weapon of choice for mages?

Of that build, I would lose Archeology and Burglary. Probably Unarmed too. In their place I would take Necronomiconomics, Mathemagic, and probably Tinkering. Tinker is good for trap detect radius and making bolts to spam in the few rare cases that you lack mana. Mathemagics is good for the teleports and a few nice single target spells.

 

No.

A healing spell turns one resource (mana) into another resource (health). Pact of Fleeting Life is limited by both MP, the presence of enemies and the inherent dangers of any Necronomiceconomics spell. Blood Mage takes an action you will most likely take anyway (killing something that is going to try and kill you) and gives you resources when it is accomplished above and beyond what resources you would normally receive.

Blood Mage has no limits beyond a recently added Taxa limitation and added damage from something like a six specific mobs over the course of the game (easily negated by taking the Vegan skill.) It procs all the time. It requires no investment to get better over time. You don't have to spend any actions or resources above and beyond what you would already spend to kill a mob to get the bonus MP. It doesn't even require you to spend an action.

The problem isn't just AoE, nor will limiting it to one proc per spell work. I don't think that's even possible with the way the game works right now. Consider: If I summon a creature, would that mean Blood Mage won't proc at all until that summon is dead? Otherwise, I'll get MP for every creature that summon kills, plus if its not undead or a veggie, I'll get MP when that summon dies. Unconditional Love is even better, as it effectively eliminates an enemy for a time on casting, as well.

Again, free resources = bad for balance. Burglary and Fungal Arts get away with it by offering a resource that has only corner applications. Fungal Arts gives resources that aren't always relevant and, in 1.0.10, requires a much greater skill investment than before to be useful. Vampirism completely changes the way the game is played. Blood Mage should do the same.

Other systems have managed it easily enough. The solution is just to make the rate of exchange fairly lousy, so such a combo is of only marginal value, or to give it a lengthy cool down. Or simply create a hard cap on the spell, allowing it to be spammed to transfer say 5 HP into 5 MP, and giving it a shorter cooldown. People with healing spells are probably going to be able to manage their HP easily outside of combat regardless of a skill like this, such a hard cap would make spamming the ability in combat much more difficult.

I haven't played with Spellsword, so I can't comment on how well the skill tree implements the idea.

Also, if people want to continue this discussion, I suggest a new thread, as this one is supposed to be about weapons a mage should carry to poke monsters with.

 

How about this:
Whenever Blood Mage procs, you start bleeding.
(Give it a skill to toggle the ability, but otherwise that would probably balance it.)

 

Necronomiceconomics 'downside' honestly needs to be buffed as it's too easy to negate. That aside you don't find it the least bit ironic that you listed pact of fleeting life's inherent balance to be that you need to be hitting something to make use of it, and then turned around in the next sentence and somehow ignored that fact and called it the 'norm' for blood magic? The whole point of a skill is to gain something above and beyond what you would normally have. If blood magic made it so that you gained nothing you wouldn't normally gain from not taking the skill, who would take it? No one.

Blood mage has the limit of needing to kill (or damage) something in order to gain mana back. This, for example, is worse than leylines when you aren't cap on mana regen for sustained abilities that consume mana every X turns. This is because you have to actually seek out combat in order to gain the mana to keep those abilities active. As DoD isn't a linear game, you shouldn't always have something to fight right there waiting for you as you backtrack toward a new section or go to kill the spawned quest mobs, etc. That means this really is a limitation of blood magic mana regen. The fact that it ends up being better in something like a monster zoo is thus immaterial as it is also worse in some instances.

Again though, the fact that leylines becomes useless with gear is not a problem with blood magic, but rather a problem with leylines. Also iirc mana regen caps at 7? That means the active ability that gives 10 mana regen doesn't even have full effect in leylines... I could be wrong about this, but that was my impression based on what I've read here.

As far as summons go, I find it odd that you keep bringing it up as somehow overpowered mana cost wise with blood magic. You can just summon something and let it kill things while regenning normally and get an insane mana for damage ratio out of it with no other mana supplementing skills at all. Summons are just, by nature, very mana efficient (but also pretty slow and uncontrollable compared to directly nuking things).

Why does vampirism changing the way you play the game imply that blood magic also must do so? That is a personal preference, not something that logically follows. And my opinion is that free resources isn't bad at all! Rather infinite resources or lack of need for the resource at all is bad for balance, but gaining something from something is kinda the whole point of a skill!

Agreed, though I think I'm done. I just don't want to leave the impression that there is only one side to this opinion (even if you still believe that to be the case).

On topic:

If I'm playing a full ranged character, I would personally go staff + orb or shield (no staff skill or dual wield) until I was set on mana regen and capability for damage output (enough spells) and then switch over to dual orbs. Potentially switching this up to dual shields for monster zoos and the like. Staves are okay as a magic related alternative to a sword for pure ranged mage characters, but they really don't compare with the stats of orbs once you can afford to be pure ranged.

I think that build looks good, but unarmed would probably be limited to a supplemental skill mid to late game as without supporting it quite well it is pretty weak compared to, say, just using a staff that has a ton of added damage on it. It does have the advantage of being able to knock things back if they're in close range (but psionics should do this just fine). Burglarly is a great skill for pure ranged though because it allows you not only to teleport, but it also lets you lockdown a named mob and nuke it from afar.

 

To clarify: Pact of Fleeing Life requires that you hit something in melee, a materially greater risk than flinging spells from range.

 

Well, I thought you meant weapons as in melee weapons...if so, I could suggest some good staff class weapons.
They also hit somewhat well, in case anything survives your magical assault to try to eat your face.
Sadly, I'm not too good with magic, so I can only offer minor advice on weapons to use as a mage.
But the metal orby staff is a good one.
And only not take Burglary if you don't want the bonus to free items from vending machines and the lockpick which helps, because of the rather odd breaking a chest chance. This is the only game I've ever played where you can break a chest by bashing it open, instead of actually getting stuff.
That makes Burglary a skill you must take unless you like the challenge of losing items. Which is a weird challenge.

 

i just abandoned the build i mentioned for a pure mage.

the new build is like this;

burglary
promethean
blood magic
ley walker
astrology
psionics
fleshsmithing

it was difficult in first level, but after unlocking a few spells, it got considerably stronger. (in level 3 yet)

playing medium difficulty, using any magic boosting weapon and shield, shield can be replaced by a orb or book in the future.

trade-off is, dual wielding and teleport (which is a huge price to pay, and bothers me the most. i liked teleporting).

 

I'd abandoned Astrology for Mathemagics if you want teleports back. Astrology is probably the most useless magic skill in the game. I'd say the most useless skill in the game, but the gives it some OK legs to stand on, and the Rune can sometimes be useful in some situations and it really helps Necromages at low levels. But you don't have Necronomiceconomics, so it's probably not benefiting you a whole lot...

 

I just took your suggestion, at level 4 it figuret right, now rolled with math