Mage Skill? (in General)

Personally I feel that Mages should have at least one skill to train. Preferably more, as one does not give any strategic choice, just an xp sink.

Evasion is no longer a skill worth training, maybe on an enchanter you don't want to buy a pair of DB s for, as DB s are far superior to the Evasion skill and you can't use both together. Well you can, if you really want, but it's not worth it in any fashion.

So, what sort of skills should Mages have?

A Focus type ability has been suggested, that stops the spread damage of FB/CoC.

How about some more ideas?

:)

Here's on off the top of my head.

Concentration. The mages version of BL. compares itself to your DD level, and at max (1/4 of DD level) grants an extra 50% damage. Works with Decay.

If you want a weakness, it grants extra pth to physical attackers, as the mage roots themselves to a single spot to harness thier magic power.

No, it's not unique, but it gives mages something...

:)

If you're interested, you should look up my long lost thread idea on my mage skill idea. I think it was called concentration as well. But my idea was a pure balancing idea. I wanted to have Jon change it so all DD spells only had a 50% chance to hit, but training Concentration at the standard 1/4 of your DD spell would raise it back to 100%. No extras, just dilute one of the two things a mage really needs.

Your idea is... just a little out of whack. Mages already do great in CB, I hardly feel there's a need to take these guys and increase their killing potential 50%. It's already hard enough to run non-mage now, as is. And as for a weakness of PTH to attackers, what? Mages usually get hit 2 or often 3 times a round- that weakness takes the word meaningless to new heights.

Besides, you can't have decay deal extra. The whole point of decay is it deals HALF, no more, no less (excepting AMF of course). Making decay a spell that kills goes against all that decay stands for and is.

Nice to see people with creative juices flowing, but seriously, let's be realistic. No more "double my damage with negligible drawbacks". Please. And thanks in advance.

:)

Just a few points;

"Your idea is... just a little out of whack. Mages already do great in CB, I hardly feel there's a need to take these guys and increase their killing potential 50%. It's already hard enough to run non-mage now, as is. And as for a weakness of PTH to attackers, what? Mages usually get hit 2 or often 3 times a round- that weakness takes the word meaningless to new heights."

That's why I didn't suggest a dex penalty, that would do notihng to mages. But giving physical attackers an extra 25 pth would help them landing extra hits. 4 or more even....

Look at the top flight, it's all tanks. Mages might be easier to level a t low levels, but at the top it's all tank.

"Besides, you can't have decay deal extra. The whole point of decay is it deals HALF, no more, no less (excepting AMF of course). Making decay a spell that kills goes against all that decay stands for and is."

It used to do more damage if the target had BL.

"Nice to see people with creative juices flowing, but seriously, let's be realistic. No more "double my damage with negligible drawbacks". Please. And thanks in advance."

Fine, then you should be in favour of removing BL. As it's "Double my damage with no drawbacks!". 50% extra isn't doubling damage...

Also, the balance factor between mages and tanks has *always* been tanks ability to land multiple hits per round.

Thanks for the response, but I still don't buy your arguments.

A) A skill that makes you get hit more? Come on, mages already get hit a lot. Any decent tank already hits mages more than easily enough. Thing is, they need the PTH for enemy tanks, not mages or enchanters. Having that be your downfall for this mage ability would be like having a weakness to bloodlust in that it negates trained direct damage spells- it's rather pointless.

B) Yes, the top is not dominated by mages. However, the top is far from the average team. Those are the teams with around $100 million in NW already and massive weapons and armor and giant tattoos. They have worked hard (and maybe cheated with USD) and raised their NW and MPR. Their strategies are solid. You can't say just because the top 10 teams aren't all mage that CB is mage dominated. Look around, many many teams use mages and quite effectively. If it's not working for you, maybe you should tweak your strategy a bit?

C) Yes, I know bloodlust used to make decay deal more. But bloodlust made EVERYTHING deal more damage. It wasn't a special case, and I just took for granted you would have realized that. Sorry. But my point remains- decay takes half the target's HP. Always has, and always should, and I'm sure that's the way Jon will always have it.

D) Yes, doubles damage at no drawback. Well, other than you can't use a different ability and must dilute your XP. I'm not sure why Jon took out the extra damage you took, it didn't seem to be a problem to me. Of course, I don't know nearly as much as he does, so I'm not surprised. Anyway, bloodlust requires you focus on melee. This can be a big thing. And then you have to spend lotsa cash getting a good melee weapon. But a universal damage increase for magic wouldn't have any of these limits. Any mage instantly would become much more deadly.

E) Yes, tanks land more blows. Of course, look at it my way. My tank takes over 200k from a large CoC, but will then turn around and only hit for 70k twice versus that same mage. The multiple blows are the only way I can keep up with the massive damage DD spells do.

Thanks, and good night.

I'll do my best to illustrate my point. :)

A) I can't see how granting attackers (not the mage with the skill trained) an extra 25 pth to be a pointless activity. But let's drop the drawback of this skill anyway.

B) Hahahaha! I don't care what works for me, I haven't for a while. This is not an attempt to make GL's Strat Uber. For quite a while I was asking for the strat I was running (FB+DM) to be nerfed. I'd quite appriciate being personally left out of this discussion. :) As for the top ten, answer this. If mages could be as effective at the top, why aren't there any there?

C) Making Decay reduce 75% of the targets HP is more powerful than 50%, granted, but it still stops Decay being a one hit kill. Decay on it's own, even if bumped to 99% damage (well, baring rounding...) will never kill it's target.

D) "Yes, doubles damage at no drawback. Well, other than you can't use a different ability and must dilute your XP" So I'm saying; "Yes, 1.5 times damage at no drawback. Well, other than you can't use a different ability and must dilute your XP". There's no difference. Actually, the mage version does less than BL. If you don't like the mage version, you surely must object to BL as well. The whole of your point D can be substitued to apply to my idea, changing thinks like melee to magic.

E) Dude, If it's not working for you, maybe you should tweak your strategy a bit? ;) Tanks have the ability to land multiple blows to even out the damage between tanks and mages. Look at (EXTREME example) the contest I ran for the first 1 mil single hit. Ranger reached it with a massive, massive weapon and BL. Oh, and he could hit with it multiple times...

;)

Another thing. Mages and Tanks should be ballanced *before* taking skills into acount. If a Tank needs a skill to equal a Mage, then something is wrong.

In that case, shouldn't Mages have something to counteract BL?

I'll also point out, that Tanks have a lower Str score than mages do thier DD, so tanks have to train far less xp in BL than a Mage would in the mage version of BL to keep it at 1/4 their DD level.

Moving on. Another Idea. DD specific.

Multi-Missile. Each effect (x) gives x percent chance for any trained MM on the minion to fire a second time. Yes, at (100) would equal double damage.
Casting minion would suffer AMF reduction and backlash as normal for each extra MM fired. All MM's fired would hit the same target in a single round.

GL Mages and tanks are not equal without skills. The reason tanks have skills and mages don't is to even the playing field a bit.

FB mage: Hits multiple minions per round, attacks every round, each attack is guaranteed to hit, damage increases as the fight continues, and only HAS to train two things (HP and FB)

CoC Mage: Hits multiple minions, does not attack in ranged, attack guaranteed to hit, damage is static but is massive, only HAS to train two things (HP, CoC)

MM Mage: Hits single minion per round, does not attack in round one, attack guaranteed to hit, damage is static, only HAS to train two things (HP, MM)

Tank: Hits one minion per round, does not attack in round 2, possibility for multiple hits per round (but also possible to have every hit avoided), damage is static (not accounting for randomness) through the fight (with the exception of a possible change from ranged to melee), and HAS to train three things (HP, ST, DX)

All have the ability to increase damage dealt and decrease damage taken with NW.

Now the way I see it a tank is pretty equal to a MM mage but gets far outpaced by the other two.
Think of BL as a COC Tank, the damage is concentrated in melee. In the same manner think of an archer as a FB tank, it gets to attack every round.

Notice that even with these skills the is not a way for a tank ot hit multiple minions per round and that adding the skills to "catch-up" to the abilities of mages further dilutes their xp (4 items to the 2 mages have to train)

Why make mages even more powerful when (as i think i have shown) they already have a clear advantage over tanks.

Warchild, if they aren't then there needs to be some balancing done. The necessaty of a skill to require balance is wrong.

The top characters show that mages are just not as effective as tanks at the end game. Otherwise, there would be at least one up there. Going back to my extreme example. Take away BL from Rangers 1 Mil hit. That's a 500K hit. That in itself is the same as a 500K CoC or 1 Mil FB. If it even hits twice (with a combination of Dex and Pth - that can't be easily reduced - you will hit more than once, on just about everybody), it's beeter than the best DD in the game at the moment.

Add BL back in. It's already twice as good as any DD in the game, with no drawback, on just a single hit!

You take about spread damage. Spread dmage is *only* good versus low hp targets. The DD damage get's reduced by a lot by spreading, with also makes it weaker to GA, ToE s and MgS s. Yes, spread damage can be used to someones advantage, mainly by using DM also, but the introduction of the RoS will lessen this.

Adding a mage skill will give the Mages something else to spend XP on. Which will lower thier DD level, making AMF more potent.

I'm not saying Mages can't do great damage. I'm not saying Tanks can't. But skills should never (and I feel are not at the moment) be necessary to balance tank v mage.

GL you are trying to compare a physical hit that was done with a $46M MH to a magical hit with a 0NW CoC

Put a $46M CoI on Talhearn and see if he or Ranger hits harder.

Also consider that the 1Mil hit was done to a BL tank before the extra damage was removed from BL.

And finally Ranger has a massive MPR advantage over the largest FB and CoC...he should hit harder.

You are looking at the top and saying "there is not a mage there so they must be weaker than tanks" when in reality it has been preference and not neccesity that have made the top ten full of Tanks and not Mages. A Mage that had the NW that the big tanks have would blow them away.

Also

My 1 million hit was vs Spid who as a BL tank also took quite a lot of damage.

My max hit now is about 450k, no where near the 1 million it used to be.

Just throwing this out there, but what if there was a skill that helped bypass amf?

the BL does not affect MPB, IIRC, so the argument that BL on the enemy increased Rangers MPB is incorrect.

Slayer you are wrong. MPB is now calculated after all increases to damage (ie BL, Beleg's, and Archery before it was nerfed.) So the 1M hit was after the BL increase and the attack would have been about 480k (remember BL was 1.2 at that time.)

"Also consider that the 1Mil hit was done to a BL tank before the extra damage was removed from BL."

My bad! I forgot that!

"And finally Ranger has a massive MPR advantage over the largest FB and CoC...he should hit harder."

*Shrugs* Horses for courses. Rangers got three minions. The other two don't add to the damage his tank does. BCS (Who I was comparing Rangers damage to) Is a single minion. If we're looking at how much damage Ranger does for his MPR, we should discount the MPR given by his other two minions.

"You are looking at the top and saying "there is not a mage there so they must be weaker than tanks" when in reality it has been preference and not neccesity that have made the top ten full of Tanks and not Mages. A Mage that had the NW that the big tanks have would blow them away. "

That's not so. If that was the case, then why hasn't one of the top changed to rule the pack? Sute asked Sef to do this, and even a 46 Mil pair of DB s wouldn't help counter the dex+pth+ToA gap.

Rangers max hit is around 450K, so 225K without BL. BCS does around 500K to a single minion, I should hopefully do nearly 600K. (On an ideal target)

Ranger has to hit three times without BL to exceed the amount of damage the largest DD spells in the game put out. I consider that to be a fair trade off. It's easy to hit three times with a melee weapons. Especially versus a Mage or Enchanter.

With BL, hitting just twice does 33% more damage than the largest DD s in the game. Three times is 108% more damage!

Yes is a massive weapon. But that's the luxury of Tanks. Their expense is balanced by the fact they hit multiple times, with an infinite limit. Just hitting a second hit per round increases their damage by 100%.

*Shrugs* if everyone is so worried about DD damage levels, just give mages something else to spend their xp on. Less xp = lower DD level = better counter by AMF.

If the big threat is possibly making mages more “overpowered” then don't worry about it. First what should be done is to find a few skills that simple add color to the mages. It is not important at the moment that these skills provide some sort of ultimate advantage, just simply a better chance to survive or kill in particular situation and a weakness in others.

The objective ought to be to create skills like these first EVEN IF they are underpowered. Then in another change month we could argue and debate a boost for these skills that DO exist once they have been tested and played with a bit. GL, I know you want to see something just half as good as BL available for mages, but you should just work on something on the level of evasion for now. We'll push for something better later on when we have facts and figures to show them, okay. :)

"Concentration"

Now Seeker already stole one of my suggestions. "Concentration" should be the ability to not hit yourself in the face with your own spell. However, how would you handle such a skill?

If you say that your spell is protected from AMF up to the level of the DD spell then you give Decay one more loophole to make it all powerful. Instead we can either allow it to cut AMF like the way DM cuts ED, but then again that's more useful then Evasion isn't it and seems a bit stale. Not only would it not be too much like DM, but it's redundent since raising your DD can do the same thing.

I like the all or nothing approach. Either you brake through the AMF barrier or you don't. At first the skill could be level for level against AMF, but I'm sure that's going to prove useless against anyone who trains AMF for real. But it's a start, then later on we can ask Jon to up the effective level of the skill so that you get more levels then you put into it. Lower damage for possible protection. Seems like color to me.

"Blowout"

If you want more power then we could opt for what you suggest, a skill that increases more damage, but we shouldn't make the skill rely on the opponent to be a tank in order to take advantage of the weakness. Now isn't that the inherent problem with your original suggestion, it turned this whole mess into tank versus mage and the endless discussion began.

"Blowout" instead is increased power (the amount of the increase matters not at all) with harm to one's self for channeling more then they can actually take. The mage will instead die all on their own from use of this skill. Now from here there are two options, either the mage just dies after a curtain number of rounds of using DD, or they take additional backlash on top of AMF and GA.

The first option is alright, but FB mages would probably just love it just too much by guaranteeing that backlash to the rest of the team could be assured never to happen. I opt for a form of additional backlash personally, but it does still sound rather stale. However, as I understand it the FB mage is the only one who is sure not to take damage from FB, and so this makes sure that mage is killing absolutely everyone with it's incredible damage.

Actually, why not just let evasion stack with DB's.

Good call Ranger. Then again it's not exclusively a Mage skill while BL, UC, and Archery are.

Sorry, I mean to say that BL, UC, and Archery are Tank specific skills. It's hard to say that a mage can be skilled in something useful other then running away.

GL i noticed that you failed to comment on my first (and main) point. You are still trying to compare a 0NW attack with a $46M attack. If you put the same amount of NW into a CoI as tanks put into weapons and the same amount of NW into other armors (DB, MCM, etc) as tanks do then a Mage would be very difficult to beat.

You asked why it has not been done yet and i offer two answers, 1) personal preference (you could also look at it as the mentality from cb1 that tanks are always better) and 2) once you have put the NW into tank gear it can be very difficult to get that NW back out in order to make the change over to mage.

I have noticed in this game that people get stuck into certain lines of thinking which they then pass on to the newer players. Now most of the time this is because it is sound advice, but I have been noticing a LOT of things that people are thinking that just do not add up. A couple that relate to this thread being:

1) Just what you start this thread with, mages are not effective at higher levels...you have no way of knowing that as noone has really tried it. New players that reach higher levels are being told over and over that mages won't work as you go progress farther up so they aren't trying...instead they use a 0NW (other than tattoo) mage and either save their money to buy a top ten tank character or sell the money for USD and split when their NUB runs out. Threads like this that promote that kind of single mindedness about strategy will kill this game.

And

2) Mages do not need NW. This is simply not true. Jon never intended for mages to be the 0NW minions that they became in cb1. He has always said that mages do not have to put NW into weapons so they have more to put into armor (that is why the + on mage armor is more expensive.) This is even more true now that the bonus from CoI is variable by NW

Simply put before you say that a strat need more skills think about what would be needed in a skill for it to even be an option (ie it would have to make the strat better) and think about whether the strat in question needs any improvement (beyond the options that are already out there such as actually using NW on a mage.)

Don't forget that forgers like to forge weapons. Not for any good reason other then the fact that they _seem_ to raise faster per BA spent, but 1 mil NW added is still 1 mil NW added no matter how you slice it. The fact that weapons have two stats that both raise up with very little NW per upgrade only feeds an illusion that it's an easier forge.

The next + on CoI is more then a million. Now how are you going to feel when your a forger and I say I want you to add a simple plus to my armor? Then when your RPM goes up by a fraction of 1% your going to say, "this is a tough forge" and forget the fact that YOU'RE ADDING OVER 1 MIL NW for this single plus.

Let's also not forget that the first point you add is always the easiest and the difficulty of each plus is only slightly harder. This quick jump start often feeds the illusion even more by making them think that they are half way done when in fact they are only a quarter or a third of the way there. It's an issue I have as I come across one whinny forger after another. Little do they know I have probably forged better then most of them in just one days work.

My feeling is that Jon has done the math himself and that in reality it will always cost you the same amount of BA per NW added no matter what you forge. The only difference that could possible come about is when you mess up and that damned dwarf let's you know it the hard way.

I don't know why you guys like to get N/W into picture by saying if same NW that a tank put into weapon when used as armour upgrade for mages will make mages great.

You guys are merely neglecting the N/W allowance that tanks has for weapons. When I used Neji, at 500k MPR, I can equip a total of 26mil N/W of weapons without even increasing my PR by one bit. If the same 26mil N/W is spent on armour for mages, that will increase their PR sky high. And yes, Jon somehow intend to make this as a disadvantage for mages, but few people actually consider this when they want to compare mage's N/W with Tank's.

Oh and the idea of linking N/W and MPR is to reflect the true Power Rating a char has. So keep hovering your points around N/W wouldn't bring Jon any interest to consider changes. Please compare results by PR.

Conclusion, N/W is more effective for tanks due to the allowance window for weapons but at the same PR I think both mages and tanks are quite balanced now. Adding a skill for a particular type of char will make Jon recalculate a lot of things... which normally he will either put it to FORS (if he's nice) or just ignore completely :)

Well, I never made the point to talk about NW and Mages and Tanks. In fact in my first post I tried to keep us on-topic. I did go on a tangent with my second post, but honestly this is getting worse. Let us save GL's post before it's too late please.

Please, if you want to talk about anything, talk about my first reply. It has no discussion on Tanks verse Mages. It only talks about possible mage skills and in no way wants to make mages more powerful, just varied.

actually I was still somewhat on topic , on the last sentence of my last paragraph :P You can feel free to ignore the rest, coz it was more of a reply to warchild's posts that hovers around N/W.

I don't see how a underpowered all or nothing AMF blocking skill could require Jon to rebalance the game.

Warchild, I think I'll bow out of the Tank/Mage discussion. I've tried both, I'm still a supporter that in some amount of time, mages will surpase tanks easily, as that next "x" will just be too darn expensive. But that appears to be so far in the future, it's not really a point worth talking about. Yes I was looking at a 0 NW attack versus a 46 Mil NW attack. As most Magic attacks will be 0 NW. Tattoo/Rune > CoI.

"Simply put before you say that a strat need more skills think about what would be needed in a skill for it to even be an option (ie it would have to make the strat better) and think about whether the strat in question needs any improvement (beyond the options that are already out there such as actually using NW on a mage.)"

Eh? Why don't we scrap all skills then? Tank, Mage, Enchanter don't *need* improvements. But additions create variety, which creates strategy (as long as one option isn't so far better than another, which incidently I think BL is now..), which improves the game as a whole.

Mages only spend xp in HP and DD. With maybe a ED/EO thrown in if you're single, but it's not really needed. You can make a very sucessful Mage just training HP and your DD. Quite frankly I find this limited and somewhat boring. Add some spice, some flavour to Mages. Plus, as I've said a few times this thread, if there were other options to spend xp on, it would go some way to limiting the size off DD spells out there.

But, in order for a skill to be trained, it must be useful. Otherwise, it's a waste of game space, like the Tulwar.

Recently, Jon poo-poo'd a Tank skill idea I had, saying it wasn't unique. Well creating a truely unique skill is hard to do without having to generate new game systems. There's only so much you can do within the existing system.

Ranger, I've been pushing for that Evasion change back since it was first announced! ;)

Vestax, some great ideas there. I'd like to expand on your "Blowout" skill. How abou having it generate it's own AMF backlash. So the mage takes some extra damage in exchange for doing more damage. Of course, they would still take any usual AMF backlash as well. :)

But, look at the other skills. Now, none of them have any drawbacks at all. Why should we build drawbacks into new skill ideas?

every target I fight right now that is a tank does 15k or less dmg to me. I do 350k with my tattoo. Please compare the two where option A: Atank is supposed to do more dmg than a mage and option B:Where a mage for some reason does a ton more dmg :)

Ok so the only way tanks win is with around 50mill nw in weapons and having a high toa.

"But, look at the other skills. Now, none of them have any drawbacks at all. Why should we build drawbacks into new skill ideas?"

I understand that you don't want to give up any ground on these skills, but your going to have to if you want an idea to be accepted by enough of the community. If then Jon implements it I'm sure he'll have brains enough to make it somewhat fair.

The only disappointing factor is that Jon never likes to implement anything exactly the way people ask it to be done. I've noticed that a lot of the Sept. 1st changes are variations of things that have been said before by other people. Then again people like to talk a lot. :)

I think Vestax lives in CB :)

Tormentor.

A Tank with MPR of x and wepaons + armour filling but not going over the free allocation should be equal/comparitive in power/both as useful/however you want to define it, as a Mage of the same MPR.

Before skills.

Before extra NW in weapons, armour.

Before Tattoos.

If this isn't the case, and I'm sure Jon wouldn't let it get out of hand, then things need to be re balanced.

I'm just pointing out that familiars are very powerful with their dd compared to minions training dd especially when it is a team of 4. And majority of tanks out there do not have a very high weapon which means they do not do much damage. So mages right now are the only viable option or more importantly the familiar. Take a look at the mpb's, majority of those up there if you multiply by 2 or 3 or 4 will not even equal to a decent level dd dmg.

And on top of all the problems with tanks not doing much dmg, they still have to spread their experience on strength and dex and hp vs a mage which spreads its exp on hp and dd and ends up doing more dmg. Tanks that players have sunk a lot of usd should not be counted on this, but other players that just sink money that they make through fighting should be counted.


So anyways in conclusion, mages do enough dmg as it is.