Aurake
07-31-2006, 12:48 PM
I mostly play a mage wizzie, and as where I liked the last patch, I don't think it's done a ton for the mage base. Actually the listed benefits are only 3 for the mage base.
Anyway, the first one is actually for everyone, but probably helps mages and healers the most.
1) Make stance changes instant, set the recast timer to be 30 seconds (as opposed to 10 seconds you can't cast, and 20 second refresh)
2) Combine Weakening/Enfeeblement into a single debuff. Leave it at -100dex/str insta cast 5 sec recast. These spells being -100 make them much more attractive, but 80 trains, and only 1 spell is really effective against any one toon make them too much of a point sink. At 40 trains effective vs. all melee, I think you'd see that more people training this but you'd see some (it still wouldn't be high priority).
3) Make mage stances penaltyless. With GM precise stance, there is actually no penalty. The o-stance penalty is mostly meaniel, seeing as 99% of mages don't have defense to speak of. Mostly this makes our d-stance maybe worth while. As it is now, it's a loosing fight to be in a GM d-stance against a GM o-stance if both have debuffs (and most mages do). *** See foot notes for some d-stance nuker math
4) Make mage d-stance have better resists, I'm thinking about a 50% boost to what it currently does. (That'll put GM d-stance at 75% elemental, 37.5 holy/unholy resist) *** see foot notes for d-stance nuker math.
5) Make reflection GM at 50dmg magic damage shield. (along that note, you should also make the warlock's mental damage shield not have a terrible cast/recast). This still wouldn't be a great spell, but with a damage shield, and damage absorbers, and optionally some damage shield gear (hood/robe), it might be useful against chukers and what not. Doubly (or more correctly %50) so for wizzies.
6) Make blood boil more effective at GM. Currently for 40 trains you can have a spell that has the exact same damage range as blood fire/chill of the grave at 20 trains, but you don't get the secondary effect. Note that it is the fastest casting spell DoT in the game (as far as I know). I would say double it at GM, except then it'd be a DoT that's got about the same damage as Mage Bolt, which seems like it might be a bit out of wack. This would give all mages some extra damage if they choose it, though the biggest boon I think would be for channies (helping only mage channies, not healer channies) and wizzies, and maybe furies.
7) This maybe a little more argued and is not a mage base buff, so much as mage classes. The mage classes that recieve magical flight should have the level of flight raised. I'd argue that the magical flight should be increased to a level 40 power. What this would do is make sure people who are grounding magical fliers are either casters or have GM weapon powers. People throwing 5 trains into something just to knock someone out of the air is kind of crappy, since flight is probably the biggest survivability tool mages have going for them. I'd say only mages should get this, and not healer bases, as they have armor/heals/block to save them from melees. Maybe give all mage bases magical flight (I think there are only 3 that don't get it from class, and I think with vamps all mage bases have access to magical flight) and put it warding or sorcery. I don't perticularly care to see every mage in the game in the air, but I do think mages should get better then level 5 flight.
8) Make the doomsayer's Vengence of the Pit have a duration of 900 seconds, and 0 recast. Fighter bases get +50% damage -25% attack delay o-stances (100% dps). Rogue bases get -25% attack delay (33% dps increase), Mages get +50% damage (50% dps). Melees get +60 dex/str buffs, casters only get +50. Melees get a stackable (from outside sources, not including self) 25 dex from huntresses, or 30 str from sentinels, self buffed stackable buffs are up to +55. Casters get a +50 int/spi from bards, +25 int stackable from warlocks. Warlocks get a +25 stackable spirit, elves get a +15 completely stackable int. So over all, melees +80 stats from outside sources, casters +75, include self buffs, casters max at +90 (elf only, everyone else it's 75 still), melees at 105). Melees get a -40% attack delay from priests, casters get no equivilent buff. Melees get +30% damage buffs from themselves, or commanders, or get +50% damage buffs from bards/saders/rangers or themselves. Very few casters get +50% damage buffs (sentinels & templars, and they're hybrids), a Doomsayer can keep vengence of the pit on 2 people at the same time. All in all not including stat bonuses, fighter bases GM o-stance gains %344.4 dps, rogue GM o-stance gains %233.3 dps, caster based o-stance gains %80 dps from buffs, seems to have some disparity doesn't it? Mages do tend to have 50% resist debuffs, but GM weapon users get 40%, and can style for extra damage on swings. Atleast with VoP being easy to keep on lots of people, we'll get the bonus damage we can more often.
These are my suggestions based on playing a shade wizzie since the Entropy server. I do not believe that mages are completely gimp, I do believe they are at a major disadvantage to melees due to buffs. This doesn't even get into weapon enchantments + jewelry generally being in favor of melee over caster. I think the game needs to balance more twords melees being balanced to casters when both are self-buffed, and then buffs being balanced to give about equal bonuses to both when buffed. I think the ease of buffbots is what has shifted casterbane to melee bane. Nobody was playing melees before people has -40% attack speed buffs for them all the time. Balance this out and I think we'll see a more diverse player field.
*** Mage d-stance vs. mage o-stance
Identical wizzies vs. each other. One is o-stanced, one is d-stanced. Both wizzies nuke for 100 (crappy wizzies), both have 0 magic resist. Wizzie A is o-stanced, so nukes for 150 and has 0 magic resistance. Wizzie B is d-stanced, so nukes for 71 and has 50% magic resistance. We're going to take out stun for this equation. Wizzie A and B mutually debuff each other. A Nukes B for 150 damage, B nukes wizzie A for 106.5, this continues, wizzie B dies.
If we had left stun in the equation, wizzie A would probably not have died inside stun time, on the other hand, he may or may not have killed wizzie B in stun time. However, after mutual 9 seconds of stun time, wizzie A would be ahead due to dealing 150 per nuke instead of 106.5.
If we upped mage GM d-stance to be +50% resists, no power damage debuff then it'd just make it equal, except that wizzie B does less damage to his next target, and it would take him 10 seconds of not casting to switch to o-stance. Thus making it more advantagouse to go o-stance, attempt to kill someone in stun time, finish them off, and move to the next target. Once again, d-stance is almost useless.
We need to up d-stance by about 50% and remove the power damage penalty for mages, then d-stance might be useful to mages. O-stance would still be prefered, but when they know theres a nuking battle about to happen, d-stance would be useful for those that had it.
PS:
Please forgive spelling errors. I have no access to Office, and spellcheck.com kind of sucks.
Anyway, the first one is actually for everyone, but probably helps mages and healers the most.
1) Make stance changes instant, set the recast timer to be 30 seconds (as opposed to 10 seconds you can't cast, and 20 second refresh)
2) Combine Weakening/Enfeeblement into a single debuff. Leave it at -100dex/str insta cast 5 sec recast. These spells being -100 make them much more attractive, but 80 trains, and only 1 spell is really effective against any one toon make them too much of a point sink. At 40 trains effective vs. all melee, I think you'd see that more people training this but you'd see some (it still wouldn't be high priority).
3) Make mage stances penaltyless. With GM precise stance, there is actually no penalty. The o-stance penalty is mostly meaniel, seeing as 99% of mages don't have defense to speak of. Mostly this makes our d-stance maybe worth while. As it is now, it's a loosing fight to be in a GM d-stance against a GM o-stance if both have debuffs (and most mages do). *** See foot notes for some d-stance nuker math
4) Make mage d-stance have better resists, I'm thinking about a 50% boost to what it currently does. (That'll put GM d-stance at 75% elemental, 37.5 holy/unholy resist) *** see foot notes for d-stance nuker math.
5) Make reflection GM at 50dmg magic damage shield. (along that note, you should also make the warlock's mental damage shield not have a terrible cast/recast). This still wouldn't be a great spell, but with a damage shield, and damage absorbers, and optionally some damage shield gear (hood/robe), it might be useful against chukers and what not. Doubly (or more correctly %50) so for wizzies.
6) Make blood boil more effective at GM. Currently for 40 trains you can have a spell that has the exact same damage range as blood fire/chill of the grave at 20 trains, but you don't get the secondary effect. Note that it is the fastest casting spell DoT in the game (as far as I know). I would say double it at GM, except then it'd be a DoT that's got about the same damage as Mage Bolt, which seems like it might be a bit out of wack. This would give all mages some extra damage if they choose it, though the biggest boon I think would be for channies (helping only mage channies, not healer channies) and wizzies, and maybe furies.
7) This maybe a little more argued and is not a mage base buff, so much as mage classes. The mage classes that recieve magical flight should have the level of flight raised. I'd argue that the magical flight should be increased to a level 40 power. What this would do is make sure people who are grounding magical fliers are either casters or have GM weapon powers. People throwing 5 trains into something just to knock someone out of the air is kind of crappy, since flight is probably the biggest survivability tool mages have going for them. I'd say only mages should get this, and not healer bases, as they have armor/heals/block to save them from melees. Maybe give all mage bases magical flight (I think there are only 3 that don't get it from class, and I think with vamps all mage bases have access to magical flight) and put it warding or sorcery. I don't perticularly care to see every mage in the game in the air, but I do think mages should get better then level 5 flight.
8) Make the doomsayer's Vengence of the Pit have a duration of 900 seconds, and 0 recast. Fighter bases get +50% damage -25% attack delay o-stances (100% dps). Rogue bases get -25% attack delay (33% dps increase), Mages get +50% damage (50% dps). Melees get +60 dex/str buffs, casters only get +50. Melees get a stackable (from outside sources, not including self) 25 dex from huntresses, or 30 str from sentinels, self buffed stackable buffs are up to +55. Casters get a +50 int/spi from bards, +25 int stackable from warlocks. Warlocks get a +25 stackable spirit, elves get a +15 completely stackable int. So over all, melees +80 stats from outside sources, casters +75, include self buffs, casters max at +90 (elf only, everyone else it's 75 still), melees at 105). Melees get a -40% attack delay from priests, casters get no equivilent buff. Melees get +30% damage buffs from themselves, or commanders, or get +50% damage buffs from bards/saders/rangers or themselves. Very few casters get +50% damage buffs (sentinels & templars, and they're hybrids), a Doomsayer can keep vengence of the pit on 2 people at the same time. All in all not including stat bonuses, fighter bases GM o-stance gains %344.4 dps, rogue GM o-stance gains %233.3 dps, caster based o-stance gains %80 dps from buffs, seems to have some disparity doesn't it? Mages do tend to have 50% resist debuffs, but GM weapon users get 40%, and can style for extra damage on swings. Atleast with VoP being easy to keep on lots of people, we'll get the bonus damage we can more often.
These are my suggestions based on playing a shade wizzie since the Entropy server. I do not believe that mages are completely gimp, I do believe they are at a major disadvantage to melees due to buffs. This doesn't even get into weapon enchantments + jewelry generally being in favor of melee over caster. I think the game needs to balance more twords melees being balanced to casters when both are self-buffed, and then buffs being balanced to give about equal bonuses to both when buffed. I think the ease of buffbots is what has shifted casterbane to melee bane. Nobody was playing melees before people has -40% attack speed buffs for them all the time. Balance this out and I think we'll see a more diverse player field.
*** Mage d-stance vs. mage o-stance
Identical wizzies vs. each other. One is o-stanced, one is d-stanced. Both wizzies nuke for 100 (crappy wizzies), both have 0 magic resist. Wizzie A is o-stanced, so nukes for 150 and has 0 magic resistance. Wizzie B is d-stanced, so nukes for 71 and has 50% magic resistance. We're going to take out stun for this equation. Wizzie A and B mutually debuff each other. A Nukes B for 150 damage, B nukes wizzie A for 106.5, this continues, wizzie B dies.
If we had left stun in the equation, wizzie A would probably not have died inside stun time, on the other hand, he may or may not have killed wizzie B in stun time. However, after mutual 9 seconds of stun time, wizzie A would be ahead due to dealing 150 per nuke instead of 106.5.
If we upped mage GM d-stance to be +50% resists, no power damage debuff then it'd just make it equal, except that wizzie B does less damage to his next target, and it would take him 10 seconds of not casting to switch to o-stance. Thus making it more advantagouse to go o-stance, attempt to kill someone in stun time, finish them off, and move to the next target. Once again, d-stance is almost useless.
We need to up d-stance by about 50% and remove the power damage penalty for mages, then d-stance might be useful to mages. O-stance would still be prefered, but when they know theres a nuking battle about to happen, d-stance would be useful for those that had it.
PS:
Please forgive spelling errors. I have no access to Office, and spellcheck.com kind of sucks.