New unlocked skill cooldowns really hurt mages

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Zapatos80, Feb 25, 2017.

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  1. Zapatos80

    Zapatos80 Avatar

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    Because ranged spells have such a long cooldown, i'm often left with 3-5 seconds "lulls" with no skills at all popping up. With no auto-attack just twiddling my thumbs, cloth armor and taking a beating in spellbinder's stance, that's an eternity.

    The obvious solution is to load up on other spells but since there's only a maximum of 2 ranged spells by element (only air actually, if you dont count fireball) but this makes attunement a big problem, since the main source of damage for a mage is attunement, of which you get 40 from equipment (65ish with the new enchant if you dual wield wands) and about 20 from an armor spell at GM.

    Given that I need about 25 glyphs to not have lulls now, that means over 60% of my spells don't benefit at all from my gems and armor spell, which makes them very weak, even at GM. This is pretty disheartening, to say the least.

    Anyone else facing that problem that's come up with solutions/workarounds? Any help much appreciated!
     
  2. Vallo Frostbane

    Vallo Frostbane Avatar

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    Maybe it gets better once we have staffs and wands using ammo.

    Right now mages get nerfed every release. ;)
     
  3. Zapatos80

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    I'm GM Blades & Ranged also... and it's pretty ironic that you have enough skill in the tree to run 20-25 glyphs in a single tree, but that you can run 14 just fine since the cooldowns are so short :p
     
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  4. Vaentorian

    Vaentorian Localization Team

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    Might be nice if the cooldown, rather than being simple on/off ability to use glyphs, was a large but gradually diminishing penalty to fizzle/damage. Then if you want to spam spells you can, but they'll be much weaker and/or much more likely to fail compared to if you wait. It'd really screw with current efforts at balancing though and probably be a lot of work to implement properly.
     
  5. null2

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    Just add more glyphs to your deck, keep adding until this no longer happens
     
  6. Net

    Net Avatar

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    I suffer playing as pure mage from the release and it is getting only worse. Levelling skills is really expensive now, the cooldowns are terrible. I still wish they made casting much easier when you use wands/staves instead of weapons, the low combat focus regen is bad for mages as well, the staves of players have no aut oattack unlike other weapons and NPC mages.


    Having deck with 40 glyphs is only partial solution, I will end up with useless filler glyphs instead of no glyphs.

    Worst thing is that playing as mage I do not get xp easily and I do not grind that hard so my attunement neveer got too high, it is getting to 50ish which means I do not do much damage as it is.
     
  7. Roycestein Kaelstrom

    Roycestein Kaelstrom Avatar

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    Start using ice field to slow down the mobs seem to help a bit.
     
  8. Zapatos80

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    See bottom half of the post.
     
  9. Barugon

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    I think the 2x cooldown on unlocked glyphs is excessive. 1.5x probably would've been better.
     
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  10. Net

    Net Avatar

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    It is funny and sad because a long time ago, they did not want people to lock glyphs much so there was 2x cooldown on locked glyphs...
     
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  11. Xeethrax

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    If we have to load up on glyphs from 2 or more schools, that's going to take away a lot of variations in builds. You can't really gear for attunement in 2+ schools either or you'll gimp yourself. The spells from secondary or tertiary schools are going to hit like wet noodles, and you'll be praying for the glyphs from your preferred school to pop. You'll have less control over what happens in a fight and I personally like to feel like I have some level of control over what happens at any given time, not leave the outcome to RNGeesus. But that might be just me.
     
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  12. King Robert

    King Robert Avatar

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    Worst decision in game history. I hope they change it back I think this killed the fun of fighting.
     
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  13. Gideon Thrax

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    hey - at least they didn't move it all to the non-combat bar like they did pick pocketing. :eek:

    I've been messing around with a ranged/air deck and find that so long as I don't 5stack I can keep glyphs in the rotation - kick out a few singles and doubles on occasion and that'll keep things moving. If you have any locked glyphs and you try to 5stack every shot you're going to be twiddling your thumbs on a conservative deck... I'm trying to keep glyph selection minimal though I'm thinking these new cooldown numbers mean everyone is going to have to learn some new strategies for deck building/use.
     
  14. GrayFog

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    IMO for Mages, Wands & Staffs should have shooting effects/spells on them for auto attack that they would have to recharge from time to time with Fire, Earth, Water, Air etc. Essence that drop of mobs like, well, Elementals...
    However, let the mage decide when he wants to burn the magical source on wands/staffs...

    Dunno, in UO a Mage was fun to play...
    But in this game it's quite ugly...
     
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  15. Zapatos80

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    To be frank, I wouldn't have a problem using a variety of spells IF I could gear up for them! The fact that the vast majority of your damage comes from the attunement on your gear and armor spell makes this impossible. For example, I have 94 base air attunement (GM all except 90 air resist), but even a quasi-full GM tree almost gets overshadowed by the gear and armor spell! 40 from gems, 30 from enchants on wands and 20 from armor spell for a total of 90 from gear/spell.

    That's why forcing mages to have 25+ glyphs decks is a huge problem right now.
     
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  16. MrBlight

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    Looks and sounds like another thing pretty much forcing everyone to be a hybrid of everything.
    And yall wonder why people have gm s in everything.
     
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  17. Barugon

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    Actually, yes you can. Having attunement in one school doesn't affect the opposing school (or any other). Also, it's not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket, as some mobs can have a high resistance to some magics or can even be completely immune (like elementals).
     
  18. Vallo Frostbane

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    Usually you know what kind of mobs your attacking, so you should gear up and play a deck specialized for them to be effective. That's why he said you gimp yourself not doing that.
     
  19. 2112Starman

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    Weird, this release I finally gave up melee... for the first time in 14 months (earth build). Now Im wrecking craap in PvE and PvP like never before. I can crack a 5 skull for 750 hp now on a crit, the best crit I ever had with melee was maybe 200. Mages still have the advantage by far in this game. I've been tempted to unlearn my blunt skills but I still leave hope that they will make melee worth playing.
     
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  20. Vallo Frostbane

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    It is only earth magic that seems to be favored. All other schools you can additionally get resistant against with spells etc. Also you will find in PVE the mage simply cannot kill certain mobs. Archers are king in that regard.
     
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