Tactics?
 

I'm getting about ready to leave for the Silver Falls, and have found the tactics using my elementalist fairly limited. The only clearly valuable things he can do for combat is summon his fire elemental, cast the shield spell, and do emergency healing and poison removal, and even that is VERY rare (since I've maxed willpower on all the NPCs when possible).

The rest (attribute buffs, enemy debuffs, and damage spells) only seem to provide very minor benefits and only seem worth the time in boss battles, and even then it is not clear. If a tough melee enemey comes after him, he has to run in circles to prevent getting knocked down and killed. Not very attractive… You'd think they'd at least give him an invisibility spell….

For non-boss encounters it seems most effective for him just to join the melee with the tanks using his rapier.

It really seems this games is heavily overbalanced towards melee combat, and most of the spells are just not effective for combat, and that if a mage gets tagged by a boss, he's doomed or at least out of commission while running in circles.

Am I missing something here?

Yes, I also have had this impression that the game is rather balanced towards fighters.

You could upgrade the summoning skill. I think there'll be more elementals summoned or so - I don't know.

Make sure to learn "offensive" spells as well, at certain teachers. Fireball is a classic, but there are also some more.

The "magical armor", I forgot the spell's name, is also important. An attacker can't got much through this protective spell.

And then, of course, you'll need the other party members … To counterbalance your own hero's weaknesses …

Haven't found fireball yet, just the single target fire spell. It's a lot of spelll points for just OK damage. Not very valuable so far. Early on against weaker enemies at low character levels the elementalist can hold his own with Rhulana, but once enemies get stronger, he's become less effective as a damage delear, and becomes too vulnerable to be a meat shield.

When fighting against masses of enemies, for example a dozen skeletons in a tomb, I found it necessary to move all party members around quite often to concentrate their firepower on one enemy. In such cases even my mage had to go into close combat.

It's been a while since I played, my character was also an elementalist. Until he got the area effect spells (fireball, mainly) I think it was like you described… armor spell, light, a debuff here and there, etc. but his main strength was the elemental/djinn, it was like having an extra tank in the group.

Yes. Looking forward to getting that fireball.

My tactics have been to focus on one enemy at a time. My mage with maxed fencing weapon skill and shield talent can help in this (unless he gets targetted by a stronger enemy in the group). Then he just runs around in circles while the others attack. :)

He doesn't have enough strength or agility to qualify for any of the special attacks, so I may give him an extra 2 points in strength and/or agility.

In the meantime I found a VERY useful new spell. The stone/paralysis one. It's great to temporily disable the most dangerous enemies while the party cleans up the minions with melee attacks.

Just make sure you don't accidently attack them again. ;)

I got the fireball spell. It's pretty fun. Main issue is that it aggros a swarm of enemies to come after the mage! Yikes. Still wish there were an invisibility spell…

I thought they'd ALWAYS go after the mage ?

Hmm, certainly the rats in dungeons do (probably because they are so close). Goblins at the edge of perception outside, on the other hand, will (mostly) stop advancing if my frontliners are attacking them and my mage is far back. But then, fireball and other area of effect spells hurt my allies… :(

I know there are certain scripts for attacking, the enemies use.

One is "get the mage first". Rats do that, especially. Somehow.

I don't remember having much trouble with my mage. Usually my fire elemental would get the aggro. I set my mage on 'defensive' and always behind the rest of the group.

Excuse me, but I don't like these terms of "aggro" etc. at all. Even less in conjunction with Drakensang.
They might be right, technically, but my personal impression is that their use distracts much of the overall feeling of the game.

So how do you keep from damaging your other parties members with the fireball or other area of effect spells? Do you not use any party members for up close melee attacks?

I played a long time ago and I have a bad memory, but as far as I remember, I would start the fight with a fireball (when out of combat, fireball casts instantly), then cast a debuff or something on the toughest approaching mob and the elemental would run to them, and most mobs would stick to the elemental and the dwarf. The amazon and me in the back with spells/arrows, and if something runs to me, the amazon switched to melee and attack it. But it's all fuzzy, guess I'll have to play again :)

Yep, that's about how I play it. There's time for one area of effect spell and that's it, usually. The exceptions being ranged enemies that hold back and can be AOE'd without endangering party members.

So damage dealing really is mostly left up to my melee party members. :(

Actually, the amazon was the real killer. There comes a point in the game where enemies die much faster from 5 wounds than from lowering their health to 0

Which amazon are referring to? If it's Rhulana she use's her amazon saber in melee. I haven't made much use of bows because of their slow reload times. It's a shame the sabers can't be used for the combat talents that cause wounds.

Exacly: For damage dealing an archer is much better than a mage. I use mages for other reasons (summoning, healing, buffing, debuffing). E. g. a mage giving additional dex to an archer is much better than trying to use offensive spells himself.

By the way a good archer can

Her real strength is in archery imho. There is an attack like sniper or something that does 2 wounds, follow that with another archery attack that does 1 wound, plus a wound from the charlatan (in my party) and one from the tank and enemy is dead meat.