Mages vs. Warriors

[Igxfl]

I recently hit dl99 for my first time using a mage. Shortly afterwards, I did the same with a warrior. Both eventually died to a combination of stupid mistakes and gigantic breath attacks, the mage at cl37, and the warrior at cl41.

Now, I usually play mages and priests, and I was incredibly surprised at how good the warrior was. From the mid-game on my warrior was topping 400 dam/round in melee, and could take effortlessly down uniques that I wouldn't want to put a mage in the same room with. Later on, I was surprised to notice that I could occasionally one-shot ancient dragons -- usually I worry about them one-shotting me!

Is this normal for a warrior? What drawbacks do they even have? I understand the lack of detections, escapes and so on, but by the end I had a gigantic pile of rods and staves for all the utility spells I needed, and even buying big stacks of scrolls isn't too bad when you can carry tons of weight from the start of the game.

Thus, I'm wondering if I haven't been playing mages to their full potential. Usually, my mages at cl30+ run from most non-pushover monsters, dive, detect&collect, and use Greater Recharging to fuel the high-damage wands they use on surgical strikes against uniques and high-exp monsters. Is there a better way? The best pre-manastorm offensive option seems to be Wands of Annihilation at 250 dam/round, which is understandably behind that of warriors, but if warriors eventually get most of the better utility spells anyway from scrolls and rods, why play a mage? How do the more experienced players here get the most out of mages?

[LostTemplar]

Create doors spell. You may want to play ranger for 1000+ dmg/round if you like damage. Actually this game is not about damage but about staying alive while collecting items. However warriors are good, play them, eventually you will see an advantage of being mage. Most people here will say that main mage advantage is zero failure rate on escapes (and endless amount of them too).

[Derakon]

Warriors are heavily equipment-dependent. If they don't find good gear, then they'll be much harder to play. Conversely, if they do find good gear, then they have a pretty easy time of it. Recent versions of Vanilla have made finding good gear significantly easier. Thus, warriors have been pretty happy lately.

Aside from the gear issue, warriors lack knowledge and versatility. All other characters can get unlimited detection spells, light spells, temporary elemental resistances (only fire and cold for the holy casters, admittedly, but those are the best two), teleportation spells, ammo-less ranged attacks, etc. Arcane casters get temporary speed, the best combat boost, while holy casters get big heals -- both are hugely useful. All of these have to be done without or made up, oftentimes poorly, by items.

Warriors for much of the game won't be able to see non-evil enemies coming until they round the corner (c.f. Staff of Detect Evil), and their only means of detecting mindless non-evil monsters is the rare Rod of Detection. They have to use potions and staves of Speed, and potions of Healing, all of which can be in depressingly short supply. Or they might be dripping out of your ears. Depends on the version you're playing.

That said, you get a damage multiplier from your devices based on your magic device skill and the level of the device. That wand of Annihilation will out-damage Manastorm when used by a top-level mage, and it can be used at range, while warriors are generally stuck in melee range.

[Timo Pietilä]

Is this normal for a warrior? What drawbacks do they even have?

Warriors are good at start, very bad at mid-game, and again excellent at the end-game. At mid-game you are severely punished by lack of reliable detection and as a result a surprise hound-pack, vault-escapee drolem or similar can easily kill a warrior.

Once you start to get rods of detection that goes away, and big HP/damage advantage starts to show up again.

I count priest being easiest to win with, with ranger and warrior very close second. Then mage and paladin and rogue last. (easiest, not fastest. Fastest is probably rogue, if you optimize your every single move. Or ranger).