Is there any way to make a mage Warden not suck IN TERMS OF DAMAGE?

RE: "is there any way to make a mage warden not suck IN TERMS OF DAMAGE?"

Hi! Mage actually outclasses everything but double dagger rogues in damage. The reason you're doing so little damage is probably that you have very little magic. Fifty isn't very much, you should rather have well over a hundred. Pump everything into magic.


Your gear is good; but i recommend using the sash of forbidden secrets and lifedrinker for a significant boost for spell power. If you really want to up your spellpower beyond that; you can use spell wisp and spell might combo. With all this; at high levels-- i have around 170 spellpower; which, using the correct spells, allows me to kill rooms in seconds.


Spells

The spell i recommend the most is blood wound; extremely potent cc and does a lot of damage-- depending on difficulty and spellpower it can be sufficient to kill a normal enemy. If you then use virulent walking bomb and walking bomb on two separate enemies within that area-- and then comboing it with either fireball, arcane bolt, Winter's grasp or sending a party member to blow them up such that they can do great AoE damage sufficient to kill most enemies even at higher difficulties.

You've already mentioned Storm of the Century; which too is a very potent spell, if you have good spellpower. Here we're talking well above a hundred dps. Very useful for larger battles. If you can cast it, you win.

i actually recommenced getting death cloud and death hex. These two combined make; entropic death-- which is the most damaging attack on a single target except mana clash until awakening. These are very potent for triggering bombs; but also for bringing down bosses without mana. And, with grabbing these hexes; you also get both the misdirection hex-- extremely useful for self defense. And the bonus elemental damage hexes-- which lets you do more damage.



Teammates

I almost always recommend having atleast two mages-- three aren't unheard of. You can have she/them bring death hex so you can fire off multiple death hexes simultaneously for a lethal combo. And like yourself, you get the earlier hexes which have the same use as yours.

Mages are also great for picking up secondary spells you don't want to spend points on; either for mana clash if you don't grab that and/or for force field for protecting your tank so he can aggro in your AoE and still endure it. Force-field is essential on higher difficulties with Storm of the century tanking. Otherwise, you can just have the double up on the spells you have for more damage and less waiting for cooldowns.



Arcane Warrior

Lastly, if you decide to go the Arcane Warrior route-- which actually doesn't do too bad damage imo. You'll do more damage than you think. With a significant spellpower, your fire and frost weapons will give you a lot of bonus damage. And, you can use both if you use them right after each other. If you then have good runes, you can kill a normal enemy with your auto-attack.

If you're running multiple mages; you can double up on haste. You can run incredibly fast, attack incredibly fast and one shot. You'll kill bosses in few seconds-- and still be immortal. The down side is that larger groups will take a little longer to whittle down.



I hope that helped; here's a demonstrational picture i temporarily made on one of my characters with the console.

Here is a tip, if you team up with Leli, Morri and Wynne, then you can cast Storm o' the Century every fight with no waiting. Make sure your mage has Spell Might and both cold and electricity. Make sure both Wynne and Morri take at least of of those. Simul cast Electricity and Cold using your mage and a companion. If the non caster has repulsion as well, then the foes die. Grease fire can be entertaining as well.

Hmm. If a mage didn't do good damage it couldn't be OP in DAO in my humble opinion. Damage is king in this game, and multitarget damage is nearly exclusively the realm of the mage.

Also DW rogue isn't necessarily even the pinnacle of melee DPS in DAO since you can build a DW Warrior that will edge it out in DPS. Getting more into this might derail the thread, so consider a Warden up against 5 darkspawn as a melee and then as a mage. They do not kill the mooks fast enough to beat a mage against a group when you consider travel time and positioning (especially true for rogue).

Personally I think mage is the strongest class by good deal, and it was the easiest class for me to solo out of all styles. You do have to keep in mind the resistances of any enemies you are engaging as that can drastically affect your damage output. Hexes are helpful for overcoming this if you don't have ideal spells.

One last thing, there is also a bug with the way DOTs are calculated in DAO where sometimes stacking DOTs causes the original to tick longer than it should. So for instance Walking Bomb then Virulent Walking Bomb on the target will end up doing more than expected DOT. This is magnified by hexes or spirit vulnerability. But it also works for other DOT types. The Corrupted Spider Queen actually takes advantage of a similar glitch, which is why it is impossible to heal enough against her if you keep her at range.

edit: more explanation just in case...

The line about solo character wasn't meant to be boastful or imply that the class doesn't have a learning curve, it was more about what I consider the relative power of optimized builds.

For solo specifically, mage will be punished if the build order is non-ideal.  But it is rewarded for a good one.

Storm of the Century is fun, but I personally never liked it because the setup time is long and it is expensive in terms of talent points and mana.

The things that I like are pretty simple things that are available relatively early.  For instance, Cone of Cold a cluster of mooks, put Walking Bomb on one, and then Stone Fist to shatter and blow them up.  Fireball should do respectable damage to fire weak enemies like Darkspawn.  Shock is good because it drains mana / stamina and can make some elite enemies creampuffs.  Blood Wound is the best spell in the game, but vanilla mage can do good damage too.

No kidding, the most powerful offensive "spell" is auto-attack. It never misses unless the opponent has "chance to dodge attack" attributes, which is ultra-rare to see, neglects spell resistance and can be greatly enhanced by +x% elemental damage accessories (whose marginal return would surpass that of spellpower as leveling up), Staff Focus passive and hexes.

Update, not that anyone responded. I decided one major step was getting the vulnerability hex and affliction hex, which significantly lowers enemy resistances to magical elements and thus increases spell damage by a fair bit. So even without replies, I am trying to find some methods for myself too.

I know. But I don't like too many mages at once, I prefer a bit of party balance.

Edit: Another thing I think I'll start doing is specific power combos, like freeze to rock throw, or nightmare (sleep and horror).

Well I didn't start as a mage, but this topic still had use since I still wanted to build Morrigan and Wynne right.

The way I built my 2 mage party members this time has kicked ass so far. Morrigan is a crowd control goddess, can lock down and wipe out entire groups of enemies at once. She has AoE stuns, AoE offensive spells like fireball, and AoE 'control' spells like waking nightmare. If there's a group of enemies, she can decimate them. Of course, her failing is that she's pure offense, great at killing and disabling, but no healing spells to speak of. She will later get blood magic, but she isn't level 14 yet.

Wynne is the opposite, lots and lots of support and healing. Her main thing is less attacking the enemy, and more helping everyone else win. She has haste, which speeds up all ally attacks and movement speed, telekinetic weapons which is a buff that makes all party members have more armor penetration, heal spells including a full party one, and force field. I'll make her a caster arcane warrior when she's level 14.

As for how I'll set my own mage up when I do another mage run, I'm thinking I won't master any tree except specializations. So no fully mastering a school for me. I am thinking to do a big multi tree build that is going to be a bit middle-of-the-road between Wynne and Morrigan, though leaning towards Morrigan's side of things (just using sustained spells and support spells won't be very fun to actually play as). I'm thinking...  Rock armor, fireball, cone of cold, waking nightmare, blood wound, fade shroud, haste, crushing prison, arcane mastery, affliction hex, walking bomb, and arcane mastery. That is, of course, counting all the spells to get to the max level of what I want (so me mentioning waking nightmare includes disorient, horror, and sleep too, so that one mention is 4 spells). I don't think I'll take blood control, but I'll see. That's... Exactly 34 points, if I take blood control after all (33 without). Hm...

24 max from level up
3 at character creation (including the one pre-assigned)
3 After story events (Rogues only get 2)
1 from the desire demon (Mage Only)
4 from tome of arcane/physical technique (supposed to be 3, but that Bodahn glitch lets you buy 2, since his inventory restocks fully once)
For a total of 35 for mages, 34 for Warriors and 33 for rogues

So I'll have an extra point if I reach level 25, but that would require a lot. Guess I'll just try to go as high level as I can and see what I have to work with. If I'm to be a caster, I might not NEED haste, since it would only be a use to the melee party members with me that don't have momentum. That would drop it down to 31, since I'd still want basic heal. Anyway, this sounds like a good build. Something of a Jack Of All Trades, but not the crappy kind. More like the kind that can generally handle any given situation. Anyone else think this build will work really well?

Bump, I want to know if that build I came up with will work well.

Shapeshifting is so shit that it's the worst specialization in the entire series. I have the console version, so no mods to make it decent either. Also, you can't use arcane warrior sustained modes when transformed, taking away any sort of symbiosis they could have had. Also, the 2 specs seem an excellent combination to me. More constitution means even better tanking as an AW, also gives more physical resistance which will make me harder to knock around and stun. Also, one of the dangers of blood magic is mitigated, namely that you'll be getting hurt by enemies a lot even while you hurt yourself to cast. But with this combination, I can be basically invincible to actual enemy damage, leaving only self-damage as my only threat thanks to AW sustained modes making me super durable. Finally, one other factor you're missing. Upkeep costs for sustained modes use mana, not HP, even when using blood magic. With this combination, I can keep fade shroud active for durability while using my HP to cast spells. Meaning the whole of my mana can be used exclusively for keeping me alive while I use my own health to destroy the enemy.

With just those 3 attributes, willpower and magic and constitution, I'll be fine. Besides, you don't know my usual equipment setup. Right now my cunning rogue has 32 constitution, and has barely put any points into that stat at level up. I make up the difference with gear, namely accessories. I won't need to pump constitution up as much as you think.

I know I was asking for criticism, but ended up arguing. At the same time, that PARTICULAR criticism wasn't applicable to what I'm planning, since AW and blood magic together seem like a very natural fit.

Constitution of course helps with staying alive, how does more HP not equal lasting longer to attack? It also fuels blood magic. So it gives me more hp to cast with and more hp to take getting hit with, it's a good dual fold purpose.

Been a while since I checked in here.

Con doesn't really help you stay alive all that much in DAO, at least when you consider the true cost of investing an attribute there as opposed to some place else. As far as Blood Magic specifically, buffing Con for Blood Magic isn't too different from buffing Will for normal casting... Neither is necessary strictly speaking, especially given the fact that there are a lot of good +con and health regen items (just like there are good magic/stamina regen items).

I would rather pump magic for spellpower, so from that sense I don't see much of a conflict between AW and Blood Mage. Also the fact that AW does the best damage casting rather than melee, I personally never felt AW and Blood Mage all that opposed from one another.

Well I'm about a month off now from this playthrough, and I'm thinking of one final and large alteration. I've never tried glyphs before, never thought highly of them. But recent reading, especially about paralyze explosion, has me thinking they could be highly potent on me. Also thinking of aiming for the entropic death spell combo too. Problem is that I will definitely need to let some of the prior build ideas go, because my prior build already hit the talent point limit. So the question is what to give up to make room.

Edit 1: looking at my past posts, giving up the nightmare spell combo is a good idea, the spell combos I have in mind now are superior.

Edit 2: Now further reading makes me think I should get nightmare. Which would be better, that or entropic death?

Edit 3: Only just learned that entropic death is single target. So I've decided not to pick it. My current Outlook is...

Max glyph line, max hex line, max the telekinesis line, hit rank 3 in fire and ice, max blood magic and arcane warrior, and max the stinging swarm spell. Two points in earth for rock throw, 1 point for walking bomb, 1 point for basic heal. Now, I'm TERRIBLE at math, but I think this works out to 35 points exactly (the absolute limit for spell points without cheating or exploits). If I have enough points, does this sound good?

Edit 4: worked out to 34, but hit a snag. Forgot the base mage tree line, that had spirit bolt in it. So while it seemed I had an extra point, I don't. So...

Max hexes, glyphes, fire, telekinesis, mage tree, both specializations, that's 28 points. From there, 1 in earth for rock armor, 1 in walking bomb, 1 for heal, 3 for cone of cold. 34 points exactly, 1 left over and not sure what to do with it. Does THIS sound optimal?

Final edit. Missed ice, but I think I'm done after working that out. Arcane mastery isn't great, but staff mastery is. I don't think the basic heal is that useful. Also never used blood control much. So...

Max glyphs, fire, hexes, arcane warrior, telekinesis, stinging swarm, 24 points. From there, 3 points for staff mastery, 3 for ice, 30 points. Then 3 for the third rank blood magic spell, 33. Finally, rock armor, walking bomb, 35. Done, this is the final draft unless someone sees a major issue and points it out so I have to adjust again.