So, I just hit level 18 and have had a play around with the endgame spells. Were these even tested?

Chain Lightning: I haven't seen it hit more than two targets so far, rather than the number its tooltip specifies. This one really just needs a fix and it ought to be fine.

Storm: Not worth the AP by any stretch of the imagination through sheer unreliability. I'm pretty sure I've seen it hit inanimate objects, I've certainly seen it hit my own character (one storm somehow hit its own caster 3 times in the 2 rounds instead of the 6 available enemies). This spell doesn't so much need a buff as it needs to be more consistent, a flat number of targets per turn, targeting only enemies. The graphical effect should also be persistent for the duration.

Meteor Shower: The only spell that really shines at level 18. Hits hard and hits quite reliably. My only query is the number of meteors, either there aren't actually 8 or the effects are playing up. At any rate, this spell should be the measuring stick for the others' effectiveness.

Hail Attack: /Sigh. A lower damage meteor shower that almost never hits anything. My record number of hits so far with the hailstones is one, usually it doesn't hit anything. This one badly needs a buff, just giving it the splash radius of meteor shower would instantly fix the problem. I also have doubts about the number of projectiles, same as meteor shower.

Earthquake: Yes, let's knock over half of our own party, that's always a good idea. If I had to suggest one change for this, make it a targeted AoE instead of being centred on the caster. With the sheer size of the AoE it'll still be a stretch not to catch your own party, but at least it won't be guaranteed to.

Hail Attack is a lower damage meteor shower that almost never hits anything (that's true) but when it does, it gets a freeze chance* and same for Chain Lightning, which when you cast rain before, is a massively effective crowd control spell (especially when your own guys are immune to stun) (Hail attack is super useful in the end-fight ,p)

Aside that, I agree..

The end-game spells are a bit uninspired too.

Geomancers for example, could have gotten a Golem Summon with massively boosted geomancer spells (epic versions of default spells)

Air mage could have gotten Ball of Lightning that shoots 3 or 4 giant balls of AOE lightning balls at the battlefield in arcs. Like the spore spell ;p

Water mages could have gotten magic that creates a ZONE (aka, blob) of water, that drowns enemies within, applies wet, and when lightning is applied further, creates a death zone deluxe. Where every move gets 4 or so triggers to apply stun/lightning damage...

I am also missing the simple and yet extremely awesome DnD like spells... like... Power word: Death , cloud-of-death. And exploding skull ;p But we can't have everything...

This is a bit disappointing haha. I have 2 mages so i can try out all the cool high tier spells >.>

They did a lot of cool things with the way the environmental effects interact with each other. All the rain, smoke, poisonous gas, tornadoes, explosions, lightning chaining through blood and water alike, etc.; all of it is really awesome. They've in this game done environmental effects in-combat better than any other game I've played.

But sadly, the spells themselves are really boring and uninspired for the most part. The early-midgame ones are functional and do what you expect spells of that level to do, but the end-game ones are pretty lame, if they're worth casting at all considering their AP costs and frequent unreliability.

Yup, that's my issue, they cost a ton of AP and frequently do less than a spell half their cost could.

e4e4s3r: I don't have a problem with what chain lightning is supposed to do, I have an issue with the fact that it pretty much never does it. Like I said, I've never seen it hit more than two targets before fizzling out, it's clearly a buggy spell that needs some work. Regarding Hail Attack I'm sure it's fine against huge bosses where it can't miss, but in every other fight it just doesn't hit, yes it'll freeze any target it does hit, but it'd be more worthwhile for me just to cast piercing ice shard for 6AP so I can choose which targets I'll freeze.

The endgame spells are clearly meant to be your tactical nuke, with huge AP cost and a lengthy cooldown. But as it stands, only meteor shower actually justifies its cost, with all the other level 18 spells I'm better off saving my AP and casting cheaper spells that'll be more effective.

And yeah, the endgame spells are seriously boring. I can't help but feel they missed an obvious opportunity to spice up endgame spells, they added a 'tenebrium' skill for weaponry, but no 'void' skill for magic. They could have added a bunch of void specific spells, along with a bunch of elemental/void spells that require the element and the void skill. So much potential, so little realisation.

I think it's entirely possible that the endgame spells WEREN'T tested all that much, since they're far enough along that they wouldn't have been included in any of the open beta material. Hopefully they'll get balanced out a bit, though, now that more and more people are trying them out and turning in their feedback.

Yeah, endgame spells and the Witchcraft damaging spells (and the high level WC spells) are kind of underwhelming.

That Void skill idea sounds awesome.

That was the impression I got. I heard the beta was only a slice of the early game, so high level spells have probably only been tested internally until now.

Glad you like my idea Here's to hoping someone at Larian becomes aware of it and does too.

Regarding witchcraft, that's the only school I've not really tested, but the books of high level spells I found sounded pretty 'meh' from their descriptions.

Witchcraft has basically 1 spell (causes 1000 crushing damage on target) not sure what else you'd call end-game spell for witchraft... resurrection is neat, but I barely if ever died. And it needs just as many AP as the scroll, even with 26 INT

So basically, Witches don't have a tactical nuke. ^^

The witchcraft spell is also touch range.

High level WC spells should be Void spells, IMHO.

Tbh, void damage is overrated compared to the insane lower resistances skills men-at-arms get.

I ended up winning most every battle in, at most, 1-2 rounds. Except mudlords in phantom forest. Those guys repeatedly destroyed me. >.> With Oath of Desecration + nullify resistances, death punch ended up dealing in the area of 1800-2000 damage.

Granted, meteor strike and the hail thingy had potential towards higher damage outputs, but, as has been mentioned, they're simply not that reliable unless you have around 5+ enemies standing clustered in the spell area.

Concerning spell design, I'll have to agree with the people posting here. While mostly effective, the end game spells sort of feel like a shoddy finish compared to the fun I've had with teleporting enemies on top of each other, or chuckling as I set fire to mob after mob after mob.

Never quite got the hang of that pesky lightning though, as the water and blood would sometimes sneakily have encroached on my characters, resulting in an unwelcome stun-fest. -.-'

Chain Lightning: Depend on how grouped up they are, situational spell.

Storm: Try 100%+ air resistance and get stun immunity talent. Higher level spells generally are meant to be unreliable, but if you negate the downside, they become good, especially for specialized party or lone wolf playstyle.

Meteor: Easy mode spell.

Hail: Not really meant to do damage as its main purpose, it is meant to change the battlefield with frozen grounds, can be used another mage to create different effects on the field. Defensive/utility, not a smash A to obliterate spell at all.

Earthquake: Really good spell when used correctly. Knockdown immunity on party members make this spell easy to use and devastating to enemies. Require either specialized builds, small party or solo, or having air mage to drop the earth mage to the enemy and away from the party when possible.


If you want reliability, use low level spells. High level spells are for advanced builds that adds some risk, but with proper builds it becomes very powerful or useful when in the right hands.

Earthquake, with its knockdown, would be utterly OP if it didn't hit your own party. If you get your party to be immune or highly resistant to knockdown specifically, it's an extremely good ability.

The only problem I have is: Okay, so it's this very good ability if you build around it... and how were you supposed to build around it, if it only became available late in the game? Abilities like Earthquake shouldn't be these high-damage finishers, but instead things which players become aware of when they still have time to do something about it. For example, Self-Immolation and Explode are also build-around-me skills, but you get the chance to become familiar with them much sooner.

Thus the bad part about Earthquake is that it's a build-around-me design for an endgame skill, and those two concepts don't mesh together very well. The former, however, is not the problem; if anything, build-around-me skills are cool.

I want arhus zzap skill for endgame!

I'm trying to understand why the most powerful spells in the game are meant to be unreliable. For the AP they cost, I bloody well get the bang for my buck.

Seriously, none of this make sense. It's like Larian just took whatever sounded cool and threw them in.

yup, having worked at a game developer for a few years, I can definitely say that there is a "cool factor" that weights much more heavily in design than pure in-game power.

there is a tendency after playing the same level a hundred times for testing, to forget balance in favor of what feels cool.

this game has that all over the place. my guess is that the first real balance patch, which I would expect to pop sometime towards the end of this month, will likely address a lot of this.

If two of those eight fireballs hit from meteor than it was worth the AP. It mostly good to use even against single targets. How much more reliable you want your AOE damage spells against single targets? ;-)

Lava Core: It creates Lava, what is not to like about? (Shame that I never got to use that one myself)

Meteor Shower, especially two from them cast at the same time pre battle clear whole groups, including bosses standing in the middle before combat even starts.

Rain + Storm when followed up by chain lighting such a nice starter for a battle, and because its giant range and zone it safe to use as well.

Hail completely changes the battlefield to your favor, even when not a single point of damage is done. Though I have to admit, that late in the game enemies are super weak so that the CC that hail brings is rarely needed. And never mix them with Meteor Shower, you will only create lots of water. ;-)

Earthquake is quite strong too, but needs some thinking about how to use it, and so far I have need seen it creating reliable ooz to blow up afterwards. So that might be a good idea to improve the spell in this regard.

Invulnerability is a little bit lackluster I will admit, less cooldown or a few more turns would have been nice. But hey, you get Soulsap and Death Punch + Oath of Desecration, so who cares? ;-)

Whichcrafts element is blood, is kind of the opposite of void magic imho.:)

say that happens 50% of the time.

that STILL makes just casting fireball more efficient.

no, i have thoroughly tested all of the level 18 spells... they ALL are entirely unworth the ap.

they need some serious fixing.

here's what needs to be done:

projectile numbers are fixed (say 7 for each chain lightning, hail and meteor); each has the damage of the low level version of the similar projectile (flare for meteor or blitz for chain lightning, for example). GUARANTEE hits for all projectiles. Divide the damage by the number of individuals affected by the spell.

just that simple.

so, you cast meteor on a single target? ALL projectiles hit that target.

there are 6 targets in the area? each gets hit, damage each receives is total damage divided by 6.

simple.

effective.

worth casting.

end of story.

That's silly. You could kill almost any boss in a single turn by hitting them with isolated AOE spells.

It also goes against the idea of AOE spells - they're supposed to be less efficient unless you're attacking multiple targets.

And you're wrong in thinking that they're not worth using. Dealing 1000+ damage total to the final boss with Hail is totally worth 9 AP, when the level 2 Icicle spell (whatever its name is) only deals around 400 damage for 6 AP.

Looked up the numbers. With 20 Intelligence,
Piercing Ice Shard costs 6 AP and deals 222-234 ice damage.
Hail costs 9 AP and deals 441-539 ice damage PER HIT.

That means that if only a SINGLE PROJECTILE hits, Hail was worth the AP cost.

Witchcraft totally has the best healing spell in all of the game.

I will remember your remark on my next playthrough. The last one was a little disappointing easy, because of starting with double meteor shower killed most enemies before the first turn, I guess I have to do this next time with just two fireballs.

If that does not work I gonna spam you with complains about your suggest strategie. ;-)

fail, since the projectiles OFTEN DON'T HIT.

you look it up... I PLAY IT.

you don't know what you're talking about.

Do you or anyone else have videos of what the end-game spells look like in game? I would love to see how they look and play out in game

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.

The problem here is the concept that fire hitting one of your characters is intrinsically a bad thing. It's not. Get your resistances high enough, and elemental damage becomes elemental healing. Do this on enough characters, and a big messy high-level spell has less ways to "miss."

yeah, if you only have man-at-arms as melee, take the trait, and stack resist gear then finally you can use your aoe spells. in my opinion that is just broken in multiples ways.

a person should never get so much resists that damage spells actually heal them. at least in my opinion. that is just stupidly overpowered against enemies. there should be a hard cap where you never become immune or better.

then all of this just to make spells functional? archers dont hit their team, even with aoe effects. melee doesnt hit their team, even with aoe effects. just spell casters suffer this annoyance, on top of the other issues.

at the least it should be equal across the board. if an archer can use ricochet and magically direct the arrow around enemies, then spell casters should be able to do so as well.

or go the other way with it and have archers and melee aoe hit the group if in range.

it just seems like they chose spell casters to pick on in this game. your spells hit your team. you gain virtually zero benefit from better weapons or crafting. you have hard caps on intelligence benefits. resists can cripple you against bosses. its just one thing after another.

i am not saying they are broken, because you can most definitely make it work with specific builds, but the treatment is nowhere near equal.

I disagree with this. It's interesting to get an elemental immunity or two, or to stack one high so that it heals you. What I do have a problem with is getting immunities/heals across the board. Getting even a single immunity/heal should represent a considerable investment in gear and/or build, in such a way that it forces you to neglect other elements, and this currently isn't the case. You can apply one of each Essence to a piece of defensive gear, and this really needs to be changed, so that using an Essence wipes out previous Essences (just like with weapons); perhaps Essences could even be made slightly stronger under certain conditions if this were the case, to provide a large bonus to a single resistance. I feel there are too many strong sources of "resist-all" (such as plate armour, Rubies, and Weather the Storm), and I feel that such sources need a serious balance review, perhaps removing one or more from the game entirely.

In short, I think it should be possible to get your resistances to, say, 75/75/75/75. Or, alternatively, 120/60/60/60; you now heal a bit from Fire, but you take more damage from the other elements. I think that's a fair tradeoff. Or even 120/120/30/30. What I don't think you should be able to do is get to 120/120/110/100. The first three scenarios aren't really OP, but the last one is. In my view, it's not about hard caps, but about soft caps, limiting the amount of total resistance available so you can't stack everything up to the sky.

You're implying I never actually used the spells? Really?
I've never had one hit *nothing*. Partially because I don't cast a huge AOE on a single target, I cast it on groups of targets.

Face it, dude, your theory-crafting was completely wrong. The high level AOE spells are amazing and completely worth the AP cost.

Agree with this. Boss design in this game is awful because they're practically immune to so many things it just makes them "tank and spank". My duo lone wolf mages just spam summons at many bosses because I CBA trying to lower their resistances and chip away at them with elemental spells.

There's also death punch, but eh.

On the one hand, I totally see what you guys are saying. On the other hand, I can't think of a boss in this game which doesn't also involve a "group of inconsequential enemies" to simultaneously annoy your party. So I don't feel like "boss design" is awful; instead, you just have different roles for different party members in boss battles. Spellcasters neutralize the chaff (especially against bosses which respawn dead minions, which is a fairly common boss design theme), while melee deal with the Big Man (or Woman, or Thing).

Plus, like you mentioned, casters can always create attackers to help deal with the bosses.

You say mages suck against bosses, but that definitely isn't my experience.

Many bosses have elemental weaknesses. Warriors can't take advantage of that - mages can.
Mages can spam cc on the boss, turning them into a harmless punching bag (and yes, bosses can definitely be cc'd). Warriors only have access to one hard cc (knockdown), and only two abilities which can inflict it. If the boss has high Bodybuilding, your warrior is up a creek.
Mages can weaken the boss (soul sap, lower willpower, curse, weaken, etc)
And, of course, Mages make the warriors twice as good. Oath of desecration, elemental shield, bless, haste, etc...

Mages were the MVP of my team from level 1 to level 21.

My lone wolf 2-h warrior at lvl 17 has about:
700-800 raw damage
1.8k hp
22 AP per round
20 ini
5.?? movement speed
8 bodybuiding 8 willpower
105% teneberum resistance , and 100% poison resistance. The rest can be up to 100% if I want (not using ruby or essence etc... to gimp myself abit)
Leech.
Enough Int to lower the cooldown of petrifying, lighting touch, blind and even invisibility to 1 per round and always lands them.

On hard difficulty I can run into a group of 8+ enemies and slaughter them all in the opening round (sneak 5 from gears and invisibility OP) then laugh at the boss because there is no cc I cannot resist. When I am done laughing, I use nullify resistance, cast oath, mayb bless too then flurry the boss.

So yea.. endgame mages are very underwhelming compared to that. And lvl 17 is not even endgame. Plus, robes are ugly.

That's not a warrior, that's a warrior/mage hybrid.

The point - for me - is comparing a pure mage to a pure warrior.
My pure warrior did more single-target damage than my pure mage, but had FAR LESS usefulness in every other situation.

Also I am pretty sure your numbers are off. Even at level 21, my 2-handed warrior's attack damage was only 300-600 (in the inventory screen). They frequently did more damage, thanks to Bully, Enrage, Oath, and crits, but they also frequently did less damage. And when they DID deal tons of damage, it was usually thanks to my mages buffing them and weakening the enemies.

300-600? More like 500-1000.



And that's with just a hand-crafted axe. At -1 level. I'm sorry to say, but if those are your damage numbers at 21... well that's just suboptimal.

Does finally explain why you think spellcasters are so OP, though.

Scrotie - I took a look at my character.
My Tenebrium skill was only at 3. Bringing it up to 5 increased my damage to 341-683.
Crafting a custom Sword (with tenebrium) only brought it up to 482-778
However, crafting a custom AXE (with tenebrium) brought it to 482-963

So apparently Axes are simply better than Swords, when it comes to crafted items.
I probably never bothered giving her a crafted axe because I looked at the sword, concluded that it wasn't much of an upgrade (especially since I would be losing some unique bonuses), and stopped there.

Honestly, though, it kind of brings up another reason why I think spellcasters are OP. They are barely reliant on gear at all. A warrior or ranger or rogue who can't find a good weapon is essentially toothless. A mage who can't find a good weapon doesn't care. At all.

Edit: I'm probably also biased because I put Glass Cannon on both of my mages, but neither of my warriors. I try to take that into account, but...

Well. I am using a spear at lvl 17 and have 700-800 damage.. so yea..

Can you post a screenshot (like Scrotie did)? I want to see what kind of stats/gear you're using.
The crafted spear I makes at level 21, with rank 5 tenebrium, only deals 355-708 damage (average of 531 damage, before armor/bully/etc).

Oh yeah, that would definitely do it as well. A non-GC character simply cannot compete against a GC character, but you can actually make GC melee just fine. The screenshot above is clearly a GC Madora.

I don't view it as gear dependency so much as Blacksmithing/Crafting dependency. A large steel bar and a bar of Tenebrium barely cost anything at all, but you need to have someone who can make them. You can cheese this by relying on the Hall of Heroes, but I prefer not to; even then, with +Blacksmithing and +Crafting equipment, the investment is minimal. Admittedly, spellcasters are not nearly as reliant on Blacksmithing/Crafting for their damage, but it's a small cost to pay for a lot of extra power.

Well, the problem as I see is that there are tons of 'small costs'.
You have to be in melee range. Your source of damage can break. An enemy can cast 'weakness' on you, and suddenly you cannot do anything because your equipment fell off. You have to be constantly upgrading your weapon (or hoping you get a newer better one). You can miss. You can be blocked. You only have access to physical damage. You have almost no AOE damage.
And then there's all the utility you miss by not learning mage skills. Healing, shields, elemental effects, hard cc, etc.

Yea. My weapons are embarrassing..
Edit: let me resize it lol

That's considerably less than 700-800 damage, dude.
Your sword user is ~583
Your spear user is ~554
Still, both of your weapons are better than any legendaries/uniques I found for my 2-handed warrior. Maybe I just got really unlucky.

Aye. I mean the range of max damage. There is no weapon in this with min-max range of ~100.
I am gimping myself a lot there as you can see. I didn't put tormented soul on either. Both toons are using mail armors instead of full plates (coz full plates look like poop). And I am using no sneaking. Str is maxed out on both. So I can only put more into INT.

My toons are as pure melee as it can be.

And I unlocked the secret sellers at lvl 8. So.. I am not that OP.
On the next playthrough will have it at lvl 3. (just discovered that bartering is the most OP ability in game haha)

You really, really don't need to find weapons for melee characters, ever. Blacksmithing gives you more than enough. I don't expect to find decent melee weapons at any point; I think Madora used a grand total of one found weapon throughout the entire game.

I actually lol'd at "your source of damage can break." Um, no, it can't. Not really.

Also, Man-at-Arms has some hard CC, ranged options, AoE options, etc. It's not quite as one-dimensional as "just normal attack this guy." Don't get me wrong, normal attacks are your bread and butter as a melee character, but it's not all you're capable of.

If you've ever played Magic: the Gathering on any sort of competitive level, the best way I can explain it is: melee characters are your win condition for a control deck. The spellcasters in your party are the actual control, but they're not good at closing the game out; they're good at not losing, which is different from being good at winning. The spellcasters set everything up so your melee can quickly and brutally end the battle. This works better than just having more spellcasters, because it means you only need to have control of the battlefield for a turn or two in order to ensure victory. A party without a good melee is like a control deck which hopes to deck the opponent out instead of sticking a threat and ending things then and there.

That's the point - melee characters either need to rely on blacksmithing/crafting, or they need to hope they get good drops. Mages don't need either.
Yeah, your source of damage can break. I've actually had it happen in a fight, simply because I didn't notice the durability was getting low. Had to switch to a (far inferior) backup weapon.
Man-At-Arms has 2 hard cc abilities, both of which can be countered by high Bodybuilding, not to mention that there are a fair number of enemies who are immune to knockdown. It has one aoe ability (2, counting phoenix dive, though PD's damage never impressed me). And unlike magic, you cannot reduce the cooldown on MaA abilities.

I'm not saying that warriors are valueless. Just that they have lower value. You can replace a warrior with a rogue or a ranger, and still have high single target damage. You cannot remove a mage without losing a TON of utility.

Imagine a party of 4 people.
One pure warrior
One pure ranger
One pure rogue
One pure mage

Now lets say you have to lose one of them. Which one is most expendable?
My answer would be "anyone but the mage".

Well, in order of importance.
1. Mage. Far too much is lost if you have zero spellcasters.
2. Warrior. Deals huge damage, surprisingly versatile.
3. Ranger. Bows are pretty good and you'll need at least one high-Perception character.
4. Rogue. Not necessarily horrible, but worse than the others.

Hybridization can kind of alter the situation, however. For example, I ranked Warrior where I did because having access to Man-at-Arms is a good thing, but you can make a Rogue-ish Str/Dex hybrid with those and use daggers instead of a two-hander, and that could work.

Generally, though, I think the best thing is to ditch Rogue, then for your fourth character hybridize the first two. This gives you some resilience if either of your two most important characters -- the mage or the warrior -- fall.

I mean, I haven't been trying to say that spellcasters are horrible. Far from it. It just seems might weird to me for you to be constantly going on about how the second most powerful character type in the game seems underpowered to you. If I did a double Lone Wolf playthrough, it would be a mage and a (Perceptive) warrior; I actually can't imagine going through the game without one.

Man at Arms Divine Light skill is infinitely useful.
With High STR - they will lower all WILL/BODY resist even on bosses.
When that happens, Wizards spell effects are hard to resist.

On crowd: Rain > Lightning Bolt
On Bosses: Shocking Grasp, fail? Go Freezing Touch. Fail? Go Paralyzing Touch. Fail? Blind.

These moves range between 3-4 AP and disables a character totally, giving them 0% chance to dodge.
Warrior switch to power stance and slam after getting Oath'ed.
Nothing in the rogue/ranger arsenal can match that kind of combination.

Do take note that none of them are even level 10+ skills to use - making the thread title very fitting.

I've played about halfway through Cyseal with a double lone wolf mage/ranger + mage/rogue, to test a concept build. It was fine. Fairly challenging, given that I was fighting fucking skeletons, and relying mostly on piercing damage, but it actually worked okay.
I cannot even comprehend trying to do that without having invested points in magic.

It's not that I think Warriors are worth less than Rangers or Rogues. It's that I think Mages are worth more than any of them. Essentially it boils down to the fact that I think Intelligence is overused.
Intelligence improves damage & cc chance, and reduces the cooldown, on more than half the abilities in the game.
A character with no intelligence is very limited, compared to a character with (at least some) intelligence. The more intelligence you have, the more effective you become with most abilities in the game.

How does that compare with Dexterity and Strength?
Strength only improves 1/8th the abilities in the game.
Dex only improves 1/4th.
Neither reduce cooldown.
Forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I don't notice that either increases damage, either. If they do, they don't seem to increase it much.

I suggested, at one point, that Geomancy scale off of Strength and Aerothurge scale off of Dex. This would increase the value of those stats - giving pure Str characters and pure Dex characters more flexibility (and synergy), while making it hard to be a master of all elements for any character.
Int would improve 3/8 the abilities in the game, as would Dex, and Str would improve the other 2/8.

I know a lot of people don't like that idea, for reasons of lore, but I think it would improve the balance of the game and essentially fix any problems I have with mages.

Retards never get far in life.
I have no complaints.

Forest Gump did.

A magic school should never scale off anything but Int.

Anyway, the only spells in Witchcraft you need are: Blind, Oath of Desecration, Summon Undead Decapitator. Well, and Bloodletting to exploit Leech. Everything else... meh... touch range, single target, why weaken them when you can just kill them.

Deathpunch? Soul Sap? Elemental Absorption? Vampiric Touch? Horrific Scream?
Witchcraft has a lot of very good spells.


Right, I know people are opposed to this for lore purposes, but gameplay-wise I think it would fix a lot of stuff. It personally wouldn't bother me much. I've played rpg systems in which magic can be based off of everything from charisma to dexterity to constitution, depending on the spell. A lot of fantasy has magic be based, at least partially, on physical attributes.

I'd add Absorb the Elements and Drain Willpower to that list. Having played with them a little, I'm not a fan of Death Punch (aka really bad Flurry), Vampiric Touch, or Soulsap (just too much AP cost for the effect). Horrific Scream is alright, but I wouldn't go Witchcraft 4 for it alone; I'd just stick with Mass Weakness (aka Horrific Scream's Little Brother). Witchcraft 3 is amazing, though.

Strength is plenty strong already. The Strength-based armours are the best in the game, hands down. Shields are also great for hybrids.

Dexterity is also very strong. Defense rating isn't a joke, and can give you a surprisingly high chance of not being hit by attacks.

My opposition to the Geomancy/Aerotheurge suggestion has nothing to do with lore. The hybrids associated with those attributes would be grossly overpowered.

Why would they be grossly overpowered?
Rogues and Rangers would gain access to some teleportation abilities.
Warriors would get another knockdown ability, an armor buff, and a bless.
Besides that, they would both get a handful of ranged damage abilities.

It would add synergy, but I don't see how it would be grossly overpowered.

Blocking doesn't really scale off of Strength, and while Defense isn't worthless, there are plenty of more effective ways to mitigate damage. Strength WOULD let you wear the best armor, which would make up for the fact that it would only improve 2 of the 8 skills.

Pure-Strength characters are already so powerful that they are in direct competition with pure-Int for the best in the game. You could even make an argument that pure-Strength is better currently, although I believe that argument would be slightly flawed. Still, very close in power. You give them anything at all, and they're better than pure-Int, hands down. What you're talking about goes beyond giving pure-Str something; you'd also be taking away from pure-Int. It wouldn't even be close anymore. The Geomancer idea is totally out of the question.

The Dexterity part of your suggestion is the slightly less crazy half. The Expert Marksman and Scoundrel skillsets are both surprisingly shallow with just a handful of options each, many of which are either dagger-dependent or extremely narrow (ex: Doctor). Spellcasters are admittedly top of the heap, and Dexterity-based classes are at the bottom; your suggestion would bump the bottom up, but hinder spellcasters slightly so that Strength-based would be the current top of the heap (but not by all that much). So although that half of the suggestion isn't crazy, I think we could find a better way to skin this particular cat: specifically, adding more Marksman and Scoundrel skills, as well as freeing a few of the Scoundrel skills from dagger dependency and/or shifting them over to Marksman (ex: Trip, which could be interesting for archers to have when things get close-range).

And sure, fine, I'll admit the Dex-based part actually is a little bit lore-based. But the Str-based part of my argument really isn't; that's just a straight-up bad idea.

I feel like pure Str is only as powerful as it currently is because of a lot of broken mechanics.
Resistance needs to be nerfed - this would affect warriors more than anyone else
Blocking can be pretty overpowered - nerfing this would affect str more than anything else
Leech works best for Man-At-Arms users - nerfing Leech would hit warriors hardest

Several of the talents you want would nerf warriors even more. The removal of Weather the Storm (making it scale off of magic abilities!), and Fashion Plate (which would allow anyone to wear plate armor) would hugely reduce the advantages of warriors.

What I'd propose is actually giving replacement skills for Marksman/Scoundrels because they're unimaginative as hell.

However, Marksman skill set definitely includes their Special Arrows so perhaps people who think they're so limited need to understand that having SPECIAL arrows is part of the kit's arsenal and not just spam active skills. These arrows have no cooldown either, a fine tradeoff for its limited quantity.

Scoundrel on the other hands seem to stop gaining new skill at end game. Kinda disappointing - I was looking forward to more trickery, but it seems possible the rogue class is meant to be a hybrid and not just a one stat end all type.

Mentioning another thread. Interesting...

The best plate armours would still require 13 Strength (actually more than that for higher Armour values, but for 20% to all resists you'd need at least that much). Even with Fashion Plate that would be 10 Strength, not exactly a small investment. If it's really a problem, perhaps 2 instead of 3 for Fashion Plate would be a better idea; 11 Strength is more investment than 10.

If you check the thread I've essentially replaced Weather the Storm with Headstrong (currently a Scoundrel talent). So it's not like I'd be leaving Str-based completely in the lurch. Scoundrel gets its own buffs in return. It would also be very difficult for a spellcaster to capitalize on more than one or two of the elemental resistance talents I've suggested simultaneously; even if they did, it would cost multiple talent points for them to do it.

I actually didn't give my characters Leech during my playthrough. I tried it out later, though, just to confirm that it's as good as people say it is. Warriors are still plenty powerful without Leech.

I don't think blocking should be nerfed at all. Two-handers are already pretty dominant.

Well, first of all, I think Expert Marksman should be renamed "Scout." There are plenty of "Expert Marksman" skills which work fine on rogue-type characters, but it seems a little counterintuitive to level an ability named Marksman on a character who will never touch a bow. A name change would dispel some confusion.

I definitely agree about the special arrows, though. Marksman (or Scout, or whatever) doesn't really need a huge skillset in order for range-type characters to have decent versatility. Scoundrel, on the other hand, definitely needs more tricks, including more which aren't dagger-based. I feel the rangers just need barely enough to actually have to make choices (ex: can't use all available skills unless 5 ranks in ability), and not a whole lot more than that; Scoundrel, on the other hand, needs a lot more than it has now.

According to your "my dream mod" thread, you're replacing Weather the Storm with Amphibian, Dirt Magnet, Heatseeker, and Lightning Rod (all of which scale off of magic talents). You'd also be removing Thick Skin.
This would leave warriors with lower resistances and armor (though your new Headstrong would increase their resistance to cc).

Blocking is perfectly fine at lower levels, but gets ridiculous the farther you go in it. My sword and board warrior has a 73% chance to completely ignore any physical attack (using a shield 7 levels lower than him). For all intents and purposes, he is immune to physical damage. Given how many enemies rely on physical damage, and the fact that block chance cannot be countered in any way, that seems overpowered to me.

Did a test - my 2-handed warrior kills my mage in 3 hits. I don't know how many hits it takes for her to kill my shield warrior, because her weapon broke 40-something hits in. She didn't get him below 30% hp.

Essentially my point here is that the changes you want would nerf warriors. The changes I want would nerf mages, and give buffs to warriors, rogues, and rangers.
Given that we agree that
Mages>Warriors>Rogues&Rangers
our combined changes should theoretically make everyone closer to equal.

Let's say if I'm making a mod, I would definitely make Expert Marksman actually increase the effectiveness of the arrow - indirectly making it a requirement to have high Expert Marksmanship if you want those Special Arrows to be effective at mid to high level.

Imagine, if every rank on Marksman would increase Special Arrow effectiveness by 10% - That would actually reflect that this ranger is actually highly trained- and knows where to fire the special arrows to inflict the greatest damage / highest chance for the effect to successfully apply.

Add a new Talent - The Specialist Marksman (E.M Rank 3 required)
Every usage of Special Arrow costs 1 less AP.
4 AP Knockdown arrow from 15 meter. No Cooldown. That's something.

Actually, in my "Dream Mod" thread, I changed Quickdraw to reduced special arrow AP by 1, and Elemental Ranger to always work on elemental ground. This would make Quickdraw the special arrow talent and Elemental Ranger the "I deal more damage with basic attacks" talent.

That is, in my opinion, a huge balancing problem, because it makes intelligence much more powerful than strength or dexterity. Intelligence, strength and dexterity should reduce the cooldown by 1 turn at an ability value of 9, 12, 15, ...

Bows and crossbows are unbalanced, too, because you need dexterity and perception to make them useful. Perception should increase the critical chance for bows and crossbows by (perception x 3) % and melee weapons should keep their current critical chance of (perception x 2) %.

Daggers are unbalanced, too, because you need backstabbing to make them useful. Backstabbing should always be possible and the talent should increase the critical damage by 25%.