New Statpack
I've been thinking about this while trying to solve the "Where did all my Mages go?" question, and I've come to the conclusion that the game needs an additional statpack. I'll call it Wise.
Wise:
Stats: 11/16/11/14 or 11/15/12/14, or thereabouts
Balance/Eq: No penalties/bonuses
Sipping: No penalties/bonuses
Resists: No resistances to major damage types
The intention here is to address what I see as a major issue in the game right now, which is that the intelligence-primary professions are relegated to a rather small subset of statpacks. There's only three available statpacks with a 13 or higher int score, and two of those three(fast, intelligent) have a sipping penalty on top of their already low health. The remaining one, clever, carries a balance bonus that's useful for monks and templars and such, but entirely useless for Mages and the like.
So if you want to be an effective Mage you have to make a huge tradeoff of tankiness for it. There's no way to get reasonably tanky without dropping your damage entirely into the gutter, and this means that bashing as a Mage really, really, really sucks. Mages are regularly advised to bash below their level, and I know several ex-Mages who are ex-Mages solely because they got frustrated with their inability to bash alone, due to having to hunt way underneath their level to survive it.
Wise trades out Intelligent's eq bonus for some badly needed tankiness while maintaining a level of damage that allows them to bash and doesn't relegate them to the role of retardationbot. While I had Mages in mind when I made it, it would also be of benefit to Bards, Summoners, Wytchen, and any other profession that relies on an int-based skill to bash, and which doesn't mind trading some offense for some defense.
"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
Excellent Idea
Could we actually not sidetrack this thread immediately and amazingly off base with discussion about the Fast statpack?
It's not like there's a worldwide thread shortage making it impossible to create another one to discuss an issue that's completely unrelated to the proposed new statpack.
"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."