Fizzle sucks hard now

Even if someone plays a full melee character, it has to still cast buffs. As melee or archer you don't wear cloth armor and so you have X% fizzle chance which seems is increased now. Casting spelss while running is now impossible. As I adressed it 2 weeks ago https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/skills-priority.76533/#post-745688, in a mixed lightning-archer deck, my lightning/chain lighting glyphs apear way more often than my rapid fire glyphs. With this and the increased fizzle it's not fun to fight in a fizzle festival when no rapid fire glyphs appear. Shall I now wear cloth armor or is the purpose to not mix physical and magical decks?

 

Atos commandments:
1. Thou shall not melee mage.
2. Thou shall not tanky mage.
3. Mages shall stand still and be brittle.

Thus saith the Atos.

 

Even heals should be without fizzle or they put bandages for melee in .

 

It seems like they are starting to implement important choices regarding skills to create different playstyles.
Either you are using heavy armor and thus receive lesser damage or you choose light armor and you are able to effectively heal yourself.
Looks like you have now to choose and do not get just the benefits without any (relevant) disadvantages...and that sounds like group play will become more interesting and playing different roles will be more important.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I would like that!

 

Maybe, maybe not. In R37 they implemented different resistances to NPC, so mages are forced to do also physical damage. With this increased fizzle and, what I noticed now, "missing" while shooting with bow, this is not conclusive.

 

No mages dont need to, they need a mate or group who do it.
If everybody can fight, craft, do everything people complain.
If they get more restrictions people complain as well.

If they additionally adress the negative effects that all physical weapon skills schould do on Magic skills and reinvent the sufferings from diametral Schools, the cherry picking and doing everything is over. And the people who have to many trees aktive and GM skills in it should have Problems until they didnt unlearn and choose specific trees.
But they still have Millions of XP in their Pool, so everything would be fine.

 

I'd say let's feel it out for a week or so and see what people come up with in the new system.

 

What's your Focus Follow Through innate looking like? It's not enough to counter the recent nerf, but it helps. I run an archer deck and wear a heavy chest piece and some leather - R38 is giving me more fizzle than before too... the Focus tree seems to be helping some.

 

i've 2 chain mail items and i can make a chain lighting when running with a % of 58 ... this seems a little be TOO MUCH.... i can understand a 68% ... i'm running and a mage doesn't equip iron things.. BUT... on some shards of UO (again UO) ... the fizzle chances to cast a spell with IRON GLOVES are 70% .. use an iron ELM.. reduce also by 50% ... a mage can equip .. legs armour and boots without any issue...

GLOVES 70%
ELM 50%
CHEST 20%
LEGS 10%
BOOTS... no fizzle..

 

I actually noticed this change and I run all cloth as a healer but use buffs from the Air tree for air's embrace(GM) and only this tree I noticed that if I am moving I now have a 95% chance to cast it versus a 99% chance to cast it before the patch. Standing still it's still 100% so something with movement changed.

 

Haha, I don't want to be forced to play with others. If game force people to play in groups, the playerbase will decrease rapidly as in every games a huge amount of people are singleplayers.

 

Is part of this obviated by potions? You mention that it's hard even for buffs.

 

i thought that we were all looking for that different game...

the one where we were not forced to go down the same path as someone else. that one build that was better than everything else could be.

it seems that they are making our choices matter now to some extent. i am hoping that they will continue down this path of making the choices of our play styles matter.

and not have to be a sheild carrying wand waving mage in a chainmail chest the rest cloth.

 

@nonaware yes exactly this.

@TarrNokk not constraint Groupon, but maybe you arent ready now as a SP to do t4 or t5 and need to go back to T3 until your build, what was neccessarily nerfed is more powerfull to do t4/ 5 again?!?

 

Spot on. I am a soloer as well who enjoys MPO mode because it feels more alive and I have friends there. BUT I PLAY solo, and help others if I see they need it.... EQ forced group lay, when they did I and most of my friends quit.... hope that is not what SOta is doing, they promised solo play .... only reason why I invested in this game was the ability to play how ever I wanted.... was MY choice.....

 

I wish that's what he said, but I don't think he's trying to do that. I think he's trying to make it so being in full plate armor isn't the "best" way to play this game.

As a player that only wears robes, I appreciate that, a lot.

 

I am alvl 89 with Ranged combat and rapid fire on 120 and air school almost all GMed. I would get bored really fast if I would go back to T3/T4 zones. I do The Rise all alone which is now harder than before. I think I am ready for T5

 

I've been using all chain except for cloth gloves, halberd, all theuragy gems in armor, ring, weapon (with galvanic blast!) and a deck mostly composed of a couple of halberd skills and AOE spells from earth, air, and death. I'm a poor theorycrafter/deck builder, but this had been serving me pretty well so far. I wouldn't say the new fizzle chance completely breaks this approach, but it certainly disrupts it. I'll have to rethink some things.

I wonder if it may be time for a 'math polish pass'. There have been several instances since persistence of players planning tactics and builds around systems, only to be told that there was in fact a formula error in the programming making things easier, or more aligned with certain tactics than intended. I have no problems with balancing occurring, but it makes it more difficult to find that balance when there are explicit programming errors making things work in a non-intended manner. Perhaps this has been done and the only way to verify these errors is through gameplay, but shouldn't these types of things be detected on internal testing? I assume there's a QA person that collects data with various builds and combinations of equipment that is checked back against formularies?

 

The result of the skill based and not class based system that sota has is that you can build any char you want.
But i think many players are missing the part, that not every combination of skills has to be usefull or strong.

Hybrid chars chan get really "komplex" when you want to use them effectively. And they often shine in special situations.
Some are build to be extremely effective in 1 on 1 pvp, others are allrounders.

Hybrid does not mean "take the best 3 shools togethers". The key of mastering a hybrid class is to find the best possible combination of given conflictive skills.

For example:
I play a Death mage with shield and mace. As an armor i wear cloth with bone chest. The most spells i use, are fast "low fizzle chance" spells like death touch and death ray or lighting.
With this combination of armor and shield, i have a relatively good value in avoid/block/resist and still have a low fizzle chance plus all the debuffs/stuns/knockbacks/knockdowns from the mace tree.

 

Im a melee, I have been playing a lot since R38 yesterday, and I cant tell that im fizzling anymore than I was before (which wasnt much). I wear all leather armor, I dont think Ive ever fizzled a heal spell, and my str buff works 100% of the time. My dex buff casts 100% of the time if Im still, and about 60% of the time if I am running (which is OK with me, cuz Im a melee, not a mage). Dash is about the same as the dex buff, though Sprint works 100% of the time.
Even immolation rarely fizzles. I cast several other spells (stone fist, flame fist, obsidian arrow, fire arrow, ignite weapon, night sight, earthquake, light, and purify) and they succeed 100% of the time.

What I do notice is I am using reagents a lot more. I guess I cant just use the same 10 of each reagent all release anymore lol. Even this is not an alarming change, it feels more "normal" or more expected that Id use regs a bit more often.