Magic vs Melee combat.

[Varulo]

Heya!

Situation:

I'm playing a server whit 2 friends, one of them is Gandalf (Magic build, he uses all 4 staffs), the other beard is Melee like me (Sword + shield). We have the lastest armor/weapons max lvl.
The difficult of the world is vanilla, no world modifiers or mods.

Recently we went to killing Queen

We make this fight as legal as we could running over all the dungeon (Not glitchie spots and stuff like that)

We were using stamina/poison/health potions and the best foods.
- Red-white-yellow food for melee
- Idk what Gandalf eats, but works. (lol)

Observations:

This fight felt quite unbalanced as long as my Melee friend and me died a lot of times more than Gandalf.
Galdalf was doing same or more dmg as my melee friend and me could make, so we focused on skip boss while killing adds (Adds was the only mechanic that bothered Gandalf).

At dungeons felts the same, as long as I'm only usefull to agro enemies while Galdalf burns them.

Conclusions:

Melees stamina costs are too high since It is necessary for:

-Roll on the ground
-Run
-Jump
-Use weapon
-Block
-Heavy armor

It's true I can handle a couple of hits while Gandalf gets close to death whit 1 hit from any mistlands mob.

On top of this I think magic build stays OP if you have distance enough to fight enemies as long as you can run out of danger and kiting attacks due to his full stamina bar.

I think It's the best build right now for solo content but you need the 4 staffs.

Melee build right now feels nice and I love it but comparing them, It feels a tank build.

Posible solutions:

I THINK adding a light armor (like the troll set) could be a good Idea for Melee dps builds reducing the ammount of stamina needed to kiting attacks.

Bow/Ballista light set for another type of range combat.

End

FIRST. Srry for my english. Not my original languaje (I'm Spanish) I'm using google transtale x)

If you just read all of this thanks for taking some of your time <3

Have a nice hunt out there vikings ^^

[chewer]

Yeah, mage builds are quite strong. You don't need all four staves, though. You can of course, but I don't think it is absolutely necessary.

For melee, think about combining armor pieces. Root armor, for instance, offers pierce resistance which makes Seekers much less dangerous. In addition, my personal opinion is that more stamina is better compared to more health. So I would eat two stamina food and one health food for melee builds. Lastly, sword + shield is not the best combo for melee DPS. The Atgeir is just so much better at killing and controlling.

Edit: Of course in melee, stamina management is crucial. Don't try to do everything at once! Read the situation right. There's no need to be constantly running, jumping, dodge-rolling, blocking, etc. Heck, I don't even use dodge-rolls or blocks in melee anymore ...

[The Gunsmith]

my conclusion is you made the mistake of taking balanced food. two health one stam or two stam one health and you should be fine. my preference is two stam one health because i like krom too much

[OctoberSky]

There have been several threads on this topic since MIstlands went into PTB and it might be like the argument of google versus bing. If you have gotten this far with well developed melee skills and you like that play style then 'git gudder' (sorry, probably looks even worse in Spanish than in English) with stamina. And Fenris is a popular light choice in Mistlands especially for scaling cliffs. If you don't mind effectively starting over with mage skills then go that path. I like to develop multiple characters in single play within the same seed and have 2 melee and 1 mage in my current play-through. This gives me plenty of fun options to try either since I really can't decide which I like better. So, both.

[Wagor]

The only benefit of being a mage that i found - you dont get close to enemies. Melee is still much more effective. Sword,spear,etc+shield have more DPS than magic stuff because enemies can be parried. Starred enemies much easily being killed by a sneaky knife hit than fireball. Also mages depended on their food - either you have +- plenty of hp/stamina but low eitr, or have 200 eitr but can be easily killed by a flying seeker. Esspecially if you know how to perform combo attacks, they are muuuch better than the magic equipment we can use so far. The best way to fight that we found - mage gives shield and spawns skeletons, whereas melee fighter protects and deals most of damage to dangerous targets(killing berserkers while mage is throwing fireballs at groups of fulings). Should check what will that looks like in Ashlands, maybe mages will be better because we have ice stuff against fire enemies, but silver weapon should be amazing too

[Seal Darklight]

What about an armored mage with 2 eitr food, 1 high hp food, an atgeir (because atgeir is the most OP melee weapon currently) and a crossbow? I find this set to be a safe option of playing a mage. It gives good protection while you can cast fire balls at it.

You might say the low eitr regen is terrible but you're much safer due to full armor and most mistlands enemies you're facing are regular seekers anyway. Seeker soldiers are still tanky despite them taking regular damage from fire (though terrain can sometimes be a good thing and it's better to ignore them) while gjalls can be handled by the crossbow which takes 4 or 5 hits to take down.

I mostly find fire staff and protection to be the most useful. Fire can doe aoe blunt and high fire damage which is good for clearing seekers while protection staff saved me more times than just needing regularly.

Skeletons are good for guarding me while mining while also being semi useful on mistlands dungeon. It's just that they take too much eitr to use. Ice staff I never seem to use since despite them shooting fast and doing frost damage, they drain eitr much faster than fire staff and won't do nearly as much damage as fire does, though this might change in the ashlands since most enemies are gonna be immune to fire anyways. Frost staff is good at close combat and escaping though currently.

I also find magic in this game to be more fun to use but not nearly as satisfying as melee combat. This might be because using fire and frost staff on low tier dungeons and miniboss locations makes it too easy and melee saves durability as well plus I mostly prefer using atgeirs AOE stun. Plus most enemies you're facing are weak trash enemies which isn't worth wasting at all. Though magic against tougher foes is more satisfying to use.

Bloodmagic is way more fun to use with my loadout than elemental. Mainly commanding an army of shielded OP skeletons that hits good hits while having tanky hp pools. There basically wolf/fulings levels of strong that handle most biomes well without dying. Though elemental becomes extremely necessary to use when mistlands and above tier biomes will get added.

[Rhapsody]

The Queen is resistant to pierce damage, and seeker swarms are vulnerable to elemental damage. Don't use crossbow, spears, atgeirs (including himmin afl, it only confers penalty and no bonuses on the boss) or any other piercing weapon except with elemental arrows.

If you want to use magic or elemental arrows on the Queen, you can bring Frostner to knock back, slow down and kill seekers that endlessly spawn through the fight.

Using feather cloak's slow fall to escape and recuperate through the fight is useful. You just need to memorize where the stairs are.

[jonnin]

The queen is a bad test of this, perhaps.
Here is the thing about magic combat: you really 'need' to wear the armor for it and eat the hard to make foods for it. That is a big drawback if you only play this way without any mods to make that easy. The armor is awful for protecting you: you are supposed to use the magic bubble for that, but it feels weak in queen fight for sure, and the food is less than ideal for your health and stamina pool.

meanwhile the normal melee combat guy has armor that resists pierce and a potion that resists poison, making the queens damage quite tamed. Then its just like chopping down a giant cactus... it hurts you some, but it just takes a lot of chops and the job is done. And as a melee guy you can run all kinds of different armor options to get high basic damage resists against most enemy while reducing specific damage (eg fire, pierce.. etc) with a single piece of one of the sets.

Both builds work, but PURE magic is extremely fiddly for staying alive with a greatly reduced armor choices and very annoying with the food issue. Not a fan of pure magic, but I am all about a partial magic build (mostly melee, one magic food active and at most 1 piece of the magic armor in play, allowing skeleton allies with bubbles and lobbing a few ranged fire bombs).

[Psojed]

Originally posted by SAMURAI COP:

- Red-white-yellow food for melee

Don't eat white food, it's bad.
If you Block or Parry, eat either 3x red OR 2x red + 1x yellow.
If you Dodge instead, eat 2x red + 1x yellow or 2x yellow + 1x red.

Gandalf eats minimum 1 magic food, blue food. Otherwise he can't use magic at all.

Originally posted by SAMURAI COP:

Melees stamina costs are too high since It is necessary for:

-Roll on the ground
-Run
-Jump
-Use weapon
-Block
-Heavy armor

Heavy armor doesn't eat any stamina.

Your problem is trying to do all at once. Prioritize.

If no enemies are attacking, do whatever, but don't let Stamina go down to zero.
If enemies are attacking, don't Jump and don't Run!

If you are a shielder, then Parry/Block > Use Weapon.
If you are a 2-hander, then Dodge/Roll > Use Weapon.
Again, don't let Stamina go down to zero. Walk backwards while Blocking/Dodging and regen Stamina mid-combat.

This is called Stamina management, it's the basics of combat.

Originally posted by SAMURAI COP:

Melee build right now feels nice and I love it but comparing them, It feels a tank build.

I think you're forgetting that Bow already exists. Any melee player should have a bow too. Craft some Frost Arrows and you'll be just like Gandalf, but without blue food, 4 staves, weak armor or getting 1 hit killed. Try it.

You can ask your Gandalf to play support, so that you can practice Stamina Management. The Staff of Protection gives a Bubble, and your Gandalf can give Bubble to you melee guys. Bubble starts kinda weak, breaks in 2-3 hits, but Gandalf can be ready and cast a new Bubble as soon as it breaks. If he levels up his Blood Magic skill, the Bubble will become much stronger too.
When you learn how to manage your Stamina, you'll feel way more useful with melee, and you won't need the Bubble anymore to survive.

[POMA]

"The difficult of the world is vanilla" well at that difficulty you can kill mobs/bosses with any build. But at highest difficulty any mistakes what you take from taking dmg is most times fatal, I found only mage build can dodge dmg and be reliable and give you enough movement. Also idk why, but new location is so odd and climbing in fog with almost no light it's just not respecting players. Sounds like devs got someone from Ubisoft who knows how to keep players busy with new content.

[knighttemplar1960]

Its rock, paper, scissors. In this case the queen is rock, magic is paper, archery is scissors, and melee is rock.

[glass zebra]

The sorcerer build did so much damage specifically because there were melees present and the sorcerer could dps without having to think or care about anything but boss dps. It was the melees that raised the dps of that person, while it sounds like they did nothing to help them with their job. The mage could have increased melee dps by spamming blood barriers or tank skeletons too, but it sounds like they choose to let the melees do everything, while they did only dps. Your teammate silently took a specialised role, while the others did tank/hybrid.

This is why specialisation is a good thing if you have more than 1 person doing something. One of the dps could have gone full tank, while the other could have gone full dps (either melee or high skill bow with frost arrows) and trying to never get aggro (takes practice for tank if melee dps). The other dps should have done a lot more total damage than the sorcerer, because etir is more expensive per damage done while also regenerating a lot slower. It is good at burst while being ranged (which is a good combo outside of team boss fights), but bad at sustained dps (with the upside of sprinting not stopping eitr reg, which is irrelevant on a multiplayer boss fight with a tank present). It also does not have something like tasty mead and skills up a lot slower, while starting at 0 in Mistlands. Magic is also extremely great at staying alive with the bubble while being ranged (idk what people are talking about here), but that is also irrelevant in multiplayer and mostly for support/tank.

People also seem to reading the Queen's piercing resistance as "don't use bows", which is nonsense. She has piercing resistance because bows would otherwise be the best damage weapon on most bosses, since they can have close to 100% dps uptime, while melees need to run around a lot on later bosses and in late game the stronger skill scaling from bows is very noticeable. The 50% resistance (which does even fully apply to frost arrows) is to make high skill bow users balanced in boss fights (they have about the same damage/resource as the staff of embers vs spinesnap at skill 60 against the queen, but better reg) and that is probably why we will see it on every boss that will be released, unless they are doing something like Moder again.


What is even the processed white food in Mistlands? I do not know of any. Only low value white food exists after mountains to my understanding and eating that at that point is rather bad.

Originally posted by Psojed:

Heavy armor doesn't eat any stamina.

Heavy armour increases dodge and jump cost while also making you need more stamina from sprint to get anywhere.

Originally posted by Varulo:

I THINK adding a light armor (like the troll set) could be a good Idea for Melee dps builds reducing the ammount of stamina needed to kiting attacks.

The fenris armour already exists and is a valid choice for offensive melees for the fight and increases dps quite a bit, especially since the Queen has such a strong knockback that dodge roll and running wins over parry (which costs more stamina) and block. Unfortunately It is by far the worst armour by time spend in the game to get and bring to max level, but still the best non-tank melee dps armour set. Blood barriers also make armour values matter a lot less, since the barrier will always take 100% of the hit that breaks it and nothing will get to your armour.

Sneaking + troll armour only really works on her in singleplayer, unless your teammates are extremely patient and wait for you to open with a sneak attack anytime she has an aggro cut. Not sure if that 1k dmg sneak attack is worth it in multiplayer.

Originally posted by Varulo:

Bow/Ballista light set for another type of range combat.

That one also exists for bows as the root set (crossbow is currently more of a support weapon for low stamina builds and has pretty terrible dps). That one will also reduce seeker and leech damage taken due to piercing resistance. You better have barley wine against Gjalls though (or blood barrier).