Wand Lore gives Sagacity which is important for a Mage Build. It's one of those skills you greatly benefit from the first point and then do not maximize it until late game.
It only gives four points of Sagacity over 4 skill points, you're far better off getting another skill that does something similar, but is more useful. For example. Magic Training, Blood Mage, Alchemy, or even another Spell Tree for versatility.
Wand Lore is a wizard skill, and wizard skills are the only ones that give you 2 Sagacity per level up. So, if you replace Wand Lore with a Rogue or Warrior skill you are actually out 8 Sagacity. A powerful pure mage build would probably involve Magic Training, Blood Mage, Alchemy, Wand Lore, Archaeology, and either Ley Lines and one Spell Tree or two Spell Trees.
I didn't say get another non-Mage skill, notice all the skills I listed were Mage skills. My pure Mage build is essentially what you have there, except without Wand Lore and with Ley Walker and two Spell Trees. Still the same result as far as starting stats and leveling stats are concerned. (Admittedly I modified Ley Walker 2 and 3 slightly to make them more appealing =P)
It doesn't matter if you didn't say 'get another non-mage skill'. This information is important for other posters beside yourself. Ley Walker might help you survive the early levels, but it is basically worthless in the middle and late game when you have maximized your mana regeneration.
Well it's obvious that there are people who find most skills usable. Those just don't fit the playstyle of others. Makes it kinda hard to determine which skills are really useless. @Embolus: yeah, I do not understand how mana regeneration works in this game, I don't even get the running mana cost of buffs. I also do not know how much magic power sagacity gives, if at all.
I think it's crazy to say Smithing is useless, it's easily the most powerful skill early game. Every warrior I've made I've taken smithing and maxed it before taking points in anything else and the first 4-5 levels are a complete breeze. You have fine iron or fine steel weapons (I even managed to craft a magma mace on dlevel 3 once, totally overpowered) which let you 1-shot anything and awesome boots, armour and helm so that everything just bounces off you. Even on deeper levels it's really tough finding replacements for the level 4/5 smith gear, especially if you've put them all through the anvils of Krong you found on-route. Tinkering is definitely useless if you don't plan on using bows at all. The traps are expensive to craft, generally worthless and you find way more traps than you'll ever use. Smithing and other skills give you enough trap skill to handle dungeons traps anyway. Alchemy also seems quite useless compared to many other skills. Health pots are great but you generally find enough for them to save you when they are actually required or can save you at all. The buff pots are too weak to be that useful and mushroom buffs are actually better or just as useful in many situations and fungal arts gets you lots more mushrooms than alchemy gets you potions. My top 5 most useless skills would read thus: Lay Lines (It's just absolute pants) Alchemy Tinkering (If you don't use archery, otherwise it's essential for ammo) Dead shot (Very weak and marginal) Perception (Weaker than almost anything else)
You do know that Alchemy allows you to craft multiple potions per ingredients set at higher levels, that it can convert weak beverages into much more potent ones, and that it allows you to craft staves and magical orbs, right? With that in mind, Alchemy is even better for Mages than Smithing is for Warriors, because it not only allows gear-crafting but also provides buffs and mana replenishment. The level 4 Perception ability actually provides a decent buff. I do agree everything before that doesn't seem worth it however.
I wonder if the 'crafting' skills would be more useful if they generated some xps? Low level crafts would generate only a small amount of xp 5-6, but crafting a level 5 item might generate 200-500 so some kind of logarithmic scale. The low level items need to balanced so you can't just xp farm stuff I guess.
My list of seemingly useless ones... *Ley Lines. As stated, it's... eugh. There have been ways suggested to fix this (Having it actually regenerate mana as you move or something) or ways to make it do something interesting, but it really does feel inferior to the other mage passives. *Shield Bearer and Dual-Wielding: But that's because their stat bonuses are bugged right now. Dual-wielding less so, since just having it enables two-weapon combat free of penalties, but... yeah. *Deadshot: Not that it's terrible, but it seems like there's always better things available. *Unarmed Combat: You can waste stuff early on with going unarmed no problem, but in the long run it seems to be by far the weakest option available for a combatant. This is a shame because its tactical options are probably my favourite and going two-shields is great, but... *Alchemy: At least, in comparison to Fungal Arts, since it's so RNG-reliant. *Perception: Like Deadshot, the other options for accuracy/evasion/trap dealing seem to offer more. *Throwing Weapons: Crossbows are great, more because of the side-effects of the skills, I think. I generally find that Throwing Weapons are both less commonly found and less notable in terms of power. As a final aside, I don't really enjoy Archeology's final skill, even if the previous two upgrades are great; I just have atrocious luck with Krong and hate how it seems like everything that'd be worth actually enchanting... will just get cursed.
useless skill, i would say the final vampirism skill, (the sparkly one thats suposed to stun mobs) though that might be my fault for not understanding it (never noticed any stun effects) For my build about all the weapon class and crafting classes are useless, but thats just with my build as i can see them being very handy for other builds. Using lay walker, blood magic, magic apprentice gave me the ability to regenerate 1 mana point every 2 turns, unless I've killed a mob (and blood magic kicks in) to regenerate mana every turn. This allows for the very costly strong spells to be spammable. I'm unsure which of the skills (and / or items) cause this mostly though...
RNG makes fools of us all. When I played my smith I didn't find a single piece of Bauxite/Aluminum until Dungeon Level 5 and not a single piece of Chalk until Dungeon Level 4. As soon as I started playing my Rogue Archetype, I found four pieces of Bauxite on Dungeon Level 1.
I do love myself a healthy dose of Murphy's Law every evening. But yes. "Aqua vitae everywhere, but not an ingot of aluminium in sight."
How has no one mentioned Crossbows as useless? That's easily the most worthless skill to level, and the worst weapon to use as a primary. It takes max tinkering and a few floors of material collection and an EXTREMELY strong bow to make the skill as viable as melee, if you get a dry spell of mats, you're useless and you'll run out of bolts.
Crossbow is definitely one of the hardest weapons to use in the early game, but it really rocks in the middle and late game when you've got maxed tinkering and you can two shot most enemies without the threat of significant danger to yourself. However, I agree that the Archery is a little lacking. You get more mileage out of Deadeye.
Even late game with crossbows is tough, you need an extremely good crossbow, with lots of enchantments before it can 2 shot things.
People, can we collectively shut-up about the same 3 skills, those being; Lay-lines, Wand Lore, and Smithing. It's all thats mentioned with only slight variations on smithing being swapped out for mage training/opinion/vampire. Opinions aren't bad at all, but lets hear why EVERYTHINGS SUCKS. Because they have to. Smithing isn't good for mages because everything about it doesn't agree with pure mages, and yes, lay lines don't do crap for a duel-wielding berserker warrior, but come on, there has to be something that you hate that hasn't been mentioned.
After some thinking on my last post, please note that I do viciously love this game. It's simple and magnificent, engrossing, creative and deep. I don't get half of those on a retail purchase. Lets just hear wild opinions rather than restate the same idea repeatedly, so I don't have to find out that throwing doesn't mix with mage, so I don't waste all my time on this imaginary class trying to figure out why it doesn't work.
