All magic schools need to be able to deal damage.

Every magic school in SOTA has its uses, if you go through the game cherry picking every single skill that helps your character you'll almost inevitably end up using stuff from a wide variety of skill trees.

However, when you try to actually play as a mage you realize very quickly that there is an absurd disparity between the different magic schools in terms of how much damage they can put out.

My character in the game is a healer, easily two thirds of my XP is invested in the Life tree, and I do pretty well with it. People generally like having me in their group. Slowly raising all the other magic schools has also given me an interesting perspective on how they stack up against each other though. I've raised every single magic skill to 80 at this point, still going to be a while to scrounge up the 200 million XP to bump those all up to GM. Every once in a while I go out trying to solo something, and it's usually pretty bad experience as a pure mage with most of my skills concentrated in the life tree. However, having access to 80/80 spells across the board lets me experiment with a lot of different mage builds, and there is one very clear truth emerging out of that:

Fire magic is the only school of magic that can actually deal a reasonable amount of damage without having insane attunements. I mean sure, people are going to point to 500 damage ice arrows and 800 damage searing rays and say those attacks aren't bad, and sure, they aren't bad if you have 300 attunement and 200 int, but they are completely worthless for dealing damage if you don't, and a fire mage at those kinds of numbers can often obliterate content that was meant for 8 people by themselves.

There is something very clearly wrong there. We're not talking a 10% disparity that would only matter to people who obsess over meta and DPS meters , we're talking about such an enormous difference that an 80/80 fire mage can comfortably complete all the solo content in the game, and an 80/80 anything else mage is so frustratingly slow at killing things that it's essentially unplayable.

A big part of the problem is of course this game's overreliance on healing and tiny HP pools, that make it so that if any spell that deals direct damage is allowed to be powerful it turns into a one-shot wonder almost instantly. You can't have a spell that is the direct damage equivalent of Healing Blast, because it would simply one-shot everyone before you're even stacking cheesy artifacts. With fire there seems to be no such concern since it's damage over time, so there is the theoretical possibility of casting douse to put it out.

Another part of the problem is that fire is the only magic school that contains multiple passives that straight up boost its damage, in Highly Flammable and Fire Speed. No other magic school actually gets a passive that strictly boosts its damage output.

A big part is also the fact that with fire all of the spells stack together to make something more powerful than the sum of their parts, while with other magic schools the only reason to cast more than one spell is that you don't have enough glyphs to just cast the same thing over and over. With fire magic you can stack all of its DOTs together, so not only do you have more attack spells in a single tree than any other magic school, you also get more damage out of them if you cast them all than if you would just cast the same one over and over.

This really needs to be looked at, because it's just broken in its current form. I don't necessarily even think fire needs to be nerfed (Though everything needs to be nerfed at extreme attunement where it simply trivializes all content and makes PvP feel pointless to average players), but other magic schools need to be pulled up to where they are actually able to compete in some kind of way. Their spells should have internal synergies that allow mages to achieve a good amount of damage using them from the start, and grow along a nice curve that keeps pace with fire, as opposed to just doing tickle damage the whole time until they finally pushed these abilities high enough to start getting one or two shots.

 

I agree fully with this statement. The new Sun spell, even if I haven't tried it myself, is a step in the right direction, giving sun a single target and a cone AoE means it has more than just a direct Niche, and can now be more versatile and used in more builds. This is something that needs to happen with all the other schools, give schools more means to do damage. I remember reading about those burning skeletons being immune to fire and weak to water, and thought to myself "Wow, finally something really cool about a monsters resistances" but then remembered how Ice Arrow was the ONLY thing benefiting of this new resistance, then it nearly felt pointless.

 

Fire magic can kill almost everything in game as it can stack up high fire resist debuff with "Evaporate "and fire skills with fire specialization. This make bosses immune to magic become vulnerable to fire magic.

Fire specialization scales "very well" as the fire resist debuff grows significantly with the fire specialization level. As for the specialization of other magic school, they do not scale well with its level. For example, searing ray always applies 10 sun resist debuff and blind always applis -5% critical chance debuff no matter what sun specialization level is.

In addition, boss fight (e.g. dragon, lich boss, daemon, etc...) is not fun for mage except fire as they cannot do much damage on them. I also have no idea why these bosses and mage type monsters having high magic resistance, but melee monster and archery monster do not have high melee resistance. These settings just make non-fire mage not viable in any group adventuring.

 

I'm not sure if it was a design choice, but Fire is a requirement in this game - if for the simple fact that there are a lot of undead. You cannot spec a death/air mage, for example. In my case I am not viable alone spec'd death/air, which is sad really as I don't feel "special" or "unique" in my build (there is some new content which I haven't tried yes where it seems my spec is viable).

However, this is counterintuitive to the concept of grouping which was/is supposed to be a big part of this game.

Otherwise, yes, you are required to spec Fire if you want to have any viability alone or in small groups. I, too, wish it weren't this way. I rather liked the idea of death/air and didn't want to pick up Fire, etc.

 

Yea, death magic is pretty much only used for Death Shield, which is most useful to heavily armored fighters, and air magic has pretty much just been claimed by archers as their dex/crit buff and using Shield of Air to get a second healthbar since they didn't actually need their focus for anything until their charge attack was slightly fixed. It's sad that they are so up in arms about that, when actual air mages aren't even really playable. That pretty much just shows that the imbalance in this game is so extreme that it doesn't just have people slightly annoyed, it has obliterated every single character based on gimpy trees and probably driven out a lot of their players along with them.

 

It's more about all the nerfs over time that have made the actual skills very weak.

As for the rest of this thread; yes, it's intended that fire deals the most damage. It's also intended that you get the most out of mixing things together in creative ways and not being a one-trick pony.

 

This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

But what is creative about Fire, Fire, Fire, more fire, Meteor shower and Banish undead, ohh and more fire?

At least give us combos to make more schools have diverse options, Hailstorms, Thunderstorms, walls of earth (to block paths). Add in spells that offer their little something, so that we stop seeing RoF + Meteor Shower as the main spells everywhere.

I've always wanted to play a mage, but 2 schools I did not want to do with were fire and Life, but honestly, where would I go with a mage build lacking those? Not very far that is for sure, unless I stand behind someone else who can actually kill stuff for me, considering 50% if not more of mob population is undead, and the good spots require some sort of AoE...

I dont find the builds diverse and creative at all for mages, you have the Fire/Life deck that grinds all PvE, and then some little elemental arrows in PvP (for the 12 still doing it at this point) since they are less resisted...

All I would want is more spells and/or combos to actually allow creativity...

 

*shrug* I don't use any of that except for Ignite Weapon.

 

I disagree pretty strongly with a lot of what's been said (You can't wreck the game with lvl 80 fire magic, death magic is very good and not only used for death shield, etc.), but there should definitely be more options for sustainable magic damage.

Imo the easiest way to do it would be to create some new persistent AEs and make persistent AEs not stackable. That way you could have a lot of options without being able to make a Scooby sized AE sandwich.

Could make earthquake rumble for a while, increase ice field damage, add some new ones like lighting storm or something, whatever. Even if you were only heavily invested in one or two schools, you could do a lot with a persistent AE + a normal damage skill or two.

 

But not every magic school should have to work that way.

 

Ever bring a mage with you to obsidian forge? Its pretty hilarious if they dont know what the obsidian golems do. First off, the fire eles and obs golems are immune to fire, then you have the obsidian golems have an aura that takes away like 200 attunement on each school so your spells do nothing anyways. Its funny watching someone casts heals over and over till they die.

Anyways, to the topic. Yes fire can do a ton of damage, but other then the healing mod from spec, the fire res from spec and all the rest is JUST damage, that is all its got. Air tree has stuns, move rate skill, a stat boost, a blink and one of the best shield spells. There is a lot of utility in air magic that makes up for its lack of damage. Death tree is mainly damage as well except for the mezz on corpse explosion if your death spec and has the other good shield spell. Combine death with chaotic feedback and it can produce some insane damage against non undead. Sun tree has a mezz, a stat buff, an avoidance and dex debuff and a heal over time spell. Earth has root, knockdown, stat buff, damage resistance buff and a kinda meh shield spell, but it can be used right in certain situations, as well spec adds avoidance to the shield spell and can go beyond the 2 avoidance skill limit. Life tree has a buff, one damage spell for undead only and then heals. Water has move rate cc, fire res buff, crappy shield spell, heal over time and an elemental that heals. Moon has mezz, debuff, a blink onto target and a heal over time.

You cant just go off the damage and make your comparison from that alone, that is a very fractionalized view to look from. You need to look at them from a whole, damage, cc, healing, buffs, debuffs, mobs that it works against and mobs it does not, focus cost and reg useage. There is probably a few things I am still missing here.

Death magic, life magic and water magic all have passives that increase their damage/ healing.

Not saying fire is fine and should not get nerfed, just like to add in all the stuff people leave out to try and paint the whole picture, not just the corner of the canvas.

 

I agree with this to some extent. Sure, other schools have their little mechanic that makes them fun, and fire only has damage which means it needs damage, but what other schools lack is ways to deal damage. Death is awesome, if used in a zone with no undead, but it is still insanely good. Air has 2 long range skills and one actually hits multiple targets. Earth has a nice Earthquake spell that knocks down, and sun just got a new cone AoE. but then you look at the remaining 3 (not gonna count Life because honestly Life does more than you could ever want it to), Water, has 1 long range damage spell (don't talk to me about the 5 damage Ice field does ONCE per mob...), it has some "Support" spells, which are actually great, but that's it, and honestly, this game revolves around individual prowess and not group reliability, so who am I supporting as an Ice Mage? Myself? What am I supporting? My Ice Arrow? Just send 3 mobs and there we go, unless I use physical weapons or use another school, I am out of the game! Moon... Moon has probably the strongest AoE, and then a Mezz (which cancels as soon as you do damage, so whoopsie Daisy!), The Blink on target works if you use close range weapons, other wise you are screwed, and the debuff, once again, works for Physical weapons... The final one, Chaos, has 1 Damage spell, that will actually debuff you from time to time, so you are putting yourself at a potential risk every time you cast it.

Now these three schools I just talked about at the end are great as supporting schools for any other class, but as standalone schools, have barely any potential. Why could I not use a combo to get myself a hailstorm, or another kind of damaging spell or 2 for one specific school? Honestly, I would trade out some damage for the niche each school offers, if they had more damage spells! That is all I would want, more spells to play with. Keep fire the top damaging school, and leave it have its DOT, that is fine! Add a poison spell to Earth, maybe a poison cloud that poisons a target more and more if it stays in it, and the poison slowly wears off as you leave it! Add in a (stalagm/stalact-ite) spell for Ice that will have a spike come out of the ground directly on its target, doing burst damage and slowing down those in the area for a short duration.

Basically all I want is more damaging spells for every school (Yes, even fire), to allow for a more dedicated approach towards a specific school, because like I said, this game BARELY has any dependancy on others, so even if you WANT to play a support character, unless it is a healer, and even then, is pointless, considering the classless system. I LOVE the classless system, and don't want to trade it for anything else, but I would love to see more usefulness to many of the magic schools outside of the mostly useless support system they are in.

 

At the end of the day you only get XP and loot if you reduce a monster's HP to zero. Doesn't matter how clever you think you are, if whatever you're doing doesn't either help you kill the enemy faster, or survive when the enemy would otherwise kill you you're simply not moving toward the actual goal of the fight. There is simply no getting around the fact that damage is what finishes fights.

 

CC helps you survive and kill faster, heals help you survive, mezzes help you survive, everything I said either helps you survive or helps you deal more damage.

 

If it helped you survive and deal damage as well as Fire/Life we wouldn't be having the conversation.

The bottom line is that only getting that health bar to zero finishes the fight. You can introduce a lot of nuance, build options and clever tricks into how that is accomplished, but if what you're doing doesn't at some point translate into damage output that's within a predictable window that all builds fall into the character is gimped.

 

I'm not sure how you would balance this.

If you give each school it's own AOE, how would that really help unless it's damage was good? Because unless its damage was good, it would still be mostly worthless. I can reach a modest, in comparison to some, 210 Fire attunement and I find many of the areas where I hunt that are my level, mobs die slowly. Resistances are such at the high end that even stacking Fire DoTs is slow. In Tartarus for example on the zombies that are green to me, my RoF ticks for less than it's minimum damage range stated on the buff icon 90% of the time and can crit for less than that as well. Resists are crazy.

If Water or Air or Life get damage spells to be able to do these scenes, wouldn't you then create a situation where players just speced those trees instead because you have the utility as well good damage? If the damage is not high enough after resists are factored in then they wouldn't be worth it. I guess moderate damage would be OK to farm low level stuff but at some point you would butt up against the resists and would face the same problem.

 

The problem is twofold:
1- you need to mix and match from various magic trees as there's insufficient glyphs to build a pure deck in anything and still reach min deck size, except maybe fire and only if spec'd.
2- attunement system means you can only really excel in 1 tree cause that's all you can gear for

This has been a problem/frustration with "maging" since day 1. Magic is considerably weaker at low xp investment because you don't have attunement (though you can get a decent boost in gear, its to a single school). Then magic is weaker at high xp investment because even if you do have attunement in your single element everything is so magic resistant you're doing half the damage of a melee character with 1/10th the xp invested. Only fire has sufficient resistance stripping to overcome this,(and only if you specialize it) and only fire has enough stackable damage over time skills to deal with targets in the 8k+ HP range. Doing them with any other element, while possible, is tedious and not worth the time more often than not.

Ok, so we need to be fire to do damage. This would be acceptable, (pointless, but acceptable...)except....
Fire mages can't group together because their skills overwrite, rather than complement, each other!
This is an MMO. Isn't grouping together the point? You get more than 1 fire mage in a group and one of them is relegated to healer, or to whatever other skill/build they know how to do because there's no benefit to having more than one fire mage.

So fire is the only viable damage, but you can only support 1 fire mage per group.

I'm about fed up with the embarrassing damage on large targets with level 140 non-fire magic skills. The "utility" doesn't make up for it since these same targets are immune to most cc. If I go fire, then I can't really contribute anything to a group because there's already a million fire mages.

Ways to fix it:
1. Let every fire mage stack their own dots - let them group together. Everyone will be a fire mage but it seems that's the goal so ...why not.
2. Give resistance stripping/damage over time to other schools. - makes other elements a viable choice. Every school also needs another reg-free basic attack in order to meet min deck size in a single element. Sun needs two more, moon needs 3. Life is a special case - its only effective on undead and only with the 1 spell. If you want it to be more standalone, give it a fist/arrow "smiting" attack that works on anything. I'd say life spec is already powerful enough from the healing though. (Which is why you see fire/life spec absolutely everywhere).

 

Utility isn't worth anything without damage. You can't win a fight with utility. Even if you're a utility player in a group the only reason you can do that is because someone else lays down the damage.

The resists being used to curb certain builds is just another bandaid on top of a bandaid on top of a bandaid on top of a gunshot wound. That's not how any of this can be balanced. The core of the problem is that only certain builds can do enough damage to be fun to play to begin with, not that those builds need to be stumped by some encounters to force people to use other spells. The ideal situation is a game where you can reasonably build a mage that doesn't use fire for damage, and no mob is simply immune or absurdly resistant to some tpyes of damage.

 

Utility has its place, but even with absurd attunement/skill levels most big targets are completely immune to it. Making it doubly pointless.
The whole logic of "fire hurts it more, but earth could root it, air could stun it and water could slow it" goes out the window then the thing can't be rooted, stunned or slowed - and even those that can, can't be done reliably." And not even applicable to things that attack you from range which is hmm most things.