Your also arguing that you dont want to have to use a specific skill or technique and that people shouldnt define what the role of a warrior is....but let me throw that back at you - I want to play a mage that runs into the middle of 10 monsters and kicks butt in melee range. How well do you think Id do ? Maybe I dont want the mage to be defined as a ranged damage dealer...oh wait, thats really kinda what they are designed to be.
Ok, you misunderstood what I was talking about. In fact, I specifically said "viable within reason". Your examples are not what I would define as "reasonable". I suggest re-reading what I wrote again.
It bears noting that it is viable within reason. A close-range mage, exclusively using mage skills, can do exceptionally well on Hard mode. You won't have the raw damage of a man-at-arms with two-handed weapons, but as long as you're patient, you'll make up for it with better tanking and better debuffing. There's no shortage of close-range spells with low AP costs and low cooldowns, from the various touch skills, to Lightning Strike and Teleport for positioning, to Why-Is-This-A-Witchcraft-Skill Punch, and Better-version-of-Whirlwind-quake.
Others spells actually allow you to draw and tank aggro better than a warrior does. Pyrokinetics in particular gives you Wildfire for Haste, Self-Immolation for close-range punishment, Smokescreen to shut down ranged attackers, and self-healing Fireballs and Explosions if your Fire Resistance is above 100 (which it will be, because Fire Shield). If you're really cheap, you can use Lava Core for that last thing, too. The other skill groups are less robust for melee, but they bring more self-healing, more ways to focus aggro on yourself, more debuffs to make that non-threatening ... in addition to Fortify, elemental shield spells, the status-immunizing spells that are so crucial at melee range, Become Air, Absorb Elements, and Invulnerability for emergencies.
The point of all this is to demonstrate that once mages get going, they're not just BETTER than warriors, they're better than warriors
at the things warriors are supposed to be good at. I don't like using mages this way, because I liek me some sword mans. But well-played mages are better than anything else at every range; and if we're working from the premise that casters and fighters should be equal, that's a problem. That premise isn't
necessarily correct (though I agree with it), and you can beat the game on Hard with any skill set. But for mages, it's a whole lot easier.
