theworldofdreams.com

wow to have my 110 magic resist actually make a major difference would rock i still get nailed with more than a couple casters with the far lower level spells and you cant tell me an orc mage is smarter than me i mean come on its an orc for cryin out loud now if a dragon could cast spells i can see them doin damage long life and all means really smart for the most part givin how dragons are usually viewed

Drocket wrote: Currently my thoughts on the main thing that needs to be done to magery is to make Magic Resist a bit better (which is sort of a boost to tanks too, there, though that's not directly my main reason for doing so)

That's cool.

Drocket wrote:and nerf the buffs somewhat, especially polymorph and bless. Then just see how that works out.

I still do not see where this would help. I'm just now getting used to the last time they were nerfed. Nerfing it too much more would make a Tank/Mage only good for gating and a few offensive spells.

I have an idea, instead of across the board nerfs, do it only to those who have invoc and magery primed. That way only the pure mages get nerfed and the Tanks and half mages don't have to suffer.

Orion Michaels wrote:I still do not see where this would help . . . Nerfing it too much more would make a Tank/Mage only good for gating and a few offensive spells.

You mean it wouldn't help YOU
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Polymorph is an entirely mage-oriented buff and nerfing this one seems like the logical choice to balance out the buff differences between mages and tanks.
Heck, polymorph shouldn't even work the way it does now to begin with. We shouldn't call it nerfing, fixing would be more appropiate.

Eldric wrote:

Orion Michaels wrote:I meant cut your percentage of Tank Mages that only use buff spells in half.

So, what in my specs should I replace with said new proposed skill?

Prime: Sword, Tactics, Healing
Sec: Anatomy, Parry, Magery

This would become.

Prime:Sword, Tactics, Healing
Sec: Anatomy, Parry, Magery-defensive

Buff, healing and travel wise it would be identical to what you have now. If you use attack spells higher than Circle 3 you would need to use scroll instead of book casting if you wanted to be assued of never failing.


Actually I wouldn't even have magery specced in your skillset, Orion. There are plenty of mages to buff you (which are better buffs than you can give yourself) and you don't have magic resist specced, which makes you particularly vulnerable to cast attacks. Either that or keep magery and replace anatomy with Magic Resist. Or drop both and replace them with archery and magic resist and use wands to buff yourself. Just some options.

My tank, Pau, has 60 magery and he does just fine. He doesn't cast offensive magery spells, and rare is the time he can't find a mage to buff him or gate him. He uses archery for distance attacks and with the changes to fire arrows, he deals out a lot of damage vs. casters.

His skillset:

Maces, Tactics and Magic Resist primed.
Healing, Archery and Parry seconds.

Just remember that for all the powers that pure Mages have, they're limited to not wearing heavy armour and doleing out death with Halberds - they're limited to packing their inventories full of reagents and healing potions, keeping an eye on both their Health and Mana bars, and praying that they meditate enough before the nasty troll eats them.

If you want to talk about Magery - as I've said before - you have to look at the balancing factors already in game. Mana costs and reagent use are two very important factors to consider.

If you want to make magery seem less powerful, take away Scrolls. They're used more than Magery is. If scrolls were changed, Magery wouldn't be so appealing. Think about it.

-M

Marius the Black wrote:Just remember that for all the powers that pure Mages have, they're limited to not wearing heavy armour and doleing out death with Halberds - they're limited to packing their inventories full of reagents and healing potions, keeping an eye on both their Health and Mana bars, and praying that they meditate enough before the nasty troll eats them.

Limited to not wearing heavy armours - the increased protection spell and AR provided by polymorph more than make up for this, plate + normal protection = 30 + 12 = 42, studded + mage protection + polymorph = 17 + 20 + 7 = 44.

Healing poptions - my mages generally carry around 50 but selthom actually use them

Regents, just carry around 1-2 K of each, no limitation.

Keeping an eye on health bar, set bandage to whenever damaged, cast at 75% drink at 50%, you can largely ignore your health bar.

Keeping an eye on mana bar, this one I agree with and is the only real limitation.

If you want to make magery seem less powerful, take away Scrolls. They're used more than Magery is. If scrolls were changed, Magery wouldn't be so appealing. Think about it.

This is intresting.

If you really want to be horrified, at one time there was no appreciable delay in using scrolls at all, I only ever saw it in action once but you could basically machinegun off energy bolts. This was before I took up playing a mage. Always a day late and a dollar short. Hehe.

Or make scroll cast spells use reagents and/or more mana than book cast spells.

Now that's a scary thought...

Atei wrote:Or make scroll cast spells use reagents and/or more mana than book cast spells.

Now that's a scary thought...

Only certain ones though. Gate travel, buffs, teleport and the like shouldn't because it would be punishing characters that NEED the scrolls to cast those spells. The only ones that should are the immediate offensive spells like E bolt and flamestrike.

I agree, Orion. I was primarily thinking about the attack spells.

Drocket, perhaps now is a good time to revisit the NPC mages program "buff for a fee?" Just an idea...

Atei wrote:Drocket, perhaps now is a good time to revisit the NPC mages program "buff for a fee?" Just an idea...

oooo, I like it.

I really don't like the idea of buying buffs from mages. The more I think about it, the less I like the whole buffing thing in general. Something that I always come back to when thinking about game mechanics (in general, at least) is classic fantasy (which is a nice way of saying 'generic stereotypical fantasy') because in a lot of ways thats what I want to recreate in the game. So I imagine a brave knight off to fight a dragon and save a damsel in distress - but first he has to stop, light a camp fire and buff himself with a half-dozen spells.

Just doesn't work, does it?

Tanks shouldn't need buffs, and magery shouldn't be a nearly-required skill for tanks, which it seems to be now. It should be something that makes a nice little bonus when you're out with a mage, but it shouldn't be something that's on all the time.

I'm slowly building up to some major world-shaking changes

edited after reading Drocket's post. Decided to remove my post to think about it more

I agree with Drocket, and his perspective. I think that Tanks shouldn't need Magery, but Mages should still be useful. I know I'm just repeating what he said, but I can't wait to see these changes.

Maybe WoD will become a place where All Classes are Created Equal.

- Abe Marius
Founding Father of Evilness

I agree that tanks shouldn't need mage buffs, but unless some major changes are made in melee combat, they do. We simply miss the mark too often, and something has to be done to make up for those misses.

Certainly your personal battle tactics are different when fighting a Black Wisp vs. a headless one, but sometimes you just have to slug it out. Sometimes, retreat isn't an option, like if the dungeon has respawned behind you and you are alone. Granted, you could recall, but with 60 magery that fails too. So what do we do? We take that extra little "oomph" that magical buffs have given us and we stand our ground.

To bottomline it, at least for me: have any "pure" tanks (no magery specced) fought a tougher mob (ie, Titan, Vamp Lord, Ancient Dragon) unbuffed to see what would happen? To dispel the rumor that tanks MUST be buffed to fight? If we can do that, using our battle tactics and wit, I'm all for it. But as long as I am missing as often as I am with 110 macing, I don't see it.

Atei wrote:To bottomline it, at least for me: have any "pure" tanks (no magery specced) fought a tougher mob (ie, Titan, Vamp Lord, Ancient Dragon) unbuffed to see what would happen? To dispel the rumor that tanks MUST be buffed to fight? If we can do that, using our battle tactics and wit, I'm all for it. But as long as I am missing as often as I am with 110 macing, I don't see it.

Actually, for the longest time I didn't use magery at all (not even to recall) when hunting. Back on OSI I had developed this purist attitude that took a long time to die out. Once I started using buffs, however, I never looked back. For the life of me I couldn't figure out why I had not invested those 6600gps on magery before.
Of course, "battle tactics" and "wits" help somewhat but when it comes down to it tanks can do one of two things, use bows for range combat or a swords/macing/fencing weapon for close combat. The basic strategy of a (pure) tank is to attack until running is needed (usually because healing has been interrupted for a whatever reason). It's as simple as that.
The more I think about it the more I wonder exactly how Drocket is planning make tanks viable hunting characters without buffs. I can imagine other ways to "buff" a character that do not require the character to cast spells on himself. I cannot imagine a tank that has no stat increasing abilities of any kind, however.
It should be noted that hunting without buffs is not at all impossible (as Eldric pointed out in another thread). However, unless you carry around the right equipment and skills, solo'ing of certain areas for tanks would be either very very difficult (enough to make you feel like an inept noOb) and/or downright unprofitable. However possible it may be for a number of tanks to solo an ancient with the proper "tactics" and required dedication, no tank is going to make a living from killing ancients. Of course, this wouldn't be such a problem is WoD didn't have such hunting-oriented economy, but that's different issue