Magic trees... Spell for Spell

Really liked the concept of having people focus on a few magic trees instead of just everything but I feel the trees need to be balanced a little better in order to make this work. Seems like there are must have spells in each tree and I find myself opening up that branch in each magic tree in order to live as a Mage. Maybe this is intended to be this way but for someone in light armor and Polarms it just requires more trees to succeed.

I think the Devs have done a great job in this area when it comes to the first level spells. I.e. Fire arrow, ice arrow, obsidian arrow and Discharge.

Obsidian - straight dmg
Fire - Dmg over time
Ice - moderate dmg and slowdown
Discharge- multiple targets and chance to freeze.

The issues start to come in after that... And these are the two I think need some loving from the DEVs.

Defensive...
Earth - an increase dmg resist.
Water- an increase Dmg Avoidance
Air - lose Focus instead of Hp
Fire - not sure if one exists immolation maybe.

Earth and water make sense but air losing focus is bad. Focus is life and with the focus regen where it is, I would rather keep my focus and lose the HP. Now this may be better at higher levels but to start it is 1.6 mana for 1 hp so a 200 point shot from a dragon and I lose 320 mana. Pool empty, I am dead.

I would like this one to raise Combat Dodge or Parry to avoid the hits and bring it in line with earth and Water.

Balancing out the inmates would also be helpful as right now a strength and dmg avoid and resist from earth make this a must have. With no other tree having something similar.

 

I've got a friend who GMed his Shield of Air. At level 102, it is showing a 0.8 focus transfer ratio. Which is honestly still a little too much. If you could reasonably get it down to a 0.5 focus transfer ratio, then it might become useful with a large focus pool. Essentially, your focus becomes you health, so you would just stack as much focus as possible then. Focus regen is still a problem for this kind of setup though.

Your DEX, INT, and Air attunement all work towards reducing the focus transfer ratio by the way.

The worst part though is that Air also happens to be the most focus expensive magic tree. So have fun casting away 25 of your focus that you're now using as health per use of Chain Lightning.

 

maybe it would be viable with a huge mana pool but, seems to pale in comparison of Ice Shield For a Mage.

 

Yeah, every other shield and attunement increasing spell is better than Shield of Air. It's unfortunate that shield of Air also includes the Air Attunement increase on it since it's essentially unusable.

Death: Death Shield gives a flat % damage resistance to all incoming damage (heals for percentage of damage taken).
Fire: Immolation give you fire attunement and a fire DoT AoE around you
Earth: Shield of Crystal gives you +Health, and Earth's Embrace gives you Earth attunement and damage resistance with a penalty of slower movement speed.
Water: Shield of Ice gives avoidance, fire resistance, and Water atttunement.

and lastly....
Air: Shield of Air makes you run out of focus. Also gives Air attunement to increase your Air spells that you can't cast since you now have zero focus.

The unbalance in these skills is pretty clear.

 

It's been a while since I've used air shield, but it used to not fade when your focus ran out, so it at least had some value as a decent emergency escape type spell.

 

The thing with Shield of Air is... regenerating healthbar is easy. Way too easy. There is whole tree dedicated to restoring your health, and there are healing spells in most other trees now. There is about one spell that increases focus and at very high cost.

The other issue is that low level mages have terribel conversion rates on both Shield of Air and Tap Soul. So terrible that by using them they will end up losing both focus and hp at faster rate than if they ignored the skills. At GM levels those skills are owrth considering though still pretty bad.

I still think that game would be better if the damage scaled down significantly (and some enemies could stop having crazy high damage regen). Healing should be much smaller and harder imho, but focus regen should be easier to achieve.

Also with high level healing spells I can heal 5, maybe, 10 hp for each focus point. The conversion of Shield of Air is nowhere near close to that.

I think the game needs the obvious. Set conversion between focus cost (+reagent cost) and hit points, be it healing or damage. set conversions of focus cost of increased speed, higher damage avoidance and so on... Higher level spells should be slightly more effective and maybe require more focus and do more damage, but currently there seems to be no such thing. At higher levels you can regenerate both focus and health by spamming heals with tap soul which seems quite wrong to me. Where is the room for potions in that scenario? Potions should regenerate focus and health for gold, more expensive potions/consumables regenerate more.

 

I think Shield of Air just needs reworked. It would be significantly better if it increased Combat Dodge as the OP suggested instead of this whole focus transfer nonsense. Especially considering Air is supposed to be the DEX/INT magic tree and DEX = Dodge. I would much rather have that then an empty focus pool.

As it is now, nobody uses Shield of Air unless they're using it as an "Oh sh*t!" button. Which doesn't even help as much as spamming Healing Touch anyway. I don't even think my friend with Shield of Air GMed actually uses it. He just GMed it to see how bad the focus transfer ratio is at level 100.

Honestly, I really wish the devs would stop focusing so much on housing and cosmetic items and instead focus on getting this combat and skill system balanced right. There are too many skills that just aren't worth using because their damage is too low, the benefits they provide aren't worth it, or they actually hurt you more than they help.

Look at Undead Mastery under the Death tree for example... summon effectiveness provides no benefits. It doesn't increase you summon's health or damage. It's currently a completely worthless innate skill. Death Mastery is also pretty bad... at level 80, it gives you a whopping +8% healing from life steal skills. 8% of a 40 damage death touch gives you a whole +3.2 more life steal. Seriously... a whole 3.2 extra health from an innate skill at level 80. That percentage is just way too small to make any difference.

 

yeah there is a lot of work on Balacing needed accross all the tree's. Especially with The innates, how earth has two innates that affect STR, Dmg Resist, Dmg Avoid. And all the other trees have absolutely nothing compatible is ridiculous.

Earth should not have avoid at all, if anything is should be a penalty to avoid because most earth will generally slow you down.

Add the avoid to the water innate with increase dex/Int

Add combat dodge to the air innate with increase dex/Int

Maybe for Fire... A heat feedback that returns dmg when someone hits you with increase STR/Dex

 

As it is now, SoA is a joke. You'd be better casting ANYTHING else for the same resources/effort, than dying by focus depletion.

I know that Air tree was OP some releases ago. But the nerf bat, paired with focus regen reduction across the board, resembles more a nerf nuke...

 

Yep, Air has a higher focus cost, a 50% higher reagent cost for chain lighting than any other magic type, a 100% higher reagent cost for Lightning compared to any other magic type, it had a reduction to it's damage, and it has a worthless shield skill. It's also the most impacted magic type by the focus regen reduction due to its higher focus costs.

I suppose you can see why I went from a heavily invested full Air mage to an Earth mage now. If the goal was to make players stop using Air altogether or to suffer for using it, then I believe they've accomplished that goal. It sucks because Air (Lighting) has always been my favorite element (besides Death and Necromancy, which aren't technically elements) in every other game.

 

Air got nerfed. Recently fire took a big hit. Soon they'll realize earth is OP now and will likely be up for the nerfbat. Given enough time magic will be as weak as melee. 'Balance.'

 

I think you don't want that to happen. And I agree, they really just need to balance out what they have not need everything to nothing and call it balance.

 

Shield of Air is obviously more of specific use kinda spell, but do not underestimate it. In groups, so long as you're not being hit, it DOES give attunement. On top of that, it has very potential impacts in PvP by almost effectively doubling the amount of damage you can withstand. It also removes Torpid Torment if your opponent has hit you with that.

Admittedly, it does require a very focused air build. Need high attune, high dex, and the skill at least GM'd to start becoming effective. On top of that, all of your best offensive spells are now air spells which cost ridiculous focus amounts. But hey; ups and downs for everything eh? Let's not nerf stuff. Let's buff other things to bring them up to snuff.