New unlocked skill cooldowns really hurt mages

I think one of the largest impacts of this cooldown change is complicating the mechanics of the deck system. I grew up playing magic the gathering and I play a lot of hearthstone, so the deck mechanic is something that I found interesting when being applied to this combat system.

I have always liked relating to a deck like you would a deck of cards. You would draw cards into your hand. Combine some cards (stack) and you can fit more cards into your hand. The cards not in your hand were in your deck, and when you draw you have a chance to get any card not in your hand currently.

This actually allowed for a good amount of determinism. With small decks you could have multiple 5 stacks locked in your hand and know "I only have 7 glyphs in my deck right now and have a 72% chance to draw an obsidian arrow"

Now, there is an additional dimension added - cooldown. Like every time you play a card it has to sit in your graveyard until this timer goes off, and then it can be shuffled back into your deck. Not only that, but each glyph has its own timer. This is no longer a system that can be easily mimicked with an actual deck of cards.

Seems like a inelegant solution to a problem that nobody is sure existed.

Cooldowns on locked glyphs doubled for a lot of spells this release. And unlocked cooldowns are supposed to be 40% of locked. Meaning that most combat glyphs this release unlocked have 80% of the cooldown they had last release while locked.

Again, seems like a heavy handed change to mitigate glyph spamming or whatever the issue was.

Why not have a more deterministic deck? Any glyph you play/discard or can't put in your hand goes into your discard pile and if you can't draw from your deck then your discard pile gets shuffled into your deck?

 

No. That was the ending of fallout 3.

What we have here is just another balance issue that can be fixed with lowering the timer.

 

A 750 dmg crit??? With what strength, int earth attunement and spell and vs what?

 

Ebone Cultist in Seq Colossus

Earth with various str... enough for 1K hp (Mid 170's when buffed). Obsidian Arrow 5 stack (1 stack can crit for 350). Earth attun is at around 160 when buffed (850ish total skill points in Earth). Note, Im running around in full chain while doing it with no fizzle chance on almost any spell, I think my worse when moving is air shield at 91% fizzle.

It does feel a little uber but at adv lvl 90, I can barely kill the new yellow con skels in Seq Colossus (1 at a time, 2 sill kill me)... so probably not... Im just high enough level over 5 skull mobs.

 

Ah right, makes sense with that high stats and a 5-stack glyph. FWIW, I consider earth magic in heavy armor more of a hybrid/melee build than "pure mage" which are usually in cloth/light armor and only use ranged spells and is by far hurt the most with cooldown changes.

 

This makes everything a big problem. The combat system is terrible. This great game is hampered by what I see as the opposite of the problem they attempted to solve. Instead of spamming spells, and actually doing something in combat, we instead have to wait and do nothing during combat.

There is not enough skills/spells and the system is also set up in a way to hamper progress like with attunments.

With combat being the heart of an MMO, the game has a massive issue. Its really sad and I dont think it can recover from it so late in development as it will require a complete overhaul of the system and no MMO has ever recovered from something like that.

 

I think a lot of this is the steep learning curve on successful decks (and gear) builds.

I'm sorry but mages wreck. I watch it every night. They are not underpowered or helpless. Every time I get walked on in PVP it's from someone with a wand.

You can sit and watch mages running through the Rise solo'ing rooms filled with mobs.

Now some could argue is a 150+ str "mage" really a mage in the classic sense, but hey... classless.

 

Its hurt everyone not only mages.
Its step on the right way.
Right name of the game was Shroud of the Mages. They are still the strongest one. Hope we will see more balance here soon.
95% of top players use mage build. Mage is the most effective build. Mages are OP in PVP. Really why nerf mages ?
I see only one part of gaming where mages are weak, they are bad in solo boss hunting now.

 

Based on my experience in recent days, adding more glyphs to the deck seem to get rid of the issue. I have around 27-30 glyphs on my deck instead of the 18 now.

 

That is not quitre true. Top players are all/mostly mages, because the attunement affects effectivity of spells a lot. However what it also means is that anyone who is not top player with high attunement has quite weak skills compared to melee/archers. Nerfing mages does nto affect only the top players though, it makes life even harder for low and medium level mages.

 

Archers class determined not by zero usage of the magic, it determines by bow in the hand, same as weapons for melee. All builds have to use magic.

Life even harder for melee and archers too.
Btw, low and mid level archers and melee miss VERY often. Different class different problems.

P.S. x5 obsidian arrow(tier 2 skill) makes 750 dmg(good armor and wands+high skills), aimed shot(tier 2 archery skill) makes max 450 dmg in best conditions (tournament class armor and weapon + target is burning + shot in the back+ high archer skills) focus consumption is pretty close and it can miss. Also in PVP its very easy to defend against aimed shot and much harder against obsidian arrow.

P.S.S. Generally I didnt understand with what here possible to argue, pure mages are OP since wipe, everybody knows it, nice that devs begin to balance this.

 

Thread kinda derailed from original point, wasn't really talking about "pure" mages power in PvP (that being said, Obsidian arrow is more a culprit of outrageous crits than any other spell since it goes through armor and you can enchant +obs arrow dmg on weapons).

Either way, I feel that forcing spellcasters to run 25 glyphs in their deck to have ranged spells accessible without 3-5secs lull in their rotation is not the way to go, whatever your feelings may be in overall balance. Just my 2 cents.

 

What is your current setup? And are you using 5-stacks only for your spell casts?

 

My old deck was 5 chain lightning 5 lightning 4 sun rays. Now I need to put in 5 chain lightning 5 lightning 5 sun rays 5 obsidian arrows and 5 death ray/water arrow to not have lulls in my rotation. So basically only 40% of my deck gets bonus from my air attunement.

Anyway I just switched to "melee mage" because the melee skill cooldowns have a much lower cooldown so I don't need nearly as much glyphs. Pure ranged mage is pretty dead at the moment (unless someone found a workaround then im all ears )

 

Exactly, faster cast speed is useless now. Ah well, guess i'll GM another stance then =/

btw I think they fixed Mind Wipe last patch.

 

I've been playing as a mage with all unlocked slots for quite some time. For example, I put all the ranged attacks in slot 1. Magic fists in slot 2. Aoe in slot 3. And so on... Each slot has a category with last slot for miscellaneous.

I did this against many suggestions that I was supposed to specialize in only one magical school. Attunement bonus yada yada.
Sadly, I haven't been able to play much since the changes, however I am getting the sense that many players' mage builds have been nerfed more than my own as a result of the changes.

Perhaps the ability to fire off ranged combat from different magical schools without waiting for cooldown is more useful than having a high attunement bonus, and sticking to one school only. At least for tier 1-2 spells.

 

It sounds like you weren't stacking, so it's unlikely you would be affected by this much at all. It's only super-affecting people who insist on 5-stacks. If you keep your stacks smaller (or don't stack at all) you wouldn't notice the change.

(note: when we talk about "stacking" we mean dragging duplicates of the same glyph onto each other so they combine into one more powerful glyph. When you do this a green number appears in the corner.)

 

I sometimes stack... but typically it never gets to more than 2 0r 3 before I deploy the skill. I could be totally wrong, however it seems to me that I can do a lot more damage in the same amount of time by just firing off the skills as they come up, rather than waiting for a 5-stack. Then again- since I am mixing so many magic schools, it would take WAY longer for me to get 5 of the same glyph, than if I were using only 1 or 2 schools.

 

I worked with Mac today and this morning and got it figured out a bit. I dropped from about 33 glyphs to 23 and locked 2 of my slots. Now my main 1-5 slots that draw 3 spells pop up a lot faster.

 

I'm constantly attacking while moving, harvesting, buffing, whatever. So, quite often, when I come across that baddie, I can get off a 5 stack of Rapid Fire or Aimed Shot.

The cooldown is too severe though, IMO.