Meh, I'm old-fashioned, but I'd like there to just be classes in the game that shoot high damage fireballs at people without an affliction tracking setup. Basically, I'm gettin' too old for this combat.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Heh. That's sort of what we did with the Druid profession - while it's a bit more involved than that, it is more or less intended as a "straight damage" one.
Meh, I'm old-fashioned, but I'd like there to just be classes in the game that shoot high damage fireballs at people without an affliction tracking setup. Basically, I'm gettin' too old for this combat.
I honestly agree. There's nothing wrong simple combat for some classes. I'm sure if you invest a lot of work it is rewarding and deep, but just feels like another timebomb. I guess we'll see what happens with the beta.
Disrupt is a primary spell, so while you indeed can combo it, none of the combinations is particularly powerful.
So, hey. I really had to broadside this before the beta, but what the hell? Unless I'm mistaken, you'll be able to toss out disrupt/confusion in one go. Even the people who made wardancer knew this was a bad idea. Especially when you can follow up with 2 affs.
Call me jaded, but having an affliction class(I'm counting attunements as afflictions) that gets bonus damage for using afflictions who can punish you for curing (hello, hunter) all while setting up scaling % based damage modifiers is a bit "whoa." I thought the goal of all the new classes was to avoid time bombs. This class is going to have two modes. "Hey, why is this guy poking me?" After a few rounds of poking, it's going to be, "OH MY GOD, SOMEONE HALP." There will be no middle ground. It won't even be fun to fight against because if I cure, I take damage. If I don't cure, I take affs and never have equilibrium again. Then for no reason except for a karmic slam dunk, no-talent button masher switches from ice/fire fire/ice and nukes me for 50-100% more damage.
Do separate attunements count as separate afflictions?
Can I specify which attunement I want to heal? I'd like not to get nuked by lava, focus fire attunement.
I don't like mages having access to impatience/confusion every round while stacking attunements you'll need to focus away.
I don't like the idea of quadruple afflictions some rounds, especially since the attunement is going to bite me in the ass.
What you're setting up here is the hunter dilemma all over again. Do I cure impatience so I can focus (and take damage) and eat the enhanced damage from nuking (probably crazy from attunements). Or do I try and prioritize the attunement curing and just eat the slower curing with impatience (which means I'll get the attunement again the same round).
Honestly, this class reads like Drunter and it makes me scared.
My problem with the idea is that, in a way, we've reversed the problems with Imperian combat.
It used to be that you needed the complex healing system to even have a chance at surviving, because anything simple was just a death sentence. And so we introduced the G-bot, and it was awesome. Now you don't need a complex healing system to avoid completely sucking at the game.
... you just need a good affliction tracker, comprehensive knowledge of how their healing priorities work, an in-depth knowledge of how all the healing balances and afflictions interact, and an expert's knowledge of affliction combat to avoid completely sucking at the game.
So while we're no longer in a state where any fumble-fingered halfwit with an affliction class can overwhelm joe average, we're also at a point where most of the people you run into aren't good enough with their class to be a threat.
Unless, of course, you're Anti-magick, in which case EVERY class gets a strong damage offense that lets you run a damage button offense and still be effective while running a tanky statpack.
Look at Magick. We're got a crapload of druids. Everybody is running druid. Why? Because it lets us run teams AM style. We walk in. We hit people. They die. There's no farting around with afflictions. There's no getting pigeonholed into a glass cannon statpack.
There's maybe 3-5 people in the game who will go HELL YES ANOTHER AFFLICTION CLASS, and approximately ZERO of them actually play Mages right now. I expect the change to actually be a flop with the current crowd of players. Why? Because most of our fights are obelisks and shardfalls and such. And let's compare offensive styles in a shardfall.
Mage: Walks in the room. Can't use crystal powers immediately cause it hasn't followed yet. Starts building affinities and working on their affliction pattern to actually do some damage or get a kill.
Druid: Walks in room. Hits man with hitting stick. Hits again.
PLEASE rethink Mage as affliction primary and aim towards a more moderate spread.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Heh. That's sort of what we did with the Druid profession - while it's a bit more involved than that, it is more or less intended as a "straight damage" one.
Yes, but it's not a wizard class. I want a Pyromancer, or some kind Witch Elf so to speak. I realize there are damage classes in the game, I just wanted a sweet caster one so that if I ever decided to roll another Blood Elf I could do some annoying RP (largely to upset Lionas) where in shout about FIRE AND FURY. It's largely a cosmetic thing for me.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
There's maybe 3-5 people in the game who will go HELL YES ANOTHER AFFLICTION CLASS, and approximately ZERO of them actually play Mages right now. I expect the change to actually be a flop with the current crowd of players. Why? Because most of our fights are obelisks and shardfalls and such. And let's compare offensive styles in a shardfall.
Most of these people aren't useful in teams, at all.
First: A+. This class looks very interesting, for sure. I like a lot of this on paper, though some of my concerns match others here.
Second: how does attunement track? Can 3 Mages outpace your attunement curing by spamming one element?
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
First: A+. This class looks very interesting, for sure.
This right here should come across like:
Absolutely. An interesting class design is clearly overpowered and we should go back to the dark ages in terms of uniqueness and system.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
PLEASE rethink Mage as affliction primary and aim towards a more moderate spread.
I can certainly switch some things around, that's not an issue. I don't really view the class as an "affliction primary" one, though. It definitely has a big emphasis on these, but they're not the only strategy available.
I would like to throw out the idea that if Khizan is correct and magick does not want to play as mage, I will gladly accept the class on behalf of AM and have fun with it ^_____^
I would like to throw out the idea that if Khizan is correct and magick does not want to play as mage, I will gladly accept the class on behalf of AM and have fun with it ^_____^
PLEASE rethink Mage as affliction primary and aim towards a more moderate spread.
I can certainly switch some things around, that's not an issue. I don't really view the class as an "affliction primary" one, though. It definitely has a big emphasis on these, but they're not the only strategy available.
Attunement between multiple mages stacks, yes.
To temper this statement, however, we said the same of Druid at the end of beta, re: Reclaim vs damage kill. I don't see Reclaim used as much besides a fringe strategy and a snipe as a cleave.
Eventually, people distill the class down. Mage looks like it will distill down to a Hunter-esque class who always has the poison sting effect on.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>ass, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I just wish Magick didn't have so many high skill floor classes. Renegade, Hunter, and now Affliction Mage?
You get new players into these class and it's painful to watch. Firstly, since they're affliction based, they're garbage-tier without high skills. This applies to both skills as in lessons(You need all your skills to properly afflict and kill), and skills as in "player ability." And on top of that you need a crapload of high level combat knowledge about the game, and you need the coding ability and knowledge to properly track afflictions and determine the next ones.
I remain convinced that the secret behind AM's long-term dominance of the game(probably a solid 50/25/25 with AM/Magick/Demonic over the length of the game. Maybe 60/20/20), is their classes are just so much more forgiving. They can all pick athletic or strong, so bashing is always easy and they're innately durable in groupfights. They all have a simple "hit this button to do lots of damage" move, and they can blindly repeat this and be useful in fights. And none of them really NEED more than one trans skill to be useful in a fight.
Your new priest hits trans Fayth and he's set. He's a lean mean teaming machine. Your new hunter hits trans shapeshifting? Claw. Claw. Claw.
Magick does NOT need another complicated affliction class with a high skill floor. Hell, we need to lower the skill floor on our other classes, so that new players can get involved in combat without needing tri-trans skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of afflictions.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
I remain convinced that the secret behind AM's long-term dominance of the game(probably a solid 50/25/25 with AM/Magick/Demonic over the length of the game. Maybe 60/20/20), is their classes are just so much more forgiving. They can all pick athletic or strong, so bashing is always easy and they're innately durable in groupfights. They all have a simple "hit this button to do lots of damage" move, and they can blindly repeat this and be useful in fights. And none of them really NEED more than one trans skill to be useful in a fight.
Your new priest hits trans Fayth and he's set. He's a lean mean teaming machine. Your new hunter hits trans shapeshifting? Claw. Claw. Claw.
Magick does NOT need another complicated affliction class with a high skill floor. Hell, we need to lower the skill floor on our other classes, so that new players can get involved in combat without needing tri-trans skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of afflictions.
I've been convinced of all this (especially the bold) since it started. Demonic is in the same boat as Magick.
Look at our off season trades. Unremarkable combatants for their demonic stint. Then they put on the team AM jersey, rolled strong and athletic and suddenly mattered, despite not showing any sort of marginal improvement (mechanics wise).
Absolutely. An interesting class design is clearly overpowered and we should go back to the dark ages in terms of uniqueness and system.
You mistake the snark here. The class is inventive and neat. The dig here is at you. Historically speaking you're the canary in the coal mine for broken.
I wouldn't say it's the secret. Does it factor in? Absolutely. However, as I've said, Magick and Demonic have had heavy hitter options. Do they have as many as AM? Nowhere near, but the options are on the table.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Everyone seems to be completely ignoring the fire skills just because everyone has a high fire resist. He can always just turn up the raw damage of the skills to adjust for the base fire resist everyone has. There's also a skill to negate Frost. Stacking the 3+ ways to tick fire damage and pushing to a high fire attunement opens ways to kill with Xeroderma and/or high-attunement attacks like Lavablast. Long as Garryn balances everything right, this could function as a damage class as well.
I think this new Mage is closer to the other slower affliction classes than Hunter. There is some burst to this, but it's more of an overwhelm mechanic from what I see. But in general, I don't think Mage isn't going to get 20 second kills unless someone's got their curing off completely. On the other hand, it doesn't look anywhere near as fragile as Hunter, so that's a plus.
@Khizan I see why you don't want any other complicated aff classes added to Magick, but the fire skills are there to give easier options to people looking for a simple attack combo. If the numbers are right as far as damage goes, I'm fairly certain I could make this useful in shardfalls. And those utility skills are pretty sexy.
Oh, and I'll go on record now and say that Calcify looks like it's probably too powerful with those numbers, but I guess we'll see when the beta rolls around.
Edit: Oh, and I'll note this before the inevitable dislikes start rolling my way. I know that historically, hybrid classes tend to suck at everything they try to do and fire damage tends to be useless, but I think Garryn's intent is to try and make both of these things work in Mage.
It looks interesting at least, which is the first step.
Mage was the most boring and linear class in the game before, it drastically needed something other than 'embed vibes, staffcast lightning at' to contribute to gameplay. The trick will be keeping the pacing right, magick doesn't need another long set up class like assassin or bard - nor do they need more druids.
Everyone seems to be completely ignoring the fire skills just because everyone has a high fire resist. He can always just turn up the raw damage of the skills to adjust for the base fire resist everyone has.
And then you utterly obliterate the lowbies who do not have those resists.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Since the class is going to change so drastically, will you be doing refunds for people who already have the Mage profession, yet don't want to be afflictionmages?
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Since the class is going to change so drastically, will you be doing refunds for people who already have the Mage profession, yet don't want to be afflictionmages?
I don't really think that 'afflictionmages' is an accurate depiction of the profession, but yes, it's quite likely, akin to what we did with bonders.
All my theory crafting and waaambulancing aside. Mages look cool. Like I said before, it's really inventive and a lot of the mechanics look neat. I like that we're moving away from ALL DPS, ALL THE TIME and moving to a more dynamic flow of combat where you want to spike dps to try and put someone down.
So, since I never say it. @garryn You do good work.
Everyone seems to be completely ignoring the fire skills just because everyone has a high fire resist. He can always just turn up the raw damage of the skills to adjust for the base fire resist everyone has.
And then you utterly obliterate the lowbies who do not have those resists.
Do we normally build classes around lowbie combat?
Everyone seems to be completely ignoring the fire skills just because everyone has a high fire resist. He can always just turn up the raw damage of the skills to adjust for the base fire resist everyone has.
And then you utterly obliterate the lowbies who do not have those resists.
Do we normally build classes around lowbie combat?
There's a difference between balancing around lowbies and balancing around someone who doesn't have thermology/constitution transed and class buffs that have fire resist. While yes, ideally you would balance around omnitrans the reality is that you can't balance around it all the time when it comes to damage and resist holes.
Especially when you consider the effect artifacts start to have on damage output.
You balance around omni-trans, yes, but you also have to account for the many, many people who don't have full suites of miniskills and class buffs and such.
I mean, if you balance everything around "It can't damagekill Khizan/Juran/Risca/Selthis yet", you're going to be oneshotting people like you.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Comments
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
I honestly agree. There's nothing wrong simple combat for some classes. I'm sure if you invest a lot of work it is rewarding and deep, but just feels like another timebomb. I guess we'll see what happens with the beta.
Call me jaded, but having an affliction class(I'm counting attunements as afflictions) that gets bonus damage for using afflictions who can punish you for curing (hello, hunter) all while setting up scaling % based damage modifiers is a bit "whoa." I thought the goal of all the new classes was to avoid time bombs. This class is going to have two modes. "Hey, why is this guy poking me?" After a few rounds of poking, it's going to be, "OH MY GOD, SOMEONE HALP." There will be no middle ground. It won't even be fun to fight against because if I cure, I take damage. If I don't cure, I take affs and never have equilibrium again. Then for no reason except for a karmic slam dunk, no-talent button masher switches from ice/fire fire/ice and nukes me for 50-100% more damage.
My problem with the idea is that, in a way, we've reversed the problems with Imperian combat.
It used to be that you needed the complex healing system to even have a chance at surviving, because anything simple was just a death sentence. And so we introduced the G-bot, and it was awesome. Now you don't need a complex healing system to avoid completely sucking at the game.
... you just need a good affliction tracker, comprehensive knowledge of how their healing priorities work, an in-depth knowledge of how all the healing balances and afflictions interact, and an expert's knowledge of affliction combat to avoid completely sucking at the game.
So while we're no longer in a state where any fumble-fingered halfwit with an affliction class can overwhelm joe average, we're also at a point where most of the people you run into aren't good enough with their class to be a threat.
Unless, of course, you're Anti-magick, in which case EVERY class gets a strong damage offense that lets you run a damage button offense and still be effective while running a tanky statpack.
Look at Magick. We're got a crapload of druids. Everybody is running druid. Why? Because it lets us run teams AM style. We walk in. We hit people. They die. There's no farting around with afflictions. There's no getting pigeonholed into a glass cannon statpack.
There's maybe 3-5 people in the game who will go HELL YES ANOTHER AFFLICTION CLASS, and approximately ZERO of them actually play Mages right now. I expect the change to actually be a flop with the current crowd of players. Why? Because most of our fights are obelisks and shardfalls and such. And let's compare offensive styles in a shardfall.
Mage: Walks in the room. Can't use crystal powers immediately cause it hasn't followed yet. Starts building affinities and working on their affliction pattern to actually do some damage or get a kill.
Druid: Walks in room. Hits man with hitting stick. Hits again.
PLEASE rethink Mage as affliction primary and aim towards a more moderate spread.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Second: how does attunement track? Can 3 Mages outpace your attunement curing by spamming one element?
Absolutely. An interesting class design is clearly overpowered and we should go back to the dark ages in terms of uniqueness and system.
Attunement between multiple mages stacks, yes.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Attunement between multiple mages stacks, yes.
To temper this statement, however, we said the same of Druid at the end of beta, re: Reclaim vs damage kill. I don't see Reclaim used as much besides a fringe strategy and a snipe as a cleave.
Eventually, people distill the class down. Mage looks like it will distill down to a Hunter-esque class who always has the poison sting effect on.
I just wish Magick didn't have so many high skill floor classes. Renegade, Hunter, and now Affliction Mage?
You get new players into these class and it's painful to watch. Firstly, since they're affliction based, they're garbage-tier without high skills. This applies to both skills as in lessons(You need all your skills to properly afflict and kill), and skills as in "player ability." And on top of that you need a crapload of high level combat knowledge about the game, and you need the coding ability and knowledge to properly track afflictions and determine the next ones.
I remain convinced that the secret behind AM's long-term dominance of the game(probably a solid 50/25/25 with AM/Magick/Demonic over the length of the game. Maybe 60/20/20), is their classes are just so much more forgiving. They can all pick athletic or strong, so bashing is always easy and they're innately durable in groupfights. They all have a simple "hit this button to do lots of damage" move, and they can blindly repeat this and be useful in fights. And none of them really NEED more than one trans skill to be useful in a fight.
Your new priest hits trans Fayth and he's set. He's a lean mean teaming machine. Your new hunter hits trans shapeshifting? Claw. Claw. Claw.
Magick does NOT need another complicated affliction class with a high skill floor. Hell, we need to lower the skill floor on our other classes, so that new players can get involved in combat without needing tri-trans skills and an encyclopedic knowledge of afflictions.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Look at our off season trades. Unremarkable combatants for their demonic stint. Then they put on the team AM jersey, rolled strong and athletic and suddenly mattered, despite not showing any sort of marginal improvement (mechanics wise).
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
-Noctusari is expensive.
@Khizan I see why you don't want any other complicated aff classes added to Magick, but the fire skills are there to give easier options to people looking for a simple attack combo. If the numbers are right as far as damage goes, I'm fairly certain I could make this useful in shardfalls. And those utility skills are pretty sexy.
Oh, and I'll go on record now and say that Calcify looks like it's probably too powerful with those numbers, but I guess we'll see when the beta rolls around.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
@Garryn
Since the class is going to change so drastically, will you be doing refunds for people who already have the Mage profession, yet don't want to be afflictionmages?
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
So, since I never say it. @garryn You do good work.
There's a difference between balancing around lowbies and balancing around someone who doesn't have thermology/constitution transed and class buffs that have fire resist. While yes, ideally you would balance around omnitrans the reality is that you can't balance around it all the time when it comes to damage and resist holes.
Especially when you consider the effect artifacts start to have on damage output.
@Dicene
You balance around omni-trans, yes, but you also have to account for the many, many people who don't have full suites of miniskills and class buffs and such.
I mean, if you balance everything around "It can't damagekill Khizan/Juran/Risca/Selthis yet", you're going to be oneshotting people like you.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."