Chain Lightning and Lightning Reagent Cost... Bug?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sixclicks, Sep 28, 2016.

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  1. Oba Evesor

    Oba Evesor Avatar

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    Dont forget about the Obsidian Book of Unlearning. I'm not a fan of unlearning spells, but getting 90% of your xp back from the Air tree will take some sting out of leveling Fire. If ya decide to do that.
     
  2. Lifedragn

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    To think the calculations are about raw damage is to be mistaken. Obsidian Arrow does more damage per cast. Lightning creates more Opportunity per cast. If we were looking at pure PvE use, I might agree that Lightning seems high on reagent costs. The AI almost instantly recovers from stuns. And an AI opponent being stunned for a short time usually doesn't change much from their simple algorithm.

    Let's take it to PvP. A stun against a player, even a small one, is a HUGE freaking deal. You interrupt their current flow, inflict a period of inaction and often panic, and their reflex time to get back into flow is significantly longer than an AI opponent.

    Earthquake vs. Lightning - It's all about Range. Range creates opportunity. Casting Earthquake against non-melee foes is somewhat tough - they don't want to be in melee with you! Casting Lightning or Chain Lightning is much easier. You don't have to chase them down first.

    When looking at ability cost and balance, you need to look at the broader picture and not just your immediate use case.

    Note: I haven't done much PvP, but I am assuming skills affect players pretty much the same way.
     
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  3. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Because lightnign has a very high chance ot also stun a target for several seconds, making it more deadly than obsidian arrow.


    Earthquake's knockdown is dodgable and melee range. Chain lightning does alot of damage at range to multiple atrgets and ahs a high chance to stun all of those targets for several seconds.


    Ring of fire is having its damage reduced and immolation is havign its range reduced. Fire has NO other effect other than dealign damage. Lightning has a high chance to stun for several seconds while simultaneously causing high damage.

    The intent of the fire tree, specifically, is to be the most damaging set of spells over time, but sucks at direct instant damage.


    It's the luck of the draw. Aside from why you picked it, it has recently been the most popular because it is very high multi target damage with long stuns at range. No other magic does that
     
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  4. Sixclicks

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    It is a problem in PvP as I have said many times previously. And I do think the stun should be nerfed, especially in PvP. I'd be completely fine with them cutting the stun chance and duration in half. I am not fine with them making my main spells cost more in both gold and focus than any other spell in the game. I only play PvE so far besides a few friendly duels with guild members. I'll probably try PvP sometime down the road once PvP is more polished, but PvE is definitely my focus. And currently I am finding it way too costly compared to it's benefits for PvE. Hence my disappointment and frustration.

    All I ever hear from my guild members who play Fire and Earth mages is how they're out soloing the rise or soloing the Obsidian Troll in the Rise with little to no issue while I'm stuck out in the Crag Foothills barely able to cover my costs and certainly unable to solo the Obsidian Troll due to the higher focus cost (and now higher reagent cost) of Air spells. I'd run out of focus before I even got close to killing that troll.
     
  5. Lifedragn

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    If your focus is to be able to solo lots of high end content, you need to build toward that end. Different trees have different strengths and weaknesses. I am deep into Water and use Sword and Shield. My guildmates who have gone into Fire with 2H weapons can kill things so much faster than me it isn't really funny. I do have a lot more survivability and versatility though with some CC effects, extra damage mitigation, a HoT, and a choice between melee or ranged summon in the same tree.
     
  6. Bow Vale

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    Thanks for acknowledging my issues with AOE mages.......Just so you realise i am not totally biased against magery, i am also Air specialised with around 100 attunement when i want it, so my reasoning is not to cut off others fun, or my own. Maybe you have your CL spells a little high in skill, thus using more focus per cast, might be an idea to drop it a little possibly to see if that helps. The thing with fire mages from what i gather is that they have dot's so for a LOW focus cost they are doing damage for a long time, and i believe the dot's stack as well. This combined with earthquake i can imagine keeps the mobs pacified while they burn to death over a duration. Sorry to hear, like me you haven't got an optimal build for grinding XP, good but not the best by a factor of 10 most likely, and this is where my issue with AOE mages comes in. Air school has the CL and discharge spells but they have limited benefit compared to fire schools with there long time dot's that stack, and small focus costs to cause lots damage to many foes.
     
  7. Sixclicks

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    And that's part of the point I was making in my post. Why is it that Air is the most expensive magic type in both focus and reagent use while other magic types, fire in particular, does more damage with less casts? It's not as bursty as Air is, but that's not an issue when you build it the way my guild mates have built theirs. They essentially have a bunch of tanking skills on their bar and a few fire spells to do damage. They drop the fire spells on the enemy and then just spam tanking skills while everything burns to death. So if anything, since fire spells require less casting to kill enemies, they should cost more per cast to balance them with other spells that you have to cast continuously until the enemy dies. At 15-34 damage with single stack Ring of Fire every 2 seconds for about 30 seconds total, that's an average of 367.5 damage per Ring of Fire over its duration not including critical hits (these numbers are from a guild member with 110 fire attunement and his Ring of Fire at level 80). If you combo stack Ring of Fire five times, then this damage total increases significantly. I believe they nerfed Ring of Fire by 16% this release, but that's still an average of 308.7 damage for an unstacked Ring of Fire. Also, Fire DoTs do stack. So if you're hitting the enemy with Fire Arrows, Fireballs, and your Immolation as well, then you're just burning them down even faster. Plus there's an innate in the Fire tree that directly increases fire damage by a percentage, and it also increases the duration of fire spells. There's another innate that also increases the radius of any fire spell.

    So why is fire cheaper to use than Air then when it also requires less casting and therefore already uses less reagents due to that alone? That just doesn't make sense to me.

    All of that considered, there's no reason for me not to switch to Fire or Earth now besides my personal preference of lighting type spells. Fire and Earth are just vastly superior now besides in PvP (which isn't my focus).
     
  8. Bow Vale

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    If you read my link i posted to you above then you would see what i think might work to help alleviate the issues. My first post in this thread to yourself was a little short and a little broad in my view (including all AOE), while i know air itself doesn't have that much of a bad reputation as fire does. However, i am an air user myself and don't want to make it seem i am looking to nerf the worst of the examples, fire, while keeping mine which isn't as bad but still a form of AOE, chain lightning. In truth the only AOE i use is discharge, have only one in a dynamic slot and use when it comes around if the situation calls for it, or i look for a situation to use it, i don't spam it or haven't even used CL for say 6 weeks...dangerous thing it is for aggro as I'm sure u r aware!

    If there is no changes to AOE mages ( i don't really have Air School as a typical AOE damage as it is short in its duration )and the ability of causing mass carnage for limited costs continues then i/we/all will have to change to these builds in order to stay significant in our XP gains. If we didn't have this pool system, which i kinda like, but it does have issues, then i wouldn't care how much xp anyone earns with whatever build, as the xp earned would have to stay in that field, and they couldn't then allocate to a different build, and thus be good at everything....
     
  9. Sixclicks

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    The suggestions you linked in that other post are a lot more tame and reasonable than what you first posted here. Making AoE spells cost a little more focus or split their damage amongst the number of enemies is a lot more reasonable sounding than making them cost reagents 100% of the time and also multiplying the number of reagents used per cast by 3x or 4x. Chain Lightning for example could do less damage per subsequent chain up to it's 4 chain limit. So it would do the most to your target, but less to each enemy it chains to for example. I'm not against balancing changes in terms of damage or focus cost or stun chance... I am against balance changes that arbitrarily make one spell school cost more gold than others plus the damage nerfs and focus cost increases on top of that. The last thing we need in this current game economy is even more of a gold sink than I already have as a pure mage. Hence how I reacted to your initial post in this thread.
     
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  10. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Because it hits multiple targets (sometiems the same target multiple times) for instant damage and enough stun to keep them locked in place while u spam more. Lightning is the hands-down best damage stun in the game, which is a particualrly deadly combination. Its benificial to make the two lightnign spells in particular unspamable. Discharge is still quite spamable.

    Air specializes in stuns. thats it bread and butter, but it also deals high damage with that stun.

    Fire specializes in DAMAGE. It deals high damage over time and is the easiest damage to resist in the game, and has more monsters immune to it than any other spells (including 3 or 4 boss types, and at least 3 normal mosters including an entire dungeont hats immune to it and the obsidian forge). While i wouldnt be suprised to see a couple of the higher end spells get increased regeant use, it would not affect fire users much.
     
  11. 2112Starman

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    considering in PvP last night, I once again saw one chain lightning be cast over 70 feet away hit 5+ people standing next to me up on a castle wall (20 feet up) for over 150 hp each, I still have no sympathy for anything negative done to chain lightning.
     
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  12. Dexter4

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    dude thats bs , it barley hits 3 targets and wont cast if they are little more than half the range of fire . this is for npc mobs and it doesnt make sense that it would be any different with live players.
     
  13. 2112Starman

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    nope sorry bud, there was a good crowd of 8ish people standing right on the edge of the walls and it hit at least 5 of them, their bars all dropped fast.

    FYI: This is normal for PvP in our tourneys, CL routinely does this. Show up for yourself if you would like to see. One of the funnest things to do is watch CL kill people in the crowd.
     
  14. Abydos

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    It was quite clear that the air school would be nerfed.
     
  15. agra

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    Ah yes, nerfing PvE for the sake of PvP. Good times.
     
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  16. Couldin

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    It was OP in PvE too. People were stun locking stuff they had no business even fighting. Two people with air could kill any single target in the game without a problem. They could also take out rooms of stuff because it'd all be stun locked with chain lightning. Spam lightning and chain lightning and nothing else's mattered.

    It wasn't just for PvP.
     
  17. Hornpipe

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    I'm using all those spells despite the reagent cost. I don't see any problem as they are very useful nonetheless.

    Seriously +10% isn't ruining anything. Stop whinings. Try to build a no-reagent-deck if you feel like you have no other choice. In other words : adapt yourself, test. We are here to do that.
     
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