>>>And if they based CL damage off of a new magic skill called Area of Effect Magic and gave you a year to train it up via some other spell, that would be ok?

>The difference is, a new magic skill called Area of Effect won't cripple WM from using every last one of their self buffs. In the case of Barbarians, a new Inner Fire skill MUST be grandfathered or every last dance and berserk will become useless for a Barbarian.

Yeah, I'm not arguing against grandfathering the Dance Moves skill, I'm not sure why you have that idea.

Yup, apparently I fail at research.

It still wouldn't have been that hard.


- Mazrian

The Flying Company

The Public Stat Data Project
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkqoUyrmvlKNdGlpeHZacEdldi1Ob2h3M1I5TXpCZVE&hl=en

It took Taghz, who I'm going to presume started his TM training very shortly after we got the AP spells, over 2 years to get it to over 500. My guess is roughly 300 ranks his first year, 200 the second. That's still not a 400. Regardless, I'm not bothered by the changes anymore, just the people who think it wasn't that big of a deal.

What was the last skill that made you forgo at-level training and train something up from scratch. It can't because of a player made choice, one that was not there for you before, but there now, and you need it to perform something you were used to doing.


Death Dealer Adakin of Prime
WorldsBestMagic Kastr of TF

"The Key To Immortality Is Living A Life Worth Remembering."

"Killing Time Murders Opportunities."

>>Yeah, it isn't hard at all for you if it's someone in another guild that has to do the back training.<<

I've done plenty of back training with Maz. Shield, hiding, stalking, and others - and all of that before new exp. I know how to do it and I know what the issues are.

>>I mean, are you saying it isn't hard to backtrain any tert skill to any rank? What's your point exactly?<<

Don't go all George on me. Back training is not rocket science and it's not some monumental task. It just takes time and ingenuity.

- Mazrian

The Flying Company

The Public Stat Data Project
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AkqoUyrmvlKNdGlpeHZacEdldi1Ob2h3M1I5TXpCZVE&hl=en

>>If you were unable to kill things after those spells lost their lethality that's a personal training problem rather than a mechanics problem

Either I wasn't clear or you missed the point. I'm talking about magical damage only, which is what I thought this thread was about... I had the ability to kill with a spell, (aka I was used to doing that, and told we won't need TM for that) the change was made, I could now not do that. Hope that helps.

No personal training problems here.

Death Dealer Adakin of Prime
WorldsBestMagic Kastr of TF

"The Key To Immortality Is Living A Life Worth Remembering."

"Killing Time Murders Opportunities."

It wasn't a full screwing because they did give us a heads up, but it was still there. I was probaly irate over this for the first few months then got over it. I enjoy the game either way. IMO was a poor business decision.

Death Dealer Adakin of Prime
WorldsBestMagic Kastr of TF

"The Key To Immortality Is Living A Life Worth Remembering."

"Killing Time Murders Opportunities."

Hi there.


The bickering is done. Take it elsewhere.





Annwyl
Message Board Supervisor

If you've questions or comments, take it to e-mail by writing me at DR-Annwyl@play.net.

Complaining and arguing isn't going to help any guild involved in the TM debate at this point.
However, a very capable GM just asked us what we would like to see looked at in the way of spells. I feel that we should move the TM debate to the dead horse folder, because everyone who doesn't agree with me is wrong anyway, and focus on presenting the ideas we've had for the ranger spell book over the last 10 years.

I only have one idea that I've given a lot of thought to recently but there are TONS of posts concerning ideas. I'll try to go back over some of those posts this week.

Ability that increases spawn in the area... I know Bards just got this ability but I feel that it does and always has fallen in the ranger sphere of influence.

Armifier, are we talking ANY dev or JUST the spell book? There are a lot of things like critter special attacks, companions, critter stealing, that could use some love. Also, there are a lot of abilities that other guilds have that do fall within our sphere of influence to one degree or another. It seems to me that while every guild can't have all the abilities... the game is limited to how many useful actions can really exist.

>>Armifier, are we talking ANY dev or JUST the spell book? There are a lot of things like critter special attacks, companions, critter stealing, that could use some love.

Speaking for myself, I can only meaningfully talk about Ranger development through the lens of the magic system. Audacia and Zeyurn are the people that you need to have a conversation with when it comes to other guild abilities -- and Audacia has already started one about beseeches.

-Armifer
"In our days truth is taken to result from the effacing of the living man behind the mathematical structures that think themselves out in him, rather than he be thinking them." - Emmanuel Levinas

>>Actually four out of the twelve spells or so available at the time were damaging spells. So... Damage was a major focus of Ranger magic.

A couple rebuttals:

1) I'd define "major focus" differently than you. Rangers are magicians, but they are magic tertiary; as magicians go, they are among the least magically-inclined, more akin to nature-loving Thieves with magic than they are stealth-loving Warrior Mages. (Note: obviously neither are close, but my point is they are a survival guild first and a magic guild a distance second, if not third or fourth). Even then, a fair portion of the magic is to boost their survival skills, and not kill stuff.

4 of 12 spells = 1/4 of the spells, though you also have to include stuff like Ranger bonus, survival "perks," beseeches, etc. Regardless of your feelings on some of these things, they represent Ranger abilities, so whereas you might see 4/12 spells, I see like 4 abilities out of 30+ being geared towards magical damage. I wouldn't call that a heavy focus.

2) Let's just assume your definition of focus and include only primary ability sets, that being spells for Rangers and dances and berserks for Barbarians.

Rangers: 4/12 spells = 30% argument for grandfathering TM
Barbarians: 18/18 (8 dances plus 10 berserks) = 100% argument for grandfathering Warding

30% != 100%

The two are separated by a 70% degree of difference. I can, again, respect the argument for having grandfathered Ranger ranks at the time, but I want to stress the degree of difference between nerfing Ranger damage-spells and nerfing all of a Barbarian's primary abilities. The two arguments are not analogous.

---

"Limited in nature yet infinite in desire - men are like fallen gods."
- Alphonse de Lamartine

All i gotta say is backtraining anything is way way way easier then its ever been,give me a break,I do it all the time.Paladins got a better argument here anyway,they cant do half the things a Ranger can,god

>What do you want out of the Ranger spellbook right now? Assume that Magic 3.0 will take care of TM issues by itself, where do you want the spellbook to grow past that?

Have the spells that are broken or not really useful fixed, eliminated, or replaced. I'm looking at swarm, blend, AF, etc. here.

Get our AoE disabler/AoE TM (undergrowth spells). I'm most concerned about the AoE disabler given the direction engagement is going in, though I desperately want some sort of fun AoE TM given all the effort I've put into TM in the last two years and enrage undergrowth really sounded awesome.

Get our anti-undead TM spell (POS) back.

Our boosters and disablers are pretty good. I still wish HB lasted longer / didn't have 900,000 ways to break it near instantly, but oh well. I'd like these to either stay as good or get better. The only thing I can think of here is wanting a disarming spell. Given the combat changes this won't be so much an impact down the road, but it will still be useful.

I'd like to see more utility spells. Something like Lirisa's Arrows spell where we can create magical arrows that we can determine are blunt, puncture, or slice oriented and our TM skill determines how good the arrow is. I'd like to see some sort of animalistic spell that aids us in brawling by essentially adding some brawling toys to us for the duration of the spell. Maybe something that plays on our STW animal for what it does?

Something that improves our armor increase protection, lower hindrance, or both. I know SOP needs to be fixed as part of this and we need to get some sort of additional layered defense to help take up the slack. Having a spell that replaces the save-my-behind use of blend would be nice.

I'd like to see more of our spells replacable. While most of the time this doesn't impact me, it would be really handy during invasions.

-pete

HB's top duration is over 40 seconds.

-Z

3 GM posts in a row and all addressing a concern or question... this is going to spoil us.

Amifier ~ So that means you'd consider the change to magic secondary for the ranger and paladin guilds? I mean, you've already taken on rewriting the magic code... how much more hellish could it be ;)

Z~ What's the cast req for 40 seconds though? I wouldn't mind a non-pvp solution that allowed us to keep a critter in range without tanking our mana pool... though, I'm hoping the new arcana model might provide a solution there.

<<Don't get me wrong, there's more than two guilds we'd like a chance to tweak the skillsets to,

Okay, now that really has me curious. Which guilds?

-Evran

* Prophet Hotoke Fuku-Nyorai snuck out of the shadow he was hiding in.

<<Okay, now that really has me curious. Which guilds?

While I'm really curious too, I don't think that would be a very good question to answer. Think of the speculative discussions that would happen.

Nikpack

The gods are jerks. No, really.
-Armifer

I don't think we ever take the training wheels off as players or gamemasters.
-Inauri

I figured for paladins it would be a swap for survival/lore, not magic/lore.

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.
Also: Moo.

>>Paladins are Survival Tertiary, they can't switch something they already are.

Right, and lore secondary, which is why I figured if they were going to swap, it would be Survival/Lore swapped, and not Magic/Lore swapped.

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.
Also: Moo.

I think it would be neater if we get rid of tert skillsets all together, because in so many cases some lores/some survivals/some skills will always make more sense for one guild than another.

Thief should be experts at cloth and leather armor, light edge weapons, and crossbows. They should be master hiders and stealers as well as evasive and elusive. They should also be decent at making poisions and picks which their craft depend on.

Since DR is set up in skillsets, the above cannot ALL happen. even if it makes total sense.

The Dragon priest hisses, "We'd have won, too, if it weren't for thossse meddling kidsss."
>

>> If their were skill set switches,lest I;d have some super whining to read everyday for the the next decade on how this guild should be this or that or this guild shouldnt be this or that

Or from rangers themselves. My ranger is still pretty low but I know that I wouldn't want to give up weapon or armor secondary for magic.