Only if you’re a Sentinel/Rogue.
1 Like
True, I did miss that.
1 Like
As was pointed out, sadly not.
And plainly spoken I’m a bit confused about it since the Mage is supposed to be the Mana class kinda.
Yeah, but take those away which need synergizing stuff going generally always together… like skeletons are nigh only played with skeleton mages for example and hence Bone Golems as well… or totems generally implemented… well… totems 
We definitely have to differ between ‘core’ skill or ‘supporting’ skill for some of them along the way. For example ‘Fireball’ itself as a core skill is awful. You use it to trigger Meteor mostly, not standalone. Or with Mana Strike, it’s commonly frost claw or elemental Nova… or both, it’s not used alone.
In terms of fireball it’s solely the trigger element, at least with Mana Strike it has distinct functionality only seen there, so we can say it’s either a Mana Strike build or simply a measure to trigger those things at range and without target leading.
Makes it feel a bit less then the choices actually are overall given that they’re hard pressed to be viable ‘standalone’.
Which is fine! And absolutely great too as a game goes along in complexity, but LE isn’t all too complex yet. It’s a lot about perception there as well.
And 1 in 20? Hrmm… I would argue with instances like Storm Totem which is generally a totem build… or a companion build like the beastmaster usually makes it in total it turns kinda into a sort of ‘It feels like one skill’ deal. They’re a kinda ‘bundle’ hence mentally. Just makes it seem like it’s more prevalent.
So I would argue ‘currently yes, but it can be managed with some effort relatively quickly’. And that’s fine too! Would make the perception of Mana being an issue case probably disappear to a degree, or at least become entirely neglicent to even mention.
I mean… that’s what the skill tree is for, isn’t it? Variants of skills which change how they behave heavily… so the base-skill being viable start to finish (or rather acquisition time to finish) being a thing… but the specifics of how to use it being opened up as you play through auxiliary means.
I didn’t mean in the sense that you can’t change it. I meant in the sense that there’s nothing to solve. It works fine at level 1, it works fine at level 100. You can make it target, or shoot several or whatever, but you don’t actually have to solve anything relating to the skill. You just scale it while scaling your defenses.
It’s a “no-brainer” from the start and you just choose your flavor, basically.
Which is fine for starting skills. Not so much for “better” skills you get later on. Those should present challenges (since they’re also, in theory, stronger).
Yeah, that’s fair.
But why not make the core skill weaker then the variants which need some ‘solving’ then? Usable without feeling like you can barely even play at all but not being as powerful as the variant creations.
Effort leading to reward hence, incentive.
Gives the people which want the ‘no brainer play’ still something to engage in, allowing the more casual build-planning adverse person to engage reasonably with the game while also allowing those leaning more towards build creation itself to have enjoyment.
Some of them are that way. For example, Hammer Throw is the skill that I consider has the best design overall. Lots of changes to it, lots of ways to solve it.
And, to be fair, Fireball is also pretty well designed. It just scales poorly.
Some skills are better designed than others. And I get that it’s hard to come up with ways to design them that way and keep them interesting, solvable and balanced.
But having no-brainer skills is fine as well. You don’t always want to solve a huge puzzle and just want to have some immediate fun.
And having hard to solve ones that require endgame solutions is also fine.
In my opinion a game should have a healthy mix of all of them.
So, to return to the original issue, I don’t think LE has a mana issue. Some skills are easier to solve sooner, some are solved later and that’s fine.
The problem is with skills that are way too hard to solve even in endgame, and those should be fixed. But the main reason why some skills are underused is usually scalability, rather than mana issues.
1 Like
No, I’m not even kind of stoked because all the solutions are bad. This is a power fantasy, loot-based ARPG. I don’t actually give a fuck about solving mana. I want to progress and idea I have for a character without having to do things like spec mana strike in a fucking meteor build 
Fair enough, you might want to play D3/4 then as they’re a lot simpler & dont have quite the same challenges to over come, or PoE as mana isn’t an issue there admfter a certain point. I quite like mana being a limiting factor that needs to be dealt with rather than ignored.