Heck, I'm waiting to get ingame but am already thinking about what to possibly play...
It seems that the Bright Wizard is without any doubt the most popular damage dealing Order caster. But I was wondering if the archmage can keep up a bit with it too? Or is it too depending on healing? Is the damage decent when specced properly? I don't want to be playing a class and being refused in most groups cause I'm not healing...
The Archmage operates on a ying/yang force system, the more you heal, the greater the damage you do once you stop healing, the more damage you do, the faster your heals go once you stop damaging. If an Archmage is spam healing and doing no DPS, they are only being played to about 60-70% of their potential.
An archmage cannot really put out the same punch as a BW, but they can do some good damag
The thing is that if you make a healer class you will mostly be grouped in order to heal. As tallen said ofc you can do some dps but your primary objective will be to heal. The only 2 healing classes that need to do much dps in order to heal are the disciple of khain and the warrior priest so you might have a look there als
You have to heal as a healer but the mechanics dictate that you get involved in the offensive combat too.
Running a scenario last night there was two shadow warriors, one swordmaster and three archmages and we made short work of everything cause we all knew how to play and worked together. Everyone had fun and we destroyed the destruction players consistantly.
I've tried a few classes in O/B and Archmage was the one that interested me most proir to the O/B going live. Tbh having only had 15 hours played as one I can see this being a class that takes a degree of skill to truly master and get the most from it. I've played countless senarios and done most of my leveling to 11 in senario play.
Generally in a senario my dps is usually slightly lower than my healing. Though this is partially dependant on how strong the destro opposition is. I've basically tried to stick to using insta dots for dps to build up high magic for healing. I've found it hard to truly max the 'ying yang' effect as sometimes the situation dictates that you either heal or dps. Another slightly annoying aspect is your morale ability heals only pop for a limited duration and sometimes nobody needs that insta heal..
On a side note either I havent got the hang of the targeting aspect fully, but I find it a pain when I change defensive target I sometimes lose my offensive one and vice versa.. this usually happens when I click a defensive target out of my group in senarios.
I do really enjoy the class tho and prefer it above SW and BW which I also tried. AM will def be my main for retail
kinda aside from the main topic but the biggest problem you have with BW is the easy factor in killing yourself, you get too trigger happy and you'll blow yourself up.
AM you can rest easy you dont have this mechanic, so your life expectancy is automatically larger, sure you might not push out the same kinda dps but you do zero dps when dead
Archmage is probably a good class for you if you want to mostly heal, but also dps when healing is under control.
You're always a much better healer than you are at dps.
Some players will indeed pester you to heal, screaming %26quot;HEAL FFS!%26quot;, %26quot;if you play a healing class then only heal!%26quot; or jumping up and down in front of you. Ignore those and heal everyone else.
Let them die: its so much fun to see them crack up. Besides, if theyve time to do that they clearly arent doing their job properly
Better yet the correct solution is not to group with idiots like that
Anyway, the real answer to the thread is that anyone choosing an archmage that isnt happy for healing to be a significant part of their role has chosen the wrong class. Its a hybrid, to be played well you cannot concentrate on just 1 aspect of its abilities.