Magic bad?

[Warlord]

So I'm a level 7 magic guy and fights are pretty lame. Run out of magic fast shooting blue balls with the occasional stasis. Meanwhile I see my companions who are melee doing all sorts of cool stuff without having to constantly run away from enemies. Does magic get better or should I just respec?

[fauxpas]

Once you unlock teleport and better amulets it gets better.

[enohex]

I'm level 8 mage and actually, it's not too terrible, but I absolutely suggest having alchemy to make magic potions because you're going to be blowing through magic like there's no freakin' tomorrow.
i've found that kiting and then using the lightning movement ability, or whatever is after the shadow bolt spell that you start with. it's really useful to get back away from something or to even kite around them. i don't know, mage started kind of bad at the very early stages of the game, but once i got used to the combat system and respecced to be more efficient and do more damage.. i've been having a lot more fun with the character.
kind of have to find what works for you i think.

[Namhaid]

I too had a rough start with magic, I found it the weaker at the beginning, but as you level up it becomes considerably more powerful and fun, specially after unlocking lighting dash. I've been playng on hard and with shadow impact + shadow burst + lighting dash you can tore through groups of enemies, just keep lots of magic potions or invest some points into guns for when you run out of mana.

[Elenoe]

I used pistol as main and magic as support and that worked really well. But that's mostly because stasis 50% dmg bonus + backstab 20% + lightning dash to get behing + really hard first pistol hit all stacked up.

Having traps/grenades is also problem solver as it is infinitelly strong dmg burst at the cost of resources.

But magic itself felt weaker compared to it. Being fast with low dmg hits means nearly zero contribution from stasis/backstab bonuses. And even when I used it as support, basically just to finish nearly dead mobs, I burnt through mana rather fast.

I've never used healing nor shield as I kept distance most of time and after getting stasis pretty much kept mobs and bosses stun locked. Health potions if I got hit anyway mostly because companions and NPC keeps waking mobs.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Why not review the Magician's skill tree and evaluate what future skills you will be able to learn? Shooting magic and stasis is only the beginning of it.

[Elenoe]

that's the problem here. Magic doesn't really have anything useful beyond stasis (and posibly mass stasis, athough I consider a bomb more useful). Healing/Shield have no use for ranged glass cannon. And dash.. there is even non-magic variant even mages will learn because there are good passives hidden behind it.

So what does magic actually have here? (And I tried to find anything, I'm a mage by nature.) It lacks hard hitter (like guns or 2H melee have) to benefit from one-time bonuses. And it doesn't even have AOEs to decimate groups (funnily enough tactician has grenades that can wipe ANY group of anything in few seconds if things go south)

[fauxpas]

The fact that it ignores armor makes it more powerful than melee (especially when leveled up, I use the punch more than the bolts), and the fact that you don't have to manage ammo makes it more reliable than firearms.


As for the roll, yes, it does essentially the same thing as teleport, but just as teleport doesn't work if you aren't using a ring, rolling doesn't work if you are using a ring.

[fauxpas]

Oh, and the mass stasis storm spell is basically an "I win" button so there is that as well.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by Elenoe:

Healing/Shield have no use for ranged glass cannon.

How do you protect yourself against ranged attacks? Also, with some of the abilities you may heal and protect your companions - at least in all those battles where you are not alone.

Originally posted by Elenoe:

So what does magic actually have here?

Storm, Shadow Burst, Lightning Dash.

Originally posted by Elenoe:

(funnily enough tactician has grenades that can wipe ANY group of anything in few seconds if things go south)

It's your choice. I also liked the bombs from the Technical class.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Why not review the Magician's skill tree and evaluate what future skills you will be able to learn? Shooting magic and stasis is only the beginning of it.

Because the descriptions are total garbage and aren't specific enough to tell if what you put a point into is worth it.

e.g. attacking is faster, slightly faster, much faster.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Because the descriptions are total garbage and aren't specific enough to tell if what you put a point into is worth it.

e.g. attacking is faster, slightly faster, much faster.

Uhm, the details are shown, and you cannot skip those skills anyway in case you want to unlock a specific skill further down a branch in a skill tree. That is what you would figure out while evaluating the skills.

Alternatively, use the list at the bottom of:
https://greedfall.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills

[Warlord]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Originally posted by Warlord:

Because the descriptions are total garbage and aren't specific enough to tell if what you put a point into is worth it.

e.g. attacking is faster, slightly faster, much faster.

Uhm, the details are shown, and you cannot skip those skills anyway in case you want to unlock a specific skill further down a branch in a skill tree. That is what you would figure out while evaluating the skills.

Alternatively, use the list at the bottom of:
https://greedfall.wiki.fextralife.com/Skills

"Allows faster attacks after a Lightning Dash."

hurrrdurrrr

[Elenoe]

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

How do you protect yourself against ranged attacks? Also, with some of the abilities you may heal and protect your companions - at least in all those battles where you are not alone.

dodge, stun lock, distance. I rarely get hit. 0 endurance, starting armor, played on hard, switched to extreme around level 10. Companions die often. Their purpose is to hold some mobs until I deal with those going to me. It's not any harder without them. They wake up sleeping mobs too much. But if needed: ressurect potions. Used 5 through the game. (I suck at games like Sekiro.)

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

Storm

had storm, never really helped, Stasis is spammable, locks for longer and is stackable, you can easily lock groupped mobs as they go to you for a minute each without using ultimate ability/afrenaline.

I used Shadow Burst for a while (I've read it's good). But it casts too long (you get hit anyway) and its effect is.. meh. And again I rather keep distance. And if they do get close because there are too many enemies and I have problem to target them and lock them for eternity, emergency grenade spam eliminate anything no matter armor/hp while locking them in hit-animation so they can't attack.

Lightning Dash, is eyecandy. I've used double roll before and it's very similar. In any case it's not vital skill. Can be skipped and the game won't be any harder really. It just helps you with backstab (which ironically is hidden behind double roll anyway so even mages need that one).

Originally posted by D'amarr from Darshiva:

It's your choice.

well, it is. Even on extreme the game is not exactly hard (had I known that from the start :/ ) so anything really works. It's just another perspective from "a mage" that rather switched to guns/grenades. It's more powerful to use magic just as support (you still get all the good things if you wish, there are enough skills in one playthrough to max two styles completelly) while having really strong tools from other styles.

As for ammo, I was scared first. But it's no issue. You get science 2 (+1 from chest) and you make infinity of them. Never went below 300, what the game doesn't tell is that you make 5 bullets per batch not 1, that's 0.5gp/bullet if you buy resources from NPC. I've always found much more then needed on my own. But I like picking things, not everyone does.

And as for ignoring armor.. even that is discutale. Given that bomb + 2 grenades strip the hardests enemies from all armor on extreme if you want quick fight, or you let it be slowly eaten by stasis, while you stasis/backstab some other poor croco, armor didn't seem to be issue really. Every boss armor went down much faster then average croco.

I used magic. If there was some last abandoned croco with full armor and I wanted to keep bomb/grenades I burned it with magic through the armor. But it took soo long was pretty dangerous (with gun I really keep mobs in stasis and distance permanently) and it felt so unnecessary when I knew I can just make him drop dead with other tools if only I wasn't so hoardy.

[D'amarr from Darshiva]

Originally posted by Warlord:

hurrrdurrrr

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1584724340

Originally posted by Elenoe:

Even on extreme the game

Been there, done that.

[caroraim]

I started out with magic, but I immediately switched most of my focus to sword skills after I tried it a few times. Simply not enough "mana" to do the job. I was draining my magic resource on one or two enemies when most mobs are at least two or three times that many. Perhaps it's just more viable if it is invested in more heavily?