Fizzle

I have found that the deeper into the game I go, the worst my fizzle rate is.

As I either level up, or as I fight more difficult monsters, my fizzle rate increases. Does anyone else notice this, or have an explanation?

Or did I miss a huge fizzle increase across the board from the last patch?

 

I think it depends on your armor. Feedback from plate wearers has been quite a bit higher fizzle. I switched from cloth to leather this release and found that I have quite a bit more fizzle as well. Remember your chances to cast go down when you are moving, too. Maybe in higher level areas you are moving a bit more? (i.e. chasing after golems in the shardfalls as they constantly move back out of range.)

 

I think I just saw someone running naked through Rat's nest testing this armor suggestion. But I might be wrong.

 

Would think this is more pvp related than armor?

 

I think I found the issue. I THINK I have been picking up some reagents that have impacted fizzle positively. I think also think that I've been standing still a lot and getting a fizzle buff. So when I went to the more challenging areas to go kill things, I have to run and cast a lot more. Thus making me lose my fizzle buff for standing and having some reagents.

User error for the win.

 

Ok, I'm now sure that I was correct before....my fizzle change is definitely going up depending on what scene I'm in. Or it's level based, like slugs.

It's the scene....in the scene my fizzle is 67%....out of scene on overland map, same spell is 82%.

That's pretty lame.

 

Are you moving vs standing still?

 

No that's not it.

 

So many penalties for using magic: 1) wear light armor so less damage mitigation, 2) stand still to fight, 3) find or buy reagents, 4) carry reagents affecting encumbrance, 5) burn reagents, 6) running back to town for reagents in the middle of battle because one ran out of supplies, and 7) fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle, fizzle...Are you finding the quality of the spells to be worthwhile enough for all of the penalties against using ranged magic? What are you finding the fun factor to be?

 

Just to throw this out there
I took a chance this release (after seeing one of the devs say that armour type is determined by chest piece) and swapped my cloth legs and boots for plate (gloves and helm was too high fizzle)
So plate legs and boots, cloth elsewhere, and about 50-60 in the focus skill that lowers fizzle chance (Follow Through?), and i almost never fizzle at all, think ive fizzled once or twice casting summon elementals, but then my summon skills are still below rank 10 (because thats just too expensive in regs to try and "train" those skills)
Still as squishy as month old tomatoes though

 

The fun factor is small. I don't like the design of the combat/magic system. I could write a book about it at this point.

It's becoming very difficult to criticize the combat/magic system though because it's hard to tell what is being done because it's a small team in an iterative process, and what is being done because the developers think it's a good idea. They honestly don't talk a lot about the combat/magic system and when they do it's not very satisfying. There's a hangout on Tuesday for 1 hour where Chris plans to answer questions, but I'm very excited about it. It's been almost 2 years of this.

Despite my negative feelings for combat/magic, R22 has been the most FUN yet, mainly because of the use based system and partly because of the small changes that were made recently with dodge, block, and parry. But that's why this is so frustrating, it often feels like we take very small incremental steps forward where I say "maybe they do get it" and then I look at the last 2 years and the amount of work left to do (and the lack of conversation) and I think "but probably not".

 

I'm wearing all cloth. I don't fizzle a lot, but when I do it seems to come in bunches, like the same spell fizzles 5 times in a row (I'm sure that's a bug and not just statistics working as intended).

The OP isn't about fizzle in general though, it's pointing out that there is either a bug or a design (feature) that is making my fizzle rate change for no reason, probably because I'm entering a different scene. It's hard to identify because it's not happening right when I enter a scene, just when I fight different things within those scenes.