Baron Drocis' List of Magical Desires

Baron Drocis' List of Magical Desires: A Report Card on Magic (Last Updated on Oct 7, 2014)

Green = Got it!
Yellow = In the right direction
Pink= Not even close

1. City Level Wizard Tower available in the Add-on Store.
Current Status: Multiple Developers have said "Your request has been noted." and "We'll see what we can do."

2. Flowing Mage Robes
Current Status: Unity 5 may allow for better cloth animation. We'll see.

3. Ritual Magic
Current Status: Not for Episode I but perhaps Episode II.

4. Competitive Combat for Players that use ONLY magic
Current Status: That is one of the goals for combat.

5. Scrying
Current Status: Unknown

6. Spell Books
Current Status: Unknown

7. Reagents required for all spells
Current Status: The FAQ's say all spells require reagents, but "current thinking" is that some low level spells will not.

8. Spell casting animation for casters using no weapons
Current Status: Currently when using no weapons, casters look like they're boxing.

9. Read Only permission system for public libraries
Current Status: This seems to be the plan, but the full extent and functionality of the permissions system is unknown.

10. Staves and Wands being useful tools and not required for competitive or casual play as a spell caster
Current Status: Staves and Wands are over powered and required to be competitive in spell casting.

11. Healing spells being important and meaningful, but not overused and common
Current Status: Healing does not require reagents, it's both cheaper and easier to use than a potion or a scroll.

12. Levitation "Holmes" (Thank you Tenacious D) Note: No request has been made to be able to "kill a yak at 200 yards away".
Current Status: Unknown

 

Baron I have to disagree on the staves and wand being overpowered. A wiz should use one and be hindered if not. Also if the staffs get nerfed where they offer nothing . Then finding a rare drop magic staff would not happen. Heck imagine doing a dungeon crawl and killing the boss and in the chest is a magical staff. But since staffs are nerfed the wi goes home empty handed. Staffs in dungeons and dragons were powerful and in some cases helped the caster make stronger spells . It helps focus power. What I think is we need to add a system where mages can craft or find magic staffs that help the different disciplines. Example fire staff, ice staff . Also a staff of spell storing. This idea also he's hand In hand with spell research. So a wizard can research and build powerful spells and or a staff that can buff a certain type of magic or store spells. Just to give a few ideas. As for spell storing it can even be a spell of a different discipline or a summoning staff.

 

Sorry baron typing on my cell phone it keeps correcting my ghetto english

 

@Zantul

When I say staves and wands are OP, I mean in the current release. They fire automatically, hit automatically, require no charges or reagents, do not impact focus, and when you compare using one verses not using one it's clear that you're making a choice between having a free attack and not having a free attack. They're completely over powered and essential to combat, as of R10. There's really no counter argument to be made here.

 

What if Staves and Wands had a "Ranged / Melee" option, and drain focus on ranged? I think that would be a first step for re-balancing them!

 

Great idea.

I think one of the things that needs balanced is Spells vs. Items (including potions and scrolls).

The advantage to items should be that you have something ready to go "pre-casted" in a sense. But the cost of using that advantage should not IMO ever be less than what it would take to cast it. So your choice should be as follows:

1. Do I want to have a pre-cast item that will use just as much focus AND take up a skill slot? Also if you have a staff that for example performs what would normally be a combo, it should have a HUGE cool down and probably cost extra focus. Is it a big advantage, yes in the right circumstance. But it's also a huge risk in the right circumstance.

2. Or do I want to cast the spell for the same amount of focus but keep the skill slot flexible?

 

What about my idea on staffs and them being a little more and research able.

 

I am not sure about R10, but before they (staves and wands) drained the focus and it was bad to use them... using them gave you extra attack, but the focus drain prevented you from killing your opponent before you run out of focus and the auto-attack meant that you would never recharge the focus... the focus cost of damage dealt was too high. I hope this will be eventually balanced, not only to not using wands but also to using different weapons (especially bow). So far the bow is weapon every mage should use, because it does not drain focus and can interrupt enemy mages quite often and even at long distance.

I hope that 'Gandalf combo' (i.e. staff+sword) will be viable option as well. It is something I expect to be viable in the classless system, but so far such combination is only quick way to die.

 

I think as long as the advantage to having a staff is that you have a pre-casted item that is limited by the number of uses, then absolutely they should be a valuable part of the game much like you've described.

 

Whoops I missed this - yes, elemental specific staffs would be good, giving a bonus to specific disciplines. In fact a normal staff (with no magical power) would be good too! I'd assume that they would fall under the category of polearm. For wands, maybe they could fall under the category of bludgeoning weapons. This is something I noticed in R10 (maybe I got this wrong), but staves and wands didn't fall under any specific weapon category, strange!

Nostalgia alert! - in the Ultima series, staves and wands had limited use (they were enchanted and had charges) - like the Firedoom staff and Magician's Wands (Lightning and Fire)



It would be a nice addition if enchanters could re-imbue staves and wands, but they had to be prepared at a station. When out of charges, they become normal weapons - not very powerful, but still of some use.

 

Unfortunately there is a counter argument to be made. Your argument is totally based on your vision on what mages should be and doesn't include facts. Fact, a solo dungeon crawl of Ravenmoor takes 2 hours as a Mage with a staff, it takes 40 minutes as a plate wearer fighter with a two handed axe. Fact, every melee weapon has an auto attack that does more damage than a staff or a wand. Fact, a staff doesn't crit, melee weapons do. Fact, the way combat is designed auto attack is a critical part of everyone's combat plan, or it should be. Combat is designed by the dev's to include auto attack. Taking it away from mages and letting everyone else have it puts mages at disadvantage. So why would you want to be a Mage that doesn't have auto attack, unless you want to spend three times as much time in a dungeon or want to play solo, because the Mage would be gimped compared to other combat participants. Claiming that staves are overpowered is simply a way to push your vision of how a Mage should play and balances their damage and playability against mages only and not against the capabilities and playability of fighters and archers. If you don't want to auto attack, don't. But don't take it away from those that do want that capability to be competive with other classes.

 

There should be no auto-attack. But if there is, it shouldn't come without a cost.

I don't believe dungeons like Ravensmore are designed for solo mages to get through them. If they were, then spells would do a lot more damage. If you're even able to get through Ravensmore on your own without running past half the stuff in the dungeon, hats off to you (regardless of how long it took you). Regardless, auto-attack is not my main beef with staves and wands, it's one part of a very overpowered mechanic.

 

They have already said that staves and wands will hold charges in the future. They simply have them functional at this time, not balanced. Like most features in any pre-alpha game. Can't balance something when the rest of the system isn't even in place. Alchemists are supposed to enchant wands/staves with charges of spells. Alchemy isn't even in the game yet. The pieces and parts an alchemist needs to gather in order to charge a wand or stave isn't in the game yet. All of the possible spells aren't in the game yet. All of possible combos aren't in the game yet. Most of the high level spells/skills aren't in the game yet. balance is impossible at this point.

 

If something can be soloed by any combat type, it should be soloed by any combat type. Balance needs to occur at a meta level between combat types as well as a micro, internal level. If there isn't balance between combat types, the combat types that aren't competitive become useless in many people's eye and are only good for role playing and not for anything else.

 

Good point. I appreciate you reminding me of that.

I try not to assume that all of these things will magically get fixed though. New priorities shift and when the game launches there are always things that get pushed to the back burner (sometimes forever). I don't want magic to be one of those things. For that reason, I think the OP remains an accurate portrayal of where we are, today. When Alchemy comes online in R11, and improves in R12, will that make staves and wands more balanced? I hope so, but until I see it or until it appears to be headed in the right direction based on more evidence than we have today, I think it should remain Red. The current system is so far unbalanced, there's really just a lot of work to do beyond simply adding charges.

 

I totally agree, but this post is just about magic (that I'm personally requesting because I'm really into magic). My assumption is that all of the requests above will be balanced with the other systems of the game.

 

To be fair, the auto-attack was not completely the focus of Baron Drocis's argument, it was part of it as a contributing factor.

As of R10, long-ranged projectiles (bows, wands and staves) are somewhat overpowered, worse in the case of wands and staves because they consume no ammunition like bows do. A mage with roots and slows will constantly outrun a warrior and endlessly pelt them from afar.

This in turn also leads to a more recent issue: there's a reason why movement penalties are being put in place as of R11 - this is because users of ranged options were constantly evading the close ranged combatants in 'Flight Combat Simulations' (this description was given by DarkStarr himself). I've had the joy of witnessing first hand how this happens with a PvP ranged mage and melee fighter.

In my recent review of the R10 challenge dungeon, I successfully soloed up to room 19 using kiting methods and ranged combat as a Mage / Polearm combination. This would have been worse if I were a Mage / Staff or Wand user, because I could easily use the terrain to block off the melee units from reaching me, combo my glyphs, leap up and then deal a devastating series of blasts (all this while continously attacking them!). There were only 2 rooms that this could not be achieved without great difficulty - the elven armada on 17 and the Lich party on 19; then again, whatever I used as a weapon wouldn't be effective because I was just taking too much damage.

While the contrast in PvE may not be so noticeable because AI is rather 'dull' at this point, I can invite you to a duel in R11 to demonstrate this fact in PvP (but then the mechanics would have already changed somewhat).

Edit: Wow a lot of posts in between this one. Thank you Mishri for clarifying the charges / enchantment!

 

I wasn't trying to over react to the (on average) 6 points of damage a staff or a wand inflicts. But it's 6 points of damage that you either have or you don't have, so when you're min/maxing that becomes a big factor over the course of a 30 second fight. It's definitely a difference maker. So while it may not be over powered in the sense that you just pick up a staff or a wand and win every PVE fight...in competitive play it is very noticeable.

I know you understand this, Sunswords. I just wanted to expand on your thoughts to help people relate to what I'm trying to say.

 

I agree with Mishri and have been giving the dev's time to complete the combat system. So I've been trying to stay out of balancing discussions for this reason. I wanted to give them time to get everything in place before carrying on with balancing discussions between the different combat styles. If the system has auto attacks, every combat styles gets auto attacks that are balanced against each other. The auto attacks should be doing similar damage. If one combat style gets auto attack crits, they all should get auto attack crits. (Currently for some reason mages don't get crits right now while fighters do. Not talking about auto attacks, but skill versus spell damage.) If there isn't balance across combat styles, if one combat style has a capability another combat styles doesn't (unless balanced by a capability that acts the same), then that combat style will predominate over the others. (Unless you are role playing a combat style and don't care about it's playability. Then it really doesn't matter.) But considering a combat system or style in the SotA universe should balance role playing and playability, not necessarily favouring one over another.

 

@Baron Drocis - I'm actually very inspired now! I hope Challenge Dungeon comes back in R11, I have a great idea for a Wand or Staff / Mage combination that could be very, very fun (until it gets fixed in the future)