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Firstly,I define all about magical armor as "magical" or use"M"as abbr;and "P" for physical ones.And I will talk about:

Why do I think M users or called "M camp" are weak and useless comparing to P users?

Of course,M users and P users are not enemies but co-operators in DOSEE,as P characters benefit a lot from M characters including dual-wand users,buff skill users,control skill users and damage magic users.And the question"Is M user powerful than P user?"is less important,because wand are powerful enough and magics are "monopolized" by intelligence-type characters to a degree.

Then let me use Q and A format:
Q(1)Why M camp is obviously weaker than P camp?
Please compare damage per ap:
P camp --- dual-dagger and dual-strength-based weapon
M camp --- staff and dual-wand
It's so obvious......
And there are troublesome M resistance but no P resistance.
Q(2)Why M camp and P camp are enemies each other?
Because of the armor system.As M camp is so weak,a"all P team"behaves not worse than a"P-M cooperationteam".
P camp can use all magic if they want,with a skill point cost and a skill book.(for example,'haste' or 'teleport')

Q(3)How M camp attack M armor?
Weapon attack(and weapon-based skills for staff user),of course.
Without the source skills,there are only 'fireball','hail strike','chloroform'(a rogue skill)and'shocking touch'able to obviously causing more damage per ap than using weapon.
Of course,pouring poison on fire is a good idea.
Q(4)How M camp attack Vitality?
Their is a fire magic 'spontaneous combustion' which deal large damage on burning ones.And only this is not in Q(3).All damage of time,including poison,fire,necrofire,are powerless.
(In v3.0.31or33,M camp had decay+heal...but not at now)

And let's see:what changed for M camp?

1.For summon school,let's talk about Incarnate:
3ap and 10turn is more powerful with casting before war.
Damege and two armors are a little low.
Whirlwind is useless and Range attack is normal,while Rush is a additional Knock-Out skill.
Initial skill is powerful with summon school buff and two skill buff.
However,
Earth incarnate(summoned on oil)is a P-user.
M-incarnates(summoned on elements) have a lower damage than P-ones.
Water incarnate's healing is useless.(Why not hail strike?)
Knock-Out is no use for a M-team.

2.For polymorph:
Tentacle is a P-skill.Of course,it's still a way for a melee to cause temporary range attack.
Chicken Claw is good,as frozen fears for fire and give 40% poison resistence.Stun,chicken and frozen,sounds good.
BullRush is completely a P-skill.

3.For necro:
Decaying touch changed from S camp to P camp.What a betrayer!(laugh)
It can turn healing into 1.75 bouns damage.For example,healing of range school can heal 30%*MaxHP,which turns into 30*1.75=52.5%.And heal skills from water magic school also behave well.
Obviously,it's far more powerful than 'spontaneous combustion' +burning,or poison on fire.

Come on Boss,let me heal you,don't be shy,just a little pain and then end......

Therefore,in V3.0.50&52,M camp lost their most powerful weapon vs Vitality,which is stealed by their enemy(=P camp).

In short,1 and 2 are just so so.However,3 is fatal.Betraying of 'decaying touch' is the Final Straw.

Conclusion:M camp is weak.M-user is useless."All magic-user team"lives hard. Poor fellows!

Last edited by HedroAero; 13/04/17 04:17 PM.
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I guess you forgot something important: P-skills mostly scale from weapons too, therefore finding a good weapon can give you a bigger boost than mages will ever get.

Also physical was always more of damage focused, while magic was more about applying effect, which will get totally denied as long armor is left.

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I don't think weapon boost needs to be concerned...The most powerful and constant attack for Magic users is pouring poison(especially poison wand)on fire,and staff is only a little weaker than strength-based melee,so they also need good weapons.About skills vs M-armor.

Fire or poison dot(=damage of time) are not so useless,and so is bleeding for Physical camp.However,decaying touch is so powerful,as I can kill Bishop without armor with decaying+2~3healing skills.

To be short,give my advice:Rob the rich?Or feed the poor?
Plan A
1.Increase Wand damage(at least +50% to catch up with Bow),and decrease poison+fire combo
2.Increase Staff damage a little to catch up with Two-hand Sword
3.Design powerful magic combo for killing no armor units
Plan B
1.Decrease healing skills not related to intelligence,especially the Ranger skill "heal 30% max HP"
2.Increase physical damage types,and add corresponding physical resistances
(Anyway,it's only my own opinion.
A balanced and interesting game with enough complexity is nearly impossible.
And I also prefer complexity or interest than balance.)

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The problem is not, that fire & earth do so much damage, the problem is, because of the armor system fire & earth are pretty much the only viable for mage. Air & Water are more CC based wich causes them to be low on damage, but CC gets totally denied by the Armor system, making water & air pretty useless for a large part of the combat. But that problem is discussed in other topic.

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The current armour system is a big problem IMO. Every fight is simply a race to beat down the physical/magical amour so status effects can actually be applied. There's also no benefit to a magic user and a physical damage dealer attacking the same target, since reducing magic armour does little to help a physical damage dealer.

The old system with body-building, willpower, etc was a more sensible system, it meant status effects always had a chance to be applied.

Another issue may also be that there are so many damn CC abilities in the game now...

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Originally Posted by Kalrakh
The problem is not, that fire & earth do so much damage, the problem is, because of the armor system fire & earth are pretty much the only viable for mage. Air & Water are more CC based wich causes them to be low on damage, but CC gets totally denied by the Armor system, making water & air pretty useless for a large part of the combat. But that problem is discussed in other topic.


I don't really see this as a problem. I mean are you really going to play any char with just one element/school of skills?
Just go fire + water and you have one element to brun through magic armor with and then another one to apply CC with.

Or if you want one char to be all about damage have another one be the CC guy and the others as damage dealers. Perhaps having a healer+cc+buff char would be nice. Focus on memory vitality and defenses and then simply play a more support type character.

Personally I like the new armor system and I like that different elements offer different things. If all of them offered some damage and some CC one would always come out on top in terms of damage, so the others would just become pointless.

But the armor system means you need to have plan for defense or really reall good offense. I make enemy skills a bit more scary because you can't just perma CC everything and ignore whatever NPCs are intended to do.

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The problem is: It forces you to take fire and earth, because fire alone does not do that much either. Only the interaction with both does the real deal, as you say so.

If don't have that knowledge and just start the way you expected to play, you could easily feel screwed. Same goes to the fact, that the early stage is pretty hard, if you don't know what you have to do, to get your exp. Also in the early stage of the game it is much harder to be that versatile with all those different kind of skill for every situation.

In DOS1 water and air were good to lay a huge field of decent CC, in DOS2 the combination is pretty useless. You don't have to worry to get stunned, as long you have enough shield left.

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I can only hope the dev team can figure something out to give mage classes some love in the damage department. I prefer to build my mages as Blasters, not CC bots. Can only imagine how the people feel who actually like having their mages CC everyone. Load up a mage with CC spells only to be able to not use them cause of armor.

Also sucks cause as a mage you have to contend with enemy resistances as well. If an enemy is resistant to the 2 schools you picked, you're gonna do no damage. Either that or you spread your character too thin skill point wise.

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There probably should be additional modifiers for scalability, or the existing modifiers made stronger. Weapons directly add to physical attack skills, while comparatively, the power of a mage's wand or staff has little bearing on the actual spells. That's a portion of the itemization that is worthless to a mage.

Another idea, would be making either intelligence, or weapon damage/quality of a mage weapon, have the added effect of adding some form of spell penetration effect, where the higher the value, the more damage they deal specifically to armor.

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Originally Posted by Kalrakh
I guess you forgot something important: P-skills mostly scale from weapons too, therefore finding a good weapon can give you a bigger boost than mages will ever get.

Also physical was always more of damage focused, while magic was more about applying effect, which will get totally denied as long armor is left.


Another aspect in the first game was magic featured a lot of ways to make damage go out of control. Chaining explosions, forcing enemies to walk on fire, and a bunch of other crazyness. Often making enemies who were immune to such cheapness suddenly shook the difficulty level because you couldn't just make a wall of fire to kill all the enemies.

Though yeah the spells as a whole didn't do anywhere close to the amount of raw damage that Physical did in the first game by a sizable margin outside elemental chains. You could expect your warriors to get double damage on you.

You also got some great buffs and amazing debuffs. While Rogues had as much CC as Mages did, mages also recovered spells faster.

---

Now the issue with the leap to this game comes almost entirely from three key changes

1) Area Denial has been severely weakened: Fire Floors don't immediately win you battles (nor do they immediately kill your friends)
2) Movement Ability has been boosted (Enemies don't waste a billion turns trying to get up to you)
3) CC almost never kicks in unless the armor is gone.

You can see the effects rather prominently.

Firefly was a great skill in DOS1 because the ability to paint fire really controlled the battle field. Yet in DOS2 it would be not very useful (better than Fireblood) and thus it isn't in the game. Fire had to up its game and create HUGE pockets of flame creating almost unmanageable amounts of fire.

As well because enemies can run like their butts are on fire it means mages don't get much in terms of grace before they have to start firing into your own lines making spell casting very surgical.

CC has been severely handicapped and there are very few forms of CC that even penetrate armor (Slow, fire, and poisoned) and the forms of CC combinations usually don't work until after armor is gone making them useless (No point in doing Chill + Water).

As well because of the armor split it means that the first armor destroyed is best. Sure enemies can have a lot of armor and low magic defense, but even now that typically just means that if you had an extra physical member that you could take them down just as fast.

Yet there is more

1) Physical fighters are even more CC Heavy than before
2) Physical Fighters still have a lot of damage over mages.

Mages typically only show their magical might with Earth + Fire... Right now the Air + Water combo ability is weak.


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