One thing has been bothering me for a long time now, and reading the thread about Wizards brought it back to mind. So, I wanted to start a thread on our favorite power-hungry casters.
Bloodmages are the one class that continuously eludes any kind of efficient use for me. Hard dungeons are becoming fairly routine now...unless I'm playing a Bloodmage, in which case the dungeon requires extremely tight play and victory is usually just gained by the skin of my teeth. For the life of me, I can't tell if it's just that I'm playing them badly or if they're really just that weak. It's a shame, because I love the idea conceptually. It just fails to really *click* together into a neat, cohesive package like most of the other classes have.
If I try to play the class as a heavy caster, I end up consuming giant patches of black space all the time from BLUDTOPOWA, and yet still feel inferior to a Wizard or Sorcerer. If I try to play the class as a hybrid brawler, BLUDTOPOWA ends up being fairly useless except in certain specialized situations (like when I want to blow up a wraith that won't level me) amd I have no abilities that's really helping me much early-game. In either case, I don't ever really feel "powerful" at any stage of the dungeon.
Perhaps I'm missing something? Or is the class really weaker than the other casters at the moment? What's the "intended" way of playing these guys?