You can completely nullify the negative effects of Vessel of the Spirit by having Alistair do Cleansing Aura right after Wynne gets stunned by the negative effects.
Hey, great video! Here are my two cent: - Threat: a lot of debuffs draw quite a lot of threat, especially in Entropy tree plus walking bombs from Spirit, that should be considered on higher difficulties. On the other hand, if you reanimate undead midfight it draws a lot on itself. - Blood magic: it has surprisingly a lot of synergy with healing spells (as far as i remember Lifeguard also works through BM) if you rotate usage of Mana and HP thus regenerating one when using the other. Role-play wise if you beat DAO many times its a good idea to try a complete psychopath playthrough and BM would fit just right. - If you have more then one mage in your party you can utilize Storm of the Century far better since its components dont need to be from the same mage and only the second caster need a spell might. But tactics need to be adjusted. I used it when i played with 2 mages + archer + tank(defensive/always stays close to casters) and started every fight with it, worked great. - Death Syphon and Death Magic are much better if you treat them as active instead of sustained. Like when you drained most of you mana, activate Syphon (also sustain cost doesnt substract if your mana isnt full already), then turn it off. Btw Death Magic draws threat each tick for some reason.
I get why you are saying don't be a blood mage but... be one. The blood sacrifice spell can be used against ranger pets if you want to use it but really your picking blood mage for blood wound. It's probably the best spell in the game. You just win. I just turn it on cast blood wound and then just turn it off again. It's very powerful and locks down almost everything. It's also a huge aoe with no friendly fire which you said but it makes it super strong on nightmare mode.
I know it's a strong specialization, but I personally don't care to min-max. I can beat the game on Nightmare with my "suboptimal" builds just fine, so I don't see a reason to play something that isn't all that fun to me just because it's "stronger".
Personally I like to use blood mage in a fully decked AW not bc of the Blood Wound but because it allows me to run a metric ton of sustained spells (we're talking >75% of the mana bar) and still cast as much as I'd like between the head chopping. Endgame stuff, but incredibly fun and strong. *Especially* in Awakening once you get access to runecrafting and armor runes (and if you're not using a mod, respec items).
My favorite will always be the Arcane Warrior mage. Just slap on some heavy AF armor, grab a weapon (shield optional), set up 50 different sustained buffs and attack the boss. You can take a weekend vacation and the fight will probably still be going on, but you wont die.
@@btiermutineer random content idea! What i did was use a mod to unlock awakening specializations in the normal origins campaign. It adds a complete new flavor to a replay and makes so many builds possible! Still even if u don't do it, would be cool to see your thoughts on awakening specialisarions one day! Really appreciate the video!
Another fun fact about Vessel of the Spirit, is if it’s not use in combat, and Wynne dows, she automatically use it and return to the combat. It’s quite interesting and lore friendly if u ask me
It is worth mentioning how large an effect good choices in the tactics table have. Often you have to micro manage mages so you can use a basic spell like cone of cold without freezing half your own party. But, In tactics you can set combos so in tactics you can set a mage to cast Winters Grasp (single target freezer) along with a command that says cast 'Stonefist' if target is inflicted by a condition (which it is if frozen - immobilised in this case), and gives you a good chance to shatter an enemy. It is a versatile table that allows all sorts of choices and really needs an entire (and long) video of its own. Example - combining Winters Grasp with Stonefist in the tactics options. I would put the Stonefist command fairly high up on the tactics list as the AI starts at the top of the list and works its way down the list until it finds a command it can execute, then starts back at the top of the list again. If the Stonefist command line is high up in the order on the tactics list, any time the AI starts again from the top, (which it is always doing) it quickly comes to the stonefist line, sees an immobilised enemy and executes that spell. If the stonefist command line is far down on the tactics list the computer may do several other things before it gets to that spell, and the mage may either be out of mana by then or the stonefist command activates too late to catch the enemy while frozen. The Winters Grasp part of the combo can be later in the list, as long as the stonefist follow up is set up to come quickly after it. Final note: Stonefist has a 15 sec cooldown, while Winters Grasp is only 8 secs, essentially two Winters Grasps for every one Stonefist.
Blood magic does not reduce the power of healing spells cast by the blood mage, they can still heal others just the same. Only effects that heal the blood mage are reduced (unless that's something the mod added). I don't see a problem role-playing wise with using blood magic, a warden uses anything at their disposal to fight the blight and they are capable enough to not be corrupted. In terms of game mechanics: It gives you access to blood magic spells, it lets you stack sustained abilities down to 0 mana, allows you to only put points into magic and constitution and completely ignore willpower, and with a blood magic item every spell only costs a fraction of what it would cost in mana. If you ever run out of health in a fight (which shouldn't really happen) you can just deactivate blood magic and drink a healing potion or get healed by another mage anyways. Otherwise you can just activate blood magic in a pinch on a normal mage that's not an arcane warrior if lyrium potions are out or on cooldown to keep casting and then deactivate again once health gets low or when lyrium potion is off cooldown. Not like you are taking shapeshifting anyways...
Glyph of neutralization is great! It instantly drains all mana and blocks its regeneration, instantly neutralizing the enemy mage at the beginning of the fight.
Arcane warrior bloodmage is the most fun I have had in the game. I like one shot mages with Manaclash and auto attack almost anything else. Roleplaying wise it makes sense for the warden to be an effective fighter and seek out power where they can.
Admittedly, I always used mods that allowed me to over-level in DA, and because the Mage is my favorite class, I generally made my Mage pretty versatile. So, if I had Wynn in the party, I could focus on DPS, Morrigan support, or neither and do what's required. I loved Mage, especially the Arcane Warrior. Great guide. I'll have to check out your other guides when I reboot DA. But right now doing another run-through on BG3.
My understanding of shapeshifting is you can do some kind of cheese with the swarm, or you can play like you weren't a mage by building strength and do well with the bear form. Not sure there's much to be done with spider form, but maybe if you pump dex it can be good, but I don't know of anyone trying it.
Ah yes Mage - the braindead sibling of DAO classes. Not only did he benefit from easy access to many powerful spells (where other classes have to slowly level their weapon branches one at the time) but also from combat system design. Given that both Willpower and Condition are weak attributes (you get around 1 point worth of them in hp/stamina/mana every time you level up, they don't offer passive regen, other stats also increase your status resistances and for some unholy reason amount of hp/mana from consumables scales with SPELLPOWER) you can basically forget about them and pump +3 Spellpower every level. You unlock access to all spells quickly and make better use of your unlimited (with Lyrium Potions) mana pool. You save more money this way as less spells -> less mana needed + more mana regained with each lyrium potion. Don't kid yourself that you will use all those spells. Even on Nightmare game isn't capable of challenging player enough for there to be a need to use more than 1-2 spells throughout the game. Which makes high level mages somewhat less satysfying as their spells don't synergise as much and they get most of their broken stuff from get-go. Glyph of Neutralization - cast it on your team holding position after you casted your huge AoE. Useful after cutscenes that force you into fight within melee range. Impressive effort compiling all that data! As for my favourite spell(s) - Flame Weapons + Haste. They are not exactly spell combination but each of those sustains feeds into each other (around 44% damage increase in the end). As I mostly play with Warrior/Rogue heavy parties this is great. Hex of Vulnerability is also great but is often an overkill. Arcane shield is also funny as in Korcari Wild you find few +Defence mage items so relatively quickly after Lothering you can get +30 Defence from items alone, then go to Orzammar to steal Champion Shield from Vartag Gavorn to end with +45 Defence at level 7-8 at which point that few extra points from Arcane Shield really go the distance. Non-honorable mention: Heroic Aura is a hoax as most damaging talents Archers have (Scattershot) are guaranteed critical hits so it doesn't help at all, also basic defence also increases chance to avoid projectiles so...
@@btiermutineerwell actually I did learn some new stuff I didn't know the regicide antidote fixes curse of mortality And the regen combo with blood magic somehow escaped me tooo
Im surprised you haven't tried the old classic of arcane warrior blood mage. One thing funny about blood sacrifice is that you can still heal others just fine, so i usually just heal them afterward. regeneration is better and worse in dains fixes as the cap has been lifted but can no longer heal blood magic.
@@evilcow666 ah, I didn't know that about regeneration and Dain's Fixes, it's good to know! As I mentioned in the video, I find blood magic strange to use from a roleplaying perspective within the context of many people ending up drawing the attention of demons and having to fight against possible possession, plus even my most practical or "evil"/selfish characters wouldn't really sap the life out of one of their companions, mainly because to me it makes zero sense that those companions would continue to follow you if you did that. Like if it would be an extreme situation where you're actually saving your entire team by taking some blood/power from one of your companions, that's one thing. But that would be the exception, not the rule. Of course, as you can see I play RPGs for the story, roleplaying, and vibes, and I know that many people use blood magic or AW + blood magic for purely gameplay related reasons since it's a "powerful" combination. And frankly that doesn't matter to me - I can very well beat the game on Nightmare with "suboptimal" choices, so why use something that I don't find appealing story-wise just for power?
My usual go-to (late game) mage build: ~Stats - 16 cunning (for coercion) about 25 to constitution, 45 to magic and dump the rest to willpower ~Skills - Max coercion (for dialogue), Max combat training and the rest in survival ~Spells - Take Blood mage and Arcane warrior. Max out the specializations, Arcane shield, Rock armor, Spell wisp, Telekinetic weapons, and all hexes ~Items - Dragon bone pate armor, Spellweaver and a good shield ~How to play: Mostly auto attack enemies with massive damages. If they feel hard to kill - use hexes. Feeling overwhelmed? - Blood Control is your friend... Mind blast also helps If you want to play the mage as a mage - Mana clash is a must have to deal with mages, for damage - go fire+cold. For control - max out Entropy tree
I've never played DAO on Nightmare. After my first time getting the floor wiped with me after Redcliffe on my first playthrough I just never ventured past normal. I also liked walking bomb on Morrigan too much and the friendly fire was rough 😂. It was also far more clunky on 360 than PC I'm giving it a go now after being so bummed about Veilguard. Planning how I'm building my blood mage beyond Ostigar. This has a lot of good stuff.
@@btiermutineer I like a comprehensive guide that has all that one would need for something. I also find it cool just listening to people who know something really well. c:
Haha bro I always go blood mage exactly for lore reasons as I like playing as a sort of evil-leaning MC doing anything necessary to become powerful and defeat the greater evil.
Broken tier: blood wound, mana clash, force field Very good tier: fireball, cone of cold, winter's grasp, heal, group heal Good tier: vulnerability hex, misdirection hex, mind blast, arcane bolt, paralysis glyph combo, haste Marginal tier: everything else (a lot of spells are very badly hampered by long cast times) Different if you are an arcane warrior.
What I find funny about the necromancy tree is that you're playing with demons in the creation of your summons. However it's not blood magic so the Templars are none-the-wiser.
it's been about a year since I played Origins but my most recent playthrough was a blood mage and arcane warrior combo and jeez I was immortal and did lots of damage lmao
It's funny that you mention not using Blood Mage for RP purposes since I do use it for specifically that. Basically drastic times call for drastic actions and my warden has several safeguards in place if things go South.
Spell might + blizzard + tempest = i win haha SotC and paralysis explosion work well together especially if there's a chokepoint Multiple mages can proc entropic death multiple in one cloud, whether it be the same enemy successively or different enemies simultaneously
Optimized SoTC (full Spellpower + basic equipment boosting it's damage) doesn't need any crowd control. From max range it kills enemies in 3-4 damage ticks so not even archers get to attack you. Even on Nightmare difficulty. Even better due to it's ridiculous area of effect you can be clearing 2 rooms of enemies in tight dungeons at once. After they are dead save and reload to work around cooldowns and SoC duration.
I might have missed it in the video, but why no mention of the Keeper and Battlemage specializations? If I'm remembering right, they have the same unlock across all playthrough thing as every other specialization.
@@Craftims those are only available in the Awakening expansion, not in the base game. I haven't talked about Awakening separately because very few people play it, and frankly it's far too easy to play for me to make guides for it since your character is absolutely OP due to the new abilities added in Awakening.
What I've observed is that the mage class is the least dependent of equipment. Equipment generally helps with boosting spellpower and elemental damage but it is not absolutely necessary; one just takes more time defeating allies and therefore more lyrium potions XD
I have a video discussing the essential mods for Dragon Age Origins, I must have forgotten to link it in a card. The mod is called "Dain's Fixes" and you can find it on NexusMods!
@@btiermutineer Thank you! I've since watched like half of your posted Dragon Age content and found it haha. You have an excellent vibe as far as creators go, keep it up!
Death syphon+Death magic = work fine! Tested! Walking bomb and Virulent Walking Dead Bomb is stacks! Its amazing! U draing life and mana with corpdes. How it's work? Use first aura, and pick second! Maybe bug, but 90 mana cost ))
Yes! Working on the warrior guide, but December is my channel's anniversary so taking a little break from these. However, I'll definitely have the warrior and rogue guides up likely in January!
won't be replaying origins in the near future, but i see a mutineer video i click :D very in depth guide! i remember having to turn off earthquake an hour after unlocking it on my first playthrough because the screenshake was giving me a headache lol
@@Duckylai that screen shake effect is my villain origin story, lol. And thank you for the support even if you aren't planning on playing Origins anytime soon!
Yes, it is a mod. I am using Dain's Fixes for nearly all the bugfixes and most of the mechanics tweaks, so for that reason I use the "More Detailed Tooltips" by the same mod author (dainbramage) on NexusMods. If you don't want to use Dain's Fixes, then there is also a mod called "Detailed Tooltips" by Bibdy.
Man i've came across your channel just today after putting 35 hours in origins and it's making me understand a lot more, from the video on stats and attributes to this one on mage. I was wondering, i have been going around finding infos on arcane warrior, and one thing makes me confused : when reading strength's description, it says it is required for hit scores on two handed weapons, where dex says it helps with hit score on dex weapons. But most people say for arcane warrior, dex is the go to after magic/willpower, so is it still better to go dex for arcane warriors even when using two handed weapons since it increases hit score + armour ?
Both dex and strength will increase your attack score. Strength adds 1 to attack score, dex adds .5. But dex will also give you a defense point which is why it can be useful.
Dex still increases your attack score with melee weapons, too. It just increases it by 0.5 per point of Dex, instead of the 1 point of Attack that Strength offers. But Dex also grants +1 Defense per point, so that's why it's better for Arcane Warriors. Since you're satisfying gear Strength requirements with your Magic due to Combat Magic, half of the usefulness of Strength is lost. Plus, your Defense tends to be lower than that of other melee characters, so it's a good idea to invest some points into Dex. Of course, the Arcane Shield spell will also increase your Defense by a good amount so I recommend using it for sure.
Couldn't I just dip into blood mage, stack constitution and magic for Arcane Warrior while prioritizing health regeneration in combat to offset Shimmering Shield's cost and fund my spells?
I... can't say that I've ever tried to do something like that. I don't believe you can reach +10 health regen in combat from gear to offset Shimmering Shield's cost. If you keep casting the Regeneration spell every 10 seconds that MIGHT be enough to keep Shimmering Shield up, and you can cast it with your weapons drawn. However, it feels like a bit too much of a hassle to have to be extremely careful about your health while using Shimmering Shield - the whole point of that kind of AW build is to be a quasi-tank for your team, so if you're self-damaging while ALSO getting hit by enemies (and you will be sometimes damaged by enemies even if you DO have Shimmering Shield active), it kind of defeats the purpose. As far as I know, if you plan on using Shimmering Shield then the best way to do that is to go for the +10 combat mana regen from gear + other passives. If you're a min-maxer you can pick up the Blood Mage specialization simply for the bonus spellpower that it gives you from unlocking it, and just ignore any of the actual Blood Magic abilities. But take my notes with a grain of salt, as I'm not a min-maxer and 90% of the time I don't even touch the Blood Mage specialization.
it might be ugly, but setting the game to medium graphics stopped the crashes for me completely. it seems the memory leak has to do with something in the graphics settings
You need the Lock Bash mod in order to be able to bash open chests. It was something the devs were meaning to add into the game but it got cut for some reason. The mod is great, I've been using it for longer than a decade.
@@alexu9696 solo-ing the game is a special challenge, and not the intended way for the player to experience the game. So it's something that only advanced players would do. And those players wouldn't need a guide to begin with, lol
To be fair I have no equals using blood magic because it is cool and as far as I know there is no real connection between it and demons. I consider it to be Chantry propaganda, not real cause and effect (I know how you unlock BM in this game but that does not mean you are more likely whne using it)
You can completely nullify the negative effects of Vessel of the Spirit by having Alistair do Cleansing Aura right after Wynne gets stunned by the negative effects.
Hey, great video! Here are my two cent:
- Threat: a lot of debuffs draw quite a lot of threat, especially in Entropy tree plus walking bombs from Spirit, that should be considered on higher difficulties. On the other hand, if you reanimate undead midfight it draws a lot on itself.
- Blood magic: it has surprisingly a lot of synergy with healing spells (as far as i remember Lifeguard also works through BM) if you rotate usage of Mana and HP thus regenerating one when using the other. Role-play wise if you beat DAO many times its a good idea to try a complete psychopath playthrough and BM would fit just right.
- If you have more then one mage in your party you can utilize Storm of the Century far better since its components dont need to be from the same mage and only the second caster need a spell might. But tactics need to be adjusted. I used it when i played with 2 mages + archer + tank(defensive/always stays close to casters) and started every fight with it, worked great.
- Death Syphon and Death Magic are much better if you treat them as active instead of sustained. Like when you drained most of you mana, activate Syphon (also sustain cost doesnt substract if your mana isnt full already), then turn it off. Btw Death Magic draws threat each tick for some reason.
I get why you are saying don't be a blood mage but... be one. The blood sacrifice spell can be used against ranger pets if you want to use it but really your picking blood mage for blood wound. It's probably the best spell in the game. You just win. I just turn it on cast blood wound and then just turn it off again. It's very powerful and locks down almost everything. It's also a huge aoe with no friendly fire which you said but it makes it super strong on nightmare mode.
I know it's a strong specialization, but I personally don't care to min-max. I can beat the game on Nightmare with my "suboptimal" builds just fine, so I don't see a reason to play something that isn't all that fun to me just because it's "stronger".
Personally I like to use blood mage in a fully decked AW not bc of the Blood Wound but because it allows me to run a metric ton of sustained spells (we're talking >75% of the mana bar) and still cast as much as I'd like between the head chopping. Endgame stuff, but incredibly fun and strong.
*Especially* in Awakening once you get access to runecrafting and armor runes (and if you're not using a mod, respec items).
My favorite will always be the Arcane Warrior mage. Just slap on some heavy AF armor, grab a weapon (shield optional), set up 50 different sustained buffs and attack the boss. You can take a weekend vacation and the fight will probably still be going on, but you wont die.
holy moly a 1 hour long video! meanwhile i was just picking out the cutest icons lmao but now I know!
@@ywarh lol, honestly sometimes I still just choose whatever spells have the coolest visual effects like freezing stuff and spirit/entropy spells
@@btiermutineer random content idea! What i did was use a mod to unlock awakening specializations in the normal origins campaign.
It adds a complete new flavor to a replay and makes so many builds possible!
Still even if u don't do it, would be cool to see your thoughts on awakening specialisarions one day!
Really appreciate the video!
Another fun fact about Vessel of the Spirit, is if it’s not use in combat, and Wynne dows, she automatically use it and return to the combat.
It’s quite interesting and lore friendly if u ask me
It is worth mentioning how large an effect good choices in the tactics table have. Often you have to micro manage mages so you can use a basic spell like cone of cold without freezing half your own party. But, In tactics you can set combos so in tactics you can set a mage to cast Winters Grasp (single target freezer) along with a command that says cast 'Stonefist' if target is inflicted by a condition (which it is if frozen - immobilised in this case), and gives you a good chance to shatter an enemy. It is a versatile table that allows all sorts of choices and really needs an entire (and long) video of its own.
Example - combining Winters Grasp with Stonefist in the tactics options.
I would put the Stonefist command fairly high up on the tactics list as the AI starts at the top of the list and works its way down the list until it finds a command it can execute, then starts back at the top of the list again. If the Stonefist command line is high up in the order on the tactics list, any time the AI starts again from the top, (which it is always doing) it quickly comes to the stonefist line, sees an immobilised enemy and executes that spell. If the stonefist command line is far down on the tactics list the computer may do several other things before it gets to that spell, and the mage may either be out of mana by then or the stonefist command activates too late to catch the enemy while frozen. The Winters Grasp part of the combo can be later in the list, as long as the stonefist follow up is set up to come quickly after it.
Final note: Stonefist has a 15 sec cooldown, while Winters Grasp is only 8 secs, essentially two Winters Grasps for every one Stonefist.
Blood magic does not reduce the power of healing spells cast by the blood mage, they can still heal others just the same. Only effects that heal the blood mage are reduced (unless that's something the mod added).
I don't see a problem role-playing wise with using blood magic, a warden uses anything at their disposal to fight the blight and they are capable enough to not be corrupted. In terms of game mechanics: It gives you access to blood magic spells, it lets you stack sustained abilities down to 0 mana, allows you to only put points into magic and constitution and completely ignore willpower, and with a blood magic item every spell only costs a fraction of what it would cost in mana. If you ever run out of health in a fight (which shouldn't really happen) you can just deactivate blood magic and drink a healing potion or get healed by another mage anyways.
Otherwise you can just activate blood magic in a pinch on a normal mage that's not an arcane warrior if lyrium potions are out or on cooldown to keep casting and then deactivate again once health gets low or when lyrium potion is off cooldown. Not like you are taking shapeshifting anyways...
Glyph of neutralization is great!
It instantly drains all mana and blocks its regeneration, instantly neutralizing the enemy mage at the beginning of the fight.
Arcane warrior bloodmage is the most fun I have had in the game. I like one shot mages with Manaclash and auto attack almost anything else. Roleplaying wise it makes sense for the warden to be an effective fighter and seek out power where they can.
Admittedly, I always used mods that allowed me to over-level in DA, and because the Mage is my favorite class, I generally made my Mage pretty versatile. So, if I had Wynn in the party, I could focus on DPS, Morrigan support, or neither and do what's required. I loved Mage, especially the Arcane Warrior. Great guide. I'll have to check out your other guides when I reboot DA. But right now doing another run-through on BG3.
My understanding of shapeshifting is you can do some kind of cheese with the swarm, or you can play like you weren't a mage by building strength and do well with the bear form. Not sure there's much to be done with spider form, but maybe if you pump dex it can be good, but I don't know of anyone trying it.
9:50 It's an ignition type move. Like to use after freezing them so to speak.
Ah yes Mage - the braindead sibling of DAO classes. Not only did he benefit from easy access to many powerful spells (where other classes have to slowly level their weapon branches one at the time) but also from combat system design. Given that both Willpower and Condition are weak attributes (you get around 1 point worth of them in hp/stamina/mana every time you level up, they don't offer passive regen, other stats also increase your status resistances and for some unholy reason amount of hp/mana from consumables scales with SPELLPOWER) you can basically forget about them and pump +3 Spellpower every level. You unlock access to all spells quickly and make better use of your unlimited (with Lyrium Potions) mana pool. You save more money this way as less spells -> less mana needed + more mana regained with each lyrium potion. Don't kid yourself that you will use all those spells. Even on Nightmare game isn't capable of challenging player enough for there to be a need to use more than 1-2 spells throughout the game. Which makes high level mages somewhat less satysfying as their spells don't synergise as much and they get most of their broken stuff from get-go.
Glyph of Neutralization - cast it on your team holding position after you casted your huge AoE. Useful after cutscenes that force you into fight within melee range.
Impressive effort compiling all that data!
As for my favourite spell(s) - Flame Weapons + Haste. They are not exactly spell combination but each of those sustains feeds into each other (around 44% damage increase in the end). As I mostly play with Warrior/Rogue heavy parties this is great. Hex of Vulnerability is also great but is often an overkill. Arcane shield is also funny as in Korcari Wild you find few +Defence mage items so relatively quickly after Lothering you can get +30 Defence from items alone, then go to Orzammar to steal Champion Shield from Vartag Gavorn to end with +45 Defence at level 7-8 at which point that few extra points from Arcane Shield really go the distance.
Non-honorable mention:
Heroic Aura is a hoax as most damaging talents Archers have (Scattershot) are guaranteed critical hits so it doesn't help at all, also basic defence also increases chance to avoid projectiles so...
Oh yes, it is mage time.
Just bought Origins on Steam after being a console player for years. Excited to hop back in
Hoooo boy, a 1hour and half guide for my fave class in a game I beat about 6+times....time to get the popcorn😊
You'll likely already know all of this stuff 😅 but I'm very glad you're enjoying watching it anyway
@@btiermutineerwell actually I did learn some new stuff
I didn't know the regicide antidote fixes curse of mortality
And the regen combo with blood magic somehow escaped me tooo
Im surprised you haven't tried the old classic of arcane warrior blood mage. One thing funny about blood sacrifice is that you can still heal others just fine, so i usually just heal them afterward.
regeneration is better and worse in dains fixes as the cap has been lifted but can no longer heal blood magic.
@@evilcow666 ah, I didn't know that about regeneration and Dain's Fixes, it's good to know! As I mentioned in the video, I find blood magic strange to use from a roleplaying perspective within the context of many people ending up drawing the attention of demons and having to fight against possible possession, plus even my most practical or "evil"/selfish characters wouldn't really sap the life out of one of their companions, mainly because to me it makes zero sense that those companions would continue to follow you if you did that. Like if it would be an extreme situation where you're actually saving your entire team by taking some blood/power from one of your companions, that's one thing. But that would be the exception, not the rule. Of course, as you can see I play RPGs for the story, roleplaying, and vibes, and I know that many people use blood magic or AW + blood magic for purely gameplay related reasons since it's a "powerful" combination. And frankly that doesn't matter to me - I can very well beat the game on Nightmare with "suboptimal" choices, so why use something that I don't find appealing story-wise just for power?
My usual go-to (late game) mage build:
~Stats - 16 cunning (for coercion) about 25 to constitution, 45 to magic and dump the rest to willpower
~Skills - Max coercion (for dialogue), Max combat training and the rest in survival
~Spells - Take Blood mage and Arcane warrior. Max out the specializations, Arcane shield, Rock armor, Spell wisp, Telekinetic weapons, and all hexes
~Items - Dragon bone pate armor, Spellweaver and a good shield
~How to play: Mostly auto attack enemies with massive damages. If they feel hard to kill - use hexes. Feeling overwhelmed? - Blood Control is your friend... Mind blast also helps
If you want to play the mage as a mage - Mana clash is a must have to deal with mages, for damage - go fire+cold. For control - max out Entropy tree
I've never played DAO on Nightmare. After my first time getting the floor wiped with me after Redcliffe on my first playthrough I just never ventured past normal. I also liked walking bomb on Morrigan too much and the friendly fire was rough 😂. It was also far more clunky on 360 than PC
I'm giving it a go now after being so bummed about Veilguard. Planning how I'm building my blood mage beyond Ostigar. This has a lot of good stuff.
Thank you for the guide. Big ups
Glad you liked it!
@@btiermutineer I like a comprehensive guide that has all that one would need for something. I also find it cool just listening to people who know something really well. c:
Haha bro I always go blood mage exactly for lore reasons as I like playing as a sort of evil-leaning MC doing anything necessary to become powerful and defeat the greater evil.
Broken tier: blood wound, mana clash, force field
Very good tier: fireball, cone of cold, winter's grasp, heal, group heal
Good tier: vulnerability hex, misdirection hex, mind blast, arcane bolt, paralysis glyph combo, haste
Marginal tier: everything else (a lot of spells are very badly hampered by long cast times)
Different if you are an arcane warrior.
What I find funny about the necromancy tree is that you're playing with demons in the creation of your summons. However it's not blood magic so the Templars are none-the-wiser.
it's been about a year since I played Origins but my most recent playthrough was a blood mage and arcane warrior combo and jeez I was immortal and did lots of damage lmao
It's funny that you mention not using Blood Mage for RP purposes since I do use it for specifically that. Basically drastic times call for drastic actions and my warden has several safeguards in place if things go South.
Spell might + blizzard + tempest = i win haha
SotC and paralysis explosion work well together especially if there's a chokepoint
Multiple mages can proc entropic death multiple in one cloud, whether it be the same enemy successively or different enemies simultaneously
Optimized SoTC (full Spellpower + basic equipment boosting it's damage) doesn't need any crowd control. From max range it kills enemies in 3-4 damage ticks so not even archers get to attack you. Even on Nightmare difficulty. Even better due to it's ridiculous area of effect you can be clearing 2 rooms of enemies in tight dungeons at once. After they are dead save and reload to work around cooldowns and SoC duration.
I need to slog though DATV first...will come back to this later.
Yikes 😬
That is torture my guy
I think a lot of us are reinstalling origins after that weird fanfiction that was DAV. Also fancy seeing you here!
I'm not sure I can do that. They won't let me refund the game so I feel like I have to now
No you don't.
I might have missed it in the video, but why no mention of the Keeper and Battlemage specializations? If I'm remembering right, they have the same unlock across all playthrough thing as every other specialization.
@@Craftims those are only available in the Awakening expansion, not in the base game. I haven't talked about Awakening separately because very few people play it, and frankly it's far too easy to play for me to make guides for it since your character is absolutely OP due to the new abilities added in Awakening.
What I've observed is that the mage class is the least dependent of equipment. Equipment generally helps with boosting spellpower and elemental damage but it is not absolutely necessary; one just takes more time defeating allies and therefore more lyrium potions XD
can you link the fixes mod you're referring to? It's difficult to determine the spelling of whoever's name that is on hearing it alone
I have a video discussing the essential mods for Dragon Age Origins, I must have forgotten to link it in a card. The mod is called "Dain's Fixes" and you can find it on NexusMods!
@@btiermutineer Thank you! I've since watched like half of your posted Dragon Age content and found it haha. You have an excellent vibe as far as creators go, keep it up!
Death syphon+Death magic = work fine! Tested! Walking bomb and Virulent Walking Dead Bomb is stacks! Its amazing! U draing life and mana with corpdes. How it's work? Use first aura, and pick second! Maybe bug, but 90 mana cost ))
Thanks for the guide. Will there be a rogue and eventual warrior guide?
Yes! Working on the warrior guide, but December is my channel's anniversary so taking a little break from these. However, I'll definitely have the warrior and rogue guides up likely in January!
won't be replaying origins in the near future, but i see a mutineer video i click :D very in depth guide! i remember having to turn off earthquake an hour after unlocking it on my first playthrough because the screenshake was giving me a headache lol
@@Duckylai that screen shake effect is my villain origin story, lol. And thank you for the support even if you aren't planning on playing Origins anytime soon!
I mean I need to replay the whole series now 😂
Is this some kind of mod that changes the description of the spells with concrete formulas? Please advise the name of it
Yes, it is a mod. I am using Dain's Fixes for nearly all the bugfixes and most of the mechanics tweaks, so for that reason I use the "More Detailed Tooltips" by the same mod author (dainbramage) on NexusMods. If you don't want to use Dain's Fixes, then there is also a mod called "Detailed Tooltips" by Bibdy.
Man i've came across your channel just today after putting 35 hours in origins and it's making me understand a lot more, from the video on stats and attributes to this one on mage.
I was wondering, i have been going around finding infos on arcane warrior, and one thing makes me confused : when reading strength's description, it says it is required for hit scores on two handed weapons, where dex says it helps with hit score on dex weapons.
But most people say for arcane warrior, dex is the go to after magic/willpower, so is it still better to go dex for arcane warriors even when using two handed weapons since it increases hit score + armour ?
Both dex and strength will increase your attack score. Strength adds 1 to attack score, dex adds .5. But dex will also give you a defense point which is why it can be useful.
@@Bivuki777 Thanks a lot, was wondering and it had me confused ^^
Dex still increases your attack score with melee weapons, too. It just increases it by 0.5 per point of Dex, instead of the 1 point of Attack that Strength offers. But Dex also grants +1 Defense per point, so that's why it's better for Arcane Warriors. Since you're satisfying gear Strength requirements with your Magic due to Combat Magic, half of the usefulness of Strength is lost. Plus, your Defense tends to be lower than that of other melee characters, so it's a good idea to invest some points into Dex. Of course, the Arcane Shield spell will also increase your Defense by a good amount so I recommend using it for sure.
Couldn't I just dip into blood mage, stack constitution and magic for Arcane Warrior while prioritizing health regeneration in combat to offset Shimmering Shield's cost and fund my spells?
I... can't say that I've ever tried to do something like that. I don't believe you can reach +10 health regen in combat from gear to offset Shimmering Shield's cost. If you keep casting the Regeneration spell every 10 seconds that MIGHT be enough to keep Shimmering Shield up, and you can cast it with your weapons drawn. However, it feels like a bit too much of a hassle to have to be extremely careful about your health while using Shimmering Shield - the whole point of that kind of AW build is to be a quasi-tank for your team, so if you're self-damaging while ALSO getting hit by enemies (and you will be sometimes damaged by enemies even if you DO have Shimmering Shield active), it kind of defeats the purpose. As far as I know, if you plan on using Shimmering Shield then the best way to do that is to go for the +10 combat mana regen from gear + other passives. If you're a min-maxer you can pick up the Blood Mage specialization simply for the bonus spellpower that it gives you from unlocking it, and just ignore any of the actual Blood Magic abilities.
But take my notes with a grain of salt, as I'm not a min-maxer and 90% of the time I don't even touch the Blood Mage specialization.
Yes, you can.
I hate how easily DA:O crashes on modern PCs. I wish they'd remaster it so I could play it again.
it might be ugly, but setting the game to medium graphics stopped the crashes for me completely. it seems the memory leak has to do with something in the graphics settings
You can patch the game with the 4gb/LAA patch and it only crashes very very rarely after that. I have a guide for this on my channel!
Wait, you can just bust open locked chests? Do you need a warrior for this cause my mage can't do shit.
You need the Lock Bash mod in order to be able to bash open chests. It was something the devs were meaning to add into the game but it got cut for some reason. The mod is great, I've been using it for longer than a decade.
Arcane warrior. I will never enjoy any other class in any other game.
Agreed being an unkillable tank that can also cast fireball or other damaging spells felt amazing
The guide is good if you use a party and you dont try to solo the game
@@alexu9696 solo-ing the game is a special challenge, and not the intended way for the player to experience the game. So it's something that only advanced players would do. And those players wouldn't need a guide to begin with, lol
To be fair I have no equals using blood magic because it is cool and as far as I know there is no real connection between it and demons. I consider it to be Chantry propaganda, not real cause and effect
(I know how you unlock BM in this game but that does not mean you are more likely whne using it)