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

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Originally Posted by Ichthyic
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If two of those eight fireballs hit from meteor than it was worth the AP.


say that happens 50% of the time.

that STILL makes just casting fireball more efficient.


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. ;-)

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fail, since the projectiles OFTEN DON'T HIT.

you look it up... I PLAY IT.

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


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Originally Posted by DarkFenix
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.


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 smile

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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.
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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."

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Originally Posted by ScrotieMcB
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.

Last edited by MrFritz; 02/08/14 02:31 PM.
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Originally Posted by MrFritz
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.
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.

Last edited by ScrotieMcB; 02/08/14 03:01 PM.
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Originally Posted by Ichthyic
fail, since the projectiles OFTEN DON'T HIT.

you look it up... I PLAY IT.

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

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.

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Originally Posted by MrFritz

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.


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.

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Originally Posted by Fellgnome
Originally Posted by MrFritz

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.
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.

Last edited by ScrotieMcB; 02/08/14 06:31 PM.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by dirigible
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.

[Linked Image]

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.

Last edited by ScrotieMcB; 03/08/14 10:30 PM.
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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...

Last edited by dirigible; 03/08/14 11:11 PM.
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Well. I am using a spear at lvl 17 and have 700-800 damage.. so yea..

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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).

Last edited by dirigible; 03/08/14 11:34 PM.
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Originally Posted by dirigible
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...
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.

Last edited by ScrotieMcB; 03/08/14 11:41 PM.
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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.

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