Tank Mage

I don't understand the armor on this game yet obviously... All the good armor has fizzle.. if I want to use a tank mage it's pretty much impossible because if I wear any armor the fizzle is ridiculous, if I don't wear great armor then I get hit by 100 dmg per hit by dexxers. So what do I do?

 

If the game allows tank mages, why wouldn't everyone be a tank mage? It's not a very balanced build. The armor has fizzle preciously so you can't be a tank mage.

 

Uh, UO has tank mages and it has the best pvp of any game ever made... So ask yourself that question. Also hardly anyone plays tank mages on UO there are much more templates you can build besides that exactly how this game should be, why should I be stuck playing either a straight warrior or straight mage?

 

@Heavy Smoker, In UO, armor affected your ability to meditate and regain mana am I right?

 

Correct, but you still had armor for mages "barbed" armor so that dexxers did not hit you for 100 dmg and 2 hit kill you. On here you do not have that option, if you use any type of decent armor you can hardly use spells because of the fizzle rates.

 

Also medding and regening isn't what I'm talking about.. Armor didn't effect your rate of being able to cast a spell... You literally can hardly even cast with good armor here.. They need to make armor for mage type classes that can actually be useful to players that dont want to play a dexxer.

 

a mage should never use heavy plate armour period or it must come with big disadvantages or why would anyone use cloth armour? UO didnt have Tank mages either, the so called tank mages were weapon using mages with reactive armour, that gave u almost as much armour as full plate. If u were wearing plate in uo you had no meditation at all thats disadvantage enough
Basically a Tank Mage was a mage using the totally overpowered reactive armour spell

 

Obviously you haven't played much UO at all. If you are not aware of the things I am comparing please refrain from commenting. Reactive armor was a spell which wasn't even remotely close to being overpowered.. All it did was make it so that a couple hits from an overpowered dexxer didn't do any damage to you.

Tank mages were any mage that used a weapon as their secondary fighting ability, all mages could have some sort of secondary fighting ability... such as poisoning, inscription, swords/fencing/macing/archery, healing.. You should not be forced to use one class such as a warrior or mage, there should be a ton of different templates to experiment with.

 

Depends if you were a scribe mage or not....but there again scribe did take 100 points. Of cause in UO now, RA is fairly pointless......also it's important to remember that in UO players haven't really gone for plate armour since the launch of AOS (obviously a few exceptions)

Back in the day Archer mages were the build most went with, run out of mana and start to fire arrows. These days I change characters depending on opponents....if dexers I go with parry scribe, if mages I go fence/poison/mage.

 

Kinda true... Before Meditation a plate chest was just enough to take a hit and react.. 70+ percent of all damage was directed to the torso iirc. It was good for all mage could take a hit on occasion.smiths sold the single most expensive piece of armor to almost everyone..

 

Nonsense

If your talking way back then it's 7xgm so....Mage/Eval/Resist/Wrestle/Med/Tactics/Wep Skill

Without wrestle you would get hit whilst casting, without tactics you would do no damage with the weapon. There was no space for scribe which was the only way you could possibly make reactive armour reasonably powerful. Tank mages were all about the big hit following up with decent spells (mind blast trick used to work a treat) as well as have offence and defence whilst mana was low.

If your talking about modern day UO, forget about armour because everyone who takes it seriously has corpse skin proof all 70s suits with max dci.

 

@Heavy Smoker,

Some on the forums have suggested alternatives to the increased fizzle rate, like reduced focus regeneration. The complaint about the fizzle rate has been that its randomness is what makes it annoying.

Also there have been discussions on the forum about how to make magic more powerful, and about useful defensive capabilities for mages so they don't have to rely on their DPS. Like protection, invisibility, immobilization (root). Things the mage can use in synergy with his attack spells, to protect against his opponents.

Fighting with magic needs some type of real trade-offs though, if they're going to keep strategy involved in combat. Especially if reagent use is out for low level spells.

 

Also while I think about it......pre AoS, I didnt bother wearing any armour on my mage unless I looted off a victim. I just ran around in a skirt, mask and sash.

 

Fizzle rate can be resolved within the focus skill (if I remember correctly), that makes both cloth and leather armour viable. A real mage shouldn't be wearing plate, however I understand there is a view to make some magic skill trees fizzle less in plate (makes paladin viable).....other magic trees on the other side of the coin should therefore be a lot more powerful.

 

Well... some of us have been discussing the paladin issue in other threads. Basically, if they allow access to Life Magic while wearing armor, you won't get paladins, you'll just get a lot of fighters who just pick up a heal spell and do heal spamming, since reagents aren't required to cast spells. The only way around that is to start requiring reagents. Either way, I don't know if its the best idea.

Yea, I agree with you personally that investing in focus should be enough, although I'm open to alternative approaches on how to handle magic.

 

In terms of the amount you heal through a spell, it could be linked to the number if points spent in light armour tree. This would mean that although players in plate could cast the spell, the amount of heal points would be fairly low compared to say a mage casting it.

 

I dunno man I seen naked mages stand next to a dexer not really taking damage reactive armour did most of that

 

That was because they had GM wrestle.....just as defensive as a wep skill but with 0 attack (well maybe a point or so now and then). Reactive armour without scribe would take a couple of hits, certainly not enough to drop someone in those few seconds (unless the opponent was a complete nub with unbalanced stats). In reality RA without scribe was enough defence to have time to weaken/agility someone....or maybe enough to precast an explosion.

 

Exactly, tank mages was all about waiting for the hits and following up with spells. Exactly what should be allowed in this game which would make things awesome.. It can already be done, but sadly at the cost of wearing hardly any armor at all, which makes it extremely difficult to fight any dexxer that knows how to attack and has around the same level. Players with armor get hit by me for like 10-20, I get hit by players for 40-100 everytime because I don't have any armor hardly... I can't wear armor because everything adds fizzle which is pretty silly that there is no decent armor for a mage.

 

Thanks for having some knowledge on the subject I'm speaking of, sadly it's the ones that have no knowledge that ruin great updates for games.