I started out with the intention of creating an "Air Mage", sort of like Storm from X-Men or the Avatar from The Last Airbender. This meant lightning from the primal tree, telekinesis from the spirit tree, haste from creation etc.
Once I got Morrigan and Wynne, however, I decided to keep them because I like mages and I realized that some of my choices would have been redundant, so I decided to go full spirit. I never really used the "raise undead" path, but the aura thing was very nice. I have no points in fire because I don't like fire.
The most powerful spell combo is probably Storm of the Century. This takes a regular blizzard plus an augmented (spell power from the spirit tree) lightning storm or vice versa, i.e. lightning storm followed by augmented blizzard. This is also a good example of mage synergy, basically it worked like this:
- Shale runs forward and becomes a fortress
- Morrigan starts casting Blizzard at maximum range (this is important)
- 1-2 seconds later my mage starts casting an augmented Lightning Storm from the same position, overlapping Morrigans target area
- Wynne casts Grease and/or Earth Quake so that the enemies don't come near, single targets are hold in place with Petrify
Storm of the Century has a radius twice the size of a normal lightning storm or blizzard, which is just inside the maximum range for those two spells, so you have to be careful. It's deadly if you get caught in it, doing about 70 points of damage to everyone each tick (as a comparison, lightning storm does 18, blizzard 9). My mage usually casts spell ward on Shale so she can get back to the group safely, force field if it looks really bad.
If you really want to min/max my spell choices for each character are not optimal. I chose to keep them in character. A more practical approach would have been to give each mage a different part in all those spell combos so that they all hit at pretty much the same time. For example, the spell ward for shale could have come from Morrigan, because she's free by the time my own mage finishes his spell. Spell combos are usually created within one branch. Another example is hex of death and death cloud. If only Morrigan is casting those it takes a long time. If Morrigan could start casting death cloud while another mage puts up the hex, it would be much faster.
Another useful combo is freezing opponents and then shattering them, although I assume that works well with any class combination that can provide critical hits on demand. Crushing prison from my mage, stone fist from Wynne, Shale had two talents as well. Morrigan didn't, which was too bad.
Revenants were difficult, yes. Don't have much to offer on those though. Freezing and hex'ing was important, but it was also necessary to slow down the spell casting a bit, lest you overnuke.
Anyway, I attached a screenshot of my skill choices. I'm sure there are other or better ways to make three mages work together. I increased magic only to meet the requirements, all the rest went into willpower, which is important if you have lots of sustained spells active.
Some comments on some spells:
- the healing aura from the spirit healer path is very powerful, because it also heals all allies in range that are not in your party. But in combat it drains your mana like no tomorrow. I only used it in the final fight, but then two times at once (Wynne and myself) to great effect. Had to drink a mana potion every few seconds.
- Death Syphon is very useful as well to replenish mana, particularly if you use lots of sustained spells
- I'm not sure if the weapon augmenting skills were all that useful, given that I only had one melee in the party (Shale). Their effect would have been better with three melees or so.
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