What is attack speed?

There's a lot to like. It's come a long way.

But at its core, it has one glaring issue that sets it all up for failure (relatively speaking). It's all about DPS. If there's one build that is the "best" at DPS, then everyone has to pick that or lose to whoever is doing that. If they nerf it, then there's just some other build that everyone has to have. There's not enough "skill" involved in the combat system. There's some, but not enough. At the end of the day what's important is how much damage you can do in the shortest period of time.

 

Wooden shields offer only a small defense and no focus penalty. Bucklers raise your fizzle a tad, but offer a small block and avoidance chance that can be doubled if they are ever able tobe masterworked

 

Are there bucklers in the game now besides that add-on store one?

 

So much to know. I wasn't aware of that. I knew that life magic worked without fizzel at least for the basic heals. I didn't really take a look at earth magic, but I'm glad for that.

 

If "the best" dps can be defended against, you dont need it to win.

 

Yes

 

In order of trees least fizzled and most fizzled by armor: life, earth, water, sun, moon, air, fire and death, then chaos

 

do bucklers take the place of gloves, or do they require a hand to use them? This might make the difference for me. if it could actually be strapped to the wrist not hindering double handed weapons, then maybe putting on a bracer or bracelet like wonderwoman might cause a few pole arm guys and especially mages to cause them to learn some shield skills.

Personally I would love to see golden bracers or something fancy for wizard armor anyway. unlike pure warriors or pure archers, it seems the mage and the hybrid mage would be the types to wear more colorful and magical looking gear. Even the Genie from aladin had gold braclets... they sort of added to his magical appearance even if they were symbolic of his slavery to the lamp. Bit of a tangent i guess.

 

Bucklers are held in the offhand. Some mages hold a wand in the main hand and a shield in the off hand.

You trade half the bonuses of your staff, but a crafted shield and wand can bothbe socketed for the same attunment, and can be enchanted seperately for double the enchantments of a staff.

I.E: a 7.5% bonus to fire damage on wand, and another kind of bonus on the shield (or maybe even the same. Havent gem enchanted shields yet)

 

What about the ability to escape? I think escape is underrated. In WoW DPS was pretty a term coined there. Why? they all moved the exact same speed and the onlything we could do is just stand there and kill or be killed.

I think the difference is the ability to move. Far be it from a double bladed weilder to kill an air mage. NO not going to happen if they set up their skills just right. The air mage should be able to teleport far and run fast as hell.

Want to DPS me the mage says. Now you see me now you don't. ZAP lighting, flames burning... all sorts of stuff. I don't know if the highest DPS is always the winner. I think the dual weilder should probably be great at DPS, and even better should be the sneak attack dual wielder. However if a mage sees you coming the advantage of DPS shouldn't be the only factor.

 

Agreed. But take bows for example, a pure mage can't stop arrows without using a buckler, at which point he's no longer a pure mage.

If you want to be a hybrid that has 50 GM's, you can technically defend yourself against anything. Or out DPS your opponent. But you can't counter everything if you don't have everything, and in this system if you have everything then you're a hybrid which from my standpoint ruins important parts of roleplaying.

If you're not concerned with roleplaying and you don't mind using a two handed sword, wearing a bucket helm and casting fireballs while periodically switching to a bow, then the system works "ok".

 

Except in this game the double bladed wielder also casts lighting bolts that stun.

 

You will always be limited by your hotbar so you wont be readily able to counter all things in the middle of a fight. If by pure mage, you mean taking only magic skills and nothing else at all then you choose not to take advatage of equipment designed to offer defense. There are defensive spells, instead, that your going to have to utilize effectivly. But these smaller shields were designed to be mage friendly defense. So to say your not a pure mage for using defensive skills asdociated with gear, you might have to make sure you arent using any armor skills either, otherwise you arent a pure mage.

 

Right, we've been over that already. In the end, there are "best" ways to build your character, all of them hybrids that don't take into account traditional roleplaying.

For people that hate class systems and say things like "why can't my wizard wear full plate?" This is a great system because it ignores tried and tested archetypes in favor of allowing anyone to do anything. But it's not just cosmetic, it's also forcing a new reality, that everyone needs to be a hybrid to compete. I think I can just get by as a pure mage, I'll be at a disadvantage though. It's not really fair to say "that's your choice", the choice was made for me by the design team. I was always going to play a pure mage from the beginning.

 

Running 'pure mage' this time around. Love how hard the cloth and wands hit, but its defensive powers are laughable. Melee guys are easy, just stay away from em, but those archers, dang tough.
If all you do is cast there are a ton of hindrances right now. There is no Enchanting benefit for wands (all Enchants work on 'hit' not cast, if you never hit w/your wand then no bonus), the above mentioned lack of any true defense, attack speed means nothing and is a useless skill, The Sun tree makes no sense why does it have STR buffs in the passives, (should be INT, STR has plenty of other sources), all the Master-working bonuses are for melee too, (Wep Crit, Wep DMG that kinda thing).

 

That's a very good point!

 

Your locking yourself into a predefined class in a classless system,

 

T

there are enchants for casting.

 

Auto attack is not where the real damage comes from. % chance to hit drops while moving.