Solo mage frustrations

As a long time LB fan, and a bit of a MMO player, I have some complaints of Shroud as a mage that has to solo quite a bit that I wanted to bring to the devs' attention. I was going to use an in game mail to Atos as I didn't want to use a public forum where I risk shaming from the trolls/haters (see Mail section below), but am posting it here as it is the only option I can find when he's not streaming. To be constructive, I've included possible solutions for each.

Combat:
Many times (usually when entering a new zone), I find myself suddenly attacked, and almost immediately surrounded by mobs from who knows where. I end up having to leave out to Novia just to survive. I get no time to get my deck ready, or plan any strategy. I almost got to the point of rage quitting the other day because of it. As a solution, I thought of 2 possible options. 1) Implement a detect danger skill tree possibly in the Subtlety section that would point out various dangers on the interface (similar to how the quest objectives are highlighted in blue) with traps separate from mobs. 2) Allow deck changing in combat. I'm pretty sure this second one is not an option, and I would prefer the first anyway.

Mail:
In game mail is a pain. 1) There are no instructions on how to use it. Clicking on the mail box brings up the interface, and it's easy to discern that I need to click the Compose Message link, but there's nothing about requiring media when I want to drop a quick note. 2) Asking other players, I found out that we have to buy paper that's made by other players. That's cool, but there's no availability for this. Instead of hunting down a vendor or other player that happens to have the pattern to make paper, I think every Banker that has a public mailbox should sell blank paper for mail only use. I do like that the system checks for real player names to verify you're actually sending to a real player.

Non combat pets:
These should be treated differently from combat pets that are tamed. I was taken by surprise when my non combat pet got killed in combat for the first time. While it did provide an opportunity to practice my resurrection spell, it was disconcerting that the pet that I just paid 500 COTOs for just got sent to the nether-nether. It did give me opportunity to practice my resurrection spell, but I was expecting to have to party for that. Also, the non combat pets should not share the same "slot" as combat pets or the Chaotic Clone duplicator. Since I mention that, none of the monsters seem to even notice the clone, so I don't get any relief by casting it. If it's going to be THAT useless, I'm not even going to bother using it.

I have other smaller annoyances, and may post about them later, but these are the main things I wanted to present at this time.

 

that's doable: set an alternate. deck swapping speed in combat is controlled by the quick swapping skill in focus and by how much of the linked gear is shared between the two decks.

player instructions:

these players have mislead you.

http://sotawiki.net/sota/Blank_Sheet_of_Paper

not necessary. there's a pet rez spell in the taming tree. it's easier on regs, too.

the offensive spells in the chaos tree are pretty much for pvp.