Release 31 has made the game unplayable...

Well for me yesterday it was unplayable.. I barely did anything and it crashed 4 times while trying to recall to my lot near Eceter mines and then again when entering into the mines..

I did check Cloth option but still crashed Perhaps I will try taking off my cloak completely.

 

Agree with original Poster 100%. Cannot even kill one patriarch bear without Focus being totally gone, 427 points. I realize I can decrease my Focus costs in a skill, but have never had a problem before. But everything mentioned are not just simple problems. They are serious making the game not only un-playable but not FUN. It seems that one thing has been totally forgotten in this release.

 

Death Magic has actually been a lot more powerful for me thus far.

 

I did not have any problems in Eceter mines either. I did notice a little more focus drop but not that much and I was still able to defeat the ghost more or less the same way..
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I did notice one thing though, is that the misses were more prevalent. I was noticing more misses while fighting the low level mob foes in first level of Eceter mines. so this also could be why some are reporting there been out of focus by the time they defeat one foe..

Given my DEX and INTEL I should not have been missing those low level foes that much I think..
Adventure level = 66
Dex = 60
Intelligence = 71

 

You are correct because the last Unity Version I am willing to call smooth running was 4.xyz

 

Ever since taking cloak off I have not crashed.

 

This will be the #1 complaint after July 28th, if it's left in it's current state. It was fine in R29, but they changed focus costs slightly in R30, and then again in R31, and it's just ridiculous now. If you play the game right, and setup your deck right, and always have glyphs to use? You run out of focus so fast it's punitive. Focus costs are too high, they need to go back to R29 values.

 

So you notice that the mobs have much higher health regeneration rate even during in combat? I suspect this might be why we have to drain so much focus to kill them.

 

I don't have any objection to the 'fixing' of the air magic stun spells, they were a bit over the top once you get really high attunement etc. Fair enough.
But the focus cost increase across the board? I was struggling for focus before the patch, now its just ridiculous. My mana drains so quickly now I think I'm going to be forced to throw my wand on a junk heap and get some sort of melee weapon just so I can get things dead before my focus is wiped out. Whereas I used to be able to run around and kill things, letting me focus regen between fights, now I'm struggling to even finish fights. Please consider re-examining this "balancing" - mages already have to deal with fizzle rates, reagent costs, wearing the lightest armor, etc - didn't really need a nerf of this magnitude. The stun spells yes, the rest, no.

 

I wish I could say the same

 

We melee guys use focus on virtually everything we do, so it's not just you mages who have the issue of unacceptable focus drain.
Besides, I don't know any melee people who don't use some magic along with their weapon.
Oh, and I agree with everything else you said in your post....

 

I totally agree. For a mage though, I can see the value of having a pointy stick for use in auto-attack for those times when the mojo has otherwise run out. It gets in attacks very quickly between spell use when mobs are in melee range.

 

I agree with all of that, including the fact that air magic stun spells were slightly overpowered previously. They've now gone the other direction though, and nerfed them too much. Somewhere between where they were and where they are would be a lot better. However, there are a lot of MUCH worse problems with combat balance at the moment; excessive focus cost and super-fast monster regen being the worst ones.

 

Once the focus cost and monster health regen are being rebalanced again, I think we will find the equilibrium in this.

 

I guess I must be doing something wrong cause I dont run out of focus, I am a polearmer mage and my inner calm is 50 and my intel is 50. I do a lot of auto attacking so that might be one reason I dont run out. I do have a crafted focus cloth armor set.

 

That's exactly the reason-autoattacks.
Either the focus regen needs to be re-evaluated, or they need to make wands/stave do a bit better than 0-1 damage. I can understand having them be 'weaker' than non-mage weapons, but 0-1? Really? Surely a big two handed staff, if used to clobber something in the head, should hurt a bit. At the moment if using mage-appropriate weapons you rely completely on spells for damage - which is fine, you're a mage, and is how it should be I think. Except now, you're out of focus far too quickly for this to be viable. At higher levels (ie grandmaster'd spells) you can still get away with quite a bit from the passives but I'm dreading trying to 'start out' as a mage with a nerf of this magnitude.