We need channeled spells, or a concentration system.

One of the fundamental problems with magic balance in this game is that there are no channeled spells or limit to how many spells you can concentrate on, so every single damaging effect that has a duration can be stacked up. Since this is possible you simply can't do top notch damage unless you do this, which forces all mages into a very similar play style.

For example, Ring of Fire. Great spell in concept, the idea of "Just set the whole place on fire and let them burn" absolutely has a place in the arsenal of a mage. The issue is that that place is every time, all the time right now, because regardless of whether you're trying to burn down a group of small enemies or a single big one, a good chunk of your potential damage will always come from making sure they stand in that fire.

There is no good reason to ever not set the ground on fire while you're fighting, so you always do. The game's balance expects you to do this, so you can't output top damage without doing it. Since it's a classless game you also can't restrict abilities like this to a specific set of characters that are balanced around them.

Basically there are two ways to start addressing this issue. One would be to change some of these ground effects and other damaging effects with a duration to being channeled. This is a common way in other MMORPGs to handle these types of spells. An example would be the mage spell "Blizzard" in World of Warcraft, which continuously rains large chunks of ice on an area while your character stands and maintains the spell. That means you can't cast other spells at the same time, making it a great tool decimate crowds of weaker enemies, but not something you always use, even while fighting singular tough ones. The damage of spells like Ring of Fire or Meteor Shower would be raised significantly if they were channeled, and their duration would probably be more around 5-10 seconds until you have to initiate another channel. They would still be great for burning down crowds, but all other spells would no longer have to be balanced around the possibility of being used at the same time, allowing damage to come up in general.

Another possibility would be the use of a concentration system that only allows a limited number of active effects at the same time. This is something that many people have probably seen in D&D 5e, where almost all spells with a duration now simply run on concentration, which limits you to one single active effect at a time. While this limits the power of magic somewhat, it does force you to make tactical choices, rather than just try to figure out how to stack every conceivable positive effect with a duration. Perhaps SOTA wouldn't need a limit of just one spell at a time, but including a limit of active effects would still force people to strategize more, and also make balancing the game much easier. Since it would make different spells compete for concentration slots they would all have to have their own niche and purpose, rather than simply stacking up.

You would see a much more satisfying variety of magic builds and combat strategies in the game if spells with a duration didn't simply all stack up, and thereby become essentially mandatory to cast.

 

Gotta admit you have a good handle on very specific weaknesses of the combat system. I hope you are heard.

 

It seems as though what you are asking for is for mages to basically do less DPS. Maybe I am missing something but limiting doesn't necessarily equal more satisfying but if you have some examples of builds that may be more interesting.

I think the biggest issue is that SOTA combat is ARPG in style similar to Diablo for example. There is little in the way of crowd control or tricks that leave a lasting impression on the battlefield so having to stand there, even for a few seconds, channeling Ring of Fire would render the spell useless. The action is so fast paced in comparison to say WoW or EQ (classic EQ anyway) that you would be swamped by skeletons and killed (or your concentration would just keep getting broken). For channeling in this way you would need to slow the combat down and give players more options to be able to channel the spell out. As a mage as it stands, a channeled Ring of Fire would just be unusable because of the fast paced nature of the combat.

As an example. I stack my 5* Meteor and drop it, I agro some skeles. Couple of archers pinging me and say, conservatively, a couple of melee. Looking at my spells there is no trick to allow me to control the 2 melee attacking me nor the 2 archers pinging me. I could try and root one but it's not super effective and as in the previous thread where you mentioned about the problem of having to be good at everything, I don't want to spec Earth just to make my root good. At this point I cannot use Ring of Fire. I cannot get enough distance between myself and the mobs to use it. So I run around waiting for my Shower to kill them using Firefist or whatever. Maybe if there was a reliable, fairly long lasting AOE root. To balance it it may randomly break depending on factors. That might work, but not if I need to pump a lot of points into earth to make it viable.

 

Oh no, damage is going to stay the same or go up even, because individual abilities would get to do more damage if they don't need to be tamped down to account for the fact that you can stack two or three damaging ground effects along with everything else you do.

Right now there is not a single high damage strategy for mages that doesn't rely on putting the enemies into some kind of ground effect, because all the extra damage they take from standing in that thing just adds straight to whatever else you're trying to do. The whole game ends up having to be balanced around that.

You are correct that there could be more tools for mages to control the battlefield. A huge thing that I think is missing in their arsenal is the ability to use summons to distract enemies. Currently the summons we have aren't very good at drawing aggro, and seem to be designed to just be more background damage. If we could create some creatures that are more short term but that actually take enemies off you it would allow you to control the battlefield a lot better. Adding some more CC spells would also be an option, but I think it's more likely for existing spells to be reworked to be more useful than for new spells to be added right now.

 

I've been a supporter of more strategic combat encounters for some time but I do wonder if it would need a rework of more than just changing some spells. Better pet agro could help, as could a reworking of root, but the combat feels as though it is meant to be played on the move. Even in melee it helps to be constantly moving around and positioning yourself with knockdowns from bludgeon and trips from polearms.

What you suggest is actually workable in game at the moment but it requires a lot of points in Taming. I have about 1400 points in taming and the artifacts and my pet can hold agro very well on one mob and can attract a group if, and only if, I can send it in so that it is the first thing the mobs agro. I could then at that point channel RoF but it would quickly pull agro from the mobs my pet wasn't fighting. Maybe by then it has already done it's work. The fire pet could fire off an AOE taunt giving you time to use your channeled spells. I'm struggling to see how it makes it more interesting for me as a fire mage though as much of the combat, outside of a few encounters, is about burst DPS or in a few encounters like Tartarus zombies, sustained DPS over a longer period which is where fire mages excel.

When you watch a swordsman or death mage kill a dragon much of the work has been done beforehand with the deck building. Then it is a matter of maximum DPS while keep yourself alive long enough. To change that it feels as though it would need a fundamental rework of the combat systems.

I think it should be pointed out also that much of the strategy is in building the deck in SOTA. No substitute for in game encounter tactics and strategies I know, but the design feels as though it is about refining your deck, where to have locked and unlocked glyph's, how many of a glyph etc and then going boom.

 

Indeed an interesting suggestion.
But maybe instead of standing still as in WoW why not making these spells lasting while you hold your left mouse down. This way both the spell area and your avatar could continue to move while the limitation of just using one spell would still work. This would also make it easier to keep moving enemies within the cast area. I guess if that would be an option there could be added a lot of skills that work that way e.g. “Spinning Attack” for polearms could be a continuously attack as long as you hold the left mouse button down, “Whirling Blades” in blade could also work the same with a cone area you can move around your avatar,…
Maybe the longer the spell is used the more damage it generates but also the more focus is consumed and the max lvl of this is defined by the number of cards you can use. E.g. every 10 seconds of continuous casting the damage raise until you reach the maximum of lvl4 (or lvl 5 if you specialize).

 

The only major issue I see is mages don’t get any form of auto attack/free attack I’ve viewed things like RoF the auto attack free attack equalizer. If you have ever looked at damage charts auto and free attack can equal up to 40% more damage. If they removed both thousands attack types I’d call it a fair suggestion. In addition most all the high end content stuff is immune to magic or nearly so. Go try t5-6 dungeon totems my 150 ms ticks for 7-8damage where my crushing blow or puncture hits 300-1000 and on multiple targets.

I play two types mage and macer and after playing both I recognize the power of auto attacks on a 2h weapon. I think the aoe fights for mages are set up poorly for melee to compete so there def are major balance problems. I’d like single target stuff to have much improved rewards to be honest where a single target guy can keep up with loot/xp gain per hour.

I love concentration type systems played a shaman in linage 2 and found it a fun mechanic .

 

I mean, that's down to the numbers ultimately. With a lot of attunement gear mages can close that difference, and if the spells were rebalanced we have to assume it'd be done right. It is really annoying that your average wand/staff/robe don't have a noticable impact until they have the exact right enchantments though, while weapons and armors work straight out of the gate. That's something they could work on a bit. Caster gear should have a more fundamental benefit, not just be a good medium for enchantment bonuses. I don't like the idea of something like a "Fire suit", not heroic when your skills come out of your clothes and not yourself.

 

I really love this idea, and then the addition coming from Lars :

This combination would be EPIC. Add in stances being actual stances and not a 1m buff, and you've got a revamped combat system that starts looking REALLY good!

 

But we wants all the skills at 140... No we needs them. We must have our precious grind incentive.

 

Yeah I think that sounds awesome too.
Looking at the skills I think there are in every skill tree already skills that could work that way and I would guess these skills could be grouped into four types.

A - cone area around your avatar
Basically you are attacking a small area you can move around your avatar. Possibly the highest damage of the 4 types as you have always to adjust the attacking area to do any damage.
Example skills could be: Whirling Blades (Blade), Shield Bash (Shield), Elysian Illumination (Sun), Healing Ray (Life), Stone First (Earth), Ice Fist (Water), Gust (Air), Death Touch (Death), Flame Fist (Fire)

B - circle attack around your avatar
You are attacking everything around your avatar. Would see this on second place regarding damage as you still have to get close to the enemies.
Example skills could be: Spinning Attack (Polearm), Ground Pound (Bludgeon), Earthquake (Earth), Discharge (Air), Immolation (Fire)

C - detached small circle attack
You can move a relative small circle area detached from your avatar. Comparable damage to B but maybe a little weaker as you can keep some distance to the enemies.
Example skills could be: Banish Undead (Life), Fireflies (Moon), Death Field (Death), Ice Field (Water), Ring of Fire (Fire)

D - detached large circle attack
You can move a relativ large circle area detached from your avatar. Lowest damage of the four types but you are basically attacking a large area and that way possibly a lot more enemies.
Example skills could be: Rapid Fire (Ranged), Healing Burst (Life), Soothing Rain (Water), Meteor Shower (Moon)

I think out of the schools that can be used directly in combat just Chaos has no spell that would fit into those groups.​

Each skill of those types would be active as long as you cast the spell by holding the left mouse button and maybe the damage and ranges could be generally like that:
Type A skill Tier 1 at lvl 1 = 20 damage in a 45 degree radius and 1m range
Type B skill Tier 1 at lvl 1 = 13 damage in a 360 Degree radius and 1.5 m range
Type C skill Tier 1 at lvl 1 = 10 damage in a 3m circle in up to 10m distance
Type D skill Tier 1 at lvl 1 = 7 damage in a 7m circle in up to 15m distance
(Just example values to describe the differences in damage and range.)

 

I'll admit I do not see the necessity of every school having one though, spells like Fists should still be multi target single cast, Banish undead works great as is, death field would fit more into group B. Basically a few adjustments like that, as I still believe mages should rely on more than 1 school to get everything done, and this could allow for a Combo Expansion to generate these "Water magic AoEs" or stuff like that. For how the 4 groups work, I love it