While some enemies have Magical weakness, the vast majority do not and even when they do it is often pretty minor.
I agree. I can only think of a few encounters where an enemy has a negative resistance (I think there's skeleton near the blind man that has 200% fire res, and -50% water res). He got melted by my enchanter, but he could have been easily solo'd with my rogue.
Wands have the absolute lowest damage per AP by a large margin and Staves are beat out by Str weapons by reasonable amount. Even spells have low damage when compared to weapon abilities.
I believe wands/staves do less damage compared to physical weapons, due to the fact that they trigger secondary effects. An air weapon hitting a guy standing on a puddle can potentially stunlock him forever. A poison element weapon against a guy on fire will trigger explosions, which will scale with Pyrokinetic. When you mix oil into all of this, the cycle between
poison->
fire->
explosion->
oil->
explosion will rack up a great deal of damage.
My last playthrough consisted of the cheesy OP scoundrel/polymorph rogue elf (who could solo groups by himself, but that's another topic), and a pyrokinetic/geomancer wizard. The rogue far outdamaged the wizard of course, especially early game, but after a few levels, my wizard was able to routinely handle groups of enemies himself. So while I think physical-based damage could use some toning down, magic damage is still powerful in its own right. He never felt like a liability.
Another large hit to using Magic is that they lack a solid passive skill to increase their damage./quote]
I believe Geomancer raises poison damage by 5% per point invested as well. Aerothurge and Hydrosophist do seem like they could use some more love, damage-wise, but they may be the way they are right now since Aerothurge has a very powerful stun (especially mixed with water or blood). Hydrosophist's vitality increase, mixed with decaying touch, is pretty lethal but I do feel like water/shock damage could use some love.
[quote=error3]I'm not saying Mages can't do fine in the game, I'm just saying they often feel weak when compared to Physical.
Oh definitely. Scoundrel in particular is very powerful right now, and the advantage of focusing on one damage type is apparent when you face some of the tougher enemies like Bishop Alexander, who has physical/magic armor in the hundreds. It's much easier to just burn one armor type down and stunlock him.
