Hey all,

I am mostly following the mage development tree and I am thinking of putting two points into the ability Magic Intensification which boosts sign intensity by 2. I actually tried it out and I am not fully convinced it was worth it. However, I have only been fighting Harpies yet so it may be that Harpies have a high enough resistance against my lvl III Igni to mitigate the extra effect.

I am curious as to what your experience with boosting sign intensity was if you opted for it.

Thanks for reading.

Each point of Sign Intensity ups Quen timer by 25 seconds.

Pretty badass, and Quen's pretty much the only sign I use.

Uhh seems you're right. I haven't noticed that yet as I try to use Quen as a last option only so I can play with fire more, har :)

With my lvl III Quen it is now almost 3 min long.

Aye. And you should reach 3m5s once you finish the gargoyle quest in chapter 3. It gives you a perk that has +0.5 sign intensity.

Have you noticed a big damage increase for, say, Aard and Igni ?

I see some increase, yes, but I find it a bit disappointing.

Wait a second, doesn't the journal entry say +1 sign intensity = increase Igni damage by 100%?

It's not a bad talent but it isn't amazing either. If you are mostly using Quen, I'd go with the talent that reflects damage to multiple opponents, rather than sign intensity.

I, on the other hand , prefer to go for sign intensity çause the smaller fry i can take care using the sword once quen is on, and the bigger ones like bullvores etc.. and bosses usually come in ones or at max twos , so going for sign intensity to deal with them seems more useful to me.

Sign intensity allows you to take more hits before it goes down. Venting just results in more damage, but it's only useful if you want to use it as a damage-dealer. Even then, it doesn't compare to heavy sword strikes, which is why I ignored venting and chose sign intensity instead.

Fair enough, to each his own. To be perfectly honest, the only problems I had with combat was usually versus groups and from that point of view, I found venting extremely useful (especially against gargoyles) not so much because of the damage part, but rather the fact that it allows you to hack opponents while being protected, or just bug out to recuperate.

Yes, that is exactly what I thought, but the subjective feel of the end result was a bit underwhelming. However combined with damage from quen lvl 3 to multiple enemies and Igni lvl 3 area effect it is very pleasing with high sign intensity and sign damage. I believe my mage has 57 sign damage and 3 or 4 sign intensity on lvl 34. In act 3 you have a group of 4 harpies approaching, let them take the quen damage, follow up with igni, maybe hit the last 1 or 2 with the operators staff and the group is done. Very satisfying.

And while we're on the subject of damage, here's a very short experience report post on using the operator's staff on a mage build: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/the_witcher_2_best_armor_and_steel_silver_sword/post8