>Well, yes, but just like a TM spell is more dangerous in the hands of a Warrior Mage than a Trader, a throwing hammer is more dangerous in the hands of a Barbarian than a Moon Mage, assuming we're not talking about everyone having all tertiary skills capped out.

For this to be technically true you would need to have a guild based stamina recovery bonus and pool size bonus.

But every guild recovers stamina at the same rate using the same pool derived from the same statistics.

Magic doesn’t play by the same rules as other skill sets. It can dish damage on par and in some cases surpassing high damage special abilities like dual load while at the same time buffing and debuffing in combat and serving utilitarian functions. Magic primaries generally have the best buffs because it’s their thing but the other stuff is also their thing; they have access to the best offensive magic. Skill set placement means little when you can completely overcome deficiencies so as to compete on equal footing with, and sometimes stand above, others on skills in a higher-placed skill set. For that reason it bugs me when anyone suggests contested spells should contest magic skills rather than stats. How many eggs do we want to put in the one basket to which not everyone has equal access. I digress...

In my own guild home on these forums I’ve talked about converting glyphs and other abilities to magic over much the same concerns raised here. Bear in mind, it’s not a popular opinion and I get that. In my heart of hearts, I want less reliance on magic. I don’t want to feel like just a bad mage. Still, I recognize the price I pay to have things that way. So, I feel for NMUs.

>Well, yes, but just like a TM spell is more dangerous in the hands of a Warrior Mage than a Trader, a throwing hammer is more dangerous in the hands of a Barbarian than a Moon Mage, assuming we're not talking about everyone having all tertiary skills capped out.

Wrong, so wrong. 500 ranks of HT will give the same effect no matter what the guild is. Barbarians don't get bonus damage just because they're weapon prime. Likewise with TM, a Warmie casting strange arrow at 100 mana will get the same results as a Trader casting strange arrow at 100 mana. Warmies are so dangerous because they get cyclical TM on top of things like Dragon's Breath while also casting a third TM spell.

>Barbarians don't get bonus damage just because they're weapon prime. Likewise with TM, a Warmie casting strange arrow at 100 mana will get the same results as a Trader casting strange arrow at 100 mana. Warmies are so dangerous because they get cyclical TM on top of things like Dragon's Breath while also casting a third TM spell.

What in blazes are you talking about? Magic primaries don't get bonus damage, that's my whole point. Are you talking about attunement pool, and then claiming that because they have more attunement, that translates to more damage?

I follow your math in theory, but it doesn't work like that in practice. I'm going to leave Warrior Mages out of this, because they absolutely do get bonus damage to the actual damage template for some spells, because they are Warrior Mages. Let's take a neutral hypothetical situation:

~ Moon Mage Bob is casting Burn at Paladin Joe.

What is Bob doing? He's probably snap-casting (or close to it), because he wants to thrash Joe before Joe can land a Halt. Maybe he managed to snap MB and is now hiding and waiting for full prep. Now, when Bob is casting, he immediately runs into the first two limiting factors: the mana he can pump into the spell, and the speed he can reach successful prep (whether full prep or partial prep at a lower mana). The third major limiting factor is effective his TM skill vs. Joe's effective defenses.

You're arguing that because Bob has more attunement, this translates to more spells being cast, yes? This only matters in a situation where the fourth limiting factor, max mana pool, comes into play, and it hardly ever does. The first three limiting factors are much more significant.

Or are you talking about magic primary giving you the ability to pump more mana into your spell faster, and this being equivalent to raising a weapon's stats? Magic offers unique benefits, but the core of the argument is that the template itself (i.e. any given non-Warmie TM spell) doesn't distinguish between skillset placement, just like a throwing hammer doesn't.

>>Magic doesn’t play by the same rules as other skill sets. It can dish damage on par and in some cases surpassing high damage special abilities like dual load while at the same time buffing and debuffing in combat and serving utilitarian functions. Magic primaries generally have the best buffs because it’s their thing but the other stuff is also their thing; they have access to the best offensive magic. Skill set placement means little when you can completely overcome deficiencies so as to compete on equal footing with, and sometimes stand above, others on skills in a higher-placed skill set. For that reason it bugs me when anyone suggests contested spells should contest magic skills rather than stats. How many eggs do we want to put in the one basket to which not everyone has equal access. I digress...<<

I love you Warb. I think you're kind of mad about not much, though.

I mean, buffs obey the same caps and progression rules regardless of guild, and every guild has buffs that are thematic to them. Unique buffs are rare but I think each guild has one or two. For example, Paladins have Divine Armor, which as far as I can remember is unique.

Paladins also have a really good selection of stat boosting buffs. Divine Guidance, Martial's Order, and Clarity provide Wisdom, Discipline, and Intelligence. That makes Paladins better debilitators than (I think) any of the Magic primary guilds. They have Heroic Strength and Courage for Strength and Stamina. Sentinel's Resolve with Veteran Insight gives Reflex. The only stats Paladins can't buff with their own spells are Charisma and Agility. Paladins can buff all their offensive melee skills and the stats of their weapons, too. And being magic tert doesn't make any of that worse in any way - it just means the Paladin is slower buffing up because they need to preserve attunement.

And being magic tert, they can learn useful skills faster than a magic prime. I mean, if Armor was a set of useful skills instead of Shield and maybe Defending and some skills to farm TDPs off of. Rangers might be a better example in this case. =(

Then consider that with a cap of 20% on skill buffs, buffing a secondary skill is more or less bringing you to the level you would have been at were the skill primary for you. If the skill had been primary when you buffed yourself, you would have been at 20% over that - SUPER primary level, if you will. Having more ranks is always better than having less assuming you can buff yourself in both situations.

All that is to say that I think when you look at things in detail, the grass is not necessarily greener.

Please remember to keep this discussion constructive and avoid attacks on others. Thank you.

Iristi
DragonRealms Board Monitor

Any questions or comments, please contact me at MOD-Iristi@play.net or Senior Board Monitor Helje at DR-Helje@play.net.

>I love you Warb. I think you're kind of mad about not much, though.

<3 you too, man. I don't think I've ever seen you riled up. All we can do is fight bias, and it's clear where mine are. ;) My over-arching desire is for a a good, lasting game, though, and I'm totally open to being proven wrong. Maybe you'll recall I was very team magic on here before Kodius upped the damage a lot on it in one of these decimal updates.

>TEQUILASUNRISE

I mostly agree with you. I think the rank-for-rank balance within each skill set is pretty spot on. A moon mage slicing a weapon with 200 ranks in LE is going to be as effective with it as a barbarian with 200 ranks in LE. I’d even say 200 ranks in a cast of a single-target TM is fairly balanced with 200 ranks in a ranged weapon. We can all talk about buffs and debuffs across guilds, but we shouldn't talk about them in the same vein as a straight rank-for-rank analysis. Where I think there's some talking past one another is on this point:

>And I've responded to this sentiment like three times now buddy. Magic primary guilds get MORE spells. They do not get BETTER spells simply by nature of being magic primary. Warrior Mages get better TM spells because they are WMs, not because they are magic primaries. There are tons of categories of spells where the primary guilds are either surpassed or matched by secondaries/tertiaries. Do we need to go through the list again?

I can't speak for anyone else and my poor reading comprehension skills have already been on full display here, so I may be wrong on the crux of the issue. Two things:

First, my understanding is a robust spell suite is a feature of a magic primary guild (and secondary guilds to a limited extent) and I'm partly basing my opinion on that. You can say that's more a consequence of having more spell slots to which I’d say sure, I dunno, and to be fair, you don’t think there should be a slot disparity with the balance of abilities/spells tipping the way it does. That’s something we can agree on.

Second, if we're talking purely offense, magic wins by a mile on damage and versatility and to me that's incontrovertible. My example before was I can't AoE with my greatsword passively while I actively swing by broadsword or even simply actively AoE with a bow at range. I can't do that with any weapon, certainly not any single weapon skill. This is a bit of reductio ad absurdum I doubt anyone really cares about but even the mere action of changing weapon damage type requires that I holster my weapon and wield a new one.

There is also something to be said for skill set placement in all this, so I’d caution against anyone being overly dismissive of it in spite of a rank being a rank being a rank. I’ve trained TM harder than weapons on my paladin since the beginning (I rolled him after TM became a thing for paladins and rangers). It’s within 100 ranks of my top weapons at 1k+ ranks. Not for lack of trying to be good, I suck at all facets of being a mage. To be clear, that’s not a bad thing if the deck isn’t stacked. I wouldn’t expect a MM to be as good with a weapon as a barb, but he doesn’t have to be.

>>Are you talking about attunement pool, and then claiming that because they have more attunement, that translates to more damage?

Not the poster, but the point may be that MUs can have multiple damage streams even when focusing solely on TM. For example, MMs can have 2 (cyclic + single TM), Bards a limited 3 (cyclic + BTN + single TM), WMs 4 (cyclic + MAB + DB/BG + single TM).

>>To my experience, even in PvP mana pool size is very, very rarely the determining factor in engagement.

Not my experience personally, but then I do a lot of buffing. Lately my PVP has all been as "support Bard" when jumped by a group of Necros, but invariably my mana pool gets drained pretty quickly when trying to throw up all the buffs so quickly. But if buffing is out of the way, maybe things are different.

>>I wouldn’t mind an item that I could hold like a TM focus that stacked 20% potency like it does for others.

The purpose of the TM focus is to raise TM damage to equal weapon damage. Weapons are considered to already be "focused" I guess. That said, given the multiple damage streams of MUs, I think it might be worth Dev considering just what they want each guild to output and whether the balance is truly where they want it. It might be there's room for NMU multiple streams or situational enhanced weapon damage.


- Navesi

>>Now, I'm disregarding arguably OP unique abilities/spells as out of scope (e.g. BMR, backstab, maybe dual load, select spells). We can talk about 'em but I don't think it's helpful here because they skew things to the point where it's difficult to formulate any coherent objective conclusions. In that land things get circumstantial quick.<<

These discussions are usually circumstantial right from the get go. =) I feel like that means balance is probably better than we mostly feel it is.

>>Hell, I could pretty easily be convinced of retconning the armor skill set and just changing placement to accommodate. Just move shield skill to weapons or something.<<

I would say the same thing for Magic, even.

In Magic your ranks mostly don't do you any additional good after a certain point, and I think that's an important feature to consider. The only applications of magic for which your ranks are always important are TM for hitting things and Attunement for managing your mana. Everything else is normalized through mana input, so once you can cap what you're casting given whatever circumstances you're interested in, having higher skills doesn't do you much good. I think for everything except Attunement and TM and maybe Sorcery, anything over 1,000 or so is basically just contributing TDPs. You could make TM a weapon skill and let everything else scale off your circle or stats or the buffed skill or something.


Mazrian

>In Magic your ranks mostly don't do you any additional good after a certain point, and I think that's an important feature to consider. The only applications of magic for which your ranks are always important are TM for hitting things and Attunement for managing your mana. Everything else is normalized through mana input, so once you can cap what you're casting given whatever circumstances you're interested in, having higher skills doesn't do you much good. I think for everything except Attunement and TM and maybe Sorcery, anything over 1,000 or so is basically just contributing TDPs. You could make TM a weapon skill and let everything else scale off your circle or stats or the buffed skill or something.

To be fair, most skills don't do a whole lot passed 800 or so (or 200 in the case of FA :p), but that's a symptom of a different problem -- the game can't reasonably scale forever. I've been playing for many years and I still can't cap all my spells. All magic skills are useful up to that point. Just a heads up: If we go down that road here or elsewhere, I'm in favor of lower skill caps even to my detriment; another popular opinion /sarcasm.

I can make a pragmatic case for debilitation magic skill being something I need to train separately from augmentation magic. Light armor? As a paladin, any magic (or music lore) is hugely more useful to me than light armor... or brigandine armor. Chain? Meh, that's for mages. I also don't have any use for the 300 weapon skills in the weapon skill set, but it is what it is. I could easily make the case that TM does weapons more effectively than the weapon skill set. I think I can also make a plausible case for magic doing defensive skill sets better than defensive skill sets.

Then there's: TM is to damage as shield is to defense? I still need evasion and/or parry to be effective, preferably the former since it's more well-rounded. We can get into damage mitigation vs. avoidance, but it's been done and it's tired. I'll always take 0 incoming damage over 10-5 points of incoming damage.

>There are lots of perks around other systems. Rangers and Thieves both get substantial passive bonuses to a bunch of survival skills.

For the sake of this argument, I'd keep it limited to combat skills, as that's where magic mostly shines (aside from the rare crafting bonus).

The first critical difference in 'not magic' bonus systems is that are largely more complicated (i.e. annoying) systems and almost universally have the ability to go negative. Aside from sorcery, magic don't got dat.

These systems are also, as far as I can remember, out of the player control. They're room/location/etc. specific. And while mana is too, after a few hundred ranks it's usually OK to find a room with decent mana. I can't ever swap rooms in a hunting ground and get my thief urban bonus going.

>And each guild gets thematic magic or quasi magic stuff that makes their primary skills better. They're not the same as magic perks because each skill and each skillset functions differently and does different things but the perks are present.

I just snipped the end off here, but by and large the difference is that magic allows people to do more things, and magic primary allows people to do more things better than most people, while also unlocking completely new tools. The systems you're talking about shave RT off here and there or allow you access to arguable totally useless things like 'forage precise', which might have been fun if crafting and herbalism had ever been finished.

> If it takes you approx 5 minutes to buff up and your buffs in general last 40 minutes that leaves a lot of time for slinging other spells. It's certainly easier for magic primes to manage mana.

Ya, I've never played a high level paladin; but having talked with several, all of whom are really awesome contributors to the game and the forums, I was left thoroughly convinced that playing any magic tert character is a waste of time due to mana costs and spell slots.

>The whole Paladin (for example) spell set is 43 slots. At 150th circle a Paladin will have 68 slots. If a Paladin wanted to have all the Analagous Patterns spells (11 slots) they would still have 14 slots left for feats.

Didn't someone do the math in the discord and figure out it's about 10 years for the 'average' player to hit 150? Personally I think that's a bad flag to plant. It skews numbers. If we instead look at the early to mid game of 50th and 100th, those numbers look different. That's also where you really need the feats you can pick up, like bonus attunement and spell mastery.

>These discussions are usually circumstantial right from the get go. =) I feel like that means balance is probably better than we mostly feel it is.

I disagree here; being able to point at a single controlled instance of BS doing great alpha strike isn't the same as comparing it to an over time damage curve from a mid-level AOE cyclic coupled with TM damage and weapon attacks. For each exemplar there is probably a counter. Notably, in quests/etc. that use per-attack flex mechanics, those high alpha attacks are rendered null. While the magic examples aren't.

>Those are two very circumstantial discussions! In some cases TM is more effective than weapons and in other cases weapons are more effective than TM. Depends on what you're trying to do and who you're trying to do it to. I'm not sure what you mean about defensive skill sets, tho.

Touche on the defense part. You're right, that's circumstantial, but I don't think TM-weapons is. What's more, it's WAY off topic. I stand by everything I've stated on magic, NMUs and offense, however. I don't think I have any more to add on that I haven't already stated so I think I'll let it stand unless I'm swayed or have an epiphany. This isn't Warb-realms or the Warb.net forums, after all. I'll invite anyone to dismiss anything I've stated about my experience as a paladin or armor that doesn't apply to the NMU magic discussion. Hopefully, the discussion continues because I find it more interesting than I once thought I did.

WM vs. guild. :(

I think moon mages are mentioned more than any other MU in this thread, and I think they're the least offensively potent magic primary MUs, arguably less potent than bards. I blame Maz.

>>I'm under the impression that the purpose was to make TM + foci do similar damage to TM + weapons, not weapons by themselves.

Hm, I think you're right. My apologies. Either way my only point was that I think it would be a good time for Dev to look at things, and possibly give NMUs some additional damage tools.


- Navesi

<People take issue with HUNT? Is it because it's a way to train perception, which is typically incredibly difficult to train since the days of "open pockets" a decade and a half ago?

We are NOT going here. This topic is about magic. Please stay on topic.

Helje
DragonRealms Senior Board Moderator

I'm just happy it wasn't a firm no to magic. Back in the day after runes were taken away from thieves, it seemed like any requests to reverse that decision were met with a firm no. My first character was a thief and my favorite thing to do was fool people into thinking I was a WM by acting and dressing the part with talismans I found or bought on the black market and occasional fake perceives. I'm attached to him to this day, but I didn't bring him back this time around after a break from the game for a few months. I didn't play him much at all because I find NMU guilds less interesting after M3.0. All I'd hop on my thief for was to pop boxes.

That's not an indictment on abilities 3.0. They're a big improvement IMO. Just... Setting aside any apparent controversies, magic is interesting because it adds a layer of customization. You can tweak feat builds, change spell preps, play with MDs, experiment with spell scrolls, etc. Even when your guild has nothing left to offer, magic can deliver. I think the statement in the OP that not having magic makes NMUs feel like a second or third class citizen is an apt way to put it. For me, anyway.

Not to beat a dead horse, here.

>>Barbarians can offhand larger weapons, Paladins can arm wear larger shields and have lower encumbrance with plate, etc. On top of that, there are weapon-related feats like whirlwind, dual load, throwing knives, etc. that represent mastery with weapons that a Moon Mage will never have access to, even at 1750 ranks.

This is particularly interesting because it demonstrates a lack of understanding about what skillset advantages are and are not. One that I suspect is far more widespread than just one person posting on the forums.

Barbarians can offhand large weapons because they are Weapons primary. Dual-load was proposed as a Weapons primary benefit (mostly to assist with training because ask a Barbarian, they'll tell you, training aimed weapons is awful even with low draw weights) and ended up getting sent over to Rangers out of pity/arguments over SOI. Meaning it's not a skillset advantage, it's just something only a couple of guilds can do (and only in conjunction with spells/forms).

Whirlwind is weird because it was implemented mostly to make training easier on Barbarians (getting a better picture here) by significantly cutting the time it takes to lock/allowing them to train two weapon skills with one action. Realistically it's probably best considered part of the Expertise tool kit that doesn't actually check/train Expertise (but probably should). It's worth noting that the roundtime incurred using whirlwind with a large weapon in both hands means you have to hit 6 of 8 possible times in order to beat out the learning rate of feint. There's a significant penalty to hit from whirlwind (why?) that generates a net result of not even solving the problem it was designed to. There are workarounds, of course, because Barbarians are still successfully training, but the game shouldn't enforce this sort of system mastery for best results. Good game design opens near-optimal paths to everyone.

Throwing blades is not a skillset perk. It's another weird some-guilds-get-an-advantage thing and it's simply a lower rank requirement for throwing more blades; everyone can throw 5 blades at 600 LT.

This is part of the frustration Barbarians have with skillset advantages; everything they propose gets farmed out to other guilds because combat is literally the only system that everyone interacts with. To put this in perspective: arm wearing large shields? Skillset advantage (armor secondary I believe). Lower armor hindrance? Skillset advantage. Larger attunement pool? Skillset advantage. More ability slots? Skillset advantage. To add to this we know that there can't be any development on an alpha strike for Barbarians because having devs spend more time doing single guild development is pretty much untenable right now.

So if a Barbarian is telling you to take a long walk off a short pier, it's not without reason.

Aaaaaaaaaall of that aside, I just wanted to make some comments and suggestions on Barbarians (and Thieves) vis-a-vis the magic systems: Does the game really suffer if you put in a new attunement type, assign no mana values to it in rooms, and then add a guild check to the Perceive command that returns "Don't be silly, you're a Barbarian!" when they try to do it? (I realize there are likely threading issues.)

At this juncture I don't think you can do anything with Barbarians and Arcana. That particular set of horses is over in the next dell by now, let alone trying to close the barn doors. Punishing people who got tired of waiting a decade (actually 15 years now since Jaedren floated it, I believe) for something is exactly how you lose good will.

Pushing towards parity has been the major thrust of much of the development since 3.0 and I find it a little concerning that this is where you'd see a need for a line.

Barbarians and Thieves absolutely should be able to access cross-domain abilities if that's going to remain a thing for MUs. They absolutely should have the full suite of Magic skillset skills to train and gain TDPs from because I'm sure staff is aware: the Magic skillset almost always far outstrips the others for TDP gain because you never have to stop training it. As the game moves away from egregious roundtimes and travel time sinks this becomes less and less of an issue, but there is inherent disparity with a skillset that can be trained in and out of combat with more or less equal facility. Imagine if the only skills that could be trained out of combat were PM (a mastery), Utility, and Arcana? People would lose their minds.

Insofar as Barbarians and Utility: Buffalo, Wolverine, Panther Form. Seek, Staunch, Prediction, Flame/Power, Unyielding and Focus meditations. Berserk Avalanche, Flashflood, Tsunami. That's a pretty conservative list, too. Bear, Cyclone, Contemplation, Wildfire all do things Utility-keyed spells do for other guilds. Personally if we are making this change I'd want Bear and Contemplation to be Utility just for training purposes.

I don't know how you make Barbarians capable of accessing things like scrolls, attuned magical devices, and inkpots but I think you either need to or actually implement something to compensate for the lost versatility. Don't key it to not training magic skills either; (all) skills should be open to everyone.

All the things they have are advantages, while all the things I have are so much junk. =(

First source: Neolithic cave paintings, probably.

Mazrian

>>If it directly buffs a skill or stat it's usually not Utility.

You'll find this enlightening: https://elanthipedia.play.net/Category:Utility_abilities

It's like...there were rules. That weren't followed. Except by the NMU guild abilities.

I can see the argument (as someone who has played a Thief) from Thieves wanting to be MU's. Many/most play mages as their fake guild, and their bundle of tricks is one of the most narrow in the game, so the idea of sorcery and scrolls and runestones seems very appealing. That said, I think it's a problem of development, and it's being actively worked on right now. The game has a nice symmetry: two guilds of each mana type, two NMU guilds, and Necros.

I'd hate the game to become Magerealms (guest starring Barbarians) even more.