Yup...bingo on the useless archer/mage class. Never had such a crappy cooldown system. Like a level1 heal spell would need a cooldown for a level 20+ wizard. Some of the spells actually increase in cooldown. That's just not right.
But the bit you mentioned about worthless archer -- same with many magic missle attacks. You can't shoot even though you can see the target -- but game prevents you -- this is very non-real life.
Instead, you have to wait until you get closer -- then they attack you and you still can't shoot back! That's just stupid! So then I have to walk much closer until the light comes on -- then I can attack.
Another problem -- my summoned monsters (2 of em) will be attacking creatures from behind me that are in front of me, yet they are out of range of me. My magic missle is supposed to 'seek' enemies -- again -- my summoned creatures can be fighting, but I'm not allowed to fire. Very lame.
I nearly always play magic users in DND type games. This is the first game I was force to play fighter, cuz the magic is worthless. Mana was never an issue because cooldowns would prevent me from even denting it.
The only game that's worse on 'cooldowns' was sacred2 (which crashes ALOT on Win7, because they claim win7 is so buggy. HA!, everyone else says win7 is better than vista, cept sacred2 devs -- problem is their DRM doesn't function under win7 -- is disabled for 'causing OS instability' (it seems pretty stable under XP though). Cooldowns in sacred2 increase all the way up to level 200 -- most spells become useless after about level 50. Tried to play a magic user there -- nogo. Paladin(seraphim) was ok though -- as they could exist on passive (buffs), and fighting and some 1-shot spells that deal massive damage in a large radius -- usually enough to kill most creatures outright.
For some reason seems like this is the 2nd game that's decided to severely penalize magic users with long cooldowns.
You are expected to play as primarily a fighter -- with all else being 2ndary. At least that's how the game is setup -- arrows don't do near enough damage -- I've had to use well over 10-15 arrows to take down a skeleton, and that's with a bow that does over 100+/shot -- vs. My dual wield ability @+13, gives me +120/+120 per weapon, or about 900-1200/swing. Don't see any similar ability for arrows -- especially, as you note,
the monsters can fire upon you a fair amount before you can fire on them.
I suspect it's something to to do with the ranger 'sneak' ability where they can get closer before I detect them -- that's fine if I'm not staring at them. But it's also connected to their fireball and magic ability. So I have to carry a bow, and use that ability to get the same bonus, and switch to swords when I'm overwhelmed? I don't usually travel in packs of 6-8 like many groups of monsters I meet -- so I'm forced into melee, while they can stay separated and use archer abilities.
There are ways that fighters are overly strong, perhaps to compensate for some of these problems, but it really makes the other classes difficult to specialize in.
