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2 specs

CrazedlyCrazedly Member, Alpha Two
edited November 12 in Mage Archetype
I played mage during my 1st of 3 weekend play test. Had made it to lvl 12. I love how powerful my character seemed to have become right when I got the choice of the electric ball or other level equivalent spells. For whatever reason they felt significantly less powerful as I continued to level. I really disliked that my spells would travel through completely solid surfaces and pull groups from around corners, may be the main reason I won't return back to mage any time soon. Lastly, I had tried out many different specs or ways to build my character, as compared to other archetypes it felt as tho I could only follow two specic paths. Either the fire path or the electric frost path. My personal preference, I think a mage should be able to efficiently wield all forms of magic rather than being forced into just a fire mage to make all your spells work together.

Comments

  • JumbolayaJumbolaya Member, Alpha Two
    It's interesting that you felt that you were forced into a single element. I have the exact opposite experience playing level 14 mage. In the mages current rendition, I feel to get the most DPS you have to leverage the conditions of each element. The general rotation I have found is:
    1. (ARCANE) Use arcane circle (I don't really being forced to stand still but it is a big damage boost).
    2. (LIGHTNING) Use Ball Lightning to apply Volatile.
    3. (FROST) Use an ability that applies Chill followed by something that applies Frozen.
    4. (LIGHTNING) Use lightning to explode the frozen condition.
    5. (FIRE) Keep burning (using fireball) and combust DOTs up. Alternatively, move this up above step 4 to apply stagger, which triggers a double (LIGHTNING) Chain Lightning

    Not a perfect order, but in general I think you need to use all three (four if you include arcane circle) to be optimal. That being said, "optimal" is extremely relative to the current state of mage and will definitely change as more abilities are added, build trees fleshed out, and tuning is done. A better write up was done by Crixx on the above (https://www.reddit.com/r/AshesofCreation/comments/1gmfa7y/extremely_in_depth_mage_guide_for_ashes_of/).

    I personally like focusing on a single element as I've always played fire mages and don't find doing all elements as compelling thematically. I'm hoping that both single elements and mulit-elements will be competitive at different things. For example, fire is good at applying burning DoTs, lightning at splash damage, frost at burst damage and kiting, all while allowing the above playstyle to be capable of a little bit of everything. Also, who knows what secondary archetypes is going to do, that could throw all of this build-crafting on its head.

    I also think resistances/vulnerabilities to certain types of damages is going to be a big part of enemies in this game, so being able to build an optimal build to a specific element would be cool. Sort of bring the right build/toolkit for the job.

    Just my 2 cents :)
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