Sirrocco wrote:If you're going to include freeze and flameshock for the wizard, you ought to also include Frost Infusion and crystallize for the alchemist.
The only problem with the infusions is that the effect is not always a sure thing, whereas the mage stuff at least attempts a freeze or stun 100% of the time. I'm... not really sure what crystallize is, though. Doesn't seem to be in 15b. If you're talking about stone touch, the whole 'is melee' thing is a nasty drawback, especially for a class that doesn't really have innate defensive abilities (Defensive posture is about it, unless you unlock combat techniques.). Everything else is tied up with the golem.
Sirrocco wrote:That's not to say that true archmages don't have more toys to play with - they do. I also don't think that the comparison is fair or particularly meaningful. Alchemists aren't playing the same game that archmages are.
I'll give you that it's not particularly fair, heh. Meaningful though, yes -- mages and alchemists are both mage subclasses and presumably somewhat matchable against each other. As to the game, I definitely think they're both playing the same game -- that of ranged DPS and disabling. I just think alchemists are a bit worse at it
Sirrocco wrote:- The alchemist just doesn't need mana in the way that an archmage does. You can play a fully functional alchemist off of bombs, staff attacks, golems, and the occasional bit of stone alchemy. You won't have any major sustains to deal with, and your mana load is easily handled without investment in willpower. This allows you to invest in things like con.
They don't need mana because they don't have as much they
can spend it on. It's one of the reasons that alch firepower is lower compared to, yanno', all the other mage subclasses.
The stat disparity between alchy and mage is in dex vs willpower (and mage can fairly safely cut of willpower at about the same point that alchs can cut off dex, in my experience), not con, and manasurge makes most cost issues fairly trivial, especially if you nab two runes.
I'll give that alchs don't have any particular
necessary sustains, but they do have some pretty expensive ones (Defensive position, body of fire. You'll need some infusion occasionally, and 30 mana isn't trivial for someone who hasn't been investing much into willpower.). They also, unfortunately, don't have any particularly
useful ones to the extent mages do. The infusions overwrite each other, and then you've got defensive posture and body of fire... and that's it. BoF's pretty kickin', though.
The con thing isn't really an issue -- pretty much everyone invests in that, or else they die. My general alchemy stat allocation is 1 magic, 1 dex, 1 con, until dex is high enough that my throwing range is satisfactory, then it's keeping magic and con investment roughly equal. Lose out on some crit damage that way, but it's generally necessary to keep from getting wrecked when (not if) the golem drops.
Sirrocco wrote:- You don't have the same access to utility trees, but you also don't need to pay for the same access to utility trees - making it easier for you to pick up another infusion, or possibly the combat training tree. That plus your higher con means that you can afford a few more HP from the right talent.
The only thing involving escape talents an archmage could unlock is temporal, which puts the alchemist at a disadvantage in terms of category points if you count mount golem as one (Mount golem and body of fire both being in locked categories). There's
more escape talents that you can invest in, which is true, but there's only three top-tier escape talents (Probability travel, invisibility, and stone wall) -- most of them are at or lower tier than gem portal. Strike and tidal wave (knockback) are both third tier, the rest -- freeze, tele, PD, flameshock, and time prison -- are lower.
Sirrocco wrote:In the end, you wind up with a guy who can actually tank a bit. The archmage is a glass cannon by design. The alchemist isn't, really. Saying that the alchemist isn't as good at being a glass cannon as the archmage is? Well, no. He's not. On the flip side, if you compare him to some of the other character types, I think he comes off pretty well.
If you compare alchs to the melee classes, early to mid game, yeah. Every other range centered class, baring maybe summoners... not so much.
Alchs don't tank any better than a mage will -- quite possibly worse, if you count the various shields and things like stone skin and regeneration. The only thing the alchemists have going for them in the tanking arena is the golem, not the character itself. That does make a different, but there's this nasty at-least-15 round gap between the golem going down and you being able to get it back up that a alchemist is really,
really flimsy... and can't do much about it.
Though not all of this is fully applicable, as the golem changes a lot of how things go down, at least for a while. The issue is what happens when the golem
does go down, and the alchemist is up th'proverbial creek with only only one good paddle, as opposed to other folks, who may have several different paddles useful in different situations.
I think the real problem to be noted is that, compared to mages, alchemists are two talent trees short (9 vs 11). It's not surprising that alchs are coming up a bit short, given that.
Actually, I just noticed that there's several classes that have less talent access, in terms of raw number of talents. Anorithil only have 8! Gonna' have to contribute to the brainstorming stuff once my last bit of school is done for th'semester.
Freeze, flameshock (Th'blazes did I get fireflash from? I'm sure it's in another RL, but I can't remember where... oh. T2. Right.), PD and teleport... alchs have gem portal and taunt 
The golem helps alot, of course, but...
) into strength.