... The cleric get's Guardian Wolf and only needs to spend 6 skill points to get it to level 12... think about it. If you spent 6 skill points as a mage you get your stinky level 7 elemental.

Then I feel like some cities lack better mage equipment. Even with level 14 or 15 I had the very same leggings and boots from early on. I know that the mage is fairly new, but there is definitely room for improvement regarding shops.

The next (general) thing, and this really bothered me is that some cities are in a high level area and offer the crapiest potions. I mean, Whitetower is a high level area with level 10+ monsters, and all you get is the crappy potions that heal you for 30 health??? Then there barealy is a city where you can buy (good) mana potions. It's not that I used them more than 10 times, but it would be cool if there maybe was more than 1-2 places where a solid mana potion was sold?

Gate is a usefull skill, but it costs 3 points to get it to LVL 2. Considering how easily you get gold in late game and that it is a late game skill, I think LVL 2 should only cost 1... right?

Arcanist is the biggest disappointment. It costs 6(!) skill points to reduce the mana cost when you use your staff. Of all the skills, this has to be the worst one. First off, I barely have mana problems and even if so, I could easily buy a few mana potions that actually are fairly cheap. You can buy the cheapest one and use it whenever you are like below 50% mana. Unlike health potions, mana potions don't need to be used during combat, it's not like you unexpectedly run out of mana. Who in their right mind would ever use that skill? I could understand getting it to LVL 1, because some good staffs cost 1 mana to use, but apart from that?

I feel like there could be more staffs in the game.

In late game, the staffs barely get any better, but require 3 mana to be used. They basically are worse than the previous staffs. I know that you could come with the Arcanist skill, but the 6 skill points could be used for much better skills.

Lightning Bolt LVL 4 seems a bit weak to me, it barely does more damage but costs double the mana... not a fan of that.
Bugs I encountered
Body Development is bugged? Level 2 does nothing and the description is weird. It works, I just read it wrong :roll:

In the Grey Library, if you get 1 or more reputation and fall back to 0 or lower, you can still enter it. I guess it shouldn't be that way and I guess this is true at further places where you need a specific amount of reputation. I think it wouldn't be all to bad to fix that.

Another thing you probably are aware off, Mage Armor doesn't stay when you load the game or enter new areas, same is for fire resistance potion and I bet all other potions (didn't test it) -> needs a fix.

Another bug that just came to my mind. Mage Barrier is buggy, often the enemies get hit by it 2 times in a row, you get damaged twice too! This means you can deal like 200 damage to enemies with bad shock resitance in like two seconds, but you can easily lose health... needs a fix too.
Maybe I'll make a list of ideas, suggestions, balancing etc. in the future. I guess there already are 100.000 threads for that though, but I guess some of my ideas could be new and interesting.

Also, I wouldn't mind any suggestions to my used skill points. Not sure if I missed something here. I also know that my armor could be a bit better. Here some screens.
 

Bans1x

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Joined
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I agree with almost everything except the arcanist skill a level 1 arcanist is really useful it only costs 2 and all those wands and staffs that have arcane 1 cost 0 i dont know about you but i have alot of problems with mana ALOT but with everything else i agree ohh and maybe you could fill me in on some better equipment heres what im dealing with right now
http://i.imgur.com/zOIPOp3.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/CSlgVm0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/RQJSTwZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/E1u3ZA6.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/gR3LprN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lMksNpL.jpg
 

toopa

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Yeah, Arcanist LVL 1 is pretty useful, but I'd say LVL 2 and 3 is a waste, unless you are LVL 20+, maybe it gets useful there.

I think I got most my drops from boss monsters or quest rewards.

- I have the same cloak, I think its good because of it's high resistances value
- The wand is probably the best thing you can get right now, there aren't many wands and I can't think of better ones right now. Also, I prefer staff as it has high base damage
- The ring that adds 20 mana and 10 spirit isn't all that great. I guess if you need mana it's fine, but spirit resistance is pretty useless for mages imo. My rings aren't too great either, but I'm fine with them (+20 HP, +20 toxic res and +5 HP, + 20 fire/death res)
- Your necklace is good. It adds mana and has nice resitances, which means that you take less damage. A little side note: I think the best resistances you can get are fire and death, so try to get that high. Also, toxic and ice can be useful, shock is rather rare
- Your helmet is decent too. It has 2 armor and adds health, mana and decent resistances

I think for level 12 your equipment is pretty nice, possible even better than mine :D
 

Cuckoorex

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09/03/2017
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Been playing the mage, up to level 9 so far. Loving it overall, just one complaint; the Ice Storm spell is almost worse than useless. Tried to use it at least a dozen times, it always goes off in the wrong direction, I've checked the battle ligs, and I honestly think there was only one instance where enemies registered cold damage. The way the spell is now is a total waste of skill points, IMO. If it worked like, say, the blizzard spell in Champions of Norrath, where it just is a wave of cold moving away in whatever direction you cast it, it would probablu be awesome. But for now, I'm trying to save up gold to reset my skills and put the Ice Storm skill points to better use.
 

KYTX

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04/01/2018
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So, because of the new Mage class, I've done a tour through dungeons and places to see if there's cool stuff for mages. Hoping in the future there'll be a mage companion who can use this stuff (I'm a Rogue lvl 21). But I'm afraid some of the best stuff was in monsters / single time containers that I've killed or looted before. It means that if there is ever going to be a Mage companion, they'll never get the best possible gear in this playthrough, am I correct?
 

VDX_360

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Yes and no.

Most of the top tier items drop in the Arc or Sewer of Horrors, both areas added with the Mage class. So you can still get top tier mage stuff later.

But certain pieces from one time loot chests from chests you've already cleared, or from already completed quests, than yeah, a pre-mage game file will miss out on those items.

Note, as you point out, the equipment issues will only impact those who want to collect one of everything (not sure where they're putting it) and those that want to gather stuff for the idea there might be a Mage companion added some time in the future.
 
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