Hipster Mage build

Especially since it has one of the best healing spells in the game

 

I tried both, and neither really have the room-clearing power to be efficient. If you're careful, you can do it, but it takes a lot of patience and mana to use either of those for zoos.

 

Then Wild Magic. Since Psionics' spells cost almost nothing (between 1 and 5 mana with pretty nice scaling), you can use them just about every turn to activate Wild Surge. Toss in Ley walker's Thaumaturgic Conflux (another triggeroncast), and you're in pretty good shape.

 

Chemical Explosion works until about DL4-5, in my experience. It's scaling doesn't really keep up past that though.

 

I'm guessing that's a mod skill? I tend not to consider those when pondering builds, if only for the slippery slope. After all, if I use a mod skill to fix a weakness in my build, why not use a rather unbalanced mod or make one myself to more than fix that weakness.

 

But that doesn't apply because you're not patching a weakness here. You're creating an arbitrary problem ("mage build without classic nukes") and then looking for something that will let you do that. If you're going to start at an arbitrary line, why not end at one?

 

Well, the weakness in question was a difficulty in dealing with monster zoos and other massive hordes. In any case, I still feel mods make a build discussion kinda moot. For whatever kind of build you wish to make, there is likely a mod out there that does precisely that. And if not, you can build one.

 

I don't think the solution here is to create a mod which will patch the problem with the build which resulted from obstinacy during character creation. The only "requirements" for the build here are lack of Necronomiconomics and Promethean Magic, and the whole thing being more of a wizard build than any other one, so it's not like there aren't any skill trees with good area-of-effect spells to choose.

Thus, it's about self-control. For as long as you don't start creating your own skill trees with questionable balance to start dealing with such problems, using skill trees from mods doesn't appear to break the balance of the game (for as long as you use semi-balanced mods, anyway; mods like "Nephilim" or "Shadow Disciple" are a big "NO" there).

 

I suppose it's mainly a question of how balanced the mod in question is. Assuming the mod is perfectly balanced, there's not much difference between it and any of the skills packaged with the game, except this mod lets you play a certain build otherwise impossible to play as.

 

Yeah, Urthdigger, your view of mods is pretty...odd. There's most certainly not a mod out there for you for whatever you want to do; there's only something like 250 mods total. That's far below the critical mass you'd need to get "advance X arbitrary goal" out of the modosphere. Furthermore, your association between modders and power creep implies that modders in general don't know how to balance -- but if you actually look at the feedback for the mods, they actually tend to go out of their way to avoid being OP except the first-timers, and they tend to get the idea real quick.

Mods add things to the game that weren't there before, but if they broke the game by doing it, they'd be pooped on by the forums (see: Kazeto's post above). To put it another way, if there's a "slippery slope" between "I'm going to use a mod" and "I'm going to deliberately use an overpowered mod" to "I'm going to mod away all my problems", there would be a lot more mods that modded away all the problems -- but there's not, because this is, in the end, a game, and people like to play games.

 

I think the Urthdigger was implying that he'd like to use X build within the confines of the vanilla game. That's a perfectly valid viewpoint for playing the game, just as using mods is also perfectly valid. I understand both points of view (I tend to start using mods or modding when I've exhausted the core of a game. I haven't hit that point in DoD yet, but when I do I will certainly look up balanced mods), but trying to convert either viewpoint sort of detracts from the original intent of the thread, I think.

 

As long as he realises there's no guarantee X build is usable within the confines of the vanilla game. There are only a few dozen vanilla skills- they can't do everything.

 

Welp to be honest I tried to install a couple of mods but I came across some weird crashes so I just ereased them. Anyhow, thank you for the answers! Helped out a lot really.

 

Yes, he was. I expanded on that answer as means of encouraging him to give mods a try, but Essence's reply went, in terms of accuracy, to Siberia (though the second paragraph of his is back on track).

 

Erm...yeah. I think I was replying to two different things at once, only one of which was actually Urthdigger (or actually even on this thread.) My bad.

 

If mods are out, then how about Psionics+Mathemagic+New! Magic Training + Tourist? It plays something like a magic sniper- set up See the Sights for the extra vision and use Certamen Circle at the end of a hallway or room, then proceed to snipe the shit out of everyone with all your single target spells. Use Psionic Shove to keep enemies at bay, and Xeuclid's Translation if they get too close anyways, and use all the mana you're saving by using such cheap spells and spending all your time on a Certamen Circleto keep 2 or 3 Zenzizenzizenzics active.

 

That sounds fun enough that I want to try it.

 

kk going to try it asap when I fix my troubles with the mod

 

New! magic Training? What mod is that? :O

 

Just "Magic Training" from Essence's rebalance. Which you seem to have, so no other mod is required.