The Mage sucks

[Bread in the fridge]

Seriously why is his ice spell so damn weak I'm convinced that the starting weapon is stronger I'd just stick to the lighting spell if it didn't use so much mana and btw seriously 3 mana per ice spell? ♥♥♥♥♥ please the axe does more damage with 2 mana per hit
The only weapon that's weaker than the ice spell is the clerics mace but that doesn't use mana

[Emmanuelexe]

There is a fixed version for gzdoom4, in case:
topic:
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=35846&start=765
Im checking it
EDIT: Yes it works, no need other files for Hexen iwad :)

[pvnco - afk til 2026]

mage is fantastic. idk what herb OP is smoking

[Bread in the fridge]

Nah he sucks his first weapon is the best and the most boring, his second attack the freeze spell is a waste of blue mana unless you get within melee range (the axe has better range for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake), his lighting spell is to inconsistent with its damage sometimes it can't even kill an Ettin and his super weapon is only a real threat to the wall

[Emmanuelexe]

His first weapon is like a railgun so it's not powerful for balance.

2nd weapon, the best way to use it is to close range the enemies like a knife, it 2shot a centaur or ettin, it kill and freezes it (good damage on other enemies but more dangerous to use, like Serpents), little shards/ice spikes spam is more for flying gargoyles or Wendigo (low hp)

3th weapon, you need large area because the thunder stock on wall, pillars, geometry stuff ect... if it works and catch an enemy, it can 1shot a slaughter/centaur or any enemy except boss.

4th weapon can combo a lot of enemies but yeah, against one or 2 enemies, its better to not shoot and keep your mana.

But yeah, FIghter is easy to play and is the most powerful (except the 4th weap sword who need a lot of mana, better to keep it for boss or big problems), if you can aim well with the hammer, it does huge damage and you don't take damage from the explosion.

Usually, i start fan wads with the fighter and if i want more challenge, i use the Mage or Cleric.

[Bread in the fridge]

Dude I've played this game alot I know how everything works but the mage still sucks

[Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer]

Gameplay wise, no.

Balance wise, yes.

There are mods that buff him up tho.

Kaiser Ducky eredeti hozzászólása:

The Mage is meant to be weaker. It makes up for the fact that he's the only character that has all ranged attacks. All other characters have to use their mana wisely, since that's the only way they can kill enemies out of their reach.

Absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ logic.

First of all, all other classes have overall better stats pretty much at everything. Better speed, better armor, better vitality and even better flachettes.

Second, the first weapon of both cleric and fighter does a much higher damage so it does compensate it, it also have enough long range to reach ettins and centaurs without these two ever do any harm to you.
Not to mention, Mage is the only classs in the game that gets to fight afrits up untill he gets the scond weapon, so the range is irrelevant anyway.

Third, given the abundance of ammo spread everywhere through HeXen, I never found myself EVEN get out of ammo, even when I mindlessly spam my ♥♥♥ stick. But that's mostly because cleric weapons are generally pretty overpowered.

Forth, both cleric and fighter have superior MAGIC weapons than the Mage, and that's where the real problem starts. Why choose Mage to be a Magic caster, when that niche is already taken from the class because other classes do exactly that, but better? The class doesn't offer anything to be worth using, as every of his weapon outside of beginner's sophire staff simply overpowered by the weapons of other classes.

[Emmanuelexe]

Mage:
1st weapon can kill multiples enemies with the pierce effect of the Sapphire Wand where the Cleric need 6 hits with the mace to kill an Ettin, with the Mage, you need 6 hit but you can kill a lot of other enemies.
2th weapon can kill a lot of enemies in 2-3 hit with the close range effect (direct freeze) easy to use on Centaur and helpful, spread is made for Afrit and some ranged stuff.
3th weapon, in big area, it can 1shot any enemy except maybe Centaur if he uses his shield but then just spam it.
4th weapon is very strong against hordes, its not made to be a super bazooka, its like a different pierce weapon type

Mage is based on ranged attack and can be very good at that, more safe to play him in a lot of maps.

The balance is more about how you start the game and how you finish it.
Cleric start with the weakest weap (mace) and finish with the best (wraightverge)
Fighter start with the best melee weap (fists) and finish with a strong weapon but who cost a ton of mana and don't pierce the enemies
Mage start with a decent weapon, more for ranged stuff and finish on something good enough, overall, all the same balance of power, actually, he is maybe the most balance in term of advantages and power,
with the fighter, once i get the hammer i use it a lot because its very effective and dont cost a lot o mana, wraightverge for boss and some hordes.

People can still make a patch to change stuff if they want more balance for the weapons overall but dont forget its about class melee/ranged/both.

[Bread in the fridge]

alright I'll admit his attacks are pretty cool but he still stinks he's so boring

[Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer]

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

1st weapon can kill multiples enemies with the pierce effect of the Sapphire Wand where the Cleric need 6 hits with the mace to kill an Ettin, with the Mage, you need 6 hit but you can kill a lot of other enemies.

Straight up lies.

The Mace can do up to 40 damage, often killing ettin in 5 hits. https://heretic.fandom.com/wiki/Mace_of_Contrition

The Saphire Staff, while supposedly meant to go up to 36 damage, due to it's piercing nature it usually does much less as that's how doom engine RNG system works. As result, you'd often need 7 hits to kill ettin, sometimes even 8. It's especially pain against centaurs that shield themselves after each hit.

Here is better summary of it's damage. https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Sapphire_Wand

Sure, GZDoom fixed the RNG being so incosistent, but we are talking about vanila game, right?

Not to mention, you couldn't disable the auto aim assist in the vanila game, thus often hitting some enemies were pretty impossible as the idiotic aim assist always tried to hit their center, and as result it was impossible to hit them if some random tree or decorate cosmetic object is in their way, or if they are on higher\lower ground than you.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

2th weapon can kill a lot of enemies in 2-3 hit with the close range effect (direct freeze) easy to use on Centaur and helpful, spread is made for Afrit and some ranged stuff.

The only enemy it can kill in 2-3 hits, IF we are talking about shards, are afrits, i.e. the weakest enemy in the game. Not even ettin can die from 2 shots from direct shards EVEN if you hit them all at once, which is another pain by itself due it's huge spread. Spread does anything but help hetting afrits. If you keep spaming shards and only do like 1-2 hits of shards toward a single afrit, you'd waste like 10 shoots just to kill a single one.

The frost touch is just an gimmick feature that makes your weapon do slightly more damage if you hit enemy at point blank. This only helps to kill in 2 shots the easiest enemy in the game like ettin, while even centaur often require 3 hits to kill, again, thanks to RNG. Ironically, it have worse range than both axe, hammer, mace and gauntlets, leaving you actually getting close to the enemy to the range where they are actually can reach you to do damage. All that given it's slowest fire rate and ammo consumption of all second weapons in game.

Wasting 3 ammo just for that when you can 2 hit ettin with axe using only 4 ammo or 3 shot ettin with 3 ammo with serpent staff that has both better damage, more ammo effecient usage and overall better\more consistent ranged usage, with the EXTRA ability to heal yourself on top of that, makes the frost shard weapon objectively the worst and useless in comparison.

Oh, and on top of that, it creates ice statues that only blocks all of your attacks to hit enemies.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

3th weapon, in big area, it can 1shot any enemy except maybe Centaur if he uses his shield but then just spam it.

Just like any other weapon on slot 3, to be honest.
For hammer though, it's more based on RNG of first projectile damage and the closest the enemy to the explosion - https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hammer_of_Retribution
For the firestorm though, it's more based if enemy is close to the ring of flame that the weapon creates on hit, or if the enemy is close to wall\obstacle - https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Firestorm
And these two weapons have AoE damage radius that damage multiple enemies at once, potentially killing more than the Arc of Death as the lightning only stick to single foe.
All of that while having faster fire rate, less ammo consumption, more ammo effecient and even more consistent ranged usage due to the fact that Arc of Death keep moving left and right on random, often missing enemies.

Then again, Arc of Death is not as good as it may sound. Aside from it's lack of abiltity to damage multiple enemies, it's very incosistent against airborne targets due it's buggy nature and as result the lightning not always stick to them nor damage them. It's useless against enemies close to wall\obstactes, as lightning gets canceled once it's near wall\obstacle, even if it already stick to enemy.
And I don't want to mention how much it's useless in multiplayer, especially deathmatch, where due to some weird nature of it's coding, it hardly ever sticks to enemies once you have ping, and even if it sticks to enemy player, the player can simply run away from it's damage, making almost useless.
While ability to 1 kill single enemy sounds good, on paper, it's not always even working, and the rest of 3rd weapons can kill most enemies in one shot too. Not to mention, majority of the enemies have about the same amount of health, warrying between 2 axe hit and 3 axe hit, so the "1 shot kill", that isn't very consistent, isn't something that fantastic anyway. The only exceptions are the bosses like Wyvern, Korax and the Heresiarch. It's fun to use, and have unique coding behavior to ignore obstacles, but it's still outclasses by the other weapons.

[Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer]

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

4th weapon is very strong against hordes, its not made to be a super bazooka, its like a different pierce weapon type

It's objectively the worst of the 4th wepaons as well. It shots 3 homing projectiles that gets detonated from any map obstacle and often unable to kill a SINGLE ettin once all of 3 balls pierce through him. There is not a single map in vanila HeXen and it's DLC\expansion where it would get enough room AND enemies to pierce through them all and have enough room to rotate and spin around them all without accidently hitting random cosmetic decorative prop obstace or map thus vanishing instantly, for it to be useful and justified to use. And even if there would be a huge, open area map with a bunch of enemies, the bloodscourge's balls after a single shot tend to go to floor and vanish immediatelly, not even giving a single enemy the second pierce-hit.

Just like Arc of Death, on paper, it looks cool, it sound cool, but useless on practise. At least quietus have more consistent damage while shooting 5 explosive pieces unlike 3, and waste much less ammo that Bloodscourge. I don't even have to mention how brokenly overpowered the Wraithverge is, I've already made thread about it.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

Mage is based on ranged attack and can be very good at that, more safe to play him in a lot of maps.

More lies.

The ranged attacks, aside from the beginner's weapons and timon's axe, have better outcome for the other classes. Serpent Staff is like double plasmagun while hammer is like pocket rocket launcher, and while firestorm isn't infinite range (so does is Arc of Death, after some distance it vanishes for no reason), at least it have more consistent ranged attack which moves in straight line all the time, while Arc of Death waves around in right or left direction on random.

Then again, in a vast majority of maps you'd be trapped in a tight corridor where arc of death would be useless and enemies will ambush you. That doesn't make the class the safest of all in open area due to his slowest moving speed and the fact that Bishops can shoot pretty fast homing projectiles - these are pretty much a death sentence for mage, especially on Archmage difficulty. Not to mention the above mentioned fact that mage have both vitality\surviability\tanking capability and armor out of all classes.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

The balance is more about how you start the game and how you finish it.

That's more of a terrible game descission than a balance.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

Cleric start with the weakest weap (mace) and finish with the best (wraightverge)

With the given reasons above, I can't say the mace is the "weakest" weapon of the first slot, even though saphire has piercing ability. It still has higher damage and DPS than saphire, and has enough range to deal with melee classes with ease. The flachettes, that are everywhere, also makes centaurs a joke, while mage tend to suffer a lot from them as they keep ambushing him.

Also remember, the cleric doesn't even get to fight afrits at all untill he gets his second weapon, just like fighter. Only the Mage does.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

Fighter start with the best melee weap (fists) and finish with a strong weapon but who cost a ton of mana and don't pierce the enemies

More lies.

Fighter's ultimate weapon have LEAST ammo consumption out of all classes, and does overall higher DPS\damage in one blast than Bloodscourge. The pierce of the Bloodscourge is a meme, it's about as useful as Pyro in TFC. I wouldn't call it a "ton" because at the cost of mere 14 ammo of each color, I often tend to kill up to 6-7 ettins in one blast, that's far more ammo effecient than the same Arc of Death. Like jeez, at least play the game before stating such an obvious misinformation.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

Mage start with a decent weapon, more for ranged stuff and finish on something good enough, overall, all the same balance of power, actually, he is maybe the most balance in term of advantages and power.

Another lies.

Try to play the mage in deathmatch and see how much of "decent" and "good enough" weapons they really are. Even if we talk about basic vanila singleplayer, there hardly ever situation where you'd need to use something as useless as frost shards, and something as ammo wasting as bloodscourge. The balance is so bad that you'd never use frost shard and Bloodscourge once. I only ever found Bloodscourge useful in custom vanila HeXen maps where is a huge open area with tons of airborne enemies, so the balls do not immediatelly hit the floor after they hit a single foe but actually rotate arround untill plenty of airborne targets gets killed.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

with the fighter, once i get the hammer i use it a lot because its very effective and dont cost a lot o mana, wraightverge for boss and some hordes.

There is a reason why a lot of primary HeXen community medias and wikipedias justifiable mark fighter as the noobiest class of all, while cleric as the most overpowered.

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

People can still make a patch to change stuff if they want more balance for the weapons overall but dont forget its about class melee/ranged/both.

Sure, but most mods would require a modified version of engine like GZDoom for them to be working on. And the fact that you can make a patch to balance the game, does not change the fact that the balance is still poor in the vanila game.



You are caught red-handed like a sleaze. Get at least verified facts before maliciously spreading disinformation.

[Emmanuelexe]

Just tested on gzdoom, ah yeah, the Sapphire wand can kill an Ettin in 7 hits or 8 yes but with the Mace, i needed always to do 6 HIT to kill an Ettin. (or maybe 5 but rarely i guess)
Anyway, the sapphire wand make it more safe because you can combo enemies.

Im talking about the FROST TOUCH for the 2th weap, can 2shot an Ettin or 1shot an Afrit but for sure, it's less effective than the axe.

Depend on how people can play in a way, i have more troubles to start with the Cleric, even when i get the Serpent Staff, because once you have centaur/slaughter, you need a lot of times to kill them and it can be dangerous in small areas so i use the mace too sometimes.
Firestorm is very good against Ettin or Serpent but even against slaughter, when you hit them, the fire effect is stopped sometimes when they use their shield, Arc of Death seems to do that better, i'm not sure about the physic on it, but apparently, even if they use their shield, the Centaur seem to be hit by the Arc of Death (lower Damage? Idk)

When i say Fighter starts with the strongest weapon, it's the fact it kills Ettins in 3 hits and Afrit in 2 (gzdoom). And usually, in the game and fan expansions (WADS), the maps start with a few enemies.

When i talk about Hexen, it's about gzdoom and fan expansions
Yes, i have played a lot of times the game and 90% of the fan expansions (Wolfen, Scourge of Viscerus, A New World, Shadow of Cronos, Tower of Chaos ect...)

You should chill out and calm you nerves thanks, i was talking about the game via gzdoom, fan expansions too and the frost touch.

People have different gameplay so you can't really say "this game will be better than another", in some groups, people said they have less difficulty at playing with the Cleric because of the health regen of the serpent staff and the other weapons but starting a wad or fan wad with the Cleric can be complicate i think.
You have people who don't like the fighter gameplay because with the Axe they have to be close to the enemy and dodge well, also some don't like the hammer because it's slow to them, against the Death Wyvern (easy to kill to other people, me too).

But yes, in the original game, it's pretty different but im not stuck only in the original :)

Usually in expansion, when i want an easy game, i use the fighter, hammer does most of the job because the explosion is very helpful or Axe to spam in close range when there is too many enmeis in a small area.

Then i use the Mage, expansion have some large areas and it's good to have some long range weapons to deal with the enemies who are a bit far from you, Arc of Death can climb in some parts/plat form too.

When i want hard mode, i use the Cleric, at lest for the 3 first weapon, like i said firestorm is good but if you have some Slaughter, it's harder, not sure how many hit you need with the firestorm if they use their shield once you hit them but it was more than 3 i think (or 2 with a lot of luck) but yes, once you get the Wraightverge, you destroy everything.

Actually yes, the Arc of Death is not so precis but i have rarely problem to aim with it, just have to not be too far and it works and it does a better job on Centaur/slaughter than the Firestorm. Again, about gameplay style of people.

Been a while since i played the original game, i did it a lot so i play fan expansions most of the time.

[Emmanuelexe]

Mountain Man eredeti hozzászólása:

The mage has the best third weapon
The mage has the most mana
The mage never has to melee
The mage has the strongest flechette - I believe

The frost spell is a little crap, but the point is that when you freeze enemies in front, they become deployable cover that protects you from other enemies' fire

The game is kinda trivially easy once you get your arc of death because like half the enemies are melee and the arc of death totally bypasses the centaurs' and heresiarches' shields.

True

Never had problem with mana with the Mage, even in wads but also because Sapphire wand help a lot the maps to combo stuff, and yes, the frost touch can help you to have a wall in some situation and just have to use a disc or sapphire wand to break it.

For the flechette, if you dont take the combo flechette+disc of the Cleric, it's the best, the one of Mage is very helpful in wads because you don't need to throw it (fighter) in some areas, it's a different tactic in fact but im not sure about damage, feel like its the same as Fighter, maybe close.
The gas cloud without disc can take a lot of time to kill stuff but still helpful sometimes against centaur especially (stun them but need a lot of times).

And Arc of Death have just to be used well, people who spam it randomly do it wrong, you need to use it in the right way, i can kill easily a serpent in the caves, just have to aim it well in a good place and avoid the obstacles, easy.

Hexen has some issues with the balance but there is always an easy way to deal with it and compensate with other stuff.

[Bread in the fridge]

:O oh wow and the mage still sucks

[Zedonk]

Pr.Jitterskull - best bug fixer eredeti hozzászólása:

Manhs eredeti hozzászólása:

Fighter start with the best melee weap (fists) and finish with a strong weapon but who cost a ton of mana and don't pierce the enemies

More lies.

Fighter's ultimate weapon have LEAST ammo consumption out of all classes, and does overall higher DPS\damage in one blast than Bloodscourge. The pierce of the Bloodscourge is a meme, it's about as useful as Pyro in TFC. I wouldn't call it a "ton" because at the cost of mere 12 ammo of each color, I often tend to kill up to 6-7 ettins in one blast, that's far more ammo effecient than the same Arc of Death. Like jeez, at least play the game before stating such an obvious misinformation.

I think the Quietus uses 14 blue ammo and 14 green ammo which is 1 less blue ammo and 1 less green ammo than the bloodscourge.

[Bread in the fridge]

yes that is true