Chain Lightning and Lightning Reagent Cost... Bug?

Since when did Lightning have a 20% reagent use chance and chain lightning have a 30% reagent use chance? When I played last week they were only 10% and 20% like every other spell school in the game. Is this a bug? When did it change? And if this is intentional, it needs to be reverted... this reagent cost is way too much. I haven't even cleared half a scene and I've already gone through 60 of each reagent. That's absurd. There's no way I can make enough gold to counter this cost now.

So what's going on?

 

not only that but it cast the spell and nothing happens still using regents , and recovery time . though the mages can sure hit me with their fireball almost twice as far away . weird we both had issues with this at the same time .

 

It's been this way since the beginning of R33. Were you using reg reduction gear or perhaps COTO last week?

 

This would be why me and mine are all using reagent free decks now. It's not like these spells are required to play or required to succeed or win a fight, generally. It's not like burning 16-24g PER CAST is reflected in their 2% more damage than a reagent free spell. Really, it's not. If it was double the damage? Sure, 16-24g per cast, maybe justified. But the way progression works with exponentially more XP required to advance a skill, and outrageously increased focused costs, THEN adding 30% reagent use?
Yeah, not using that. I'll keep the game less punitive until it's all punitive, then I'll just go play a different game. I'm not paying to be victimized & punished, I'm paying (and/or paid) to have fun. Geez, this is supposed to be entertainment, not a trial or suffering to be endured.

 

Personally i think all AOE spells should have much higher reagent use, maybe even 100%, and also maybe even 2 or 3 or each reagent required for the spell, AND an increase in focus cost, as it is now you are getting too much bang for your buck, killing multiple mobs for little spell cost. It should be a situational spell, only used when the conditions are favourable for cost and expenditure.

 

So essentially you would want to destroy all mage classes and make them useless. Reagent costs are already too high to be affordable for most players. If they do what you're suggesting, then everyone would be playing the typical cookie-cutter melee hybrid build. There would be no point in investing in the higher tiers of magic due to the cost. Melee needs a buff. Archer needs a buff to their multishot to fix their AoE. Mages don't need a nerf. We've had too much nerfing already.

I'm sorry, but what you're suggesting is literally the worst suggestion I've heard on here.

 

It has not been like this since R33. Literally last week when I last played it was 10% and 20% like every other magic type. With reduction gear it was 8% and 16% like every other magic type. This doesn't change until this week. I was not running a reduction potion.

 

In order to keep tabs on the serious XP grinders then we will all need to be playing a cookie-cutter AOE mage build, there is no other build that can farm xp the way they can.

I have done another post here, I'm not after the death of mages, far from it....but i think some balance is needed personally.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/aoe-balance.64800/#post-665079

Really, wow...although I'm sure you may be a little biased

 

I'm pretty sure it has been in since around R33. I have been using obsidian potions since they increased that reagent cost to counteract it. Still spending a lot of gold on reagents.

If anything the bug was that it hadn't increased for you until recently. Although, I can't seem to find anything about it in R33's notes nor any patch notes since then, only about them reducing their damage. Hmm.

 

I used to loop around the whole Crag Foothills and use only about 40 of each reagent. Now I'm using over 60 before even finishing the loop. It was not like this last week or the week before that or the week before that. I took a week long break and came back to the game last night. While doing my normal loop through the Crag Foothills for some XP, I noticed I had somehow gone down from 150 of each reagent to 88 just after having passed through the undead area of that scene and hitting the large elf camp. I have never gone through reagents that quickly before last night. Which is when I noticed the reagent costs on Air spells were higher than they were before and higher than every other magic type. I basically just quit the game after noticing because that's just not sustainable and it basically breaks all of my investment into my character as an Air mage. And I won't be playing anymore until this is reverted if it's intentional, fixed if it's a bug, or they drastically reduce the cost of reagents per unit.

Edit: And as you said, there is no patch notes at all indicating this increase. When I did last use one of those reduction potions, Lighting had a 5.5% chance and Chain Lightning had an 11% chance to use reagents. Now it would be 11% and 16.5%. So if you want to play an Air mage, then you're now forced to buy COTOS to not only repair all of your gear, but to also make reagent use even close to affordable. Fire doesn't have to do that despite it being way better at AoE clearing large groups of enemies. And Earth doesn't have to do that either despite it being the highest damage per spell magic type in the game.

 

Increasing reagent use chance to 100% would literally break all mages. That's not bias. That's fact. That would mean all spells with a reagent cost would cost 16-24 gold per cast. It often takes at least 10 casts of chain lightning to kill a group of four 600+ hp elves unless I get lucky with crits. That would mean each group of 4 elves would cost me 220 gold to kill with what you're suggesting. That is absolutely absurd. If we add the other part of your suggestion and it were increased to 3 or 4 of each reagent per cast, then that's 660-880 gold per group of elves. Hence why what you're suggesting is one of the worst suggestions I've ever heard on here. The damage of a higher tier spell is not a significant enough of an increase to warrant it being a special use only when needed spell over the lower tier spells.

Edit: And lets be real... it's not Air mages that are mass AoE farming enemies like it's nothing. It fire mages that are doing that. Fire mages are the ones going into CPs and the Rise farming hundreds of thousands of XP per hour simply by dropping a few fire spells and letting enemies burn to death. One single stack Ring of Fire does 15-34 damage every 2 seconds for a total duration of approximately 30 seconds. Add Immolation and a Fireball on top of that and you can literally kill massive groups of enemies with only 3 spell casts. Air has and still is only a problem in PvP where it needs to be separately balanced from PvE.

 

Those reagent percentages have been in from r33. I haven't been using those 2 spells this whole release because of it.

 

The last patch we have was back on Sep 7th. Even if they change the values on the server side, the description on the glyphs are stored on the client side, so it were to change, it's gotta be on the 7th or before that.

 

I know for a fact that the reagent use chance was not this high when I played just last week. I know for a fact that I was not going through this many reagents per run of anything in game until this week. So if it has been like this since R33, then my game must have been bugged until this week for whatever reason.

It doesn't change that this reagent cost is absolutely unsustainable. Why is it that only Air has a higher reagent use chance? Why doesn't fire since it's significantly better for AoE farming massive groups of enemies? Why doesn't Earth since it has the highest direct damage spells in the game? It literally makes no sense for only Air to have these costs, and it quite literally breaks all of the investment I have put into my character up to this point.

I guess Portalarium doesn't want me playing their game then. And I won't be playing anymore until this issue is fixed. I play games to enjoy myself. I don't play to be forced to 24/7 gold farm just to cover my costs. And sure, I could use a reagent free deck too, but what's the point in being a mage then if you can't even use the higher tier spells? I might as well just be a melee hybrid in that case.

So until this is fixed, goodbye. I'll probably still hang around the forums watching to see when or if they fix this, but I won't be investing in the game any further until then. And yes, I understand this is early release and things will be changing, but this absolutely breaks all of the investment I've put into my character thus far. It's costing me more gold than I can possibly make without just farming Halberds in the Serpent Spine Foothills. And that's just incredibly disappointing to the point that I want nothing to do with the game until this is fixed.

 

Consider using COTO potion that reduce reg consumption rate (You don't have to buy them from add-on store. I just bought them from vendor at around 1.2k GP) combines with staff or wands that has reg consumption rate reduction. I was able to drop lightning and chain lightning down to 15%/22.5%, which isn't too bad. I was able to make about 2-4k GP each hunt session and able to save up to 10k gp per week.

I also mix and match with skills from other trees. You don't need more than skill level 60 in each in order to be effective, so it shouldn't take too long. With multiple spells from different trees, you will be more immune to any changes that nerf the spells from certain tree while benefit from the buff on different trees.

In any case, taking a break and come back later would be fine too. The game is gonna still be developing for awhile.

 

In all fairness, everyone is playign the typical cookie cutter Ring of Fire and Chain Lightning mages right now. Chain lightning is among the msot powerful direct damage spells in the game.

20% regeant use chance is sustainable, and items make it more so. Thats an exaggeration to say it is not. Air spells are extremely powerful. They hit hard and have a high chance for a long stun.

 

@Sixclicks Man, stick it out if ya can. Maybe another magic tree is the choice (Fire? ). I know how frustrating it can be to have your build messed with (I'm Air too). This stuff does all seem to come out in the wash, but until then it feels way too punitive.
There are a few guys who I know through the forums who are 'numbers guys', we need those types since Chris wont give us real numbers on a lot of things.

So my plea is to have ya play, but if reg/spell costs are too prohibitive I get it.

 

I don't want to give up on the game. Please don't take it that way. I want the game to be successful and keep playing it for years to come, but I just can't bring myself to do it anymore after losing all that work.

20% is the chance to use reagents for the single target Lightning spell. 30% is the chance to use reagents for Chain Lightning (the one that hits up to 4 targets). Whereas Earthquake for example only has a 20% chance and does more damage and also has a chance to knockdown. Obsidian Arrow is reagent free and is also the hardest hitting single target spell in the game. Why is Obsidian Arrow free while Lightning has a 20% chance to use reagents? That just doesn't make sense.

And fire is by far the least costly and best for AoE farming large groups of enemies. One ring of fire plus Immolation can take out all 12 Bandits in the Serpent Spine Foothills at each of the camps. You also only need to invest in Intelligence as a fire mage unlike Earth which needs STR or Air which needs DEX.

I didn't pick Air because it's powerful or what everyone else was using. I didn't even know it was the most popular magic type before I picked it. I picked it because Lightning/Air has always been my favorite element in every game I've played as a mage in. In fact, you could say I also picked it because no one else in my guild was playing as an Air mage. The other mages in my guild are all Fire or Earth, and they're able to do far higher content than I can as an Air mage. In fact, they were even offering to let me go along with them in the Rise just to power level me once they heard about the Air cost so that I could switch to Earth or Fire just like them. The one advantage to Air that I've seen is it's incredible power in PvP (which I don't even do PvP, at least not yet). I have been advocating for change to how it works in PvP all this time despite it being my element of choice. I think the stun chance and duration could be cut in half for PvP. Right now my Lightning spells are at about a 60% chance to stun for 6 seconds while I'm buffed. That's an absurd stun for PvP.

I was okay with the increased focus cost. I was okay with the -8% damage for lightning spells. I am not okay with an increase to the gold cost of these spells when no other magic type has to deal with both a higher focus cost and reagent cost like this. It just makes no sense to me.

I will be taking a break from the game for now. I sincerely hope they fix this issue either by reducing the cost of reagents, making reagents significantly more abundant in scenes, or by returning the reagent use chance to its previous values. I'll likely wait a few more weeks to see what happens and if I'm really itching to play by then I guess I'll just have to switch to Fire. I really really don't want to have to do that though. Fire honestly bores me. So does Earth.

 

Lightning and Chain Lightning aren't meant to be spam-cast attacks any more than Shield of Ice or Shield of Air are meant to be spammed-defenses. They have solid damage AND a stun, and Chain is AoE on top of it.

If you are looking for damage per cost, these are not your spells. If you are wanting to inflict a stun, these are your spells.

 

Trust me, I really do want to keep playing. I'm just really disappointed to come back to my character no longer being viable due to its cost. I'll likely come back in a few weeks and make the switch to fire if I have to if nothing changes. It's just gonna really suck having to level everything up to at least 80 again and having to switch out all my enchanted and masterworked gear since it's all speced for Air.