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Mage nerf is way overboard this release.

Discussion in 'Release 55 Feedback' started by kaeshiva, Jun 30, 2018.

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  1. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Well, its the feedback area so... @Chris

    I play as a pure mage. I use wands. I do not want to have to pick up a sword or bow, like I have seen so, so very many people do (having started out wanting to be mages) because its easier and requires far less investment to be effective.

    Mages did not need another nerf. If anything, they were already losing appeal for PvE purposes due to the far less investment in experience it takes to achieve the same effectiveness in a physical damage/weapon tree.

    • Weapon-users get a (very cheap) passive skill at the top of their tree - 1 skill - that can be pumped for damage.
    • Weapon users can also get significant damage bonuses from wearing bronze or constantan armor that give a straight damage boost.
    • Weapon users get stances like berserker (or berserk for bludgeon) that give additional damage bonuses.
    • Weapon users also get a damage bonus from Strength, which is a stat that is easy to raise which has many active/passive skills that boost it, allowing it to get, easily, very high.
    Mages, by contrast, get none of the above. Spellbinders stance is pretty limited due to the fact that you can't move at all while its active, and the downside makes it pretty unappealing except in specific scenarios. We can only get spell damage boosts on weapons, not armor. The spellcrit armor with using beetles costs 10x as much to craft requiring a much harder to obtain component. There are no skills that boost INT, save the 1, extremely expensive, train int. (and train str/dex exist too, so, this is nothing special). And we do not have a single "damage skill" to pump - we have to rely on "attunement."

    So, lets talk about attunement.

    You get it by raising 10 skills in the three - instead of 1 cheap skill to boost damage. In some elements, those skills may be the cheap 1.2m GMs. In most trees, there are quite a few expensive ones in there that are, frankly, pretty worthless, but you raise them anyway, because attunement. It requires an obscene amount of exp investment - many orders of magnitude more investment, than for a physical damage user, to get a magic attunement tree high enough to be comparable to melee damage.

    A mage who uses wands without the extra attunement enchant simply cannot compete with weapon-user output- so thanks to crafting RNG, our gear is 100x more expensive to make requiring hundreds of iterations to get that attune/int/skill combination without which our damage is significantly lessened.

    Furthermore, you can only get your damage high in a single element - and there are insufficient damage glyphs in most of the magic trees (except perhaps fire) to make a pure deck without slugs or things of inappropriate timing/use.

    For example, a melee user can create a dynamic deck of minimize size (14 glyphs) and always have a melee skill on draw, using the full force of their passives and boosts to "weapon damage" consistently with every single hit. A mage must dilute their damage using alternative elements as a 'pure' tree is not possible - even with specialization giving you 6 of each, you'll have slugs unless you dilute your damage dynamic slots with alternative element or non-damaging skills. Essentially, as a mage you must diversify into two trees to create a constant damage deck rotation - minimum but you can only gear for one. Melee/ranged do not suffer from this having plenty of damage glyphs to choose from.

    As a mage, I have watched my mage brethren slowly pick up bows and swords and polearms over the past couple of years since for 20-30m xp, they could GM that tree and be pretty effective. Meanwhile, the only thing I've been able to do to boost my effectiveness is to dump hundreds of millions of xp trying to squeeze out another point here or there in attunement for a slight, slight damage bump.


    After some nerfs in the past, even I too lvled a melee skill to 120 and tried it out, though at heart, I am a mage, and despite magic being a struggle to "get good" I ultimately went back to it.

    But then more nerfs happened.

    Now I can't even step foot in the bottom of hilt fortress, or ruins, or shardfalls, or blood bay, or anywhere that obsidian golems are, unless I am prepared to try and run around keeping insane distance on things that do COMPLETE MAGIC SHUTDOWN. Melee has no such issue.

    I gave up trying to fight bosses (except the troll with fire) with magic as it is quicker, cleaner, and easier to shred them with physical weapons than it ever was with magic. The balance has changed so many times on these but the fact remains that bosses are extremely magic resistant and trying to do them with magic, while possible, is awkward and inefficient.

    Even non-boss mobs around have strong elemental resistence, making a mage less effective unless they are going to carry gear sets for every element (since the majority of your attunement/damage is contingent on that expensive, hard to make gear...that you now get to make in several flavors, vs. melee's one).

    Basically, what I'm trying to say here is, PRIOR to the R55 global damage nerf, mages were not in a good position. Magic was already severely limited by types of mobs in locations, resistance, deck limitations and the extremely prohibitive cost compared to alternative damage types.

    After the R55 damage nerf, well, I've lost about 30 points to min and max damage on my spells. When every single point of that damage cost me millions of xp in attunement grind to achieve, this was a significant slap in the face.

    While I understand there's a need for balance, and a need to "lessen the gap" between low and high level players, this is, frankly, over the top, excessive, and demoralizing to a mage demographic that was already having to grind harder and longer to be on equal footing. I'm not talking about meteor shower - I agree that was overpowered and needed nerfing. I'm talking about the general, global, damage nerf as a result of the attunement changes.

    If this change was motivated by PvP, consider making it only applicable in PvP. This change was not needed for PvE, at all. If anything, mages need more reliable ways to boost damage, boost int, and boost attunement - currently the only way to get int to a reasonable area anywhere close to what you can boost str/dex to is through the use of artifacts- and str/dex have those too, better ones even. In most group/boss activity we're almost inevitably reduced to being healers since our spells do very little to bosses, and other than the fire/moon persistent ground effects that free our hands to do other things, well....as I say, you can only gear 1 element to a high lvl where its super effective so putting all your eggs in 1 of those baskets is pretty limiting as far as what you can do solo or contribute to a group.

    I'm not saying mages are useless. I'm saying that compared to physical damage alternatives getting the same level of power requires significantly more investment due to the current balances already in place - more investment in XP, more investment in time, more investment in gear - and even then you still deal with resistances, magic shutdown/immunities, deck dilution, and single-element-effectiveness.

    Not to mention reagents, fizzle considerations, focus considerations,, cast timers, fixed targetting, lack of meaningful autoattack - debuffs to opposing magic trees for magic specialists, making a lot of combinations kinda...meh.... (melee/ranged get no penalties for specializing in their damage tree)....the list goes on and on.

    We absolutely did not need a global nerf.

    I'm sitting on sixty million adventure xp in my pool that's been accumulating due to all of the recent doubles, and nowhere that I put it is going to make me any better. I could push attunement, sure, but that was a dubious investment BEFORE the nerf and now just seems pointless.

    I strongly urge you to reconsider this change as it seems my current prospects to be able to do what I could do effectively a week ago are:

    • Put unspent XP into a weapon and forget being a mage
    • Spend 500-600 million xp in attunement to get partway back where I was (but not all the way)
    • Be satisfied being mediocre and just stick to T5 zones forever, despite hundred of millions invested in magic bringing my death decay to a level absurdly high to try anything more difficult
    • Uninstall game and find something else to play in which a magic-user is relevant at the high end
    I'll probably end up picking up a melee weapon. But I will not enjoy it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2018
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  2. Minerva

    Minerva Avatar

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    I am Ranged and Taming but I have heard this same thing from other people who want to play a mage. Am I correct that is seems that Magic is meant only as a supplement, not as primary damage? Basically, either the mage must do something else or play a support role and assist another player. Was that the intent @Chris? Is that by design?
     
  3. Kain Darkmoor

    Kain Darkmoor Avatar

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    Maybe each magic tree just needs an attunement passive skill that functions effectively the same as the base melee skills? And then remove getting attunement from every skill.
     
  4. Jefe

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    You would want to balance that by adding defense to the physical weapon passives then as attunement is both attack and defense.
     
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  5. FrostII

    FrostII Bug Hunter

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    Once again @kaeshiva you've hit the nail on the head.
    Like Bambino said in a recent post:
    Attempting to "balance" skills for both PvE and PvP is Port's biggest mistake.
     
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  6. Beaumaris

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    The story kinda made me feel sorry for mages until I read the part about having 60,000,000 pooled XP. :rolleyes:

    Mages do have one big advantage … range. And with the right skills, the ability to kite. Which in PVP has particular value. Melee-only players dont really get that.
     
  7. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    That's a couple months worth of double-xp-being-on-more-often than it isn't, and not spending any due to it not making a bit of difference =/
     
  8. Jezebel Caerndow

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    I think magic should all have a 100% unlearn on it from this recent change. I think if I just left my magics at gm, took the hundreds of millions in them, put that exp into blades or polearms and used spinning attack and whirling blades, I would probably aoe faster then I will with magic now, and not have the drawbacks of the magic resistance mobs or having to use regs or having to deal with fizzle.
     
  9. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Indeed.
    Except I really don't want to play a melee character because its the only viable option =/ Do you?
     
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  10. Jezebel Caerndow

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    I never wanted to play melee at all, but when they did the change that had ghosts taking 8 damage tops from all magics, I was left without a choice if I wanted to mine in etceter mines. Then that got expanded into other mobs, and O golems like you mentioned with an anti magic field, I cant help players at the obsidian forge unless I have melee skills.
     
  11. Floors

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    On the contrary, it's way overdue, mages were OP as **** before
     
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  12. Jezebel Caerndow

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    In what way?
     
  13. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    My heals feel more powerful this release. I hope that's not a bug.
     
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  14. Jezebel Caerndow

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    They said they did amp up the healing touch base by 3.
     
  15. kaeshiva

    kaeshiva Avatar

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    Uh, no, not really.

    And to be as powerful as a melee character, you needed much more expensive gear, at least ten times the experience investment, had more limitations with armor (fizzle), no autoattack, costly reagent use, etc. etc. etc. etc. And even with all the downsides, magic still wasn't able to put out the same raw DPS as physical, the only benefit were ground-persistent AOE spells, useful at control points but impractical for day to day PvE as a mage. In certain zones only. Not bosses. Or ruins/shardfalls. Or ghosts. Or liches, unless you gear up for life/banish since they resist everything else. Or constructs. Hell, even a low tier 150 hp golem was resisting 99% of my magic. Level 120 skill with 230+ attunement critting for 6 damage. I did better beating it to death with my wand. That's how sad it is.

    Physical damage users do not have to deal with any of the above mentioned BS. You can take a sword, or spear, or whatever, and go kill any target in the game with it. Mages can really only focus on 1 element due to attunement requirements and you run into walls all over the place depending on what element you selected. Before specialization, we'd just carry 8 wands, chestpieces, and jewelry sets around to deal with different scenarios because this is death immune and that is fire immune ...but with specialization funneling you into a primary school this is no longer practical.

    It isn't simply a matter of paying for power, raw physical damage has ruled the game for quite some time now. The utility/versatility you may get from using magic is still there, but if your objective is getting something dead, you are better off hitting it with a stick than with any sort of spell. That's the frustration. And I'm absolutely BAFFLED at why this needed "nerfing" further- the ONLY justficiation I can see if I stretch my brain is for PvP purposes - and even then, not necessary, since there are so many ways to mitigate magic damage - resist passives, lvling attunement, resist blessings, ward jewelry, ward gems on gear, active resist skills ie celestial, purify, douse....the list goes on.

    Flattening the curve makes sense in a vacuum, but in reality if you make it so that everyone can reach the same approximate power level in a couple months, you're shaving longevity off of average player retention as there's simply no reason to try and develop your character further. This has been a problem since day 1. Adjusting the curve it so that 'less' attunement gives more benefit I don't think would bother anyone - but chopping 25% dps off the high end for people who have invested years into character development is a slap in the face, and just not necessary to achieve the stated goal.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2018
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  16. Floors

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    All you have to do is look at any video of gameplay on say twitch to see how effective and powerful magic is in this game. Sure, if you allow tanks to run up on you, you're in trouble but there are so many other efffective things, including the riduclousness of meteor swarm up until this release, and y'all want it to back to that ?
     
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  17. Jezebel Caerndow

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    Meteor was not always like it was last release, admittedly it was broken and hitting way more often then it ever did or should have. I dont have to look at any videos, I have played everything myself and know what it is all like. Even though I am an insane mage, if you look at my videos I do not use mage dps on bosses and some mobs in the game. The only boss I can kill with magic in any comparable speed to a weapon is the troll, and I can kill it just as fast with a weapon, so I do cuz then I can wear better armor and not have to spend coin on regs to do so.

    Now, it sounds like you are talking about pvp with the comment of if you allow tanks to run up on you. Are you talking about melee in pvp vs mage? I can offer you solutions to this problem. First off, blink and nightstep will put you right on that mage, and while you will need light armor to be able to cast those spells, there is no point in wearing heavy armor vs a mage anyways as damage resistance and avoidance does not effect mages, as well, the dodge skill can dodge ray and bolt spells sometimes too. Now if you are someone who does not want to use magic at all as a melee player, then you have to play smart. Use corners and other terrain to get the mage to have to be in short range with you. Use engage and body slam to close any distance and cc them.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2018
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  18. Floors

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    So, I'm not a player at super high levels so it may be that I don't know what I'm talking about. I have 375 hours in the game and I'm just talking from my experience. I'm at level 66. I didn't want to play until they finished it. But it sounds like players at the very highest levels are always the ones with the most complaints. Because of the time they put in ? Or the amount of changes that go on ? The game changes so much from release to release that I feel like even if you've played alot of different builds in the past they are probably all quite different now. All I know is that magic is always the major problem for me. There are many times I'm dead before I can even get to take a whack at the source of my problems, so I guess I have little empathy for those that are upset they can't do uber dps with magic or whatever it is they want to unlearn all of a sudden.
     
  19. Jezebel Caerndow

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    This does give me some insight into the issues your running into then. While this does suck, getting the top 10 of each trees magic skills upto 60- 80 will help a ton for resistances. I know this sucks, I am an advocate of having a passive skill in each tree to give resistances instead. Without any resistances, they are just going to do insane damage to you, like you will do if they have no defensive skills. Another thing that might help you is stealth and sneak attack. Right now, sneak attack is bonused by how much stealth you can achieve, and if you use blades, a swashbuckler gives bonus to stealth and has really high base damage for a 1hd weapon. When it comes to top 1 shot damage, sneak attack is king.
     
  20. Gurney2

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    Just pick a bow : its ranged, you can kite (disabling shot is much more effective than ice Arrow)and solo kill bosses.
    Its a known fact that Chris Spears doesnt like magic (everyone still remembers his famous "screw this, its magic")…. I didnt took it seriously until i saw all the nerfs releases after releases . Maybe its too complicated to "balance" or to code, maybe hes just considering the results of the top end elite players (to see what he can nerf) and not the average gamers like most of us….
    So we have to deal with it …. we, the players that gave our money to have this game ….
     
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