My Fire Mage is an awesome swordsman?

Just as an aside , Gandalf originally didn't wield any weapons. His original name in Valinor was Olorin and he was one of the followers of the Elven god of dreams.

That's why he was never attracted to power, dominance or violence. He was reluctant to go to Middle Earth because it was full of people (and creatures) who were.

 

Wow that was beautifully said...

 

Good point! But it does make sense he would take up the fight when needed.

In the wild, you learn to fight or you die!

 

Agree with the OP. My mage is awesome with his pole arm as well.

I like a pure mage build. I don't want to melee every creature. Mages should be able to kill things before they get to them. Spells should be powerful at high levels. They are not.

I have found the best way I can play my mage is by summoning my Ice Elemental and getting about 1/3 life away from the creature that my ele is attacking. I still end up using my melee skills (ice fist/polearm to succeed)

Wands/Staves currently are worthless. Hoping eventually they will imbue my chosen school of magic...and double hopefully my staff will work like a pole-arm with more knockdown/stun than damage.

There are not enough damage spells in some trees. The water tree needs ice ball and ice storm along with freezing effects. The slow is pathetic.

 

at least now my wizards perfectly sculpted triceps are of use

 

Big part of me kinda wishes we had classes in SOTA. Open skill systems are cool, but having to balance every combination of skills against each other ends up ruining some of the flavor in having a specialized character.

A class system with some kind of multi classing capabilities a la D&D would have been pretty neat.

I think what is really apparent, is that magic needs to be overhauled completely. You should be able to be a fire Mage specifically etc.

Perhaps some kind of added benefits to more narrow builds. Say a player who only uses fire magic inherently is more effective with his spells than a player who uses fire and water. Even if they both train fire equally.

 

Wands are beyond useless. 1-4 damage, trains up ranged skill, but gets no benefits for ranged skill increases (only applies to bows and arrows). Haven't tried staves so I can't comment on those.

 

You know the sad part is wands actually look COOL AS HELL when I've seen people using them. I was genuinely shocked at how nice and fluid the animations and effects looked.

 

I'm really hoping they eventually give more rewards for using skills than just extra cards to draw from. Being level 1 vs 100 in a spell should make that spell do more. Doubly so when certain passives (Earth magic) don't even increase the effectiveness of the magic school.

 

Its why I use it. I love the blue boom stick feel of it. Just wish it did more.

 

Can you use a sword in the off hand and offhand attack with it? That would be awesome

 

Yes, but you have to train up the off hand skill for it to be used.

 

I figured that, but still awesome.

 

Yes, all we have in terms of robes is the useless elf mage robe that looks like some type of S&M outfit. I played my brother's character yesterday (bludgeon fighter/healer) and wow was it more entertaining. What I can do with all my focus and arsenal of spellsspells he was able to accomplish with a couple of swings of an axe and live to deal more damage (and carry more to boot!). Also, you need to go through some relatively useless skills in order to advance in a lot of the spell trees. There was grinding in previous releases but maybe it didn't seem like so much like grinding as it does now. And the argument will be made well there are no classes in this game so a pure mage really isn't a viable option. But if that still holds true, answering the questions of truth, love and courage seem to squeeze you into a class (fighter, ranger,mage) and goes against a classless system. In terms of magic being powerful, my theory is it will never be what it could due to PvP constraints. As an Avatar in PvEcentric Ultimas of old, (and in many other games where other players were not a variable) you worked your way up to casting some pretty devastating spells. Fireball was not to be trifled with nor was earthquake, sleep, etc...(forget about Armageddon). With the dawn of PvP came I guess came the necessary dawn of nerfing and there will be no merlins or raistlins (although they'd probably add hourglass eye contacts to the add-on store for $5) The pinnacle of most of the spell trees seems to be summoning a pet of limited ability and limited lifespan while sucking away your focus...ehhh.
I'll keep trying with my pure mage build for now, but with limited interesting spells in a lot of the spell trees (how useful will chaos be? to de determined) it does get tough. Time will tell.

 

Sadly mages Want to be like Lady Galadriel, In LotR since that is what players want to use as an example, and be able to banish the Ring Wraiths and Sauron with one spell. NP but also notice that when she did this she was done. A Sparrow could have flow in and killed her after that battle.

To many mages want to be able to kill like this but NOT have to suffer that they should have to go sleep and rest for a day after.

Yeah I agree they need ALOT more help and their High level spells definitely should do ALOT more damage . . . . BUT a true mage should NEVER be out there looking for a fight :-(

There is ALOT of balancing that need to be done . . . . Oh and again here is my argument that auto attack needs to be "fixed"

 

As you, I feel like I am everything and this is not necessarily unpleasant, but I think it could be better.
Maybe something like Attunement can help ? Combat vs Magic ???

 

Agree with the OP.

I think the way to "fix" that empty feeling is to substantially beef up most magic schools and put a real cap in place. At least a truly meaningful soft cap. To build a pure mage in any particular school should take most of your available trains. Same for any particular weapon line.

 

Such a good thread (Y)

 

Mr. Tracy Hickman was quoted for saying "Raistlin was Margaret's thing" As in it was her creation "anti-hero concept" in the otherwise mythical tale.

I'm sad that we could not reunite them both for this project... in fact theres lots of people missing

 

SotA's story already has two authors, 'too many cooks in a kitchen' comes to mind, so I think SotA is doing alright with the people we've got. Keeping the development team small and manageable is a conscious and deliberate choice. And I think the game will be better for it.