Curious to see how death magic plays out...

With no negative impact on attunement how will death magic ever be viable...

Don't get me wrong here. I really like the changes to attunement and I think it will be good for diversification in character builds.

With death magic specifclly tho... If everyone can go death and life.... Then defensive Attunement can be built in death with no penalty to life and visa versa death magic damage was in line before this, it should be crazy ineffective right?

What's being done to compensate for the lost damage in death?

Should the attunement changes impact the life/death magic pools? Or should these be different?

 

Death magic seems uber weak in this release. Now if that because everyone has no negative impacts from life attunement?

 

What level is your death magic at and what damage levels are you seeing and do you know the levels of death attunement the things you are attacking have?

 

I feel like death/life magic is much more balanced now, especially for PvP. As it was, Death attuned mages could wreak havoc on Life attuned builds.

There was nothing the Life attuned folks could do to counter it, and nothing to directly offset the advantage the Death attuned had in dealing damage and healing at the same time as the only offensive skill in the Life tree doesn't work on other players.

Now, a player can choose life or death to heal without having the one group be at a major disadvantage. Life attuned players STILL can't heal and harm at the same time like a Death player can. I think that's a pretty neat thing, and kinda wish the Banish Undead spell could heal the caster

 

How does a mage change his attunement? I have the gold thingy above fire right now.

 

Attunement now is an average of every skill in a given magic tree, so to change it, you would have to level or forget skills.

 

@Chris

 

I know @Chris has discussed some changes to death ray in the past, turning it into a channeled ability or something of that nature.

I still don't think the whole "More damage if you are lower health" thing is feasible... seeing as how all of the damage-dealing abilities in the Death tree restore your health. I've posted about that before.

But, death mages do get to enjoy this little tidbit: You no longer make yourself harder to heal by leveling death magic, so there's that.

 

10% better at GM is pointless/useless/terrible. (0.1% per skillup on the "Increases death effectiveness", no thanks!)
Crit attacks of death touch aren't too bad, but again, pointless with the current combat flow/realities.
Tap Soul is pointless because using it doesn't actually reduce the time standing around doing nothing out-of-combat, because the focus returned is so small and the damage is so large.
Sure, maybe it's effective at 150 skill, but what isn't, and many other glyphs & innates are pretty effective along the journey, not just at the destination.

I get the intent, but it's not even close to "powerful", at the moment, in R29.
For me, I'm better off using ice/fire/stone fist instead of death touch. Similarly for the ice/fire/obsidian arrow abilities vs. death ray.
They all do more damage, end the fight faster, and I don't miss the 5hp heal. I would be better off using the 11hp heal from life touch, but I don't, mostly because...
DPS is king, right now. There is no situation where killing your opponent as fast as possible isn't the most effective path to glory, and I don't personally see any of the death skills doing that.

As with so many other glyphs and innates, things that make no parse-able difference have no place in the player deck or on the hotbar, imho.

 

Idk about you guys, I'm going Life AND Death with Dual shields and some earth magic and becoming an unstoppable PITA. /sarcasm

I like the change honestly; it'll be interesting to see what high level play looks like. I think death still has an edge over life if you're a damage dealer just because you can heal and dmg at the same time. 5 dmg from death touch is just as effective as a healing touch healing for 10. The only troublesome part of death is the need to stick on your target. Life can just run around crazy and heal up.

~Woden

 

Giving Death Magic a try this release, one of the few spell schools i haven't invested in much alongside Moon.

 

Death Field is awesome.. level that up and you pretty much have no issues, until the undead start walking...

My build is Earth/Death and a touch of Sun and Air. I use mostly Earth magic for damage, but found the death touch spells extremely useful in certain cases or against certain foes (Death Ray was extremely valuable for example in pvp, when an archer is bugging me). I hear Death Shield is awesome at high levels. Soul Tap at level 80 last release (with highish attunement) was giving me 12 damage and 13 focus, looked good to me!

I am hoping for a small buff to Death tree, just a bit.. I find it a very valuable tree.