Are mages even playable?

[Oeon]

All spell have cooldowns, low base hit chances, got hit by any normal attacks and you're dead. I don't see any viable build..
Am I missing something??
The game is literally called "Swords" and Sandals

[delmoroth]

So far mages seem laughably bad compared to melee.

[Rimzell]

Really rough start but eventually you start doing thousands of damage per spell, meaning you 2 shot most things

[Oeon]

Originally posted by Rimzell:

Really rough start but eventually you start doing thousands of damage per spell, meaning you 2 shot most things

I assume you need higher ATK stat than the DEF of the opponent, but at like 50/100 DEF would you really landed those spells? It'd only take them almost the same amount of time to KO you assuming your DEF is terrible (not counting the STUN for melee attacks)

[Oeon]

I was thinking maybe you just gotta get out of melee range and spam ice attacks but they also have skills like 'command' and 'throw', plus you can't really investing in AGI along with ATK when you rarely even gonna land any hit. Your spells don't get weapon hit chance bonus from talent too so like... how are you gonna get past that starting stage (I say ATK instead of INT because it gives 1 to 1% hit accuracy to all skills and spells, meanwhile INT only give 0.5% each last time I check)

[Oeon]

So unless you gain access you 'Shield' or 'Essence Barrier' early in the game (like in most fantasy settings story how mages deal with melee in general ) to increase survivability... you're just gonna die if you missed, or you hit but can't kill them (then you're stuck with CD).

[Oeon]

And also I don't fully understand how armor break works... so if the opponent had more armor pieces than the amount of spells you had, you are most likely going to be doing normal attacks until the cooldowns on your spells are finished.

Oh right you could target specific part of the body...
BUT THEY ONLY DO MELEE DAMAGE

[Blinkicide]

Originally posted by ่่่่่่่่่่:

So unless you gain access you 'Shield' or 'Essence Barrier' early in the game (like in most fantasy settings story how mages deal with melee in general ) to increase survivability... you're just gonna die if you missed, or you hit but can't kill them (then you're stuck with CD).

You can get to the early 20's with possibly a perfect record just mastering the mage's starting abilities: arcane blast, arcane grasp, and buying the shove skill (shove is optional). The one caveat is the 2nd town boss, you would have to skip him for later.

The goal is just to keep the melee gladiators wasting a lot of their turns doing lunge attack which have low accuracy or just walking/jumping in our direction. When they step in melee, arcane grasp deals big damage and pushes them back, ideally out of melee range. Arcane blast is also big damage and ranged, so we can spam that. When they are on cooldown, most the time we'll be taking a step back, especially when a single step back takes us out of melee range and forces the enemy to lunge at us.

As for skill points, pump attack 10-20, 7-8 vit, 7+ int, 4+ stamina, etc.

Consider using a sword or polearm, arcane blast / grasp adopts your weapons damage and bonuses. The sword would give arcane blast/grasp +20% more damage once you beat the enemies armor fully off, the polearm simply adds more base damage.

You can beat the first and second town, all except the 2nd boss, then go to the northern town where no special abilities are allowed. Just go buy the best polearm and armor you will basically outslug any gladiator that's unfortunate enough to not also being holding a polearm, and even some that are.

Now you'll probably be early 20's with enough talents and skill points to make the traditional mage route more viable, and we didn't have to use any special build to get here.

[Rimzell]

Update:

I got my mage to level 65~ and was doing upwards of 6K damage with molten death, effectively 2 hitting everything. I was using shield block to survive a few turns reliably, but that only lasted to grand champion 10 (or 11? the undead priest) He kept resisting almost every spell and stacked debuffs more often. I was out of time and got the bad ending but in hindsight I think having one alternate source of damage or a different choice of spells would have really helped, like something from warfare pool.

Also Frost and Necrotic were the damage types I used the most, one lightning spell to counter other mages or bards was enough

[Rimzell]

Originally posted by Rimzell:

Update:

I got my mage to level 65~ and was doing upwards of 6K damage with molten death, effectively 2 hitting everything. I was using shield block to survive a few turns reliably, but that only lasted to grand champion 10 (or 11? the undead priest) He kept resisting almost every spell and stacked debuffs more often. I was out of time and got the bad ending but in hindsight I think having one alternate source of damage or a different choice of spells would have really helped, like something from warfare pool.

Also Frost and Necrotic were the damage types I used the most, one lightning spell to counter other mages or bards was enough

And Im doing a second playthrough with a knight, Better in every aspect so far at level 43

[Oeon]

Yeah apparently I was just trying too hard to beat every regional champion, the 2nd one has too high of DEF to actually land any hit. (And even if I did landed a hit I can't overcome his regen)

Sorry about that, maybe I could've gone further but still it was miserable..

Originally posted by Rimzell:

Originally posted by Rimzell:

Update:

I got my mage to level 65~ and was doing upwards of 6K damage with molten death, effectively 2 hitting everything. I was using shield block to survive a few turns reliably, but that only lasted to grand champion 10 (or 11? the undead priest) He kept resisting almost every spell and stacked debuffs more often. I was out of time and got the bad ending but in hindsight I think having one alternate source of damage or a different choice of spells would have really helped, like something from warfare pool.

Also Frost and Necrotic were the damage types I used the most, one lightning spell to counter other mages or bards was enough

And Im doing a second playthrough with a knight, Better in every aspect so far at level 43

My one and only good ending was with a knight class, which also the first class I picked. I can't seem to go that far with any other class (I focus mainly on STR)

What were your stats priorities? INT? the INT-focused bosses will definitely countered you, since they have absurd amount of stats. Meanwhile melee class get a lot of hit chance bonuses from warfare talent tree (not sure if gigantification helps but it boosts your STR also?) like the weapon talents.

[Oeon]

Originally posted by Blinkicide:

Originally posted by ่่่่่่่่่่:

So unless you gain access you 'Shield' or 'Essence Barrier' early in the game (like in most fantasy settings story how mages deal with melee in general ) to increase survivability... you're just gonna die if you missed, or you hit but can't kill them (then you're stuck with CD).

You can get to the early 20's with possibly a perfect record just mastering the mage's starting abilities: arcane blast, arcane grasp, and buying the shove skill (shove is optional). The one caveat is the 2nd town boss, you would have to skip him for later.

The goal is just to keep the melee gladiators wasting a lot of their turns doing lunge attack which have low accuracy or just walking/jumping in our direction. When they step in melee, arcane grasp deals big damage and pushes them back, ideally out of melee range. Arcane blast is also big damage and ranged, so we can spam that. When they are on cooldown, most the time we'll be taking a step back, especially when a single step back takes us out of melee range and forces the enemy to lunge at us.

As for skill points, pump attack 10-20, 7-8 vit, 7+ int, 4+ stamina, etc.

Consider using a sword or polearm, arcane blast / grasp adopts your weapons damage and bonuses. The sword would give arcane blast/grasp +20% more damage once you beat the enemies armor fully off, the polearm simply adds more base damage.

You can beat the first and second town, all except the 2nd boss, then go to the northern town where no special abilities are allowed. Just go buy the best polearm and armor you will basically outslug any gladiator that's unfortunate enough to not also being holding a polearm, and even some that are.

Now you'll probably be early 20's with enough talents and skill points to make the traditional mage route more viable, and we didn't have to use any special build to get here.

I do realize that arcane grasp did get weapons bonuses also, but not the elemental spells.
And yea I really need to skip that tanky regional champion, I can't even shoved him down the chasms... its like he had 100% chance to resist the fall or something.

However that wouldn't really help with the survivability though, taking a step back seems useless when your opponent landed those lunge attack that have low accuracy, but since I don't know how much you invest in defense to actually increase those odds, with your low STR and DEF you'll be likely to get hit and it will whacking away your armor, meanwhile they took no damage and you waste your turn on just taking a step back. Not to mention they will gain spirit for it... which highly favors melee fighters (All physical do crit/hp regen/etc.,)

Maybe you might get somewhere after that but... beating the game? It will be hard when I literally lucked out hard with my run. (my knight literally blocked almost every single attack and landed most hits)
Can't imagine the same happening with mage.

[Oeon]

I do appreciate you all still providing me with answers and tips to my literal outrage post though... But really it was painful, maybe it'd be more interesting to see 'traps' type of attacks that could be jumped over or avoided (since we already have environmental trap I think it might be possible). So that we could have more strategic playstyle and positioning for not just mages but range in general.