What is a 'Melee Mage'?

I prefer mages to stick to casting spells, so I picked 2. Okay, maybe they can throw a weak punch, but that would be the extent of it.

Pretty much everything Hawke was doing in the Destiny trailer;



Even chalking up the overstylised elements in the trailer as artistic license (blame Varric), some degree of melee combat is the only way that a Mage Hawke could have realistically survived (and won) that fight with the Arishok.

Because I really doubt the Arishok would have allowed Hawke to get far enough from him to start flinging spells, so it would have had to been fairly close-quarters. That means Hawke would have to have relied on their staff to block and parry often.

I'd like to see melee attacks from DA2 return, along with some skill/passive that lets us block/parry.

Maybe only give it a 10% chance to activate (like evade), enough to give mages a bit more survivability, but not make them ridiculously overpowered when combined with their Barriers and +Guard On Hit masterworks.

Do you really enjoy projectile attacks that fly in arcs and have target piercing properties or do you just love feeling like Xena?


Does that qualify?

Oh yeah, flying axes do it for me too. But there's something special about chakrams that isn't just feeling like Xena (but that is awesome); there are fairly few games that have them, they're kind of primitive but more sophisticated than flinging axes because they are so aerodynamic, in KoA the roguish mage feel was a lot of fun, and honestly they just look really cool. The only way they can get cooler than Xena is to be arm mounted a la Rinoa from FFVIII.

Indeed...




 

When I think "melee mage" to me it's kind of combination of hand-to-hand with touch or powerful close-range spells. Like magical ninjas.

I choose hibrid. I think in a warrior that can cast spells, but not the same powerful spells that any normal Mage can cast. I think in the Paladin/templar style but more focused on being ofenssive. Because templars/paladins use magic but it is a defensive/healing magic. Melee mage would be the opossite.

Paladin/Templar >>> Defensive, minor or focused healing, and anti magic spells.

Melee Mage >>> Ofensive, focused on weapons and self strenght spells. Also give elemental powers to all the allied weapons.

Spellthief/Rogue >>> Spells focused on individual speed, cloak, paralisis, slow etc., curse, and draining magic at melee range.

Arcane warrior was a cool concept but the result was way to over powered. And clunky. And ugly. Those sustainables were ugly.

Knight enchanter was cooler and less clunky. But boring though that was more because DAI’s magic arsenal was less commanding powerful Magic’s and more running the local Pink Floyd laser show at the planetarium.

I think part of the problem with your typical melee age is attempting to hybridize mage with sword and board warrior. Perhaps what would be better is treating it like a rogue/dps warrior crossed with a mage. Good damage split between magic and physical, can take as much damage as you’d expect a non tank melee to be able to take but needs to avoid taking the brunt of tough enemies. My knight enchanter tanking dragons was ridiculous when Iron Bull speced as 2H would drop in seconds.

There’s just also so many flavors of melee “mage.”

There are spellswords (knight enchanter), blade casters (mystic knight from DRagon’s Dogma), curse blades (rogues with magic dots/debuffs), and pre-wow style warlocks (channel magic into melee weapon (usually dagger), weak spells that inflict status changes, can become less squishy at the expense of less mana capacity)

I think also an important thing to ponder is there has to be a downside. You can’t be the best at everything.

Reaver in DAI did this well. It has a mechanic with a downside (damage to you for increased damage to them) and this mechanic feels like a fun/satisfying challenge to master. Mastering vanilla knight enchanter was as easy as spamming the spirit blade. When they changed the ability to have some mechanical limits it was a little more fun. Risk-reward mechanics could be better utilized I think. Although the AI tends to kill itself on them (Iron Bull.....)

Interesting mechanical rules that don’t feel like homework to learn but feel like a satisfying challenge to master are important to hybrid classes, in my opinion. Or even non hybrid classes. Spamming the same ability over and over again with no interesting intra class combos or synergies is not fun. And with shrinking ability limits it was very common in DAI until Trespasser.

You can’t do a fun hybrid class with out either making it too OP or boring with out satisfying mechanics based around limitations. Blood magic is fun because it has a fun mechanic.

Agreed. Which is why building balance into the cost of individual skills works so well. A 20-point pure warrior and a 20-point pure mage can go deep into their skill trees and have powerful abilities, but a character that splits 20 points in half, 10 for warrior and 10 for mage, necessarily gives up on some of that deeper power. Classes and class constraints are not needed for balance.

my pick is the "mage who only casts spells that focus on close-range"

gameplay wise though it really depends on whether DA4 is going to be a tactical rpg or more action rpg like DA:I was, for me personally the idea of a "melee mage" is basically the Saarebas from MP without her long range abilities (curse, gaatlok blast, etc) : your spells are much stronger / only castable within a close AoE than a regular mage (upside) however you're just as squishy and have to get in there (downside)

some ideas: backlash (the activated biotic shield from ME:A), force fields like star wars, saarebas-like (from mp) abilities like Ataashi's Breath, Ring, Athlok's Burst, close range / AoE whose center is attached to yourself, stuff like wild axes from dota 2 where projectiles only reach a certain range and are recalled back, i'm not a game designer so i'm not very creative but anything that is potentially more lethal close range or something like passive, sustained abilities which only become effective if you get in there, e.g. a time slowing bubble that is attached to yourself or lady's wrath from the avvar. basically you're meant to fight up close, have better offensive and defensive than a regular mage (at the cost of having to be mor exposed) but are also quite squishy

i also very much like the idea of a spellsword/swordsman who enhances his combat with magic when it comes to gameplay, which is not what i'd call a "melee mage" though, more like a swordcaster i guess? visually the concept is similar to Destiny's (instead of channeling your magic into the stafftop, the entire blade glows) but functionally is completely different

or i.imgur.com/63Kzjyp.png
there you're just as tanky as a regular warrior except your offensive is delegated into magic, i.e dmg output weaker than regular physical attacks but perhaps your sword attacks extend with magic and you can hit enemies in an AoE (like doomsblade from DA:I) or set the ground on flames like hawke is doing above, or maybe you even have a swordstaff rather than a spellsword, which means you can do both

When I think of a melee mage, my first thought is GW2's Auramancer dagger/dagger elementalist with it's elemental shields, pbAoEs and group support tools. GW2's mesmer also fits the image with it's sword attacks being just a low dmg tool for evasion and casting magical clones. Both of these use physical weapons (daggers/swords) but they don't really do damage with the weapons themselves, but use them as conduits for spells. A mesmer still whacks their enemy in the face with their sword but it's not really to do any serious damage with it. As an Enh Shaman main in WoW, I could also see how some people would consider it a melee mage, but to me they feel more like warriors with magical enhancements from outside forces than inherent mages. The tempest spec in DAI would propably be the Enh Shaman equivalent.

My problem with a melee mage heavily focusing on weapon skills is that they just feel like warriors with magic. And at that point why would you even play a real warrior since obviously a warrior with magic would be more powerful. What would the place of a regular warrior be in the world if such powerful alternative existed. If you as a warrior knew you would never be more than a second tier meatshield, why would you even bother.

Now, as for melee mages in Dragon Age. I don't really remember how they worked in DAO, but I really enjoyed the staff whirling techniques on DA2, and was sad when it was replaced by a super lame spam skill in DAI. Now let me preface this by saying, that I did hate playing melee anything in DAI, it just felt too clunky. But Spirit Blade is with no competition, the skill I dislike the most in any of the 3 games, on any of the 3 classes. It was spammy, it was slow, it made you get stuck in the ground and it was nowhere near as cool in either looks or idea, as stabbing people with the sticky end of your staff. And the charges it had? Just #no. Other than that 'little' issue I had with Knight-Enchanter, the spec was pretty good, altho a lot of the effects should have been group wide to really satisfy my Knight-Enchanter fantasy. I mean Knight-Enchanter - it even sounds like a cleric!

Lorewise... I imagine if teaching a mage to be a warrior would be advantageous, then Flemeth and Morrigan would fo sho be the posterwomen of the melee magedom. They are, however, shapeshifters, because apparently in lore, a damn spider is more effective than a mage swinging a sword. As for the southern nations in general, I don't see why the templars would ever allow their charges to learn physical weapons. I mean, I'm pretty sure the point is to be able to stop the mage if needed, not to make the mage an expert at defeating templars. Tevinter doesn't really seem to be a country where a mage would bother learning to melee at high skill level but I mean it could happen. And Qunari are into all sorts of crazy shit so I guess anything goes there. Ancient Elves propaby partook in the melee magedom for show and flourish. But once again I don't really see it as something they'd use as a majorly damaging combat technique.

TL:DR

A melee mage to me, is a mage fighting in melee range, with pbAoE and touch skills, focusing on supporting and enhancing their group with weapon enhancements, heals, elemental shields etc. A melee mage is a mage that doesn't do as much damage, as their ranged counterpart or their fellow warriors/rogues, but is more of a sort of elemental cleric. Any sort of smacking enemies with you weapons (preferably DA2esque staff schenanigans) is just an auto-attack.