So first off..I had a blast playing mages during EA. It didn't seem so bad (with physical damage dealers still being much stronger, however), then again it was only the first act, so it could've been that.

Now, I was really looking forward to doing a Pyro playthrough, but it's really not that fun...

The spells are so weak that you can barely scrape the magical armor, while melees and Rangers just tear through their targets like it's nothing.

Can't even CC properly, because it's all blocked by that ******* magic armor.

Kinda hoping for a mod somewhere down the line, that fixes mages.

Mages just need a better level 1 to 6. Current scaling and lack of item is why they seem so weak atm. They really need help in Act 1. It's different when you get to Act 2 and 3 though.

Once you unlock source spell like Chain Lighting and Epidemic of Fire, they become much stronger while being tanky since you don't need a weapon so you can always go wand-shield for increased int while having tons of armors and magic defense. Because of how the scaling kicks up, those two spells can easily wipe a team in 2 casts with the jump from target to target. It also helps that 1-source spells like Arrow Spray is just lolololweak.

And when you unlock 3-source spell, Meteor Shower and Hail storm can easily destroy the game as much as Arrow Shower does.

I mean, that's absolutely true. The mage source skills rock. But that I have to use source skills to be a "competitive" or rather efficient damage dealer...seems like a flaw to me.

Especially when Ranger can just strip away armor with 1 or 2 hits.

The game has infinite source pool on Act 1 2 and 3 once you find the location of the source fountain, and all of them can accessed really early.

When the game gives you infinite source, you really can't balance them around not using source spell anymore. At this point, the cost are just there so you can't use MEteor Shower AND hail storm in the same battle on the same char without drinking source potion or being in a certain fight.

"Infinite Source" is a bit strong. If you run out of source/source potions, you cast that spell and then your mage is useless for the rest of the fight because the physical damage dealers will run circles around him.

The tediousness of always draining corpses, making potions, or looking for fountains ( to even be somewhat efficient once your mage got his buffs out) doesn't make it better.

I run a staff battlemage on clasic as my avatar and overall I am happy with my ability to cc them. On clasical at least they seem to stereotype the non monster enemies by making it so that the ones who need to come in melee range to damage you have high phys armor and low magic armor while the backrow guys are the exact oposite.

That may be true for about the first quarter of the game. Then enemies start getting more and more of both armor types until your mage is just uselessly standing around until that one buff is back off cooldown.

mage is a bit crap in this game. Pyromancer so far has only a strong skill is fire ray which deal HUGE damage, other skills is more like CC version like anything. In fact, most of mage skill is all but cc skill one way or another.
Even pyromancer which supposed to be pure damage has most of its skill for area denial. Fire ray cost 3 ap, so if you cast one, you're left with using haste or clear minded than anything.

Considering the current strength of 3-source spell now, I gaurantee you that outside boss fight, you only need to cast them once to win the fight.

I played through the game twice. Once on Classic (Summoner), and once on Honour (Pyro/Geo).

The 3-pointers aren't nearly that strong.

And don't get me wrong..I'm actually one of the minority in that I really like the armor system. The thing is that mages, right now, just completely and utterly get overshadowed by physical damage dealers.

The main reason for the overshadowing is due to the lack of physical resist. The only good 3-point magics are Meteor shower and Hail storm and if you run into one that blocks fire or water, you're screwed. All the other 3-points try to hard to have utility or take too longs to deal damage that they fail to do both.

Most spells in this game try too hard to do both of them instead of just being situational but good. That's why over 70% of the spells are disappointing to use.

Guess I'm stuck waiting for either Larian to read the magic feedback, or a mod that rebalances the whole game :c
I really want to do a proper mage playthrough.

We need spells that really make use of the surface, like a spell that consume all the surrounding water to shoot one giant water bubble with ridiculous damage and CC if the entire area is covered and so on. We just have "Absorb and recover X". That's boring as hell.

We can't even alter enemies resist outside "Make them wet with rain" that goes through immunity. It's always the enemies using some move like the last boss and the zombie guy with his plague.

That's actually a really good idea. Spells like that would be totally awesome. Maybe even make source versions of these for additional (or cursed) effects.
Anything that lets mages burn through armor quickly would be welcomed. The only thing kind of doing that right now is Laser Ray, but the cooldown is shit :c

I will agree that fire spells are stupidly weak outside Meteor and Epidemic of Fire. Just look at fire ball damage. 2 AP and it barely does more than Masterrace Lizard breath unless you can get highground bonus and crit going.

Haste also got nerfed to 1 AP cost from 0 so using it in combat is almost no longer worth it unless you're the support char and just using it on someone else to make them deal more damage.

I will probably ignore fire spells in general for combat and just go for something like pre-haste -> combat Rain -> Elemental Affinity Hail -> Elemental Affinity Ice shard for a 1 + 3-1 + 3-1 combo with 5 AP if that's how ElA really works.

I actually wish ElA isn't a thing and that they just reduce those 3-cost spell to 2 cost again. The "Less AP cost" stuffs always make it impossible to balance and you either use it and be average or not use it and feel useless. It also forces them to balance 2 AP cost as if they are 1 AP spells (Ha, fire ball).

Just make talents like "Demon" give you fire resist penetration and so on so people that want to specialize in a certain element can take those instead.

Is it that bad? Urgh.

I was planning into respeccing Red Prince into a Pyro mage with a staff that does Phoenix dive for fire surface, and try to get 2H stuff for crit, but I'll see how bad it is

Don't. Do yourself a favor and stay physical.

As a mage, either spam source skills and hope for the best, or be a glorified buff-machine.

Why is everyone ignoring Pyroclastic and Thunderstorm? Both are 3-point mage spells that on a hybrid huntsman/specified element build do insane amounts of damage?


Mage builds are meant to be back line, so why people dont treat them like they do their rangers to me is just, quite frankly, inane. high ground is a core mechanic for mages, and even with the stat inflation issues for armor/damage, i manage to wipe out all magic armor for a boss fight for all enemies involved, and either chain cc them to death afterwards, or outright kill them.

Take thunderstorm for example. Pop that, toss out a charm grenade. Call it a day. meteor shower and hail storm are good, but not the only viable spells. dazzling bolt from aero, to impale from geo, even eldritch storm has its uses.

Probably because I don't want to play as a hybrid, rather as a full mage. Pyroclastic IS an awesome spell. But, like I said, to be dependant on source skills to be useful is just bad game design.

I, personally, found my pyro lizard to be really strong come mid to late campaign. I equipped with a wand and shield for the ability to survive on the front line, and With "elemental affinity" and "the pawn", AP costs easily became negligable. Add that to the fact that I was almost pure INT and Pyro for my points

The first turn was often:
Use half of free movement to reposition for firebreath, preferably to hit at least two targets.
Use other half of free movement to walk into the fire you just made.
Fireball for 1 AP
Laser Ray for 2 AP

Now, it never outright kills anyone at-level, but that's okay. What it does do is annihilate all their magic armor and bring them to 75 or 50%, where my support magician can bring in some pain or crowd control.

Yes, it's not as much single target damage as an elf archer using flesh sacrifice into elemental arrowheads on the blood you just made in order to try and annihilate one target, but it's most definitely more damage in a single turn than my ranger ever managed. I'm starting a new campaign (gotta see the stories and personalities of the 3 origins I missed) and I'm definitely going to be using a fire lizard again among the the other new builds I want to try.

There's only 1 fight in the entire game that allows you to use more than 1 3-source spell without doping on source potion. When you consider that, you are better off always using Meteor Shower or Hailstorm unless the enemies are immune because it's just way better in every way at doing its job, destroying your foes.

As long as Elemental Affinity exists, non-source spell will never be balanced properly.

Fire example is the easiest example with Fireball. You can't treat it like a 2 AP spell because it can be used at 1 AP cost, that's why they gutted its damage so heavily it doesn't deserve a place as a 2 AP spell anymore.

Another one is Hail strike. It used to be decent at 2 AP and now, it's 3 AP because you can always combo it with Rain and it becomes a 2 AP. Use that with Ice shard and you pretty much double your damage in a single turn but use it as a 3 AP = wasting ap.

As long as Elemental Affinity exists, they always have to assume the mage can end up shooting twice or thrice as much non-source spells in a single turn and have to balance all the popular spell around it. Outside Impalement with its slow field and physical cripple, the only other one I actually feel good using is Earthquake because it's a teamwide knock down. Else, I just stick to 1 AP cost because they didn't balance those around ElA.

So you basically do with 3 spells and a whole lot of AP wasted on movement, what a Ranger could do with 1 well-placed shot? I mean...good for you.

Not only that, but those spells are also on a cooldown, and you just used 3 of your arsenal. That greatly diminishes any offensive capabilities for the next few turns.

I don't appreciate snark when you clearly didn't even understand what I wrote.



A good mage always has lots of damage spells. The entire arsenal is not limited to those three abilities. By the time I ran out of spells, everything was dead. That rather serves its purpose, no?

Well, luckily I don't care if people on the internet don't appreciate what I say. However, point taken.

My point was, that in some fights, you can basically unload your whole arsenal and the enemy team isn't even halfway dead. What are you going to do then? Stand around uselessly and auto attack with your wand?

I may be a bit disgruntled. I wanted to enjoy my mage playthrough. But after running around 50+ hours as a Ranger..I just can't.

So who is better for solo? Warfare physical with some Aero (evades), Necro (shackled,bone armor,death wish etc. supporting spells only) plus Reactive Armor (I moded it to be pre-nerf still) and poly or Ranger with those?

I find physical warrior to be so strong its not a joke. How are Rangers?

Also which melee weapon is best? Two-handed ones?

Just do a team of four Rangers and you're settled for life.

Ranger is brokeop until they nerf gear scaling and Arrow storm. They already have to soft nerf Ranger by never giving them scaled gear in Act 3.

Best Melee is 2 handed, go with club or axe because they seem to have more stats, like how you always go Xbow instead of Bow for more damage even if it comes with -1 movement distance.

Rangers scaling gear in Act3 was nerfed?? When?

So if you were to solo tactician- ranger or warfare warrior (with his usual stuff)?

Rogues are also extremele strong end game with their backstab because you can put everything to Finesse. That damage SKYROCKETS later.

Looking for best tactician solo physcial build.

It's not a direct patch note nerfs. It's a game design limitation. You can barely find the ranger weapon in Act 3. I went into the final fight with an epic bow, not a legendary or Divine, because no one was selling it. Every other classes still get to use Unique and Divine weapons at level 20.

That's why I said it's a soft nerf, placing a bunch of a bunch limitation on the class just to keep them in line. I went all over Arx and ship as I work my way through act 3. Every ranger-gear npc suddenly stop selling divine/legenday xbow at level 20 and 21. Meanwhile, Warrior still get Divine weapon and even Anathema for the last fight.

That sounds very unlikely! I doubt Larian would do such design instead of just adjust damage of skills etc.

Still - for tactician solo- ranger or melee?

Ranger
Lonewolf
Stealth
Get some Ini to always go first.

Bonus point if you're an undead. Use act dead after Stealth is over to stall and then proceed to retreat on the next turn so you can return to the fight later with full skill roster again and just repeat the same strat.

Learn animation cancel to get 2-3 hits of your xbow in before the fight begins.

How to animation cancel? I have never heard about it.

Attack animation like crossbow has the following

Wind up time (Get into shooting position)
Shooting time (Bolt flies out)
Recovery time (Putting down the crossbow, can't do anything)

The recovery time is insanely long so you can only get 1 shot out most of the time before the combat begins. However, if you can remove that, you will be able to wind up and a second shot and send it flying as the fight begins, giving you another hit on the enemies as the bolt is already in motion, or even 3 if they take ages to find you.

Simply attack an enemy and the moment you hear and see the bolt fly out, going into sneak mode. The sneak mode can be used to delete the recovery animation and allow you to do issue another attack command while the first bolt is in motion.

It's extremely strong, even stronger than using Snipe with sneak or barrage. Only really needed if you want fights to be really easy or having issues keeping up with gears and need a bit of extra damage.

exploit ++;

Next: Ellezard creates a thread claiming that crossbows are horribly OP and need nerfing. :P

I talked about this exploit since EA and didn't even bother to use it in Act 2. The furthest I went with it was Fort joy because ranger is too op anyway.

And crossbow are actually buffed to the point Bow are currently worthless. You use bow, your damage drop. They still have the stat of a 3-ap cost weapon while only using 2 AP now.

Maybe

Since I RP though you'll never ever see me put a crossbow on Sebille or any other elf, -10% or even -20% damage be damned. Crossbows are for humans and dwarves. Inelegantclumsyweaponsgrumblegrumbleelvishgracefulnessmumblepfffft.

Sorry for derailing.

Thanks. For Huntsman skills to deal most damage- I should be leveling Ranged or Warfare? Because Range is 5% dmg with 1% Crit Chance and warfare is only 5% physical increase, so I guess Ranged is better?

The way the game damage work is

Weapon damage * (1+ 0.05*(Fin + Ranged level)) * (1+0.05*warfare level) * (Crit + highground bonus)

Ranged actually sucks. The only weapon talent worth taking is 2Handed because outside warfare, there's nothing boosting it.

Max Warfare and Huntsman for most damage. Warfare first.

Made me laugh. Thanks :P

It is stupid that those spells are Source related... i didn't thought that.

First game you could use those spells without "source", they really just wanted to nerf mages all the way it seems.

Source is a stupid mechanic anyway.

That's what I said as soon as I got into the Alpha. I hated the source point mechanic for spells we could use no proplem in OS1.

Source as a mechanic is stupid. Source should have been special upgrade points to upgrade your skills/powers beyond normal, not be stupid limited ammo.

Honestly, aside from starter being VERY weak for mages which is the usual thing in D:OS it seems, they get to be fine really.

Like maybe not balls to the wall min/max physical damage dealer, but really they do the job for me. I stack crit like mad on wizard, ended above 80% crit with Geo/Pyro and it wrecks pretty fine, really.

I am sure physical can be min/maxed more, but this did the job just fine really.

14 base int - mainly stack wits. hot head + savage sortile.
get all the crit chance + wits you can get on gear.
there is a 2 slot amulet somewhere in act 2 socket it with the highest fire runes you have.
once you get power frames and giant runes put them on your fire runes first. 3 int and loads of crit.
in arx you will get a 3 slot amulet at that point you will probably reach 100% crit.
school priority: your choice of ele > scoundrel > huntsman.
use the higher ground!
once you get that 20% crit chance weapon you will feel like a god.

All my spells crit for 3k dmg at lvl 21 - source spells usually one shot everything.

my mage has last rites that damage can crit too =D - so I pain chackled an enemy used living on the edge and next turned revived the dead ally. it crit for 7k piercing damage - way to turn a death into a stunning victory ^_^

thank me later.

I finished my classic play through with a 4 man physical group.

Near the end of Act 2 on my second. Playing on tactical with two lone wolf mages. I've yet to use a single source spell besides bless. This play through has incredibly easy. I'm was taking on lvl 15 enemies at lvl 12.

This is due to multiple things. One that lone wolf seems incredibly broken. Two that I know a lot more about the game and the fights. Three is the I don't need to go find gear every level or two on a mage to keep going, my damage scales with level up alone.

I think I could run through with two lone wolf physical characters probably a little quicker, but I'm not sure it would be easier. Mage AoE and range are huge benefits that help in a lot of fights.

Spells really dont do more damage than normal attacks from rangers for example but yet you have long CDs on them. It wouldnt be as bad if your wand attack would do as much damage as from a normal bow or weapon attack but it doesnt, it does way less damage.

On top of it mobs have resistances which lowers your damage even further and thanks to the new armor/shield system there is nothing which reduces physical damage.

If you dont care for achievements I can recommend the fast casting mod for mages which halves the CDs for damage spells.

You are already limited by AP so I dont get why Larian didnt balance the game around having low CDs on damage spells like lightning bolt, fireball etc. ? Its bad gamedesign if you always have to use each round different spells. And often enough you are not left with a good alternative for 1-2 rounds, doesnt make sense and is not fun.

So mages are weak huh.

What about a mage that is up close and is designed around the 2-handed perk and a staff, using things like Master of Sparks, Firebrand and whirlwind.

Or an Aero Equivalent, Staff beat downs and touch based spells??

Still not that great?

I agree that physical damage dealers stroger, But mages have better aoe. Get elemental affinity and put 1 in warfare to get executioner, then mages do insane damage. You can cast impale, fosill strike and fireball in one turn, reduce 3-4 enemies life to %25

... that sounds awesome. Must try on my next playthrough ^^

(Although at the moment I get nervous trepidations from just hearing 'fire aoe'. I did the 'oil rig' fight last night where you have to save the apprentice on the gallows. Good god. FIRE EVERYWHERE! Cursed fire too. Ugh.)

I know this seems to primarily be focused on elemental damage casters, but Summoners are stupidly strong. They can be stupidly boring too if you are trying to use them as a buffer, and their spell damage will generally be weaker too for a while since your goal is to rush Summoning to 10.

Rangers are easily the strongest class in the game. The main downside is finding 3x - 4x bows of comparative damage every few levels. Otherwise, they don't really have any downsides as a class, and I know two-handed gets mentioned a bit, but two-handed has nothing on what Rangers can do.

1. Start leveling up Summoning.
2. Raise Finesse and use a bow. Summoning exists on Finesse gear. There's even Int + Summoning on Finesse gear.
3. At some point early, put a single point into Huntsman (or get it through gear).
4. Profit.

It's not initially going to be as strong as a Warfare focused Ranger in terms of the damage you personally do with a bow, but you end up with a "caster" that can do significantly more single target damage over time compared to wands, and you also end up with a giant ass pet that can learn spells that do more damage than a dedicated elemental damage dealer for a very long time. It also doesn't hurt that you need 3 in any given school at some point if you want to buff the pet to the (insanely strong) source versions either, so you can still use all of the non stat, level only scaling abilities. And of course Teleport...

Right now i have started two games with my friends in coop.

The first party was:

Cleric
Enchanter
Knight
Ranger

The second party was:

Cleric
Rouge (Undead)
Conjurer (Undead)
Enchanter

The first party is right now hell to play. The knight and the Cleric are very, ,very slow. Enemy is running away most of the time. Ranger is getting focused down very often. Mages feel somewhat weak in the first act. I like the enchanter, but after he has used all his spells, he stands in the corner and stares holes into cheese.


The second party is an easy walkthrough. The rouge just destroys everything and everybody. I think this class is one of the strongest in the game. Especially as undead, because the enemy never uses poison against you and your party.

Some people say the Conjurer is weak. I do not think so. 5th party member and the conjurse incarnate does TONS of damage. + We are playing him as undead, so posion the area and there you go.

I have build my cleric on Necromancer, Warrior and hydro. Most of the time i am not even healing with him, but using the healing and necro spells as wepons. With some Warrios skills throwing CC skills at the enemies. And i have got the flesh summoning for the Cleric as Necromancer. So we have 6 party members all the time.

The enchanter got some geomancer spells to heal our undead or weaken the enemy.

Normally the first Team build should be the stronger one, but it is not.

The second build concentrates on the rouge most of the time as the main damage dealer. It works better than a knight and a cleric. They are both to slow.

"Tanky" builds in this game are way too slow and actually kind of pointless since enemies just ignore them anyway. The only real reason to go into Warfare besides physical damage is for Battle Stomp, or if you're wanting to play as a caster with a shield, Shield Toss. Battle Stomp is weapon based anyway, not stat based. Even once you unlock the mobility skills from either Huntsman or Scoundrel (even using The Pawn talent), they just don't do enough damage for the AP.

They kind of could, but then Reactive Armor was nerfed, so now they don't. Ranger is actually weak for the first few levels other than getting the Ifran specific crossbow as well as the one in the fort dungeon, but once you can actually start buying or finding gear, they take off. Ifran alone is a game changer early on.

Apologies but I feel the overwhelming urge to post this link for the betterment of mankind.

That's still not a spell-based "mage" (get it, mage as in someone who stands back and casts stuff?), but a melee one. Now go stand in the corner and be ashamed of yourself.



Summoners aren't even "stupidly strong". They start off very solid, but the damage and tankiness fall flat in mid- to lategame. When your Incarnate (with Summoning 12 + Infusions) does about 980 per swing, and your physical tank does about 1200+ per auto-attack with crap gear and almost no points in Warfare..you know something's off.

It's not like I'm new to the series and was looking for some actual advice before I commit to a build I know almost nothing about with regards to how it works let alone the rest of the game in terms and mechanics, do's and don't and part comps, your input was very helpful.

Also touch based spells are spells - go home. Whether I shock you in your face or from far away, I shocked your arse.

Blah blah. I guess Whirlwind is a spell then also? I'm glad you found my input helpful, however. Always happy to help!

Maybe I should've worded my first post a bit better..or the title for that matter. I'm neither talking about melee mages, nor about mage hybrid builds.

Well you can not play divinity from the "classical" point of view.

The classical combos like: 1 tank, one healer, one mage + 1 another DD does not work out very well.

Because tanks in Divinity 2 are ignored most of the time by the enemy. No tank has the "taunt" ability available at lvl 1.

You have the knight with tons of CC, but no "tank" abilities. ( The fighter who would be the classical tank, has no taunt ability too)

The healer class has one healing spell and it needs a lot of time to recharge. Something like a "true" healer does not exist in this game at the beginning.

A "true" mage would be the fire wizard. Sorry to say it that way, but this class is outright bad. In the early game you blow up your mates all the time or you can not use your spells at all. And even when you have the chance to use them, the damage is very bad.

+ The scaling in the early game for all mages. (Not good)

(+ Bartering, Lucky charm and thievery are MUST HAVE in every game!)

Do not understand me wrong. I like this game very much and i am playing it a lot right now.

But as i have written before. I have got a very hard time playing the "classical" combo, before switching to full AP rogue + support mage builds.

In Divinity 2 "mages" are basically support caster classes. Or combined classes.

Because of this full damage mages are not very good.

Right now i am playing a party with only ap classes, with some support magic and most of them are agility classes. Armor is basically useless, when the enemy is kiting you around.

The best combos are burst combos at the moment, with a lot of movement.

Considering this thread has already talked about rangers and summoners and two handed melee chars, I don't think me asking about the viability of an alternative mage build was all that strange, what was the harm?

Whirlwind is a spell when you're enchanted with Master of Sparks, your sword shoots flames, that's pretty damn magical

Like I said, this is my first Divinity game, or any top down rpg, you can probably appreciate wanting a little help when this game boasts such depth.

And I still don't know if it's just ranged based casters that are comparatively weak or if Staff Based Melee Range Casters are too, or if they actually perform well.

*sigh*

How about you try and gear your mage properly?

My Pyromancer with a dab of everything did the same and often more dmg than my physical dmg dealers.

I will admit that the other skill lines are abit weaker, but Laser Ray and Firewhip both could easily tear through magic armor turn 1 and whipe them off the board turn 2 if they had weak magic armor.

I keep hearing this about how the mages fall behind the physical, but I had no such issues. I ran 2 mages, and a 2handed tank and a huntsman, everything went smoothly. Yes on classic, and I never used source spells besides the final battle. So yeah, not sure what you're doing wrong but I had no issues.

Honestly it somewhat devolved into munchkinism here. It kinda begs a question what exactly is "weak" in some people minds, is "weak" meaning you are not oneshotting shit turn 1 or something?

Honestly mages are fine, it's more a case where there are more retarded combos and synergy builds exist there and they happen to have physical affinity because of more scaling with weapons.

But in the end you can do it just fine with mages really.

The reason anyone can do it just fine with mages is because the game itself isn't difficult as long as you have the right gears and run on the right tracks. This is caused by the fact that 95% (or somewhere around that) of the encounter in the game can be beaten through sheer power.

That's why Mages, even in their current stat, can perform as long as you stack a bunch of stuffs that deal tons of damage that instantly kill the target in a single round of action or at least leave a bunch half dead and disabled for the next person to clean.

With how mages are played, they might actually be considered the more "balance" choice atm. The problem is that the average power level of physical builds is higher than even the power of the best mage builds, making them seem weak. No matter how well they perform, mages will always feel like a weaker ranger atm since they can bounce attack with ricochet, deal as much or more damage with highground crit with any CC and element as long as they have the arrows along with the best AoE in the game while also having a mobility skill. If it wasn't for the game lack of high level crossbow, offensive mages would never be able to catch up at level 20.

You keep saying this, are you sure you haven't just gotten a weird distribution of random loot/store rolls?

I spent like 5 hours shopping everything as I ran around being level 21 and doing stuffs + afking for shops to restock.

Had to go for a 319 -334 + 56-59 water level 21 epic crossbow from the ranger store. An epic, not even a legendary because the npc refuses to sell it and the ship Fletcher keeps selling me divine armor.

So if that's a weird distribution compared to what you get from shopping at level 1-20, the chance for the crossbow to appear must be really low.

Yeah, this again. You mean late Act 3 or Act 4 when the game is about over? And you don't use the Incarnate just for its melee attacks. They can do whatever you need them to do and have extremely strong hitting spells too. Good luck doing 1200+ auto attacks before then. Besides, you aren't just limited to the Incarnate with a high Summon skill anyway.

This isn't all that different from the Widow vs Incarnate thread either where some are complaining about how much more damage the Widow does. Yep, it does more physical damage and has a teleport by default. It also has zero magic armor and gets CC'd like no other and cannot launch 1K+ AoE spells or stand in cursed fire getting healed.

My post wasn't about a Summoner exclusively you know? Since you're so focused on end game anyway, by the time a specialized melee character is hitting that hard, a Summoner/Ranger will be doing way more damage overall per battle.

Prior to end game yes, they really are very strong. They just don't scale as well as gear does for melee attacks at the end.

But look, I hear what you're saying in your first post. The armor system really screwed up the classic Mage gameplay early on, and the best thing they have going for them is Fossil Strike (later Impalement), Teleport and the occasional oil + fire combo. Both Hydro and Aero are terrible for setting up combos, and both are weaker than Pyro for damage. Pyromancy Mages scale pretty well though, and Ellezard already hit upon how Mages are probably the most balanced baseline. It's the other stuff that's out of whack. I already realized from day one though that physical damage dealers were simply better in general anyway though, but I didn't want to play that way for a first playthrough.

This is weird for me, because from my playthrough, I always get annoyed how long it takes to ranger/rogue to wear down enemies compared to mages... Sure, they can almost take down 1 enemy per turn, finish him off and start with another in turn 2...

But compared that to my mages, take can take down armor and half HP of 2-5 enemies per turn, while priming them for death in turn 2 thanks to fires and all that shit. The thing is, the more mages you have, the merrier it gets. Because when you set up your enemies for combos, its better to combo them with 2-3 characters, not just 1 mage. And so when I set up poison/fire for my elemental proc, I use it by 2 persons atleast, a fire two fireballs, 2 rays, 2 earthquakes, 2 impales...

And absolutely amazing combination with that is medusa head from polymorph - for some reason, it seems to scale with strength, while being magical earth damage checking magical armor - and it hits HARD. It can CC whole map at once after mage combo, and with proper use of initiative my poly warrior always goes after my mages, so the CC chain just goes on.

And please bear in my mind, that I play hybrid team, warfare+poly+summoner, rogue, and 2 mages (but one is running with crossbow and arrows in case I need to take down some more phys armor).

That. Also I would say that summons and totems are created from the surface element so they should consume the surface.

Back to topic. what I see is Everyone is a mage now. Even "Fighter" is a mage with a sword. Game says its classless, but here is just one class, its mage. I cant play a barbar Conan/Gottrek Gurnisson archetypes. Game do not offer me a brute brawler, just different types of mages.
Just look at warrior skill set its AOE/ ranged / buffs other collection. Its a mage.

Say that mage is weaker, is nonsence. There are only mages. So for me, refresh warfare skill set to be brute melee range skills / melee range debuf / self buffs. After that we could talk about difference warrior vs mage.

Now its mage vs mage.

Mages are weak? Yea, right! I started off playing a backstab character (till Act 3)...until I started playing around with pyromancy. I do agree that in starting off as a mage (especially as lone wolf) can be challenging, but as the game progresses you just get stronger and stronger.

Using just necromancery and pyromancery I lone wolfed the entire game on classic mode. Once my build hit its peak (around act 2), I pretty much started 1 shotting everything. The most important thing for me besides mobility, was making sure I went first. So I made sure to toss a couple points into wits, especially after maxing int.

My tooltip damage for spells like fireball was about 3-4k, though my crit chance with it was about 65% (Savage Sortilege ftw). So most of my spells hit for about 5-6k, and the big ones crit could crit as high as 12-18k (avg, have crit even higher). The most insane part was most spells were either AOE or a cone. Keep in mind fire also does burning damage on top of all of that....

My personal combo for starting fights was flaming skin + peace of mind + supernova. If you can line yourself up to hit as many around you as possible, this combo is golden. Normally I had enough AP left over even after it to do another spell like laser ray or firewhip (depending on the situation).

If I was using this on a boss, I would use gap close (phoenix dive or cloak and dagger) + flameskin + peace of mind + adrenaline + supernova + haste + flame tongues (if anything survived or melee was still on the battlefield) + chameleon cloak. Keep in mind I probably opened with laser ray.

So with this setup if any enemy survived and tried to walk out of the fire I put all around me, they would get hit by flame tongue (which hits super hard lol). Otherwise, I would sit there for 2 turns building up AP and waiting on cooldowns.

Since I was playing lone wolf on classic, my build was using sword/board (happened to have a sword with +25% crit bonus and some nice stats). To do more damage I could have dual wielded weapons for higher crit, but I got to addicted to shields up for harder fights.

I also suggest always using necromancery as a backup to deal with anything "immuned" to your primary spell damage type. Since you still get the scaling bonus from your int for necromancery, it can still do decent damage. Its also handy at lower lvl when some mages have extremely high magic armor, but low physical armor.

There are some spells that can be casted from stealth that are great openers for combat, and others that will get interrupted before you finish (due to dialogue). I also agree that from my testing so far, pyromancery spells seem to do the most damage out of all of the other elements.

I will have to do more testing on this, as the stats on my of my gear late game was all pyromancery. In fact that's yet another insane part of mage, I wore boots through the entire game that had 20 physical defense on them. I used them purely because they were a unique that gave +1 to pyromancery. I was looking for a replacement...but never found one lol.

If you choose to use supernova...keep in mind without flameskin you will need to have more magic armor than the damage you deal with supernova. Otherwise its possible to 1 shot yourself

Hi can anyone advice how to build a high damage pyromancer and what other schools pair well with it? I know there's other builds that do more damage overall but I like caster and would like some advice to playing one.

you are overthinking this...

start game, give points to intelligence, pyromancy, geomancy.

add points more or less evenly to these skills, and if you run out of memory, add memory.

tadaa