How do you mage in base DS?

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

Seriously, ive been play testing my own mod(I have the original disks so im on MP), and I simply cannot see how you can play a mage and get anywhere in this game.

Melee does 60-120 dmg, Spells, do 3-5......

I have modded the hell out of spells to the point where thye actually move the enemy's health bar. Even with my mods, my mage gets her ass whipped. I cant imagine trying to do any of these runs doing the damage of the base game.

[RNG_Wizard]

Melee's damage is pretty similar to the damage of everything else, assuming you've got gear & levels that are about equal across the board. If anything the benefit to melee is the increased attack speed, tankiness, & wide selection of armor, offset by being completely unable to kite and needing to facetank everything to function.

Rangers & mages have the ability to kite & need to use it to survive, especially on higher difficulties. They have range; use it to your advantage.

As for damage, spells do 3-5 at level 3. Meanwhile, melee at the same level does do about 5-10, but with a high chance of missing every attack. Later in the game, mages will start having their damage ramp up, and with a wide arsenal of spells at their disposal allowing them to cc, deal aoe damage, and buff themselves & teammates. That being said, if you want raw damage, combat mage will provide the most raw damage of all the classes in the game; dealing big damage is their entire purpose.

Basically, if your melee fighter is doing 60-120 damage while your caster is doing 3-5 damage, why are you expecting a level 3 character to be able to compete with a level 30 character? Mages are powerful in their own right, but with that disparity you're clearly not leveling them properly, or giving them the spells they need. Giving any more info on what level your characters are and what gear & spells they're using would be very helpful.

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

Originally posted by RNG_Wizard:

Melee's damage is pretty similar to the damage of everything else, assuming you've got gear & levels that are about equal across the board. If anything the benefit to melee is the increased attack speed, tankiness, & wide selection of armor, offset by being completely unable to kite and needing to facetank everything to function.

Rangers & mages have the ability to kite & need to use it to survive, especially on higher difficulties. They have range; use it to your advantage.

As for damage, spells do 3-5 at level 3. Meanwhile, melee at the same level does do about 5-10, but with a high chance of missing every attack. Later in the game, mages will start having their damage ramp up, and with a wide arsenal of spells at their disposal allowing them to cc, deal aoe damage, and buff themselves & teammates. That being said, if you want raw damage, combat mage will provide the most raw damage of all the classes in the game; dealing big damage is their entire purpose.

Basically, if your melee fighter is doing 60-120 damage while your caster is doing 3-5 damage, why are you expecting a level 3 character to be able to compete with a level 30 character? Mages are powerful in their own right, but with that disparity you're clearly not leveling them properly, or giving them the spells they need. Giving any more info on what level your characters are and what gear & spells they're using would be very helpful.

Lvl 3 mage? Lol, that was with lvl 48 Nature magic. An unmodded Light Ray to be exact. Ive been modding magic and buffing the hell out of them. Any spells I find that I havent modded yet, even in my same lvl 49 nature magic range, it will hit an enemy for like 3-10 dmg, despite saying something like 110-179. However, I pull out one of my modded spells, it suddenly hits for 60-100, similar to melee. I sit back laughing to myself when I see something like: 103-169 Damage, Magic lvl: 80. Im like LOL, that doesnt even hurt anything at lvl 17, never mind lvl 80. Ive even taken to increasing the range on alot of the spells. It feels very short by default, on a large number of spells. I increased ranges to between 10 and 15 for most spells.

The spells I use currently are my modded: Lightning, Lightning Blast, Explosive Powder, Iceshard, Iceblast, Shock, Flash. I also lowered the requirements on alot of the buffs(lvl 12 for most of them), Regen, Mana Chant, buffed Magic armor lol. Ive made mages much tougher overall, and much more survivable. Its like this game just had a serious thing for Melee. Melee just plain feels infinitely tougher overall. Yes, they miss ALOT, but even then, they feel far more powerful

This magic has taken some serious modding to make it actually feel viable, and even then, my chick gets downed left, right and sideways. She has an obsession with closing range and hugging enemies before casting. You know, the big glowy blue sword, click, THAT is attack, but for my mage, its charge an overwhelming majority of the time. I wish this game had a hold shift and just attack mode like Diablo. I do have my character on Hold, Attack Freely..... And what does this game have against corners? You can clearly attack around a corner, but I click a target, and my character runs out in the middle of the room, and often time closes the distance, wasting soooo much time, and against ranged enemies like Robot flamers, or more notably, the Robot BOSS, this just gets ya dead. Mah mage cant take a hit, and its quite frustrating getting downed cuz my chick didnt want to simply stay near the cover and attack from range.

I also note Melee has far more ways to increase it's damage, while magic's only increase seems to be with skill level(Which also seems to be a muuuuuuch rarer prefix or suffix to find in the stores or on drops). Melee gets increases from item abilities(+Fire Dmg, stuff like that, Buffs like Magic Hands, Triple Strike, Strength). Melee Skill only increases Melee's accuracy? Then on top of that, magic seems to level far slower than Melee, in addition to having some pretty crazy level requirements to get new spells(Something else I modded the hell out of), when combined with the piss poor damage of spells makes for a very miserable time.

One final question, what in the blue hell is with the huge delay between switching to a heal and it casting? Ill be either attacking with my sword on my fighter, or casting my spells with my mage, ill switch to healing, press 4 to pop heal and my guy will just stand there for a good second or 2, and often times, results in me being ded. Its like, no, I didnt want you to cast that or anything. Ive even reduced the recast time on the heal from 1 to 0.01, assuming its some cast delay between spells or something.

[RNG_Wizard]

Originally posted by KnightCole:

Lvl 3 mage? Lol, that was with lvl 48 Nature magic. An unmodded Light Ray to be exact. Ive been modding magic and buffing the hell out of them. Any spells I find that I havent modded yet, even in my same lvl 49 nature magic range, it will hit an enemy for like 3-10 dmg, despite saying something like 110-179. However, I pull out one of my modded spells, it suddenly hits for 60-100, similar to melee. I sit back laughing to myself when I see something like: 103-169 Damage, Magic lvl: 80. Im like LOL, that doesnt even hurt anything at lvl 17, never mind lvl 80. Ive even taken to increasing the range on alot of the spells. It feels very short by default, on a large number of spells. I increased ranges to between 10 and 15 for most spells.

Some spells just don't do great damage. I don't remember light ray too well, but it's possible that it's one of those spells. But seriously, at level 80 you should be one shotting anything on the lowest difficulty, regardless of what your class is, something sounds wrong there. That being said, most spells do have a fairly short range, while others have a bit longer of a range. Combat Mage generally has longer range spells, and you can press 'C' on the ground to cast spells with bouncing projectiles from even further away to increase their range & shoot around corners. Explosive Powder is an excellent example of this, and also happens to be Combat Mage's earliest best in slot spell until you get up to fireball.

Originally posted by KnightCole:

The spells I use currently are my modded: Lightning, Lightning Blast, Explosive Powder, Iceshard, Iceblast, Shock, Flash. I also lowered the requirements on alot of the buffs(lvl 12 for most of them), Regen, Mana Chant, buffed Magic armor lol. Ive made mages much tougher overall, and much more survivable. Its like this game just had a serious thing for Melee. Melee just plain feels infinitely tougher overall. Yes, they miss ALOT, but even then, they feel far more powerful

For Nature Mage, Flash is excellent early on for it's high damage with a bit of AoE. However, by the time you get to Lightning & Iceblast, Flash is going to be costing about 40 mana, while the latter spells will do about 25% less damage for less than half the cost, so it usually gets swapped out to focus mana on healing & buffs. Difficulty and the enemy you're targeting really make a difference here; it sounds like you're playing on hard, but on hard even Melee characters get melted and do fairly low damage. That being sad, melee is tougher, they're forced to tank. They have more hp, regen, and access to the best equipment in the game thanks to their high strength. Other classes will never be able to tank, but have ranged damage instead. That being said, they still offer survivability; rangers have access to fairly high dps with no resource requirement, giving them some of the best sustained dps in the game. Meanwhile, mages offer buffs and heals in addition to their damage, to keep both them and their party at their best.

Shock and Iceshard are just bad spells though. Iceshard is weaker than Flash, lacks AoE, does less damage, and isn't hitscan. The projectile is so slow that it's too easy to miss against moving enemies. Shock is a moderate damage melee range spell, but casters can't really afford to be in melee range with their low armor and health. I'd say it's very important to play around with your spells, and figure out which ones do the most damage for their mana cost. Or just buy a ton of potions, throw mana cost to the wind, and run the most damaging spells you can.

Originally posted by KnightCole:

This magic has taken some serious modding to make it actually feel viable, and even then, my chick gets downed left, right and sideways. She has an obsession with closing range and hugging enemies before casting. You know, the big glowy blue sword, click, THAT is attack, but for my mage, its charge an overwhelming majority of the time. I wish this game had a hold shift and just attack mode like Diablo. I do have my character on Hold, Attack Freely..... And what does this game have against corners? You can clearly attack around a corner, but I click a target, and my character runs out in the middle of the room, and often time closes the distance, wasting soooo much time, and against ranged enemies like Robot flamers, or more notably, the Robot BOSS, this just gets ya dead. Mah mage cant take a hit, and its quite frustrating getting downed cuz my chick didnt want to simply stay near the cover and attack from range.

Huh, I've never had my character move without me clicking when I have them on hold, and that's in over 300 hours of play between steam and disc versions of the game, it still sounds like your game has something wrong with it. I've had them wait a moment before moving, but never moving outside of their preset. As for mages getting downed fast, well, yeah. If you're playing on hard, just a few hits will take down a mage; you NEED to avoid damage, and you get punished quickly if you don't.

As for robots & especially that boss, there are some enemies with unavoidable damage, although it's usually a small amount of it. That's where summons come in; use them to tank for you! I know for a fact you can heal them, so as a nature mage just keep popping potions, resummoning, throwing out healing winds, etc. As for goblin robots, flamer's can't hit you if you're on raised or lowered terrain and grenadier's attacks can be dodged. The tesla & machine gunners do have unavoidable damage, plus the tesla gunners have a nasty chase range, but they can both be tanked using summons.

Originally posted by KnightCole:

I also note Melee has far more ways to increase it's damage, while magic's only increase seems to be with skill level(Which also seems to be a muuuuuuch rarer prefix or suffix to find in the stores or on drops). Melee gets increases from item abilities(+Fire Dmg, stuff like that, Buffs like Magic Hands, Triple Strike, Strength). Melee Skill only increases Melee's accuracy? Then on top of that, magic seems to level far slower than Melee, in addition to having some pretty crazy level requirements to get new spells(Something else I modded the hell out of), when combined with the piss poor damage of spells makes for a very miserable time.

Melee damage only increases through weapon & strength, while mage's gain damage through skill and spell selection. Skill level prefixes aren't really that rare I've noticed, it's just that as a mage, finding armor that you can use is a difficult, and finding skill boosting equipment is as a result more difficult. That being said, it's still possible, and you can easily spike in power by picking up a few items that boost your skills by a point or two each. As for leveling, they should more or less even out. Melee does pump out more reliable damage later on, but they don't have the range, kiting, or utility of mages & even rangers, so they tend to be a bit useless if things go poorly. Melee is a feast or famine type deal; you're either overleveled and you stay overleveled, completely melting everything you touch, or you fall behind, can't catch up, and can't engage with anything because of your lack of range. The other classes can fight almost every enemy in the game regardles of whether or not they're underleveled, even if it's not efficient. That, and yeah, melee does have a lot of buffs from casters, but that's if you have casters to provide them with buffs; part of what casters do is support with spells like revives, heals, and buffs. All that being said, mages level faster early on than melee, and should be able to stay on top of leveling from there as a result. Leveling should never be slow if you're doing damage & healing.

Originally posted by KnightCole:

One final question, what in the blue hell is with the huge delay between switching to a heal and it casting? Ill be either attacking with my sword on my fighter, or casting my spells with my mage, ill switch to healing, press 4 to pop heal and my guy will just stand there for a good second or 2, and often times, results in me being ded. Its like, no, I didnt want you to cast that or anything. Ive even reduced the recast time on the heal from 1 to 0.01, assuming its some cast delay between spells or something.

There's a delay between spell casts, with some spells having longer delays during which time you can't cast spells. With heal, there's about a 1 second delay, it's pretty spammable. However, it's possible you started to cast a spell, cancelled it by swapping spells, and still have the delay. That's what leads to your character just standing there for a second. Other spells, usually the ones with effects that apply over several seconds like healing winds have a lengthy delay of 2-4 seconds, usually for the more impactful spells that would be a bit crazy to spam or stack.