Oh yeah, DAI. The game that killed my comp. I thought having an R9 270 would be enough, but no, my Q6600 was the bottleneck. And I broke something trying to overclock it past 3ghz lol.
But it doesn't look half bad in the PS4. I do wish tactics came back though, as I kinda miss having complete control of my party with virtually no micromanagement as it was in DAO. On the upside, the AI is much better, but far from foolproof.
Oh yeah, some notes...
Auto Attacks
-Fifth attack is 3 hits, so if you do the full combo (takes around 5 seconds), you do ~160% of your weapon damage per second.
Barrier
- 24s CD, lasts 12s
- Lasts ~17s with Knight protector, and it doesn't matter who cast it, as long as one person in your party has the passive
-Elegant Defense doesn't reduce the CD if you replace your existing barrier with another one (meaning it's kinda useless if you're already staggering your barriers with multiple mages)
-Rejuvenating Barrier only works on the person who has the passive, though it is multiplicative with Winter Stillness/Combat Clarity. So combing Rejuv Barrier with either of the latter two pretty much doubles your mana regeneration
-Mana Surge activates your no mana cost for next spell buff once it runs out, no need for an enemy in particular to break your barrier. Kinda bugged that it also affects other mages who doesn't have the passive, some of time...
-With Clean Burn, Knight Enchanter can get it down to 12s CD IF they spam lightsaber and hit somebody with it (not as effective in tactic mode since the AI doesn't spam it as well)
-Alternatively, every other mage can do the same by combining Winter Stillness + Gathering Storm + mainly auto-attacks hitting a monster
-Getting hit while barrier is up activates heal x% over 15 seconds weapon/armor mods, which is what makes KE (and multiplayer Arcane Warrior) so powerful in conjunction with damage dealt becomes barrier generated passive.
Winter Stillness
- auto-attacks and most spells do not break it
- most notable spells that break it are fire/ice mine, and very unfortunately, energy barrage does as well even though you barely move lol. (others include Revivify, Necromancer panick spell, and Knight Enchanter Light Saber)
- #1 mage passive to have if you're not a KE, and long range KE can use it too
Combat Clarity/Ice Armor
-VERY inconsistent. Sometimes you get the buff immediately once you're next to the enemy (next to ice spells in Ice armor's case), sometimes you can have entire periods of time without it.
-Pretty annoying as a KE, as sometimes you would be surrounded and don't have the mana regen buff so you can continue lightsabering
Fire Notes
-Firewall is your best friend early levels. Allows a lvl 4 party to take on the lvl 8s, since it's essentially 'protection from melee' with FF off. XD
-Fire Mine is so frigging good later on with CD reduction skills. Unfortunately, it does break Winter Stillness, so only KE can use it to its full potential.
Rift Mage notes
- Perma-blizzard build is a fun build, as smothering Veil gets you mana back in proportion with the damage you deal to wekeaned enemies. Winter Stillness + Gathering Storm + Smothering Veil passives. Upgraded Stonefist into activating Blizzard while auto-attacking while Blizzard is on, then rinse and repeat once Stonefist is off CD. Easy 400+% dps, though you do need a Champion to keep a boss target within its area of effect.
- Outside of that though, Rift Mages I feel are pretty weak. It really hurts against the ice dragons for example.
- Note tooltip for
singularity Pull of the Abyss is wrong. It's duration is around 6 seconds, not 12. So if you're thinking about cc-locking entire hordes of mobs with gathering storm + winter stillness, don't even think about it.
- Also note that Pull of the Abyss won't weaken anyone who doesn't get pulled. I assume Veilstrike won't weaken anyone who doesn't get knocked down either, but to be honest, I haven't ever brought Veilstrike against dragons lol.
Necromancer notes
- Between Walking Bomb+Spirit Mark+Autos and Winter Stillness+Gathering Storm, it is the most damaging mage build. Even if you can only sustain Walking Bomb every 12s (every 10s is the ideal situation), you'd still be doing at least 500% dps at the cost of around 10 mana per second. In comparison, lightsabering as a KE is 300%dps at 10 mana per second too, and that takes much more maneuvering than just sitting in a corner and letting your champion taunt everyone together while you blast them lol.
- On the downside, horror is a terrible skill, and the panick passives are mostly kinda useless. Either you use only DoT skills (which don't break panic/terror) and lose damage from not doing your autos, or use your autos and remove the damage bonus from your panick passive. Terrible.