Pure mage with a Wand - possible solution?

Hello to all fellow travellers and especially those who try to roll a "pure mage" builds like me.
The one thing that bothers me a lot is that I am forced into taking up the sword or the bow to be able to deal with foes reasonably well. The mage wands I come across in SOTA just do not work the way they are supposed to, being the "mage" weapons. 0-1 melee damage? You must be joking... wizard breaking his magic wand over someone's head to deal the whooping 1 damage is laughable concept. As is, wands are useless, even considering the -15% Fizzle chance buff some of these offer.

So what I am hinting at...

Please, turn mage wands into a ranged weapons with low to moderate ranged autoattack damage (probably slowly expending mage's Focus while turned on during battles.)

/bow
/discuss

 

It was a ranged before until someone use it as a way to train range combat without spending any arrows. Now it becomes bludgeon because of that.

Instead of using wand to do melee damage, mages would use the first tier list spells as source of the close combat damages. That fizzle reduction rate actually play some big factor on the high tier spells and when you to wear anything than just clothes.

Ever since I started playing mage before I the final wipe. I no longer use auto attack nor charge attack with my wand or staff, it's just a waste of the item durability. The bonus you can get from them out weight the lack of melee attacks.

 

Choosing what spells you are using matters a lot, but close combat is definitionely possible. Stone Fist is an instant cast 1st tier spell, that does a good amount of damage. Wand auto attack would be a waste.

You really should not use wands that you find, they are worthless. Either make a magic wand yourself or get someone in your guild to do it for you. They are worth it.

 

Thanks for your informed input. I did not know wands were exploited in such a way devs decided to remove range abilities - I came to this game right at the final wipe.
Now I do not think wand autoattack should gain you range combat skills. Just make it a simple Focus into autoattack damage conversion and mages would become much more viable. Of course I am utilizing Stone Fist as well at melee range, but lack of any utility from the wands is discouraging.

 

Pure mage is extremely viable but somewhat weak in the early game admittedly. If it helps you any, later on in the game youll be able to kill stuff much more efficiently than any weapon-class.

 

Please never do this. Ever.

We had that two years ago and it was horrible. I understand that you may enjoy the idea of running around shooting a magic "gun" but it's extremely unbalanced.

There are probably ways that we could make it balanced, but I haven't seen any signs of this combat system moving in that direction.

 

I can't see your reasoning here: how expending Focus to shoot with the wand is any different from expending arrows to shoot with the bow? You surely will have to spend money on any in-combat Focus regen consumables to keep it up.
Basically, this is another form of money into ranged damage conversion - in both cases. How is it wrong?

 

Focus is an unlimited resource while arrows still have limited amounts and also have weight. I think it would be cool to have wands with gems be 'chargeable' with a certain amount of reagents to cast an element based auto attack.

 

Well, this is an interesting idea also, but if wand autoattack is relatively weak and does not train your ranged skill then I can see no way of exploiting it... monsters will kill you eventually if you do not do something besides running out of Focus.
Plus, sword is also unlimited resource (wearing down is very slow) but it really makes a difference. All I am asking for is viable/believable way not to force every mage to become a swordplayer. Devs can make wands wear down from autoattack as well.

What I propose to do is:

Sword trains melee skill - YES
Wand trains ranged skill - NO
Sword loses durability from melee autoattack - YES
Wand loses durability from ranged autoattack - YES
Sword autoattack expends Focus - NO
Wand ranged autoattack expends Focus - YES

Pretty fair while making low-level mages' life easier.
Does it turn wands into a game-breaking weapon? Definitely no.

 

The only problem I see with this is the ONLY time I'd ever even consider trying to autoattack with my wand is when I'm -already- out of focus -which I am, all the time, and this has been worsened by yet another nerf to regen capability.

I don't think beating something with a wand or even staff should do the damage that a proper weapon does, but 0-1 is a bit stupid. Howabout at least 2-4 or something

 

Mage with Focus depleted = dead mage most of the time. Pretty reasonable and goes in line with "glass cannon" concept.

 

That'd be fine, if the focus regen rate was reasonable, if there was something you could do it improve it (maybe like in the focus tree?) and if they'd quit increasing spell costs and nerfing regen.
Yes yes I know, its alpha, its balance, yada yada yada.
This is why so many mages feel like they need to use a melee weapon, especially early on, though.
Between the focus problems and the exorbitant cost of reagents its a 'balance' issue that sorely needs addressing.

 

Wands need some love. But, they are quite nice; so long as they are player made. The random lesser wands you get from mobs are garbage, but that is intentional. As it stands, the bigger problem here really is focus costs, regen, and mages feeling rather dead in the water when OOM.

Now obviously, we cannot have mages having equivalent auto-attacks to melee/bow users. But, you could just make a wand's range only 10 (less than a bow, but still ranged) and have it do LIGHT damage. Think somewhere about ~30% less than a bow. Have this not only cause durability loss on the wand, but have some other fuel that needs to be replenished. I.E. the wand needs to have some form of gold sink associated with it.

All in all, I am just spitballing some ideas here, and trying to be reasonable with said ideas.

 

With lower Focus regen rate as it is, any wand expending Focus for an autoattack will require bringing along some food (or an alchemy potion?) to boost the in-combat Focus regeneration. Here is your gold sink.

 

As was stipulated, the wand autoattack feature is most needed for when you've no focus left - making it cost focus defeats the purpose, you'd be better off standing there getting beat on until your focus ticks up to afford another nuke, since autoattack damage is minimal and certainly not worth spending precious focus on. I think mages already have far too many cash sinks, giving a low damage, short range autoattack wouldn't completely alleviate this but it would be a small help.

 

You can still swing your sword when you are out of Focus, right?
I have power (Focus), I want to utilize my wand to channel this power against my foe. No power - no fireworks. Without Focus your only option is to bash heads with your wand or run. No difference from the sword here. If you are low on Focus, just turn the autoattack off and run for your life! Glass cannon concept, plain and pure.
I can see you are worrying about the autoattack not worth expending the Focus for it? Well, the amount of autoattack damage can be tuned based on game stats. Usually I am dead when my health is 0, not Focus (running away), so the only worry you should have as a mage (DPS class) is to maximize your Focus-to-damage output. Wand autoattack should help. The damage should probably be more %% for low-level mages, toning it down against other skills as you progress - but that's just my guess.
When choosing between magic wand allowing you to convert Focus into ranged damage and a wand shooting some rare magic berries - even from RP standpoint - the first option wins. And again: would it be game-breaking? No. Will it add to mage playability and versatility? Yes, definitely.

 

I think it is perfectly fair to give a mage a mage look weapon and have it really be a weapon. SOTA categorizes the wand as a weapon in what it is delivering.. but it is being used as a focus item (aka more a ring or necklace) than a real weapon. Please please please bring it back!

The biggest point here is what to do without focus?
If the melee dude runs out of focus (after casting mage spells) he auto attacks or charges his weapon attack and finishes off the mob
If a wand wielding mage runs out of focus - they plain have no other option but to try and run in cloth gear. Usually this ends in death.
The difference is even larger at lower levels because a sword still does great damage without being enchanted or socketed. Where the wand is just a 0-1 nothing. That just doesn't equate balance in any way shape or form. As mob resistances come into play, this will make it generally harder on the mage.

The next argument I hear is oh aug it and it will change everything!
But at the same time I can buff up any weapon.... so I am left rather unimpressed with this train of thought.

A wand is very traditionally a ranged spell weapon. Yes, I know, we don't have to do everything the way everyone else does. I agree with you on certain things as far as mechanics, but on a very common expected type of use item I can't agree.

If you are all so afraid of balance and being able to use ranged skills or avoid arrows, then add a tree to ranged that is specifically for wand type. The other ranged skills will only be active for a bow type. From there it can be balanced to specific use types. It could have a health or defense reduction associated, use could regen focus slower, penalty to moving, it could be a certain type of damage only, it can only have limited augmentations, slower auto attack rate, etc.

I really hope there is a way to make it work. I think it looked pretty cool before it got moved to bludgeon.

 

I disagree. A well crafted mage wand is very useful to a pure spellcaster. I don't have time in-between casting to bother using any type of autoattack, that would be a dps decrease for me. And I have a large enough focus pool now that I don't run out too quickly unless I'm just spamming single attacks rather than combo stacking them.

I dual wield wands. They each have:
+2.6% Spell Crit Chance
+2.5% Spell Damage
+4 INT
+4 STR
+10 Earth Attunement
-10% Reagent Use Chance
-15% Fizzle

How are all those stats not useful as a mage? Multiply them all by two since I use two identical wands at a time. These of course are pretty high end wands, so it might be difficult to get something like that now if you're just starting out, but you should be able to find a +4 or +5 wand with 1 enchant and 1 masterwork on it for pretty cheap. For the wands I'm using, I paid 8k gold each. They had exactly what I wanted on them, so the price didn't really matter to me.

The way mages work right now is, they're very weak in early game but become the most powerful class at late game. And honestly, I think it's fine that way. The slow and difficult grind in the beginning is well worth the wait for when you're dropping 250+ damage Earthquakes or Chain Lightnings on enemies. Or if you're a fire mage with a lot of investment in defensive skills, then there are certain areas you can solo farm 1 million XP per hour.

 

I am sure to try to dual-wield wands (as soon as I can afford to craft the second one), but, in a sense, you might think of these wands as of rings or bracelets instead... what use to dual-wield weapons you do not use at all? More options is always better than less options in my book. If you believe wand ranged autoattack is useless... do not activate it!

 

What if they made it to where the auto attacks have a semi decent range 10~20m and have it do no damage but instead return a small amount of focus per hit?