The problem with attunement

So recently I had the pleasure of testing out the trials of the obsidian PvP zone that was previewed after release 55. Unfortunately I quickly found out I had zero chance against anyone with good mage skills due to my own lack of magery skills.

How much attunement do you need to be competitive on a pvp level? I heard resist is attunement decided by two but it is also a comparison between the attacker and defender can anyone elaborate?

If this is true doesn't this force everyone to grind all school of magic for attunement for must needed resistance even if your not using spells as your primary form of damage. This seems like it would create an unnecessary high entry level for PvP.

With zero water attunement I was getting crit for 600 damage or so with ice arrow, a tier 2 spell along with 30 second snare. Specced polarm/taming with most of my other skills in heavy armor and shield I felt utterly useless and a walking free kill. Pets being worthless a whole another issue, what do you guys think can be done to fix the attunement gap for Pvp, because it looks to me the only way under current mechanics is to grind your ass off.

Thoughts?

 

They should implement a seperate passive skill in the tree called warding Imo that would give you the same benefit level for level as having attunement for defensive purposes and it would use the highest of that skill / attunement, and make it a 4x skill.
This would mean mages who use the tree dont need to level the skill and those who dont use the tree can level a warding skill for less xp than grinding up the whole tree whilst still having to put something in to gain resistances.

 

Attunement should just provide a much much smaller bonus to resists, or none at all, to begin with.

Resists should come at a cost, not be an annoying grind getting a bunch of useless/unwanted skills to 80. Take Diablo 3 for example: You can gem your armor with diamonds for resists and have much higher defense, but you lose the extra damage from not socketing with your main stat. Sota should embrace something like that, given that it already has a strong socketing/enchanting system in place.

 

It already has with warding gems instead of attunement ones.
I do kind of like the idea of attunement vs attunement as then if your a fire mage fighting another firemage it makes sense he is better able to resist the fire after all his time studying it. (and a few burns along the way)

However for those that dont want to grind all skills to 80/100 etc having a seperate passive that costs way less than grinding the tree up would make sense and it uses either one or other depending on which is highest
so then the mage doesnt need to grind more skills to be competetive, and those who wish to roleplay a warrior without magic have atleast someway to train some base resistance.

@Chris This idea of any interest to you as a means of balancing attunement vs attunement ?

 

As there are only so many gear slots, typically a mage has to put all their eggs in 1 basket - gear all of their gems to a particular attunement.
Ward gems work the same way - you're limited by gear slots - so you could get your resist high in one thing, but unless you had a full rainbow of flavors to swap out for depending on who you are up against - this is not feasible for either party.
I've always thought a resist passive made more sense than having to level all magic. If a dedicated mage of a particular element with very high attunement in that magic gets a bit more resist to it, I'm okay with that too.
Really the recent attunement nerf to damage wasn't necessary, since it seems very pvp-motivated, instead I'd look at re-scaling the resist component particularly pertaining to player vs. player.

 

Yes it does force you to grind all the magic trees which is annoying to say the least and a really daft design.

Plenty of people have raised this concern and offered many alternative suggestions as to better ways of handling this but it never changes.

Forces everyone to be some sort of Tank Mage which is also annoying and daft.

 

One of the main issues of the game - still.

You cant feel special or build a unique character without to shoot yourself in the foot and make a fool of yourself.
To do thst not only possibilities are required, but also restrictions.
What arent in place .

But defining someones identity is not only what he can do, but also what he can't do!

To identify myself with my 'unique' char i need to choose weaknesses .
But with nobody forced to do so and only limit is time and will to grind there is no such thing.

Bad gamedesign !

 

That would be nice since it seems that the ones we have - Fire Proof, Well Grounded and Blue Blooded do not seem to be enough and there is no Death resistance innate.

Same thing with the defense skills - Douse and Celestial Blessing, those were capped at 20 and only the duration goes up with attunement in the tree.

 

Here's my 2 cents.

 

That is not an pvp only issue, I thought to be pretty pure archer, then reality whapped me on the head.

 

Get rid of different damage types

Sword does the same type of damage as a Fireball

 

its not a problem, it only takes ~450k exp to take the whole ice tree to 60 and using warding gear can get you 90 straight up resist (x3 +20 hands&chest, and x2 +15 ring&neck). You would be practicaly immune and his slows would not last more than a few secs...

For anyone to complain about needing to lvl up a few skill to 60 for resistance is being foolish since you need to raise anything in this game to get anything....

 

Say something like this proove i'm in the wrong place and there are no roleplayers around.
Say something like this is contradictory to me.
I also ask myself how much special gear people have and switch between it.

But as i allways say the game is another vision of a roleplayer implemented by min maxing people only with formulas in their head i guess.

the whole aspect of playing a role is completely negated and the last and many statements in this forum show this.

Good luck, have fun.

 

Rather misses the point

 

Nothing,..... absolutly nothing is stopping you from playing a role... its not negated. Group pvp requires people to take roles, even if they have skills and gear for everything... 3 fire mages wont do much against a versatile opposite team... magic resistance is just like armor, you either WEAR IT (through warding), or you lvl up the skills assigned to is....

Not at all, he chose not to push his character to be ready for pvp and he suffered the consequences.... and came here to ask questions, of which I have answered...

30 minutes for 30 water resistance is not the end of the world.... if you dont want to lvl up a character why the hell are you playing this game?????

 

don't mind them that is their thing. complain about lack of a level cap and skill cap in new ways.

its boring and frustrating having to play in a way you find boring and frustrating.

yeah sure one skill takes no time at all with 2x xp and learning boost. but then do that to all skills and your either standing at a dummy for a few hours afk(hopefully) spamming buttons every now and then or out in the world for a few days playing in a way you don't enjoy.

its a game I want to have fun playing it and this is one of the things I don't have fun doing. give me a passive I will fill it with xp. make me stand still for 20 min spamming earthquake and I get bored and turn the game off.

 

I quite like the idea (even as a heavy armour melee character) that I have to build up my (primarily but not only) innate defences against magics.

I'm a pretty average player; I've not yet doing much pvp, but i am hoping to do more when the systems are in place. I largely solo pve, but I've really enjoyed working out what active and passive resists and defences I need against the various mob types and bosses.

So far I've got my 'fireproof' to 80, 'Douse' to 81 at the moment, I'm working on increasing 'well grounded' and 'blue blooded'... I am primarily attuned to Earth anyway, so I have my 'Sympathy of Stone' and 'Bulwark of Earth' up high up anyway. I've raised my Life power innate's and defence tactics similarly.

As has been said, these skills are mostly level 2 and innates (so look after themselves once the initial level 1 skill is raised to 20), and there aren't all that many of them to raise, they don't take long or many skill points, so its not such a drag. I tend to focus on one, make a temporary 'skill learning' deck, go kill a handful of T1 mobs and its well underway. It's quite interesting and fun to be honest.

I honestly love this challenge (even working out how to best install a reasonable generic set in the utility, buff and combat hot bars, but that can be a challenge). I have assumed that this was what the exceptional combat, defence and resist systems of SOTA were all about?

 

Building up defense against magic is fine and makes sense: But what is not fine is that we have to use magic in order to do that.

Give people that don't want to be a mage like every other person in the game another alternate way to allow themselves to defend magic attacks is all...

I agree it's dumb to be sitting in upper tears for hours getting skills you don't care about up just to have a fighting chance.

Either that or Level or Skill gate PvP. You want robust PvP then it's required.

 

Its fascinating. In a sense I agree, but I don't see a conflict. Perhaps this is because I don't really consider the 'Magic' tree as 'magic' or rather I don't get too wrapped up in the name. Let me rapidly elaborate! ....

...The magic tree contains 'non physical' (magic) damage dealing. It also has 'non physical' (magic) resists, as well as buffs and debuffs. I don't currently use much combat magic, in fact one spell only, but I use and consider the non damage based 'magic' innates and actives simply as non melee or non physical resists, counters, buffs and debuffs.

Whatever category non physical resists were put into, something would still be needed, and players would still need to invest points (in some shape or form) to resist the various categories of magic attack. They could almost create a sub-tree with 'metaphysical resists'.

I do also appreciate the point made by players not wishing to invest in magic, or indeed to reduce the large number of skills that have to be learned to build resists, regarding the idea of an 'universal' generic magic damage resist which would level in parallel with Adventure Level and would still need experience point investment.

This could be an option, but I do somewhat embrace the notion of 'the Avatar' and non-capped, open skill system. I intend to play SOTA for years to come if possible, and even if I had an option for a 'universal magic barrier' for melee types, I would likely still be very tempted to develop the specific magic school resists as over time I dabble in the schools and diversify my character into various combat types.

 

Warding gems do absolutely nothing. Tested this myself as well as a number of other people. Bug reported it (multiple times) and was summarily ignored.