Magic is so underpowered in this game

[TickleMeRifle]

I'm up to the 2nd map. My party is made up of a soilder and knight, wizard and enchanter. The two melee do tons more damage! In fact I think one of them does up to 4 times the base damage of the wizard and enchanter. Also nearly every enemy I come across has much greater magic armor compared to physical armor . Seems this game is waaaay more easier with a melee character than it is with magical ones. IMHO needs some rebalancing

[K1LN1K]

Just taking a guess based off my own experiences:
One of the major errors you can make in the game is splitting your physical and magic damage down the middle. It's more likely that your melee characters have the gear to pair with their stats, and your magic users are lacking decent gear. And on top of that, your damage is split.

I had this issue in my game and as soon as I got to the mirror I made my Wizard a Ranger and made my other magic users go full support. So I had 3 physical damage dealers and one support character with some other spells for utility.

[wds_ncs]

Nah.

If you're seeing a big imbalance, chances are you're not specializing enough with your magic users. Early game, two schools max with everything in them. Don't ♥♥♥♥ around with weapon skills or anything else, except perhaps Poly to pump INT, which should be maxed ASAP.

You shouldn't be using wands or staffs except as a last resort, really. Use an element that matches a school you specialize in for best result.

There's also a pretty good distribution of enemies who have higher of one value or another.

Further, physical can do insane single target damage, but magic has much higher overall damage potential through AoEs and chaining effects. Pyro/Geo is popular because your high Pyro score increases the damage done by the explosions you create with poison/oil.

[Viper]

How do you figure. Melee characters are gimped. They have to move to there targets and chase them around the map as may enemies teleport. Magic users are ranged and have a pretty good range to. optimum party is 1 melee..1 ranged..2 magic. More than likely you have not invested your points correctly with your magic characters..

[ah]

Magic doesn't seem to get good until act 2 due to things like cooldowns and not a large option of skills at the beginning. Buddy of mines didn't start doing amazing damage until after leaving fort joy. I'm doing an all mage team run on tactician mode and act 1 was pretty annoying, but act 2 has def been a lot easier. I hear people just say run all physical for act 1 then respec at act 2 when you have a larger choice of magic.

[Leviathan]

You can still spec your mage in a way that magic becomes quite powerful (i.e. crit builds). But, yeah, physical damage is just way overpowered in this game. No resistances, and high-damage auto attacks are just a few of the pros.

[Eftwyrd]

build the magic users for criticals the same way you would for a physical character, just sticking to one primary school, take savage sortelage, level up wits somewhat and stack crit from scoundrel and/or 2h skills to taste (scoundrel gets you 'adrenaline rush','cloak and dagger' and some move speed, while 2h effects staff damage if you ever feel the need to hit anything). you end up with very powerful critting AoEs

[ah]

Originally posted by Viper:

How do you figure. Melee characters are gimped. They have to move to there targets and chase them around the map as may enemies teleport. Magic users are ranged and have a pretty good range to. optimum party is 1 melee..1 ranged..2 magic.

Not entirely true. Physical ccs don't require you chain moves. My group just went all physical with a geo tank, scoundrel, ranger, and necro and act 1 on tactician for the most part was a breeze. We can break almost everyones armor in 2 turns then chain our cc the whole fight.

[Iry]

Magic can be very powerful, but it’s true that Physical is ‘easier’ since you can just get a level-appropriate weapon, pump Warfare, and do quite well.

A low level Mage can go Glass Cannon, Mneumonic, Elemental Affinity and pump Intelligence. Try to get a Scoundrel item for Adrenaline. This will destroy enemies on Tactician, and you can swap some of the talents out later when you no longer need them.

[Full_Regalia]

I find phys to be mich easier to play that mag. And yes most enemies have a bigger magic armor (and resistances) than phys on average

[Diablerie]

Originally posted by Iry:

Magic can be very powerful, but it’s true that Physical is ‘easier’ since you can just get a level-appropriate weapon, pump Warfare, and do quite well.

A low level Mage can go Glass Cannon, Mneumonic, Elemental Affinity and pump Intelligence. Try to get a Scoundrel item for Adrenaline. This will destroy enemies on Tactician, and you can swap some of the talents out later when you no longer need them.

hmm how do you get around the drawback that glass cannon has where every enemy encountered runs to you like you just rang a dinner bell?

[Three Seagrass]

Originally posted by Pnyapa:

Magic doesn't seem to get good until act 2 due to things like cooldowns and not a large option of skills at the beginning. Buddy of mines didn't start doing amazing damage until after leaving fort joy. I'm doing an all mage team run on tactician mode and act 1 was pretty annoying, but act 2 has def been a lot easier. I hear people just say run all physical for act 1 then respec at act 2 when you have a larger choice of magic.

What's your party composition? I'm trying to make magic work but stressing myself out instead and could do with some direction.

[IlluminaZero]

Physical is just easier early game due to having reliable total CC (Knock-down and chicken form promminently) and magic users being more reliant on initially scarce skills.

Mages start getting much better once additional spells start getting unlocked. Furthermore you also start getting more options when it comes to targetting magic armor with STR and FIN characters (namely in polymorgh, scoundrel, and magic arrows) along with INT for Physical Armor (namely Necro, Geo, and summons)

---------

Addendum: Although in a peculiar twist - The extreme early game when physical CC is king is also the period in time when Conjurers absolutely destroy the early game far more efficiently.

[Ashera]

Originally posted by Felurian:

What's your party composition? I'm trying to make magic work but stressing myself out instead and could do with some direction.

it doesn't really work until you have enough memory on everyone / $$$ to buy enough spells.
Invest in summoning for fortjoy. Mass create totems until you have enough $$$/memory to get the skills you want. The tough part of a full mage group is not being able to do anything because all your spells are on cooldown after 1-2 turns. That ceases to be the case later on... So make do with elemental totems until then.

Ive just started a new run....
fane - geo/summoning
red prince - geo/mostly fire
lohse - water/summoning
beast - water/mostly aero

this allows me to have 2 characters that can heal/cast magic shield. two that can heal fane and cast fortify, a bunch of explosions from 2 geo + red prince pyro powerhouse
beast is there for aero utility and to burst anything with high fire resist (and water immunity aura... tactician they always have it...)

The summoners will have a couple of points in poly for medusa head/flight and terrain transmute.

I plan on 1 incarnate on Lohse to block paths / melee.... and one badass living artillery on fane to wreck face and heal my bone face.
red prince is the damage
beast is teleport utility

[wendigo211]

Magic is weak early on. For all the attacks your damage is:
(Base Damage)*(1+0.05*(Governing Attribute-10+Weapon Skill))*(1+0.05*(Damage Type Bonus))

• If you have high ground there is an additional (1.2+0.05*(Hunstman)) multiplier
  
• If you get a critical hit, the multiplier is (1.5+0.05*(Scoundrel+Two-Handed Skill))

Obviously there is no weapon skill for most magical attacks, so they lose that potential bonus. The real weakness is the Base Damage for the magical abilities starts pretty low and doesn't really start scaling up until you hit the teens. By the time you hit Arx magic is insanely powerful. But in the Fort Joy area it's pretty weak. At low levels, If you have a wizard with 5 Pyro and 20 Int and a warrior with 5 Warfare and 20 Strength, the warrior will do more damage because he has a higher base damage (probably by a factor of 2). If a wizard can leverage elemental affinity they can make up that difference, but that's also hard at low levels when they don't have a lot of abilities to throw around.

The source abilities also really benefit magic. Hunstman has a good ability (maybe the most powerful ability in the game), but the Warfare and Scoundrel abilities are bad jokes compared to the magic abilities.

[Iry]

Originally posted by Don't o'en the Chest!:

hmm how do you get around the drawback that glass cannon has where every enemy encountered runs to you like you just rang a dinner bell?

Overwhelming firepower. Glass Cannon + Adrenaline + Flesh Sacrifice = 9AP. It’s enough to blow away almost any magical armor in one round, and then you can dish out the CC. Hydro / Aero is actually really good for this. They can’t go after your guy if they don’t get a turn.

But you really want at least 2-3 DPS mages if you go with this build. A single DPS Mage is just going to have a hard time.