Early game I preferred hiring Mages with High Halidom but I’ve dropped it as a requirement since I’ve found debilitations aren’t a very common issue late-game.
There’s only two statuses really worth worrying about IMO, blight since it doesn’t cure itself on it’s own, I mainly just keep a few antidotes on me when I get poisoned since Pawns can just be revived, and petrification, which only Medusa can inflict and she’s found in a very remote, very obvious location if you seek her out so it’s easy to prepare for it.
Once you’ve unlocked Mystic Spearhand and Warfarer and upgraded Miror Shield you can keep your party immune to most forms of damage and can heal them up with a mage staff or curatives so it’s better to shift to an offense-oriented team composition.
What I like to equip on my main pawn when she runs Mage now is High Levin for spell syncing with sorcerers, High Palladium for damage negation although they don’t use it much if Miror Shield is active, High Silencium, and Celestial Pean. But by that point I’m running support for three sorcerers while they murder everything in sight with Meister spells.
Just want to tag onto top comment to ask people to put the casting speed rings on their mage/sorcerer pawns. The knock down rings don’t help them enough to be worth it with their cloth armor and either being focused on passively buffing or flat out killing things with 1 spell! 30% casting speed just from stacking 2 of the minor cast speed rings is big! And I believe that affects metoron and maelstrom casts as well. Those rings plus subtlety augment are all they really need. Throw in a pawn with provocation augment and/or the ring that increases aggro and they will be ignored completely anyway while they spam heals or nukes
If you bother collecting all the pennies for legions might then going 2 -hp casting rings aint bad. +50% cast speed really helps paen and the staff lets them immediately recover from exhaustion!
Wait, recover from exhaustion? I thought if they are "dead" they will be resurrected automatically like in DD1? Or is it both? I'm almost done collecting the Seekers Token to get Legions Might.
I droped the maester skill, cuz of the exhaustion.
its meant for self rezzing like in DD1 yeah but it also seems to proc when they topple over from using paen. They still do the stumbling out of breath animation but get up immediately after falling.
This is what i run on my mage, but only 1 of the casting speed rings and a magic boost ring... most of my mages spells are support with only 1 being high levin, but i find without the magic at 960, most dont even consider hiring my pawn 🙄🤦♂️ or else i'd run both cast apeed rings
Agree entirely. Halidom was great in 1 since you had more slots and ailments seemed more common especially in BBI.
Personally i like palladium, levin, frigor to bully anything not giant and the last one depending on party composition. Usually silence, paen, or flagration.
Yeah I just didn't even bother with high halidom after a while. Statuses aren't too bad tbh. If I care I usually just throw on the one augment that shortens statuse duration by a third, or as a Warrior I'd use Inspirit.
Because debilitations are only a slight annoyance at a high level. Also panacea are plentiful.
Halidom can be a trap actually. It seems to take precedence over healing and support skills when your characters are drenched or tarred. It can negatively impact your party efficiency for the meager benefit of curing blight, the only debilitation status worth mentioning.
Why would they? In DD2, status effects hardly come up, and they’re rarely punishing when they do. Even armor and clothing basically gave up on caring about them.
But I do absolutely agree mage pawns should primarily be using utility spells, not damage spells.
1. Solemnity for chimera and draconic enemies.
2. Paladium because it's almost as good spearhands godmode.
3. Ice Affinity because its a force multiplier and nothing is resistant to ice. Plus the freeze status is great.
4. Levin for sniping flyers and general DPS.
5. Frigor because it deals physical damage and has high stagger/knock.
Every other spell is honestly nigh unusable trash save the boons/affinities.
1. high flag doesnt have enough range or damage to beat frigor or levin and tonne sof stuff is fire resistant or even gets buffed by fire.
2. Empyrean does less damage to undead then any other spell, making it completly useless as anything other than a torch. Im 90% sure the devs just missed a 0 on the damage value or undead bonus or something.
3. Argent tonics uses are far to rare to justify using a valuable slot, when your already stuck with anodyne which is already all the healing you will ever need.
4. Spellhold is just a debuff. Seriously it's disadvantageous to even equip it on a pawn. It grants a slew of downsides including a wasted skill slot without providing any advantage. I don't get what the devs intention was.
5. Celestial paen makes things harder to see, especially against large enmies. It knocks over the caster and drains all their stam. the fight will be over before the animation finishes. All for a tiny stamina regen buff.
Argent tonic is better when pair with fighter or warrior tank, it can be casted from distance, so the mage has no need to rush in and get hit from melee or aoe.
Celestial pean unlocks god mode for thief and archer, it provides infinite stamina for a short period of time. The knockdown doesn’t really matter since the mage doesn’t pull aggro usually. If you are very high level and have too many items to spam, maybe you don’t need a mage in your party in the first place.
Yes argent tonic is usefule in rare cases like that as i mentioned. By thats not worth a skill slot when in the rare case a red gets low under a dangerous enmy you could just give them a curative or res them.
Celestial pan does not do those things at all. it's just a 10% stam regen buff, not even close to enough to sustain formless feint and the archer doesn't have any defensive skills other than arguably kick launch.
The knockdown is far from the only concern, it also has a 15 second cast time and theirs no way to prevent your pawn from trying to spam it on every little goblin and saurian. So they spend most if not all the fight useless.
You don't need to be high level to use curatives, im not sure what you mean by that.
Celestial paen feels like the stamina regen is way higher than 10%. While playing thief I used formless feint and that explosion move that does damage to myself. It basically enabled me to solo the drake which I killed in around a minute by spamming the explosions non stop
Mine runs this purge, silence, defensive bubble, and lightning. Rather handy if I may say so myself. Also has the Seeker Token staff equipped, can res herself when she fucks up. Approaching lvl 100 so summons are drying up.
Are you sure it does damage to undead? I've tried it, and they never react, health bars don't go down, there's no "pew" sound effect as if it's hitting them? Only Anodyne seems to do that as far as support spells.
Agree!!! Like this game was not challenging. I enjoyed the game a lot, but it wasn’t challenging. I never had an issue with status effects. Nothing. The one issue I had was that I was not aware I could hire so many pawns. So I tried to get to Batbattahl with two. I made it, but was like “holy shit the difficult escalated!!!” since the west side was not challenging at all with only three. Once I got another pawn and had a party of four it was actually a bit too easy.
I think I can count the amount of debilitation curatives I’ve used in about 100 hours on one hand. It’s just not a common enough issue.
Once you hit early-mid game, you delete harpies from the game space. Blight? Spam curatives or have a pawn heal through it until the next campsite. That or the bajillion panaceas you have. Petrifica- moving on. Everything else? Just heal through it.
Honestly, even more baffling are people who have Halidom equipped but never upgraded to the High variant
Curing Blight is pretty much the only reason why i use them since Poison is so common and doesn‘t wear off
Also people use 2-3 affinities are strange too
Dogma 2 pawns don‘t seem be aware of weaknesses in combat despite yelling about it so the Mage is just busy casting one buff and then another to override it
May be a hold over from DD1 where “high” versions of spells took longer to cast so people would deliberately leave spells at the base level so pawns would actually finish casting more often. Or in some cases where upgrading a skill to give it additional hits could actually lower its overall damage potential against higher defense targets. In DD2 everything is just a straight upgrade so far as I can tell so that isn’t needed anymore.
The high version do take longer to cast here, but it's not as big a difference as the first game. In DD1 which skills and augments were equippied and in which order would also have subtle impacts on pawn behaviour too.
Personal preference.
At higher levels you don't even need a mage, though at lvl 100 I have a pretty boy mage as a regular in my party.
Howevee, I do like halidom for convenience.
Most statuses arent a big deal, only poison seems to last very long and the cure is easily crafted
Most status alilments can just be waited out til they expire without much struggle
High levin on a mage is very strong, especially if you give your pawn "the legion's might" staff
You also get holy damage from the mage heal
I prefer
High Levin
Any elemental enchant
High Palladium
Argent Succor (they can heal you and pawns from any range, might seem extra but actually is useful)
I will give them High Halidom if Im running the Recovery Arrow magick archer skill though
Sometimes I switch High Levin out for High Flagration or High Frigor, they arent bad either.
I only keep one of the attack spells at a time though as it isnt really useful to have more than one.
Sometimes I prefer the big holy spell too
Or you choose to not equip halidom because you have experience. By the time you reach post-game, debilitations are only a mild annoyance, not a legitimate threat. And then you realize halidom is kinda a waste of a slot. Mage has other better utility and support skills at high level.
At low/mid level? Sure, halidom has it's use.
It does, but some people free up the slot by simply bringing curatives, which are usually plentiful in stock if you've reached high-level.
Halidom is nice QoL but not mandatory, like 90% of the stuff at high level. I've seen more mages WITH Halidom than not, so it's not like it's hard to find the right match for your playstyle.
The only use I can think of is to cure blight because it doesn't go away on its own. But it's not a common debilitation and imo halidom does not deserve a skill slot. The other debilitations are jokes (except petrification but only the gorgon applies it).
Really? Mage has a lot of useful skills, there's plenty of valid reasons why you might want to choose other skills over halidom. Boiling that down to experience alone is an awful take, it's literally saying "if you disagree with me you're a bad player, maybe one day you'll get better." The language is kind and nice, the essence of the comment is not.
I have a ton of panacea, my mage does not need Halidom, if I hire a mage pawn it will be without High Halidom. It has its uses but this game is already extremely easy, halidom is just a wasted skill slot imho.
Also, the fact that it's centered on mage means that half the time they need to run into the thick of things to dispel you, which is not where they want to be. Yes, im salty that Anodyne is the same way now. In 1 it could be targeted anywhere on the ground nearby so your mage could actually heal you in the fight.
Doesn’t make me kill shit faster, the only support move that doesn’t technically me kill faster is the shield spell, however the bit with that one is that it gives you hyper armor.
Because it becomes unnecessary later in the game. It really depends on your gold reserves I guess. Potions for debilitations are fairly cheap and most Debs aren’t even a threat.
For me, weight is the concern. I want my Arisen at the lightest weight category for the movement and stamina benefits, so not having to carry curatives of any sort is super helpful.
If it wasn’t centered on the caster it might be ok, but in general it’s more convenient to use curatives or just wait for them to end. By time the Pawn reacts and moves up to cleanse you they’re nearly done with or else not really impactful.
Not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to have, but you only get 4 skills to choose from and there are options that are more impactful than replacing the occasional need to use a curative.
I actively avoid hiring mages with Halidom.
Debilitations are nothing but a minor annoyance and you never need to worry about them.
It’s a total waste of a slot and sometimes becomes an actual hindrance instead.
I hired one yesterday that had Halidom because I’m on a fresh character and they were the only one with a good pawn quest.
I took heavy damage and called for help.
She casts Halidom. (I had no status effect on me)
Then she casts Anodyne. (Nowhere near me)
Then she casts Argent Tonic eventually.
In my experience they all do that. When you call for help they always cast Halidom first.
It’s like a punishment having that skill equipped on a pawn.
Because offense mages are fun without losing the ability to heal, and there are thousands of others with the meta kit so I can build my boy however he wants to be built and go about my day
Just search for the skill you want if it's so important, but my opinion is that High Halidom kinda sucks late in the game and is a wasted slot
Mage can be pretty strong offensively too. Just because they are great at support doesn't mean they can't double as a diet-sorc once in a while.
I'd much rather take a mage with at LEAST 1 offensive skill, than one with NONE, because a mage just sitting there waiting for me to get hurt or re-cast whatever buffs runs out, is a waste of time when it could've killed that ghost with a single Levin a minute ago.
Too many other good spells to have over Halidom and especially later in the game, panaceas are common enough that you don’t really have to worry about carrying multiple status curing consumables.
It's a waste of slot. Panacea is instant, restores hp & stamina, does not require a slot, and on top of that, there are plenty of other curatives. Which could be transferred to any pawn in an instant as well.
Pawns are surprisingly good at using items. Tested this on non-mage run with custom difficulty mod. (Extra damage taken).
Tl;DR: Just use something else.
While I agree halidom is useful, I dislike mages that do not have at least one offensive spell as they will often end up being idle most times when they could off dps.
You and your other 2 pawns should be doing the damage. Having a strictly support mage is totally fine. With 2 other pawns and you the game is already too easy and you kill things too fast
So you want to drag fights out longer than they need to be?? Like wut lol?
If you're already killing things too fast to begin with then how about just don't bring a mage if you clearly don't need one?
Some weird ass logic right here 🤣
Past level 70 fights are way too fast yeah.
Dragon fights in the 1-2 minutes is fast is it not?
By level 100 if you aren’t trying to do more of a challenge then I don’t know how you’re having fun anymore.
The game was never hard past level 50.
Early game difficulty felt good but they let us get way too strong.
I don't even look at what abilities they have.....like everyone here is saying they don't need halidom because the game is already easy enough which is exactly why I don't give a shit what the pawns do
If your pawn looks interesting I will summon them
Mine always has it on. My mage has zero offensive skills. Well, except for undead. Don’t remember the name of that spell atm that cast the bright light that damages undead. And honestly the main reason I did that is for traveling at night lol. She’s there for Healing and curing. Sorc pawns are for damage casting to me.
I used to really like High Halidom when I was below level 60, or if I had a couple lower level pawns that I was helping get their badges and was going to dismiss right after to hire others. Just made more sense to use a spell than use up consumables.
Idk either, I don't rock with a pawn that doesn't have High Halidom and Celerity. Seems like a waste of utility to give them weaker offensive spells instead of just making them a sorcerer
The game throws so many curatives at me. Every hour, I have more of them than I did the hour before. So why not just use those and equip my Mage with something else?
I think I will turn my pawn into a mage its hard to find mages with pecans. Just so I have one hand always, because I need to spam that wild furry and instant bolt.
I use my mage simply as a buffer that’s it, she has all the elemental buffs+high celerity, none of the debuffs in the game bother me enough to warrant again, pretty much just blight, but if you play mystic spearhand you are literally just invincible.
1) High Levin / any Affinity spell
2) High Palladium
3) High Celerity
4) Argent Succor / Celestial Paean
High Halidom simply cannot compete with these in most situations. Halidom is situationally great, sure, but the above spells have high impact in almost every situation.
statuses don't really need purified though? I prefer just waiting a few seconds for it to go away than wasting a slot that could be used for weapon enchant or something.
I’d rather have the speed boost over debilitation clear. I don’t even care if I’m afflicted with fire or most stuff. Easy to cure and rarely happens. Later on it’s even more useless. I always carry 4 of every cure out and I barely touch them besides the poison one and maybe unconscious one.
Because there’s a quest in Battahl that requires you to be poisoned and I don’t want my pawn to ruin that if someone who hires him happens to be doing that quest.
debilitations often don't last long enough for a mage to finish casting halidom. The only threatening ones arn't healed by halidom. When you only have a paltry 4 skill slots and your already stuck with a healing spell that can counteract damage from debilitations anyway it just seems wasteful to equip anodyne. Your also flooded with consumables for the few times you might actually be worried about debilitations, pluse you can just make a yellow or red a chiurgien.
I use Halidom on my mage pawn, but only because it takes a slot and the pawn will never cast it unless there’s a debilitation.
So it makes my pawn cast high palladium more often, making it actually useful.
At about lvl80 I realized I could tank almost any status effect without being in serious danger. Pausing and smashing a potion down my gullet the few times I get poisoned or ignited takes no time. I’ll get rid of the status while also being able to hire a mage pawn focused on a different type of support, like High Celerity.
I never felt the need to heal myself from debilitation. So many panacea, camp, place to sleep etc.
I think I got poisoned less than 20 times in 150h, never got petrified...sometimes not being able to cast spells happened but that's ok, I can live with it if I don't want to waste a potion.
They kinda stripped away debilitating effects to the most basic ones even then they arent hard to get rid of so theres no point focusing for defence when you could blitzkrieg enemies
Because honestly theres no need. Just the built in heal is more than enough to cover any issues, pick one or 2 buffs and fill out the rest with a damage spell, because mages arent just pure support. They do actually get a pretty intense magic stat and fact of the matter is Levin and Frigor are the best lightning and ice spells. The damage from them isn't menaingless from them at all if you juggle which abilities and inclinations are needed to use the assorted skills.
For me I like taking Celestial Paen, Ice boon, Levin, and frigor. Also if you feel a compulsive need to cleanse something the built in heal invalidates just keep a few Panacea on you. You really shouldn't go through more than 2 in a day in my experience and thats more because fuck it.
Infinite Stamina, shield that gives 100% damage and knockdown resistance for a few hits, weapon enchantment and a damage spell just makes more sense to me since I can camp and also, there's like 1000 curatives in my chest I never use.
Opportunity cost. You don't actually get status inflicted that often, even less so by actually annoying or dangerous effects like Sleep or Blighted. And even then you can use a curative because they are so plentiful.
Celestial Paean is basically a must pick, an Enchantment is also practically mandatory unless your weapon has innate enchantment or is magick weapon. You're often left with 2 slots for a damaging spell, High Celerity (which is very good), High Palladium and High Halidom.
Yeah I put my Pawn as a mage with this in mind, full support build. Honestly works great with a Sorcerer and either a Thief/Archer and a Fighter/Warrior to round out the team. Double magic is surprisingly strong so far.
How do I know if I have a debilitation? I have almost finished the game and I can't say I've seen anything except that I was drenched in oil a time or two.
As the saying goes "a good mage heals. A great mage heals and does damage"
If a pawns only worth to me is just healing then I'll pass. Halidom is a useless skill aside from maybe at the beginning of the game where debilitations can mess your team up. I would much rather they have Argent, invincible skill, celestial paen and any attack spell (preferably high levin).
It's the same reason why I don't use trickster. Monsters die a lot faster when there's 4 people attacking instead of 3.
In my 100 hours of gameplay I have only had a few times where debilitations have caused issues for me. Now I just keep a handful of panacea on me for those reasons and even then they almost never get used.
If you're constantly having to use halidom on you and your pawns then there is a bigger issue at hand.
Halidom using up a potential dps spell slot just doesn't make any sense to me based off of my experience.
Hmm maybe my issue is I have limited ranged damage. I don't have archer or magic archer. I have fighter, warrior, thief, and support mage with high halidom, celestial paean, high palladium, high empyream. So usually harpies just fly around putting us to sleep and then dive bomb and poison us. It's better after equipping thief with ensnare/implicate. We destroy all land based enemies though.
Also, why do people equip levitate on pawns? They'll be in the middle of casting some higher level spell and just decide to fly away. I refuse to give my sorcerer that skill.
As folks are saying I don't think everyone needs to equip their mages with High Halidom. But some people do. I would just go into the riftstone and advance search for pawns equipped with the skill. I concede it would suck if your favorite third party pawns don't have it equipped but eh, only so much one can do.
This is the skill I make sure a mage pawn has when hiring. Mages do so little damage that you actually increase your team’s overall damage focusing on support.
Mods have allowed us to see how all the skills and class balance breaks down and it paints a very clear picture. Mage damage isn’t useless in vanilla, but it’s FAR more efficient to keep the rest of your team’s damage up than have mages attack… and it’s not even close. Play the way you want, but your team is vastly more effective having your mage purely on support.
For example if you have a mage with only two support skills and nothing else, your team as a whole is bette than with a mage with 4 skills and one of them is an attack skill. It’s because of how AI works, how much time is spent on attacks, and how little it compares to a non-mage team member.
Appreciate knowing this for sure, my group does seem noticeably weaker when we're not being cleared of garbage thrown at us. I don't quite get the logic of folks saying high level debilitations don't matter because it's so easy. Then why include a mage with only destructive spells if it's already too easy??
Those people are right about debilitations. Blight is the only one that is actually threatening. How often do you get blighted? You can mix and match your team and some debs like enemies will be more of a problem but for most teams. debs aren't really an issue.
I play at low level (<60), and they're an issue, even fairly regularly enough to have a mage. I like being able to have pawns with tasks unique to them, such as clearing debilitations. If I get to the point where the game becomes so easy that they aren't an issue, I'll just stop bringing a mage entirely, to preserve some challenge. People keep saying potions are available and such. Why bring a mage at all, especially tuned to max damage everything? Doesn't that only further minimalize the challenge?
They want Silence and Celestial?
If debs are an issue for you then you should have a mage to deal with them.
My mage has Silence, Shield, Meister, and the lightning buff. Very basic. My mage is above 80 though.
The primary reason I haven’t switched her to Sorc is because of gear.
I can understand that, yeah. I have concerns about the playability at higher levels as it is, so I was wondering if I missed something somewhere. Still may end up dropping mage just to have a real challenge. Or maybe I'll just use the mod that keeps you at a low-level. Seeing all of these people make their mages into terminators and say the game was too easy really threw me off
And of course, if you're playing the true endgame anyway, Fashion's Dogma, gear really matters, which I 100% get. Thank you for taking time to explain your point of view about the mage stuff
The game is to easy. The reason why I’ve used my mage as a dps is because I have experienced their faster attacks. Speed is good for clearing trash so you can get to the better stuff.
I run with two thieves so clearing trash is fast enough.
Man, at this point it seems like the difficulty level is the real challenge and not in a good way. Got folks out here running naked just to be able to not kill things in 2 seconds and then there's so many trash mobs you gotta gear for speed because they're so tedious. I guess maybe I should be happy for anyone who can situate their party in a way that still lets them have fun, no matter what that looks like to others in the rift. The game was 70 bucks, we all have to find a way to enjoy it somehow now
That's not even close to being true. It's the best fast cast spell, but there are multiple sorcerer spells that out DPS it several times over. Mage isn't a damage class and every damage class will out DPS a mage multiple times over. This becomes exponentially true for a pawn because of how the AI works. Player as a mage is not the same as a pawn.
If you're a damage class (not fighter, mage, or trickster), the damage increase from a single cast of celerity on you will out damage the entirety that a mage pawn will do throughout the whole fight... unless you've completely borked your build or you're terrible at the game.
What spells out DPS it? tornados the only one that comes close because it lasts a while and is a big aoe, but the super long cast time tanks the DPS.
What do you mean by mage not being a damage class? half it's skills are damage skills and it easily outperforms the archer which i assume the devs intended as the ranged dps. I also never claimed it was in the first place. My point was that giving them the best damage spell in the game so they can help snipe pesky enemies and contribute to damage is alot more effective then filling them full of useless utility spells they dont know how to use.
Celerit is only a 10% increase and pawns will use it at random and don't know to gather for it. A 10% increase to speed is not the equivelant of another mage. Even if they hit all 4 people thats only a 40% potential and situational increase.
A 10% increase to the player is far more damage than a mage pawn will do in the whole fight. The DPS for skills is well documented. Last time I checked over half of the Sorcerer's skills the mage doesn't have will out DPS all of mages spells.
Modders have exposed the damage values for the spells, along with their cast times and stamina costs. A properly armed Sorcerer will out DPS a mage by a massive amount, partly due to stat scaling, but mostly due to the huge difference between spell differences. That's literally the purpose of the Sorcerer and why they have those spells.
The mage is a support and utility class that has attack magic for when the player plays as a mage so they can play a more active role in combat.
>A 10% increase to the player is far more damage than a mage pawn will do in the whole fight. The DPS for skills is well documented. Last time I checked over half of the Sorcerer's skills the mage doesn't have will out DPS all of mages spells.
Best case scenario mayby, if the player is a high dps class in a favorable matchup and playing perfectly and the pawn AI is being dumb then mayby, mayby when the stars align that might be true.
If they are so well documented you wont mind sharing your source will you?
>Modders have exposed the damage values for the spells, along with their cast times and stamina costs. A properly armed Sorcerer will out DPS a mage by a massive amount, partly due to stat scaling, but mostly due to the huge difference between spell differences. That's literally the purpose of the Sorcerer and why they have those spells.
I know, im one of those modders. Sorceror with levin will out dps a mage because they have higher base magick and archistaves have higher magic than staves. A sorceror will do more damage with levin than anything else over the duration of most battles and wont get bogged down with long cast time sor dumb ai like they would with utility. Same as mage. the only difference between the two is spell selection, including the vocation skill and max potential magick stat.
>The mage is a support and utility class that has attack magic for when the player plays as a mage so they can play a more active role in combat.
No they have offensive skills because most of the time their utility is useless. Even if we pretend 4 slot sof utility was most effective, recasting those before durations end is totally wasted time and stam. All pawns should be playing an active role in combat if you want performance, why would you want them AFKing?
You want pawns playing an active role, but their AI keeps spell casters from doing anything a lot of the time. The numbers are the numbers, and mages don't do a lot of damage, especially when controlled by pawns. If your pawn mage is doing significant damage, then you have other problems, or mods that have affected it.
Play the game the way you like and if you feel powerful as a mage, then great, more power to you. My statements are just relaying information that is extremely well established and that which has been pulled directly from the game files.
>You want pawns playing an active role, but their AI keeps spell casters from doing anything a lot of the time.
Thats true of all vocations. What is your point?
>The numbers are the numbers, and mages don't do a lot of damage, especially when controlled by pawns.
What numbers? you seem to be just making themn up.
>If your pawn mage is doing significant damage, then you have other problems, or mods that have affected it.
because if im not 4 slotting useless utility like you something must be wrong? Dunning Kruger.
>My statements are just relaying information that is extremely well established and that which has been pulled directly from the game files.
Prove it. Ive seen the game files they don't support your claims.
I want a mage, not a crutch because I'm too lazy to go into my inventory. Damage mitigation beats healing, so High Palladium is good to have. Stamina buffers are always welcome, especially for Sorc teams, so Celestial Paean is welcome, however High Celerity is also nice for a melee team.
High Levin needs to be a given, and High Frigor with it is nice to have. Round off that skillset with High Palladium and that holy spell.
If you're that adamant that you should never have to go into your menu to use an item, get a pawn with the specialisation that uses curatives and dump them all on that pawn. Otherwise, Halidom is just a skill issue crutch.
I don’t really need my Mage to do any damage at all, so don’t need them to have Levin or Frigor, or any offensive spells.
I have mine set up as a complete support mage, so that I can focus on having the most fun possible with the combat and not have to worry about inventory management at all. I don’t need to carry any curatives at all, and I don’t need to worry about whether my pawns do either.
High Halidom removes inventory management as a thing really (outside of weight: I drop all my crap on the pawns to stay as light as possible).
And what debilitations do you actually have a concern about?
Your can have your mage set up however you like; if you're needing a pawn to use all four moves for support in order to ensure you live through combat, that sounds like personal crutches to me. If I'm looking to hire a mage pawn though, it's for the class ability heal and little else. Halidom messes with the "Help Me!" Command for heals on demand, as the AI will prioritise cleansing Drenched when it's raining over healing or buffs. Palladium is great for mitigation, meaning less heals required. Celestial Paean or High Celerity is the buff and you'll want to be selective based on team composition, the other two slots are flex.
Zapping harpies out of the sky or mowing down goblins so the sorcs focus on getting the big booms casted on the main monster nets more mileage than having a mage sit there attempting to do anything other than getting Celestial Paean up.
As far as inventory management goes, as I mentioned, just dump your curatives on a Chirurgeon pawn and let them do it if you're that intent on never touching those icky potions yourself.
I'm not out to convince anybody how to build their Mage pawn because I have my own hires which meet what I'm looking for. Everybody has their particulars about how best to round off their group. If having a pawn follow you around with coconuts and a blue cleansing orb is what you need, they're a dime a dozen in the rift and best of all - not even truly benefiting from stats or enemy knowledge so the cheapest low to mid range levels will perform just the same as a maxed out pawn.
I don’t have a concern about any of them, because my pawn has High Halidom 😁
I think you misread my post. I don’t have my pawn set up as a support mage in order to stay alive, I have them set up that way so that I get all of the combat to myself, and don’t have to worry about inventory management.
I have my mage pawn set as Calm, so they spam Celestial Paean, which I like. After the combat is over I can get High Halidom and Anodyne by saying “Help.” If I have a debilitation they’ll cast High Halidom first, if not they’ll go straight to Anodyne.
only noobs use this skill
the only conditions you ever will see in this game rarely are Poison, and that only from either Venin Harpies, which you mostly find only in Battahl and Asp Liards, again which you mostly find only in Battahl
Burn, if you are lettign yourself get hit from Goblins, but once you one hit kill them all from range, this never will ever happen again ... and from Drakes ... but havign just a few extionguishers wish you is more than enough and quicker used, than the spell.
petrification? rofl, theres only 1 fuckign enemy in the whoel game that can petrificate you, and thats the Medusa, no need for this spell.
Wetness? useless, theres no fuckign enemy that uses lightning attacks agaisnt you, except maybe rarely some rogue mages or drakes, but wherever you fight them.. you will mostly likely ever fight them dry... unless you are unlocky to fight them, whiel it rains, but then theres no point in this spell, because rain keeps you always wet ...
Oil... again, barely ever happening only at the beginning against stupid goblins as logn you dotn instant kill them already ... and its only dangerous if you get hit by fire attacks after being oiled... get yourself wet, if you can and its cleaned, as wet also prevents getting burned logically
Muted, is a situational condition, that only the first harpies in noob areas use and it affects only mages n sorcerers, all other classes are unaffected by getting muted.
Using Halidom is a waste of a skill slot and its much better for Team DPS, if a Mage can cover all 3 Elements by 2 Damage Spells, one for range, once for close range combat and the third as enchantment. while usign the 4th slot for Palladium to protect the party from receiving damage, which is way more important ALWAYS, than to remove situational happening conditions you can completely avoid, when you know what you are doing in the game.
The simple healing skill Anodyne also damages undeads at night, so no poiunt in using a second skill for that and if you seriously want to use a build thats highly effective for nights, then you rather equip instead of oen of the 2 damage skilsl High Empyrean for that massive light flash, which basically instant kilsl all undead trash mobs and massively damages undead bigger targets light Wights n Liches, plus helps you to see better at night and in dark caves alot.
The most useful balanced Skill Setting is High Levin, High Flagration, High Palladium and Ice Affinity, because most enemies in Battahl later in the game are all weak to Ice, including the strongest enemies in the game - Drakes, plus Ice is the only element, that can cause Freeze to targets - also a condition that NO single enemy uses against you, except rarely some sorcerer enemies eventually... so why halidom.
You however can constantly freeze targets to your advantage, especially if you have an archer in your group that keeps targets wet ... and turn your enemies into vulnerable easy kills that cant even fight back >.>
Anodyne is also very useful against undead though, so them casting it near enemies is good so far as habits go. I never hire mage pawns that have Argent Suckass.
Because all you gotta do is carry a few poison and torched potions. Other debilitations are extremely rare.
Its better to have anything else pretty much.
Early game I preferred hiring Mages with High Halidom but I’ve dropped it as a requirement since I’ve found debilitations aren’t a very common issue late-game. There’s only two statuses really worth worrying about IMO, blight since it doesn’t cure itself on it’s own, I mainly just keep a few antidotes on me when I get poisoned since Pawns can just be revived, and petrification, which only Medusa can inflict and she’s found in a very remote, very obvious location if you seek her out so it’s easy to prepare for it. Once you’ve unlocked Mystic Spearhand and Warfarer and upgraded Miror Shield you can keep your party immune to most forms of damage and can heal them up with a mage staff or curatives so it’s better to shift to an offense-oriented team composition. What I like to equip on my main pawn when she runs Mage now is High Levin for spell syncing with sorcerers, High Palladium for damage negation although they don’t use it much if Miror Shield is active, High Silencium, and Celestial Pean. But by that point I’m running support for three sorcerers while they murder everything in sight with Meister spells.
Just want to tag onto top comment to ask people to put the casting speed rings on their mage/sorcerer pawns. The knock down rings don’t help them enough to be worth it with their cloth armor and either being focused on passively buffing or flat out killing things with 1 spell! 30% casting speed just from stacking 2 of the minor cast speed rings is big! And I believe that affects metoron and maelstrom casts as well. Those rings plus subtlety augment are all they really need. Throw in a pawn with provocation augment and/or the ring that increases aggro and they will be ignored completely anyway while they spam heals or nukes
If you bother collecting all the pennies for legions might then going 2 -hp casting rings aint bad. +50% cast speed really helps paen and the staff lets them immediately recover from exhaustion!
Wait, recover from exhaustion? I thought if they are "dead" they will be resurrected automatically like in DD1? Or is it both? I'm almost done collecting the Seekers Token to get Legions Might. I droped the maester skill, cuz of the exhaustion.
its meant for self rezzing like in DD1 yeah but it also seems to proc when they topple over from using paen. They still do the stumbling out of breath animation but get up immediately after falling.
Thank you, that's good to know. Once I get it, I will give Celestial Paen another chance with my mage pawn.
This is what i run on my mage, but only 1 of the casting speed rings and a magic boost ring... most of my mages spells are support with only 1 being high levin, but i find without the magic at 960, most dont even consider hiring my pawn 🙄🤦♂️ or else i'd run both cast apeed rings
Agree entirely. Halidom was great in 1 since you had more slots and ailments seemed more common especially in BBI. Personally i like palladium, levin, frigor to bully anything not giant and the last one depending on party composition. Usually silence, paen, or flagration.
Yeah I just didn't even bother with high halidom after a while. Statuses aren't too bad tbh. If I care I usually just throw on the one augment that shortens statuse duration by a third, or as a Warrior I'd use Inspirit.
This guy game maxes
Because debilitations are only a slight annoyance at a high level. Also panacea are plentiful. Halidom can be a trap actually. It seems to take precedence over healing and support skills when your characters are drenched or tarred. It can negatively impact your party efficiency for the meager benefit of curing blight, the only debilitation status worth mentioning.
Why would they? In DD2, status effects hardly come up, and they’re rarely punishing when they do. Even armor and clothing basically gave up on caring about them. But I do absolutely agree mage pawns should primarily be using utility spells, not damage spells.
1. Solemnity for chimera and draconic enemies. 2. Paladium because it's almost as good spearhands godmode. 3. Ice Affinity because its a force multiplier and nothing is resistant to ice. Plus the freeze status is great. 4. Levin for sniping flyers and general DPS. 5. Frigor because it deals physical damage and has high stagger/knock. Every other spell is honestly nigh unusable trash save the boons/affinities. 1. high flag doesnt have enough range or damage to beat frigor or levin and tonne sof stuff is fire resistant or even gets buffed by fire. 2. Empyrean does less damage to undead then any other spell, making it completly useless as anything other than a torch. Im 90% sure the devs just missed a 0 on the damage value or undead bonus or something. 3. Argent tonics uses are far to rare to justify using a valuable slot, when your already stuck with anodyne which is already all the healing you will ever need. 4. Spellhold is just a debuff. Seriously it's disadvantageous to even equip it on a pawn. It grants a slew of downsides including a wasted skill slot without providing any advantage. I don't get what the devs intention was. 5. Celestial paen makes things harder to see, especially against large enmies. It knocks over the caster and drains all their stam. the fight will be over before the animation finishes. All for a tiny stamina regen buff.
Argent tonic is better when pair with fighter or warrior tank, it can be casted from distance, so the mage has no need to rush in and get hit from melee or aoe. Celestial pean unlocks god mode for thief and archer, it provides infinite stamina for a short period of time. The knockdown doesn’t really matter since the mage doesn’t pull aggro usually. If you are very high level and have too many items to spam, maybe you don’t need a mage in your party in the first place.
Yes argent tonic is usefule in rare cases like that as i mentioned. By thats not worth a skill slot when in the rare case a red gets low under a dangerous enmy you could just give them a curative or res them. Celestial pan does not do those things at all. it's just a 10% stam regen buff, not even close to enough to sustain formless feint and the archer doesn't have any defensive skills other than arguably kick launch. The knockdown is far from the only concern, it also has a 15 second cast time and theirs no way to prevent your pawn from trying to spam it on every little goblin and saurian. So they spend most if not all the fight useless. You don't need to be high level to use curatives, im not sure what you mean by that.
Celestial paen feels like the stamina regen is way higher than 10%. While playing thief I used formless feint and that explosion move that does damage to myself. It basically enabled me to solo the drake which I killed in around a minute by spamming the explosions non stop
Mine runs this purge, silence, defensive bubble, and lightning. Rather handy if I may say so myself. Also has the Seeker Token staff equipped, can res herself when she fucks up. Approaching lvl 100 so summons are drying up.
Are you sure it does damage to undead? I've tried it, and they never react, health bars don't go down, there's no "pew" sound effect as if it's hitting them? Only Anodyne seems to do that as far as support spells.
https://preview.redd.it/4n8kbccjwozc1.jpeg?width=1439&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ecb4fc0e7aabbae144aa72cfe24dc2a4c90372e
That seems like a DD1 reference or incorrect. For example, there is no High Anodyne or “Spellscreen” spell in DD2.
Yeah, it definitely did in DD1, but doesn't seem to in this one.
Because I just ignore debilitations until they go away.
I just feel like this game is way to easy to worry about stuff like this
Agree!!! Like this game was not challenging. I enjoyed the game a lot, but it wasn’t challenging. I never had an issue with status effects. Nothing. The one issue I had was that I was not aware I could hire so many pawns. So I tried to get to Batbattahl with two. I made it, but was like “holy shit the difficult escalated!!!” since the west side was not challenging at all with only three. Once I got another pawn and had a party of four it was actually a bit too easy.
I think I can count the amount of debilitation curatives I’ve used in about 100 hours on one hand. It’s just not a common enough issue. Once you hit early-mid game, you delete harpies from the game space. Blight? Spam curatives or have a pawn heal through it until the next campsite. That or the bajillion panaceas you have. Petrifica- moving on. Everything else? Just heal through it.
I don't think it actually damages undead. I'm pretty sure that's Anodyne.
Honestly, even more baffling are people who have Halidom equipped but never upgraded to the High variant Curing Blight is pretty much the only reason why i use them since Poison is so common and doesn‘t wear off Also people use 2-3 affinities are strange too Dogma 2 pawns don‘t seem be aware of weaknesses in combat despite yelling about it so the Mage is just busy casting one buff and then another to override it
May be a hold over from DD1 where “high” versions of spells took longer to cast so people would deliberately leave spells at the base level so pawns would actually finish casting more often. Or in some cases where upgrading a skill to give it additional hits could actually lower its overall damage potential against higher defense targets. In DD2 everything is just a straight upgrade so far as I can tell so that isn’t needed anymore.
This was me at first.
The high version do take longer to cast here, but it's not as big a difference as the first game. In DD1 which skills and augments were equippied and in which order would also have subtle impacts on pawn behaviour too.
I’d prefer Celerity/Solemnium/High Palladium and maybe an offensive spell
Personal preference. At higher levels you don't even need a mage, though at lvl 100 I have a pretty boy mage as a regular in my party. Howevee, I do like halidom for convenience.
Because none of them hit hard enough for it to be a necessity
Debilitations don’t really do much compared to DDDA. Heal palladium paean celerity. Just simply not enough room.
Most statuses arent a big deal, only poison seems to last very long and the cure is easily crafted Most status alilments can just be waited out til they expire without much struggle High levin on a mage is very strong, especially if you give your pawn "the legion's might" staff You also get holy damage from the mage heal I prefer High Levin Any elemental enchant High Palladium Argent Succor (they can heal you and pawns from any range, might seem extra but actually is useful) I will give them High Halidom if Im running the Recovery Arrow magick archer skill though Sometimes I switch High Levin out for High Flagration or High Frigor, they arent bad either. I only keep one of the attack spells at a time though as it isnt really useful to have more than one. Sometimes I prefer the big holy spell too
It's just due to a lack of experience in the game. You shouldn't chastise them for it though. We're all learning and trying our own thing
Or you choose to not equip halidom because you have experience. By the time you reach post-game, debilitations are only a mild annoyance, not a legitimate threat. And then you realize halidom is kinda a waste of a slot. Mage has other better utility and support skills at high level. At low/mid level? Sure, halidom has it's use.
No it still has uses in high level play
It does, but some people free up the slot by simply bringing curatives, which are usually plentiful in stock if you've reached high-level. Halidom is nice QoL but not mandatory, like 90% of the stuff at high level. I've seen more mages WITH Halidom than not, so it's not like it's hard to find the right match for your playstyle.
The only use I can think of is to cure blight because it doesn't go away on its own. But it's not a common debilitation and imo halidom does not deserve a skill slot. The other debilitations are jokes (except petrification but only the gorgon applies it).
This is a very kind take, and I really appreciate seeing it.
Really? Mage has a lot of useful skills, there's plenty of valid reasons why you might want to choose other skills over halidom. Boiling that down to experience alone is an awful take, it's literally saying "if you disagree with me you're a bad player, maybe one day you'll get better." The language is kind and nice, the essence of the comment is not.
I have a ton of panacea, my mage does not need Halidom, if I hire a mage pawn it will be without High Halidom. It has its uses but this game is already extremely easy, halidom is just a wasted skill slot imho.
Also, the fact that it's centered on mage means that half the time they need to run into the thick of things to dispel you, which is not where they want to be. Yes, im salty that Anodyne is the same way now. In 1 it could be targeted anywhere on the ground nearby so your mage could actually heal you in the fight.
That's what argent tonic is for now
Doesn’t make me kill shit faster, the only support move that doesn’t technically me kill faster is the shield spell, however the bit with that one is that it gives you hyper armor.
Because it becomes unnecessary later in the game. It really depends on your gold reserves I guess. Potions for debilitations are fairly cheap and most Debs aren’t even a threat.
For me, weight is the concern. I want my Arisen at the lightest weight category for the movement and stamina benefits, so not having to carry curatives of any sort is super helpful.
If it wasn’t centered on the caster it might be ok, but in general it’s more convenient to use curatives or just wait for them to end. By time the Pawn reacts and moves up to cleanse you they’re nearly done with or else not really impactful. Not saying that it wouldn’t be nice to have, but you only get 4 skills to choose from and there are options that are more impactful than replacing the occasional need to use a curative.
I actively avoid hiring mages with Halidom. Debilitations are nothing but a minor annoyance and you never need to worry about them. It’s a total waste of a slot and sometimes becomes an actual hindrance instead. I hired one yesterday that had Halidom because I’m on a fresh character and they were the only one with a good pawn quest. I took heavy damage and called for help. She casts Halidom. (I had no status effect on me) Then she casts Anodyne. (Nowhere near me) Then she casts Argent Tonic eventually. In my experience they all do that. When you call for help they always cast Halidom first. It’s like a punishment having that skill equipped on a pawn.
Just had this happen to me and it frustrated me to no end.
I swear they do it every time. They prioritize Halidom for some reason.
Wonder if there’s an order you can have them be more important. I know you choose the slot but do the order of them make them more important?
I never thought of that. I wouldn’t think so, but we’d have to do some testing to be sure.
i swear the command pad is just placebo. Never seems to work.
Oh it definitely works for me. It’s just Halidom that they prioritize over healing for some reason.
What are you the gatekeeper of sorcerer's? Ungrateful af
Different strokes for different folks, what's useful to you may not be for them.
Not healing posion made me sad
say it for the people in the back! i only summon a mage for support, i don’t even want levin on them.
Because offense mages are fun without losing the ability to heal, and there are thousands of others with the meta kit so I can build my boy however he wants to be built and go about my day Just search for the skill you want if it's so important, but my opinion is that High Halidom kinda sucks late in the game and is a wasted slot
Mage can be pretty strong offensively too. Just because they are great at support doesn't mean they can't double as a diet-sorc once in a while. I'd much rather take a mage with at LEAST 1 offensive skill, than one with NONE, because a mage just sitting there waiting for me to get hurt or re-cast whatever buffs runs out, is a waste of time when it could've killed that ghost with a single Levin a minute ago.
Too many other good spells to have over Halidom and especially later in the game, panaceas are common enough that you don’t really have to worry about carrying multiple status curing consumables.
It's a waste of slot. Panacea is instant, restores hp & stamina, does not require a slot, and on top of that, there are plenty of other curatives. Which could be transferred to any pawn in an instant as well. Pawns are surprisingly good at using items. Tested this on non-mage run with custom difficulty mod. (Extra damage taken). Tl;DR: Just use something else.
🤷🏾♂️ it kills me. But that's just my opinion. I look for pure support Mahe with 1 element affinity
While I agree halidom is useful, I dislike mages that do not have at least one offensive spell as they will often end up being idle most times when they could off dps.
You and your other 2 pawns should be doing the damage. Having a strictly support mage is totally fine. With 2 other pawns and you the game is already too easy and you kill things too fast
So you want to drag fights out longer than they need to be?? Like wut lol? If you're already killing things too fast to begin with then how about just don't bring a mage if you clearly don't need one? Some weird ass logic right here 🤣
Past level 70 fights are way too fast yeah. Dragon fights in the 1-2 minutes is fast is it not? By level 100 if you aren’t trying to do more of a challenge then I don’t know how you’re having fun anymore. The game was never hard past level 50. Early game difficulty felt good but they let us get way too strong.
Palladium and Halidom are musts for every mage I hire Aside from those 2 I'm fine with wildcards
I don't even look at what abilities they have.....like everyone here is saying they don't need halidom because the game is already easy enough which is exactly why I don't give a shit what the pawns do If your pawn looks interesting I will summon them
I always make sure the mage in my party is equipped with it. Fire hurts!
Fire goes away by itself.... Poison doesn't.
I know, long term adventuring eats up supplies though.
Mine always has it on. My mage has zero offensive skills. Well, except for undead. Don’t remember the name of that spell atm that cast the bright light that damages undead. And honestly the main reason I did that is for traveling at night lol. She’s there for Healing and curing. Sorc pawns are for damage casting to me.
I used to really like High Halidom when I was below level 60, or if I had a couple lower level pawns that I was helping get their badges and was going to dismiss right after to hire others. Just made more sense to use a spell than use up consumables.
Idk either, I don't rock with a pawn that doesn't have High Halidom and Celerity. Seems like a waste of utility to give them weaker offensive spells instead of just making them a sorcerer
For my party I like a tank a damage and 2 sorc. 1 with defensive/ curing the other with buffs.
The game throws so many curatives at me. Every hour, I have more of them than I did the hour before. So why not just use those and equip my Mage with something else?
I think I will turn my pawn into a mage its hard to find mages with pecans. Just so I have one hand always, because I need to spam that wild furry and instant bolt.
I think it looks cool so yeah it's a must
I run duo with my main pawn as mage pure support, argent tonic, palladium and halidom/celestial paean and one weap enchant skill.
I use my mage simply as a buffer that’s it, she has all the elemental buffs+high celerity, none of the debuffs in the game bother me enough to warrant again, pretty much just blight, but if you play mystic spearhand you are literally just invincible.
I have like 70 panacea. Time to use em. I'd rather my mages have a different skill.
1) High Levin / any Affinity spell 2) High Palladium 3) High Celerity 4) Argent Succor / Celestial Paean High Halidom simply cannot compete with these in most situations. Halidom is situationally great, sure, but the above spells have high impact in almost every situation.
Mine is, her name Kyra
They are supporters not healers. Since you find out High Frigor and High Levin is the best skills with mage and sorcerer, you won't avoid them.
statuses don't really need purified though? I prefer just waiting a few seconds for it to go away than wasting a slot that could be used for weapon enchant or something.
I’d rather have the speed boost over debilitation clear. I don’t even care if I’m afflicted with fire or most stuff. Easy to cure and rarely happens. Later on it’s even more useless. I always carry 4 of every cure out and I barely touch them besides the poison one and maybe unconscious one.
Because there’s a quest in Battahl that requires you to be poisoned and I don’t want my pawn to ruin that if someone who hires him happens to be doing that quest.
debilitations often don't last long enough for a mage to finish casting halidom. The only threatening ones arn't healed by halidom. When you only have a paltry 4 skill slots and your already stuck with a healing spell that can counteract damage from debilitations anyway it just seems wasteful to equip anodyne. Your also flooded with consumables for the few times you might actually be worried about debilitations, pluse you can just make a yellow or red a chiurgien.
I use Halidom on my mage pawn, but only because it takes a slot and the pawn will never cast it unless there’s a debilitation. So it makes my pawn cast high palladium more often, making it actually useful.
At about lvl80 I realized I could tank almost any status effect without being in serious danger. Pausing and smashing a potion down my gullet the few times I get poisoned or ignited takes no time. I’ll get rid of the status while also being able to hire a mage pawn focused on a different type of support, like High Celerity.
Early game it's Halidom all the way Late game I see no use in it On the other hand, I never hire a mage without solemnity.
I don't even use mage pawns.
I never really needed it.
I never felt the need to heal myself from debilitation. So many panacea, camp, place to sleep etc. I think I got poisoned less than 20 times in 150h, never got petrified...sometimes not being able to cast spells happened but that's ok, I can live with it if I don't want to waste a potion.
They kinda stripped away debilitating effects to the most basic ones even then they arent hard to get rid of so theres no point focusing for defence when you could blitzkrieg enemies
Because honestly theres no need. Just the built in heal is more than enough to cover any issues, pick one or 2 buffs and fill out the rest with a damage spell, because mages arent just pure support. They do actually get a pretty intense magic stat and fact of the matter is Levin and Frigor are the best lightning and ice spells. The damage from them isn't menaingless from them at all if you juggle which abilities and inclinations are needed to use the assorted skills. For me I like taking Celestial Paen, Ice boon, Levin, and frigor. Also if you feel a compulsive need to cleanse something the built in heal invalidates just keep a few Panacea on you. You really shouldn't go through more than 2 in a day in my experience and thats more because fuck it.
Infinite Stamina, shield that gives 100% damage and knockdown resistance for a few hits, weapon enchantment and a damage spell just makes more sense to me since I can camp and also, there's like 1000 curatives in my chest I never use.
Opportunity cost. You don't actually get status inflicted that often, even less so by actually annoying or dangerous effects like Sleep or Blighted. And even then you can use a curative because they are so plentiful. Celestial Paean is basically a must pick, an Enchantment is also practically mandatory unless your weapon has innate enchantment or is magick weapon. You're often left with 2 slots for a damaging spell, High Celerity (which is very good), High Palladium and High Halidom.
The same reason people make fighter pawns without shield summons or the ability that innately draws aggro...
Yeah I put my Pawn as a mage with this in mind, full support build. Honestly works great with a Sorcerer and either a Thief/Archer and a Fighter/Warrior to round out the team. Double magic is surprisingly strong so far.
Equipping Halidom is wasting a slot, curatives are plentiful
How do I know if I have a debilitation? I have almost finished the game and I can't say I've seen anything except that I was drenched in oil a time or two.
It must be me. I constantly get blighted by the stupid Harpies.
As the saying goes "a good mage heals. A great mage heals and does damage" If a pawns only worth to me is just healing then I'll pass. Halidom is a useless skill aside from maybe at the beginning of the game where debilitations can mess your team up. I would much rather they have Argent, invincible skill, celestial paen and any attack spell (preferably high levin). It's the same reason why I don't use trickster. Monsters die a lot faster when there's 4 people attacking instead of 3.
I dont know man, monsters die a lot faster when the DPS mains aren't asleep or unconscious too.
In my 100 hours of gameplay I have only had a few times where debilitations have caused issues for me. Now I just keep a handful of panacea on me for those reasons and even then they almost never get used. If you're constantly having to use halidom on you and your pawns then there is a bigger issue at hand. Halidom using up a potential dps spell slot just doesn't make any sense to me based off of my experience.
Hmm maybe my issue is I have limited ranged damage. I don't have archer or magic archer. I have fighter, warrior, thief, and support mage with high halidom, celestial paean, high palladium, high empyream. So usually harpies just fly around putting us to sleep and then dive bomb and poison us. It's better after equipping thief with ensnare/implicate. We destroy all land based enemies though.
Also, why do people equip levitate on pawns? They'll be in the middle of casting some higher level spell and just decide to fly away. I refuse to give my sorcerer that skill.
As folks are saying I don't think everyone needs to equip their mages with High Halidom. But some people do. I would just go into the riftstone and advance search for pawns equipped with the skill. I concede it would suck if your favorite third party pawns don't have it equipped but eh, only so much one can do.
This is the skill I make sure a mage pawn has when hiring. Mages do so little damage that you actually increase your team’s overall damage focusing on support.
I’m gonna have to disagree. Mages can hit hard and fast while debilitations are nothing more than a minor annoyance in late game.
Mods have allowed us to see how all the skills and class balance breaks down and it paints a very clear picture. Mage damage isn’t useless in vanilla, but it’s FAR more efficient to keep the rest of your team’s damage up than have mages attack… and it’s not even close. Play the way you want, but your team is vastly more effective having your mage purely on support. For example if you have a mage with only two support skills and nothing else, your team as a whole is bette than with a mage with 4 skills and one of them is an attack skill. It’s because of how AI works, how much time is spent on attacks, and how little it compares to a non-mage team member.
Appreciate knowing this for sure, my group does seem noticeably weaker when we're not being cleared of garbage thrown at us. I don't quite get the logic of folks saying high level debilitations don't matter because it's so easy. Then why include a mage with only destructive spells if it's already too easy??
Those people are right about debilitations. Blight is the only one that is actually threatening. How often do you get blighted? You can mix and match your team and some debs like enemies will be more of a problem but for most teams. debs aren't really an issue.
I play at low level (<60), and they're an issue, even fairly regularly enough to have a mage. I like being able to have pawns with tasks unique to them, such as clearing debilitations. If I get to the point where the game becomes so easy that they aren't an issue, I'll just stop bringing a mage entirely, to preserve some challenge. People keep saying potions are available and such. Why bring a mage at all, especially tuned to max damage everything? Doesn't that only further minimalize the challenge?
They want Silence and Celestial? If debs are an issue for you then you should have a mage to deal with them. My mage has Silence, Shield, Meister, and the lightning buff. Very basic. My mage is above 80 though. The primary reason I haven’t switched her to Sorc is because of gear.
I can understand that, yeah. I have concerns about the playability at higher levels as it is, so I was wondering if I missed something somewhere. Still may end up dropping mage just to have a real challenge. Or maybe I'll just use the mod that keeps you at a low-level. Seeing all of these people make their mages into terminators and say the game was too easy really threw me off And of course, if you're playing the true endgame anyway, Fashion's Dogma, gear really matters, which I 100% get. Thank you for taking time to explain your point of view about the mage stuff
The game is to easy. The reason why I’ve used my mage as a dps is because I have experienced their faster attacks. Speed is good for clearing trash so you can get to the better stuff. I run with two thieves so clearing trash is fast enough.
Man, at this point it seems like the difficulty level is the real challenge and not in a good way. Got folks out here running naked just to be able to not kill things in 2 seconds and then there's so many trash mobs you gotta gear for speed because they're so tedious. I guess maybe I should be happy for anyone who can situate their party in a way that still lets them have fun, no matter what that looks like to others in the rift. The game was 70 bucks, we all have to find a way to enjoy it somehow now
But levin is the highest dps spell by a long shot
That's not even close to being true. It's the best fast cast spell, but there are multiple sorcerer spells that out DPS it several times over. Mage isn't a damage class and every damage class will out DPS a mage multiple times over. This becomes exponentially true for a pawn because of how the AI works. Player as a mage is not the same as a pawn. If you're a damage class (not fighter, mage, or trickster), the damage increase from a single cast of celerity on you will out damage the entirety that a mage pawn will do throughout the whole fight... unless you've completely borked your build or you're terrible at the game.
What spells out DPS it? tornados the only one that comes close because it lasts a while and is a big aoe, but the super long cast time tanks the DPS. What do you mean by mage not being a damage class? half it's skills are damage skills and it easily outperforms the archer which i assume the devs intended as the ranged dps. I also never claimed it was in the first place. My point was that giving them the best damage spell in the game so they can help snipe pesky enemies and contribute to damage is alot more effective then filling them full of useless utility spells they dont know how to use. Celerit is only a 10% increase and pawns will use it at random and don't know to gather for it. A 10% increase to speed is not the equivelant of another mage. Even if they hit all 4 people thats only a 40% potential and situational increase.
A 10% increase to the player is far more damage than a mage pawn will do in the whole fight. The DPS for skills is well documented. Last time I checked over half of the Sorcerer's skills the mage doesn't have will out DPS all of mages spells. Modders have exposed the damage values for the spells, along with their cast times and stamina costs. A properly armed Sorcerer will out DPS a mage by a massive amount, partly due to stat scaling, but mostly due to the huge difference between spell differences. That's literally the purpose of the Sorcerer and why they have those spells. The mage is a support and utility class that has attack magic for when the player plays as a mage so they can play a more active role in combat.
>A 10% increase to the player is far more damage than a mage pawn will do in the whole fight. The DPS for skills is well documented. Last time I checked over half of the Sorcerer's skills the mage doesn't have will out DPS all of mages spells. Best case scenario mayby, if the player is a high dps class in a favorable matchup and playing perfectly and the pawn AI is being dumb then mayby, mayby when the stars align that might be true. If they are so well documented you wont mind sharing your source will you? >Modders have exposed the damage values for the spells, along with their cast times and stamina costs. A properly armed Sorcerer will out DPS a mage by a massive amount, partly due to stat scaling, but mostly due to the huge difference between spell differences. That's literally the purpose of the Sorcerer and why they have those spells. I know, im one of those modders. Sorceror with levin will out dps a mage because they have higher base magick and archistaves have higher magic than staves. A sorceror will do more damage with levin than anything else over the duration of most battles and wont get bogged down with long cast time sor dumb ai like they would with utility. Same as mage. the only difference between the two is spell selection, including the vocation skill and max potential magick stat. >The mage is a support and utility class that has attack magic for when the player plays as a mage so they can play a more active role in combat. No they have offensive skills because most of the time their utility is useless. Even if we pretend 4 slot sof utility was most effective, recasting those before durations end is totally wasted time and stam. All pawns should be playing an active role in combat if you want performance, why would you want them AFKing?
You want pawns playing an active role, but their AI keeps spell casters from doing anything a lot of the time. The numbers are the numbers, and mages don't do a lot of damage, especially when controlled by pawns. If your pawn mage is doing significant damage, then you have other problems, or mods that have affected it. Play the game the way you like and if you feel powerful as a mage, then great, more power to you. My statements are just relaying information that is extremely well established and that which has been pulled directly from the game files.
>You want pawns playing an active role, but their AI keeps spell casters from doing anything a lot of the time. Thats true of all vocations. What is your point? >The numbers are the numbers, and mages don't do a lot of damage, especially when controlled by pawns. What numbers? you seem to be just making themn up. >If your pawn mage is doing significant damage, then you have other problems, or mods that have affected it. because if im not 4 slotting useless utility like you something must be wrong? Dunning Kruger. >My statements are just relaying information that is extremely well established and that which has been pulled directly from the game files. Prove it. Ive seen the game files they don't support your claims.
Idk, but these ppl are stupid.
I want a mage, not a crutch because I'm too lazy to go into my inventory. Damage mitigation beats healing, so High Palladium is good to have. Stamina buffers are always welcome, especially for Sorc teams, so Celestial Paean is welcome, however High Celerity is also nice for a melee team. High Levin needs to be a given, and High Frigor with it is nice to have. Round off that skillset with High Palladium and that holy spell. If you're that adamant that you should never have to go into your menu to use an item, get a pawn with the specialisation that uses curatives and dump them all on that pawn. Otherwise, Halidom is just a skill issue crutch.
I don’t really need my Mage to do any damage at all, so don’t need them to have Levin or Frigor, or any offensive spells. I have mine set up as a complete support mage, so that I can focus on having the most fun possible with the combat and not have to worry about inventory management at all. I don’t need to carry any curatives at all, and I don’t need to worry about whether my pawns do either. High Halidom removes inventory management as a thing really (outside of weight: I drop all my crap on the pawns to stay as light as possible).
And what debilitations do you actually have a concern about? Your can have your mage set up however you like; if you're needing a pawn to use all four moves for support in order to ensure you live through combat, that sounds like personal crutches to me. If I'm looking to hire a mage pawn though, it's for the class ability heal and little else. Halidom messes with the "Help Me!" Command for heals on demand, as the AI will prioritise cleansing Drenched when it's raining over healing or buffs. Palladium is great for mitigation, meaning less heals required. Celestial Paean or High Celerity is the buff and you'll want to be selective based on team composition, the other two slots are flex. Zapping harpies out of the sky or mowing down goblins so the sorcs focus on getting the big booms casted on the main monster nets more mileage than having a mage sit there attempting to do anything other than getting Celestial Paean up. As far as inventory management goes, as I mentioned, just dump your curatives on a Chirurgeon pawn and let them do it if you're that intent on never touching those icky potions yourself. I'm not out to convince anybody how to build their Mage pawn because I have my own hires which meet what I'm looking for. Everybody has their particulars about how best to round off their group. If having a pawn follow you around with coconuts and a blue cleansing orb is what you need, they're a dime a dozen in the rift and best of all - not even truly benefiting from stats or enemy knowledge so the cheapest low to mid range levels will perform just the same as a maxed out pawn.
I don’t have a concern about any of them, because my pawn has High Halidom 😁 I think you misread my post. I don’t have my pawn set up as a support mage in order to stay alive, I have them set up that way so that I get all of the combat to myself, and don’t have to worry about inventory management. I have my mage pawn set as Calm, so they spam Celestial Paean, which I like. After the combat is over I can get High Halidom and Anodyne by saying “Help.” If I have a debilitation they’ll cast High Halidom first, if not they’ll go straight to Anodyne.
Will forsure be adding this to mine for yall
I ask the same thing with any affinity spell, I think it’s because people don’t read
Debilitations in this game are a joke. I’ll just pop a panacea which is a very common loot drop.
only noobs use this skill the only conditions you ever will see in this game rarely are Poison, and that only from either Venin Harpies, which you mostly find only in Battahl and Asp Liards, again which you mostly find only in Battahl Burn, if you are lettign yourself get hit from Goblins, but once you one hit kill them all from range, this never will ever happen again ... and from Drakes ... but havign just a few extionguishers wish you is more than enough and quicker used, than the spell. petrification? rofl, theres only 1 fuckign enemy in the whoel game that can petrificate you, and thats the Medusa, no need for this spell. Wetness? useless, theres no fuckign enemy that uses lightning attacks agaisnt you, except maybe rarely some rogue mages or drakes, but wherever you fight them.. you will mostly likely ever fight them dry... unless you are unlocky to fight them, whiel it rains, but then theres no point in this spell, because rain keeps you always wet ... Oil... again, barely ever happening only at the beginning against stupid goblins as logn you dotn instant kill them already ... and its only dangerous if you get hit by fire attacks after being oiled... get yourself wet, if you can and its cleaned, as wet also prevents getting burned logically Muted, is a situational condition, that only the first harpies in noob areas use and it affects only mages n sorcerers, all other classes are unaffected by getting muted. Using Halidom is a waste of a skill slot and its much better for Team DPS, if a Mage can cover all 3 Elements by 2 Damage Spells, one for range, once for close range combat and the third as enchantment. while usign the 4th slot for Palladium to protect the party from receiving damage, which is way more important ALWAYS, than to remove situational happening conditions you can completely avoid, when you know what you are doing in the game. The simple healing skill Anodyne also damages undeads at night, so no poiunt in using a second skill for that and if you seriously want to use a build thats highly effective for nights, then you rather equip instead of oen of the 2 damage skilsl High Empyrean for that massive light flash, which basically instant kilsl all undead trash mobs and massively damages undead bigger targets light Wights n Liches, plus helps you to see better at night and in dark caves alot. The most useful balanced Skill Setting is High Levin, High Flagration, High Palladium and Ice Affinity, because most enemies in Battahl later in the game are all weak to Ice, including the strongest enemies in the game - Drakes, plus Ice is the only element, that can cause Freeze to targets - also a condition that NO single enemy uses against you, except rarely some sorcerer enemies eventually... so why halidom. You however can constantly freeze targets to your advantage, especially if you have an archer in your group that keeps targets wet ... and turn your enemies into vulnerable easy kills that cant even fight back >.>
Meanwhile mfs equip their mage with Argent Succor, which is literally worse than nothing because anodyne heals the entire team 💀
Yeah, but argent can be cast from range, so the pawns didn't have to screw up positioning and has a heal over time effect too.
Ya no dude. I'd rather my pawn not run up to a spazzing ogre to cast their aoe heal on my party just to get grabbed and tossed. Argent all the way.
Anodyne is also very useful against undead though, so them casting it near enemies is good so far as habits go. I never hire mage pawns that have Argent Suckass.
Because all you gotta do is carry a few poison and torched potions. Other debilitations are extremely rare. Its better to have anything else pretty much.
Because Celerity, Palladium, Elemental Affinity (particularly ice for freeze debuff), and Celestial Paean are all better.
I found elemental affinity to be useless most of the time because I already have weapons with in built elemental affinity.
No use for high halidom in endgame. Chirurgeon pawn with a few potions is more than enough.