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Is this game for melée only?

Discussion in 'Release 69 Feedback Forum' started by gracy, Aug 31, 2019.

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  1. gracy

    gracy Avatar

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    Hello everybody

    I always liked play "fantasy games" (i repeat "fantasy") as a mage or tamer or also as bard (Ultima Online) ... i hate playing melée

    This fantasy game has a special particularity, it don't like magery, tamers are something aside and the only way to play strong chars it's to be melée or ranged archers

    In particular I would like to focus the attention on the magic resistant monsters of this games, they are a lot, for examples
    - dragons, both normal and mechanichals are magic immune
    - ethereals mob like litches, scorpions and dragons are magic immune
    - fire elementals are immune to fire magic
    - water and ice elementals are immune to water magic
    - ... and so on


    Pole and blades are doing damages much more than 1000xp with their attacks, ranges archers are doing very fast attacks and lot of damages magic are doing much lesser damages than the above one

    just a couple of questions
    1. I would like to know which are the monsters resistant to melée and ranged attacks? ...
    2. ethereals are also magic creatures, how thei can be immune to magic and be hit by phisical weapons?


    I'm seriously considering to leave this "fantasy game" that I love but is to much unbalanced toward the melèe characters

    Thanks for your attention
     
  2. OzzyOsbourne

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    1. All mobs have damage resistance EXCEPT liches afaik. Black dragons may have the most. Ghosts have death shield.
    2. No idea.
     
  3. gracy

    gracy Avatar

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    they are Not immune to Melée!

    Please tell what monster is "immune to Melèe" ... answer is "no one"
     
  4. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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    immune to melee? hmm... I don't know of any. but, there is a long list of mobs that refuse to stand still while I pound on them. :)

    it's the classic range/melee balance. swords/etc do more damage since they also have to take damage while doing it. archer/mages do "less" because they can stay at range and avoid most/all of the damage. They also don't have chase down most of their target to get the damage up.
     
  5. kaeshiva

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    The reason why you see so many fire mages is that specialization allows them to strip fire resistance and actually damage stuff. A few other mage flavors get something similar, but not as drastic.
    Other flavors of mage, particularly specialist, could really use something similar - the magic resistance on everything is really, really frustrating and I find unless I want to be relegated to healer I had better bring a bow.
     
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  6. Lazlo

    Lazlo Avatar

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    I agree with you that boss mobs in SotA are generally more resistant to more types of magic than they should be, but this isn't a great supporting argument.

    Dragons aren't immune to magic, they're just highly resistant to most types of magic. There also isn't really any significance to something being completely immune to a type of damage. Any particular kind of damage can be really bad without being 100% ineffective. Solo bludgeon is also pretty bad vs. dragons because they mitigate a ton of direct physical damage. A huge % of physical damage done to dragons by melee comes from bleed skills.

    There might not be anything that's completely immune to melee, but there's lots of things that melee sucks at, especially relative to other things. Spider queen isn't immune to melee, but good luck running in there and trying to stab her in the face. Tartarus zombie hordes aren't immune to melee, but they're not much fun to kill without any focus...

    I think there should definitely be more viable means of magic damage vs. bosses in general, but not because of anything to do with melee.
     
  7. OzzyOsbourne

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  8. gracy

    gracy Avatar

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    Well ... let me say I'm a pretty high Fire Mage ... but against dragons I "must" switch to ranged archer, cause I can't deal damages
     
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  9. golruul

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    I'm a heavy armor blades melee and from what I seen going on in that archery thread (especially the videos posted), melee sucks. The archer solo kiting the toughest bosses simply blows melee away while fire mage also blows melee away in killing mass mobs.

    If anything I think melee should get a boost.
     
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  10. runicpaine

    runicpaine Avatar

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    Resists are definitely much too high on high end mobs. Above level 100 the gap between mage and melee begins to grow VERY vast. (tested at level 100, 120, 140, and 200 in all skills)
    At high end the only spells worth anything damage wise are Frost Arrow and Searing Ray simply because most things don't have high resistance to these schools. Both of these schools only have 1 good ranged attack though. I even tried stacking evaporate on a dragon at level 200 all skills with fire specialization and could still barely scratch it. despite it having around -200 or more fire resist on it.
    Even then though, every melee or ranged attack is on par or better than even the best spell at high level. Magery definitely needs some love. I understand pvp balance is a concern but the answer is simple:
    Give resistance a buff to effectiveness, Boost magic damage and effects, Drastically reduce PvE mobs resistances. The buff to resistances will help off-set the damage boost in PvP, the increased damage and effects will make magic competitive with melee/archery, the decreased resistances on mobs will further help balance magic vs melee.

    I will say testing at 120+ range the gap between mage and melee is MASSIVE. Especially considering melee have higher resist and avoidance, but they also do the most damage?

    Mages aren't a glass cannon in this game, they are simply just made of glass and can do some pretty stuff.

    Furthermore - stop making every high level zone undead and/or mechanical. Death mages are getting really pissed off. First Ruins of Ravensmoor, the last levels of the Compendium, K'rul and Krawl, thenTartarus, and now Despair. Not to mention UT. As if dealing with resistances isn't bad enough in general. An entire school of magic hasn't had high end content they can play in for years now.
     
  11. runicpaine

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    Forgot to answer the OP's question.
    Unless you PvP, Yes it's basically just for melee unless you're a healer.
     
  12. Darek Trond

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    im curious, how tested you the lvl200 skills? in offline with edit?
     
  13. Barugon

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    The problem is that a number of people keep trying to shoehorn this game into a this or that mold; magic or melee. The fact is that it works best when you combine them. ;)
     
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  14. runicpaine

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    Yes
     
  15. Lazlo

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    The problem with these kind of conversations is that people tend to approach it like lawyers and just roll off all the negatives of their preferred archetype and the positives of other archetypes instead of making an objective holistic comparison.

    If I were trying to make a good argument for boss mobs to be not be as resistant to as many types of magic as they currently are, I think I'd just stress the following two points:

    1) Current resist levels don't make sense

    It makes sense for fire to not work well on a dragon, but it doesn't make sense for air, ice, and almost everything else to also suck. It would make a lot more sense if every boss had a couple of strengths and a couple of weaknesses that matched up well with what they are. It would also make a lot more sense if the death tree had at least one skill that helped deal with undead, whether that be a banish type skill, undead corpse raising, charming, or whatever.

    2) Current resist levels are unfun and don't accomplish much.

    Most bosses in SotA have pretty similar loot tables. If a high level player wants to kill bosses, they can kill bosses all day long, regardless of archetype. Having a bunch of bosses that just completely hose a particular archetype doesn't really reduce that archetype's power so much as it just reduces their game play options and fun. There's a lot of fun content that already exists right now that could be enjoyed by a lot more players with just some common sense adjustments to resists.

    ----------------------------------------------

    Saying that the game is just for melee is a much worse argument, because there are obviously a lot more aspects to the game than just how many bosses a particular archetype can't beat. While melee isn't totally helpless vs. as many things as other archetypes, it also has a lower power ceiling.

    No one is forced to fight everything in the world. Players are totally free to just fight in the places that their build is best suited for, and the best spots for mages are much more lucrative than the best spots for melee, because melee has much less ability to take out a zillion mobs at once.

    If someone were to host a million dollar contest between strong players where everyone is given a blank slate character and 120 adventure levels of experience to distribute, with the winner being the one who can accumulate the most experience and loot over the course of a week, I'm pretty sure most of those players wouldn't make a melee build.
     
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  16. golruul

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    For everyone saying how good melee is, I have to ask: did you read the "archery adjustments" thread? And look at the nice screenshots of damage mac (and others) posted and videos of girlsname soloing spider queen? And the posts of Sara (a quite good melee) not even bothering with PvP against archers? That's just a sample of what was there. I was blown away with all of that.

    That particular topic was about archers, but there have been several with the power of AoEs from mages mass killing things much, much better than a melee possibly can.

    The only "niche" I see melees fulfilling is taking the highest risk for doing generic, mediocre damage that most mobs don't resist -- a generalist that gets beat by all the specialists at their specialties.
     
  17. runicpaine

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    The archery changes really only effected a subset of the archery group based on play style. I just tested it and while it's dps did take a hit if you used free attack before, it's still competitive with other melee builds

    As for melee being a Niche? You state that Melee dps is mediocre, does that mean A) You think magic damage is higher than melee damage? or B) You think magic damage is utter crap and mediocre is a good thing?


    Fire does great damage if you're specialized in it, just not against a lot of bosses. In fact all mage schools do good damage, just not against most bosses. Also outside of fire, no school of magic besides fire has enough ranged spells to not 'deck out' without adding spells from other schools to it. So yeah Mages are great at farming/grinding, but mages can't come close to the power of melee who at high level (level 100+) even Polearms and Bludgeon can easily crit for 1k+ along with 30%+ crit chance. If specced, geared, and buffed properly they can crit for 1.5-2k+ with 50%+ crit chance (no attunement needed) and that's not even counting that Blades does even more DPS than Polearms and Bludgeon if the fight is long enough.

    So yeah if you want to solo AOE farm low-mid level stuff, mages are great. If you want to someday solo bosses or be useful in end-game content, you pretty much have to be a healer or debuff masfter if you want to be a pure mage.

    That being said, one of my favorite characters I play is a mage. They have a lot of utility and open up interesting play styles that are fun but that just makes me more sad that they are so much weaker than my melee characters and practically useless or crippled in a lot of boss fights other than debuffing and healing.

    It had been a while since I tested fire against a dragon and evaporate only stacks 1x with max debuff of -70 fire resist, but with the fire arrow and flame fists I could still get over -100 resist on it and was able to kill it fairly quickly using ring of fire, immolation, fire arrow, flame fist, fireball, and searing ray with sun/fire spec and spellbinder stance giving me over 50% spell crit (used blink to tele around to avoid breaking spellbinder stance when needed). Sun/Light armor flurry build is a higher dps build (though less mana efficient) but without the fire spec and evaporate debuff, the damage against dragons is much lower so specialization into fire is really a must to overcome resistances. *tested with 200 all skills, 354 fire attunement, 3x MW/EN all gear, Full carapacian epic cloth, adv level 200, 281 Int, 52.1 bonus spell crit*

    Does magic do good damage? Yes
    Is magic as strong as melee? No
    Are there any fights melee is severely crippled and unable to do competitive damage? No except dps that's lost chasing around flying stuff sometimes but this can be overcome with engage opponent and/or body slam to help stay within melee range even while they're flying.
    Are there any fights magic is severely crippled and unable to do competitive damage? Yes, many boss tier mobs have high resist in most/all schools of magic greatly reducing available DoT and damage options
    Is specialization REQUIRED to off-set damage v resist for melee? No
    Is specialization REQUIRED to off-set damage v resist for magic? Yes along with attunement and if your are fire - use evaporate (Douse+Juxtapose) Even then extremely high skill levels, attune, and gear are absolutely essential.

    Is melee fun to play? Yes
    Is mage fun to play? Yes
    Is hybrid fun to play? Yes
     
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  18. runicpaine

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    Wait, is it you think we aren't including archery as part of the debate. The debate is basically Mage v Not Mage and how mages face crippling resistances in PvE while other don't.
     
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  19. DavidDC

    DavidDC Programmer Moderator SOTA Developer

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    i can kill any dragon under 5 minute with fire, including ancient and mechanical.
    you have to be precise with your skill, look at what the spec do and the debuff on each skill, some of them decrease fire resistance on target, add that the combo evaporate and all and you will pierce the resistance
    if you still cant damage it your just not high enough, try getting ur important fire skill higher, like highly flammable and the spec itself, fire ring, higher int, higher attune in fire etc.
    every point count, especially when your fighting those end game monsters
     
  20. Barugon

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    It is but it's also situational. For instance, no other build can do as much damage to undead (multiple targets too) as a Life mage. Not even close.
     
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