Auto Attack for magic

Like an off-hand talisman to help boost damage?

 

Don't know what the "triangle" was supposed to be, though in real history, there were ritual blades were associated magic.

There was some discussion a while ago about attacking ghosts with normal, physical weapons. That in my view is still problematic, although in historical context, iron was also thought to have magical power against faeries, demons, ghosts. It was sometimes described as "cold iron", also magical blades had to be constructed with "virgin iron", or iron straight from the furnace, never used for any work, and then consecrated.

Maybe Fig 8 is a triangle?

 

Ya, it's called an Athame in ritualistic magic

There are many paths the devs can take, possibly even a weapon for each school that is more attuned to that type of magic, and added a secondary delivery method when used as such

(like gauntlets that buff touch attacks, or work in tandem with punches ... UO wrestling skill lol)

Athame - Death [increases HP drain attacks by 20%] ( sorry Wiccans )

Censer - Life [adds 20% to banish and cleansing effectiveness, party buff when in range, cannot attack with it]

etc

Staves and wands could be universal charged items. Making them more potent, but also not 100% sustainable like a regular weapon attack. No reason to be ranged either. Staves are great defensive and non-lethal weapons in the right hands

 

That would be interesting.. if staves and wands could hold charges. Affix a gem to a wand or staff...that determines the elemental type, and perhaps some reagent consumption involved in recharging them.

 

If they're to have durability, it would be something like charges by definition, I think.

 

For mage type weapon's i think would be a good idea if they could be enchanted/crafted with +X attunment to a specific school.

 

Aye, we need staffs, bring on the staffs!

 

I think there should be an unarmed combat tree with part of that tree being 'cantrips' so that mages can set some sort of magic auto attack based off the school of there choice. You could even do it so that the first cantrip tier is some sort of basic magic with the second tier being specialized cantrips based off each magic tree.

 

We should have the option of pure mage. A staff that has no autoattack, but it lowers cooldown on magic arrows and some spells to 0, and attunes to magic skill lines allowing us to cast at range without the need for fillers or MELEE fists. Having the staff boost all magic damage and lower CDs also makes sure that the magic line is balanced if used by a character holding a bow/other weapon, so the damage comes out balanced if used by an archer for instance.

Realize near the end of development is when dps between specs starts to be worked on and balanced. It would be far more "magey" to have pure spell damage, without the autoattack damage watering it down to be balanced. I.E, would you rather be casting spells that do 100 damage each or be casting 1 60 damage spell with 2 autoattacks for 20 each in the same timeframe. As a pure mage, I'd rather be nukeing for the big numbers, and use any spare time for kiting.


Autoattacking on a caster is not fun, at least for me. Then again, I like the big numbers

 

I'm personally against autoattack in general (casting or melee), but unfortunately the design decisions behind our current combat don't have a better way of balance. I do agree big number casting would be nice (one or two shot for an obsidian bear would rock if you ever got it that high), but it completely breaks the balance for other aspects of the game. Currently, melee primary with touch of magic is only practical build. Doing something like that, mage would then be only practical build. I suppose if you could keep kiting without the penalty for not having stillness (as game design is very anti-kiting currently) then it would offset a lot of the current issues.

 

I didn't have a weapon in UO. I was GM Wrestling though, which reduced the enemy's chance to make you fizzle / interrupt you.

Also, I see no reason why pure casters should do less damage than melee chars. Is this "Shroud of the Polearm"?

 

So if a sort of filler/auto attack for mages was implemented - what could be done to offset pure melee to make both viable, along with the current melee main mage secondary hybrid? Bandages?

 

Purist melee is already pretty viable (taking into consideration out of combat healing and decent plate armor), but it could definitely use something like bandages or a staunch bleeding skill or something. The problem I see is that it doesn't look like a purist build is being considered at the moment (ranged being another great example of a non-viable build). The most annoying part of purist melee (IMO) is trying to chase down mobs that kite you as there isn't a really good charge implemented for each weapon type. Add in the inability to self heal (without REALLY expensive potions) and it really forces hybrid builds for healing magic and either root or ranged damage spell to deal with the sliver-of-health-left mob fleeing and kiting of ranged. Also, certain mobs like ghosts are supposed to be immune to weapons at some point (I'm purist mage so not sure if that's implemented yet) which really makes it harder to suggest how to correctly do purist builds.

Once all the skills and spells are fully implemented (scheduled for Q1 to finally have everything in based on IRC with DS last night) they'll be able to start doing balance and polish tests to hopefully make purist builds as viable as the hybrid build is.