Crowd control mage

[Kire]

Hey there, guys. I bought DOS2 like a year ago, and only played early access back then. So I'm not really aware of recent changes to classes, builds etc. Could anyone, please, give me an advice on classes and tell me if I chose right class for my preferred playstyle.

What do I want:
- I want pure mage as main character
- I want to have alot of CC and I'd like to have decent damage, exactly in that order (CC>dmg)

So, I was thinking about aero+hydro combo.

Tell me, please, what traits/talents do u find essential for that kinda class? Should I add any other trees of magic to the build and why?

How many trees can I comfortably develop at the same time?

Can I experience most of the game's content skipping, for example, Geo+Pyro trees on my whole party? It was pretty uncomfortable to play without these two trees back in DOS1.

Is "tanking" in any sort of way present in the game atm? Or NPCs always prefer to target the weakest members of party no matetr what u do?

Thank you!

P.S. Does telekinesis worth the points? =p

[Happygamer]

Why would you believe we would know this? The full game comes out in a little over a day... just wait and then after release check the wiki's.

[edmek55555]

Originally posted by Kire:

Hey there, guys. I bought DOS2 like a year ago, and only played early access back then. So I'm not really aware of recent changes to classes, builds etc. Could anyone, please, give me an advice on classes and tell me if I chose right class for my preferred playstyle.

What do I want:
- I want pure mage as main character
- I want to have alot of CC and I'd like to have decent damage, exactly in that order (CC>dmg)

So, I was thinking about aero+hydro combo.

Tell me, please, what traits/talents do u find essential for that kinda class? Should I add any other trees of magic to the build and why?

How many trees can I comfortably develop at the same time?

Can I experience most of the game's content skipping, for example, Geo+Pyro trees on my whole party? It was pretty uncomfortable to play without these two trees back in DOS1.

Is "tanking" in any sort of way present in the game atm? Or NPCs always prefer to target the weakest members of party no matetr what u do?

Thank you!

P.S. Does telekinesis worth the points? =p

You will need another pure damage mage in your party to make the most of this. Most enemies have high magic armor. But currently rain and lightning are a great cc combo so youre off to a good start. Geo is great too since slow ignores armor. Atleast in ea

[DarkFenix]

Originally posted by edmek55555:

You will need another pure damage mage in your party to make the most of this. Most enemies have high magic armor. But currently rain and lightning are a great cc combo so youre off to a good start. Geo is great too since slow ignores armor. Atleast in ea

Is this to say that CC generally isn't worth bothering with because enemies have high resistances? I too was thinking of making a control-centric mage, but if all I'm going to see is my spells doing nothing I won't bother.

[Sombrero]

Feel freed to add me as friend for specific questions but I'll still answer here as best as I can.

So DOS2 battles are quite different than DOS1 even though they are in appearance very similar. It is by default very heavily "status" oriented (which contains both crowd control and more varied status like burn, poison, bleed, blind and so on). All status effect can work only if the appropriate armor has been destroyed entirely. In the cases of mages as expected most status effect concern the magical armor (not all actually, the knock down from freezing is physical and all necromancer spells are physical as well).
There is not a best archetype to have heavy crowd control, you really can go with any type of character and be crazy heavy on it (and by default all your characters will have quite a bit of crowd control, supports included). The only status effect having a slight advantage is "slowed" and comes most of the time from Geomancer as for some reason slow always work and bypass all armors. That doesn't mean that Geomancers are best at crowd control because they actually don't have much other options than that.

If you stick only with elements Aero and Hydro are overall the best ones to negate enemies, you have some very good freezing spells and stuns can be deadly (they are being nerfed though with the release, you gonna need to first shock and then stun just like you needed to chill and then freeze in DOS1).

Now if you really want to go nuts on crowd control you can put a single point in a few other skills to have access to some very decent options here are a few:

• Warfare (mostly if you play with a staff, most warfare skills are melee so wands won't work) with skills such as Battering Ram (also giving great mobility), Crippling Blow
  
• Scoundrel has Chloroform which is pretty good to remove magical armor and put enemies asleep at a cheap AP price (you can then also get many very useful scoundrel skills for mobility)
  
• Polymorph has some very strong physical crowd controls, Tentacle Lash disarm your enemy making him unable to use any weapon-based skill and Chicken Claw turns your enemy into a chicken for one turn making him runaway and do nothing else

Then you also have the more obvious Necromancer option offering very strong status effect but they are not crowd control as such, it's more to add more damage to the team rather than anything.

I hope it helped, feel free to message me and you can checkout my guide as well.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1133139481

[edmek55555]

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

Originally posted by edmek55555:

You will need another pure damage mage in your party to make the most of this. Most enemies have high magic armor. But currently rain and lightning are a great cc combo so youre off to a good start. Geo is great too since slow ignores armor. Atleast in ea

Is this to say that CC generally isn't worth bothering with because enemies have high resistances? I too was thinking of making a control-centric mage, but if all I'm going to see is my spells doing nothing I won't bother.

It is very difficult to cc large groups anymore and its difficult to cc enemies before they have a chance to get some damage in on you. That's why I recommend fossil strike because slow goes through armor and will keep enemies from being able to get to you while you set set surfaces and chip armor off.

[FINSullivan]

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

Originally posted by edmek55555:

You will need another pure damage mage in your party to make the most of this. Most enemies have high magic armor. But currently rain and lightning are a great cc combo so youre off to a good start. Geo is great too since slow ignores armor. Atleast in ea

Is this to say that CC generally isn't worth bothering with because enemies have high resistances? I too was thinking of making a control-centric mage, but if all I'm going to see is my spells doing nothing I won't bother.

No. In this game CC work differently that in the first game.
Now you need to remove magic armor or armor first to apply most CC effects.
So basically everyone now has 3 health bars.. One is for Armor, one is Magic armor and the last on is real health.
Physical dmg chips armor down first before doing damage health.
Magical dmg chips down Magic armor before doing damage to health.
My 3rd playthough on early access i played with 3 physical damage dealers and one battle mage who was also my healer.
Polymorph and warfare both have amazing armor CC skills. Had those skills on 3 of my guys.
So i'm sure with 2 or 3 magic damage dealers you have enough damage to take away magic armor and then apply CC no problemo.

[Iry]

CC is still devastating, it just takes some setup. Enemies can resist it (with Magic Armor), so you have to break down their magic armor to make CC stick. The easiest way is setting up a water trap before battle, then bait the enemies to chase you through the water. Then electrocute it.

They will be forced to stand there, or walk through it taking massive damage to their magic armor. Many enemies will end up trapped.

[Kire]

thank you very much for detailed answers!