Mage builds

[Gentoo]

What are your favourite mage builds?

I have tried a few and could never quite settle on one that I liked enough to go through the whole game with. I don't like spamming damage powers constantly, and prefer a more strategy/thinking way of doing things.

Playing a controller was kind of fun with the glyphs and cages. Hexes and weapon buffs were just buffs (click and forget). Healing is just healing. Bleh.

Anybody here tried to dive deep into the other stuff? How are the sleep and nightmare spells? how about the miasma stuff?

[travjon]

Arcane warrior was fun. At the end of the game I was super OP'd. It was awesome, but nothing strategic or fancy. I like using the walking bomb spell, and it can be fun if you are fighting a lot of enemies at the same time. There's another spell I like, but I can't remember which one. It was either sleep or mass paralysis. It was one that had an area of effect.

[Yosh]

Mage is my favorite class, and I have made several thematic builds including a "necromancer" which had more than half of the entropy spells, including sleep and nightmare.


I personally find the "mind" entropy spells very unreliable, and inneffective. The issue with them lies on the unreliable nature of Sleep, and the high mana cost of actually comboing the spells together.

So, to recieve the high spirit damage from Horror, or to bypass the mental resistance of Waking Nightmare, they both must be cast on targets who are asleep. The issue I find is that, targets can resist Sleep outright, and those who don't will instantly be woken up when they take damage from ANY source. Between the initial cast time of Sleep, and the cast times of Horror/Waking Nightmare, there are consistantly only a couple enemies still asleep in any particular battle. The extra dmg done, or mental resistance bypass has never been worth the mana cost of comboing the spells together for me personally. The effects of Waking Nightmare are very unreliable and inneffective on their own.


I find that Mind Blast, Force Field, Crushing Prison, Mana Clash, all glyphs, both walking bombs, and primal magic are by far the most decisive spells. There are a lot of useful/interesting interactions between these that I can go into detail upon request. When I create any mage, I always take the first 3 listed just because of how downright effective they are.

[Gentoo]

My goal is to build a mage that uses no primal spells, and sparingly uses Force Feild and Crushing Prison (I feel these spells are overpowered) and I have used them on other playthroughs.

Sorry to hear that sleep and nightmare don't work so well. I was hoping that would be an interesting playstyle.

Walking bombs sound like a lot of fun, so I will probably try that next. I guess the trick there is to keep your allies out of the melee as much as possible to avoid unpredictable explosions :)

How are the raised zombies and other death magic?

[Yosh]

Gentoo eredeti hozzászólása:

Sorry to hear that sleep and nightmare don't work so well. I was hoping that would be an interesting playstyle.

So did I, to my dissapointment. They all have an interesting concept. Disorient and Horror on their own arn't bad. Disorient is unresistable and works against virtually all targets. Its the synergy with Sleep where they fall apart.

Walking bomb/Virulent Walking bomb are very effective spells, especially early game. Raise Dead is fun but isn't the best spell. It is a sustained spell, requires an unpilfered corpse, and has quite a large fatigue cost. So to keep the Skeleton around you have to effectively dedicate 1/3 of your mana pool. The Skeletons arn't quite worth the mana in terms of dmg/tanking, but it is a pretty fun spell. The abilities of the Skeleton are determined by the primary class of the spells host, for example: Raise dead on a warrior enemy will raise a skeleton with Sword/Shield, Shield Bash, and one of the sustained skills, or a 2 hander with a few related skills. I personally really enjoyed sending minions into heavily trapped rooms to set everything off, or to aggro mobs.

Walking Bomb and its cousin have always been worth their mana in damage for me, and are two of the deadliest spells in the game. A perfectly executed Virulent Walking Bomb can wipe out an entire group, but the spell is at the mercy of the health/resistance of the target, and where it decides to run. I recommend getting Force Field for heavy walking bomb use, so that when an infected target suddenly runs towards a party member you can protect them from the goresplosion. Its also useful for protecting the tank when many targets would expload at once.

A combo I personally like is Curse of Mortality into Walking Bomb. Together they do a good amount of Spirit/Nature dmg for their mana, and the target can't heal itself to prevent the explosion(by surviving past the spells duration).

[Yosh]

Death Syphon is in my opinion by far the best spell in the game, and is my favorite spell in any game. It is a very significant boost for any mage, and works in most situations save boss fights.

[FEZ. TF7]

There's nothing wrong with the Enthropy spells at all, every mage i make uses them, Death Hex, Paralize and mass Paralize are some of the best spells going, you're a controller and debuffer using this skill tree, if you play a Arcane warrior then death magic and miasma are a must, Out of all the tree's for a mage i think Enthropy is the best tree

And if you are going to play on the higher difficulties like Nightmare you're going to want to take some Enthropy spells because all these AoE damaging spells and walking bomb are going to kill you're team, take it from me i have beat this game on Nightmare difficulty without dying and my mage Morrigan was specced just to use Enthropy and i took crushing prison and mana clash out of the spirit tree and it made the game so much easier than having a healer on my team

[[AJSA]MeloDeath]

one way to make the summoned skeleton better is to use spell might when you summon him he get more skills a weapon with enchantments also go Arcana Mage mate nothing wrong with almost immortality!

[Yosh]

Sith Olus eredeti hozzászólása:

There's nothing wrong with the Enthropy spells at all, every mage i make uses them

I agree, they are very good. I was only speaking about Disorient, Horror, Sleep, Waking Nightmare.

[FEZ. TF7]

Xavandier eredeti hozzászólása:

Sith Olus eredeti hozzászólása:

I agree, they are very good. I was only speaking about Disorient, Horror, Sleep, Waking Nightmare.

Nothing wrong with Horror, Acts as a stun, very useful, use sleep on a group of enemies then use horror or waking nightmare on a sleeping target also very useful,

The only talents i find useless from the Enthropy tree is Disorient and being as i play on Nightmare i don't use Death Cloud because it kills you're team mates

[Yosh]

Sith Olus eredeti hozzászólása:

Nothing wrong with Horror, Acts as a stun, very useful, use sleep on a group of enemies then use horror or waking nightmare on a sleeping target also very useful

I'v already mentioned both that horror is good, and the disadvantages of the spell synergy with sleep. Could you explain your reasoning on this point? The usefullness of Disorient depends on how far into the game one is, as powerful mobs such as golems can resist almost everything.

I completely agree that a lot of the aoe spells with duration like Death Cloud arn't very good on Nightmare. Many people have played through Nightmare in this 5 year old game.

Edit: It is worth mentioning that a little less than half of the enemies in the game are explicitly immune to sleep, and a third are immune to horror/waking nightmare : /

[Yosh]

I'v seen Swarm shapeshifter builds, Arcane Warrior builds, Blood Mage builds, primal magic builds, and healer builds in the past. I would be happy to go into detail about any one of these. Arcane Warrior is a very powerful specialization, but it goes much, much farther when you build for it specifically. There are a lot of skills that synergize veeery well with it. Note that wearing armor and using Combat Magic will increase your fatigue, making casting spells more difficult. Its also worth noting that what Sith said about aoe regarding hard+ difficulty is right. Single target becomes a lot more effective the farther past normal you go.

[Jon]

Mage is by far my favourite class. Whenever I play I tend to go full out support with CC and Heals, eventually picking up Spirit Healer specialization. Towards the end of the game I also pick up Arcane Warrior which is very powerful which gives me the ability to sustain almost any amount of damage making me deal a lot of damage, be very tanky and be able to support my party.

In Awakening I pick up Blood Magic specialization and just tear through the expansion. I haven't played much Nightmare, but I played around ~10 hours of Nightmare with this build with no hassle at all.