In Dragon Age Origins, the classes were incredibly unbalanced. Mages were simply better than the other classes. If your character was a mage, you could make a team of three mages and a tank a quarter of the way through the game and from then on you'd practically have to be napping to lose. From a gameplay perspective, it was a little silly, but from a flavor perspective, it made complete sense: who's gonna win in a fight? The sneaky guy with two little swords, the beefy guy with one big sword, or the guy who can bend the very fabric of reality to his will? More importantly than just making sense, it helped make the setting believable. I could understand why people were so terrified of mages that they decided to lock them up in a tower and surround it with trigger-happy mage-hunters. It was a nice mesh of story and gameplay, even if it was accidental (and maybe it wasn't-- in the final mission, where you can call on your allies, the mage army consists of 12 units while the others consist of 50).
But by the second game, just when the mage-templar conflict strode into center stage, they had corrected the balance. Mages were certainly still useful, but not particularly more so than rogues or warriors. Overpowered control spells like Cone of Cold and Waking Nightmare got nerfed, damage output waned. Fortunately for the flavor, ENEMY mages could still throw down some infuriating practically-instakill AoE spells, but mages as a whole felt much less threatening than in Origins. I get why they made the change, and I don't really fault them for it, but I kinda miss the OP mage.
And on a related note, why are abominations such weak, dime-a-dozen enemies in both games? If a team of four skilled fighters can hack their way through an entire Circle's worth of abominations, is the prospect of one mage occasionally going bad that much of a threat?
But by the second game, just when the mage-templar conflict strode into center stage, they had corrected the balance. Mages were certainly still useful, but not particularly more so than rogues or warriors. Overpowered control spells like Cone of Cold and Waking Nightmare got nerfed, damage output waned. Fortunately for the flavor, ENEMY mages could still throw down some infuriating practically-instakill AoE spells, but mages as a whole felt much less threatening than in Origins. I get why they made the change, and I don't really fault them for it, but I kinda miss the OP mage.
And on a related note, why are abominations such weak, dime-a-dozen enemies in both games? If a team of four skilled fighters can hack their way through an entire Circle's worth of abominations, is the prospect of one mage occasionally going bad that much of a threat?
