magic is both overpowered and underwhelming at the same time. if you have a character in melee half your spells become non-functional. the only way to increase spell damage outside of gaining levels is to stack intelligence, and they all have a cap on how much intelligence affects them. off the top of my head the spells you can learn at level 1 gain no damage passed 16 or 18 intelligence. also some bosses, like the frost king, have inherently high resistances. even breaking all the totems his weakest resist is still 50% if memory serves me.
on the other hand, if you play a pair of lone-wolf glass-cannon caster builds you can pretty much dominate everything in the game. since you are not trying to melee all of your aoe spells are fully functional. the two casters can play off each others environmental effects. if you have enough loremaster from items and whatnot to see resistances you can always target enemies weakness. this allows for rather absurd damage at times. you can also cheese fights, like the aforementioned frost king, by ending each turn with the invisibility spell. enemies wont even fight back in most cases.
that said, in most cases you never need more than 3 in any spell school. at that point you will have all of the best spells any school offers and that you will commonly use. however, this is for everyone really, not just spell casters. going over 3 in most skills is generally not worth it unless you want a specific trait.
overall though melee is really better. sure a spell caster can drop a group of inconsequential enemies really quickly, but they are severely nerfed on bosses. the trash enemies normally wont be able to kill you anyhow, and just picking up a few points of hydro will give you healing, and with melee you can dominate the bosses.
Last edited by MrFritz; 02/08/14 01:30 PM.
