Nearly every guild gets a powerful SvS barrier on top of being able to buff defending stats. Warrior Mage debilitation is becoming more and more useless at high level pvp thanks to this and the fact we still do not have any buffs for our primary stats in TM and our prime offensive spell stat, wisdom. The SvS change is going to make this become even more painfully obvious.

We can buff

+Reflex +Strength +Stamina

or

+Reflex + Agility

As a magic primary guild, how exactly do those help casting?


- Erixx

What about a 'both' if they can't stack. Like opposing elements that is either one or the other. Kind of like how the Empath spells Absolution and Gift of Life work. Would give more options for different opponents.

I do not desire to reward hyperbole with my time, so I retract the question and bid you a happy thread.

-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

You gesture.
You deftly contribute enough of your harnessed streams to maximize the pattern's potential.
An overwhelming clap of thunder booms through the area, rattling the teeth in your jaw.
The thread is viciously stunned!
The conflicting nature of the spell diminishes you.

---

>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.

>>I'm not sure what your complaint is here. Vicious stun for that spell is 19-25 seconds, moderate is 11-18 seconds. If you're bouncing between the two you're probably getting 18-19 second stuns. Max >>stun duration is 25. Looking through my spreadsheet based on your skills and stats vs that creature, you probably lost a second or 2 at cap, and gained a second or 2 with any cast up to 50 mana. I >>appreciate your feedback on the matter, but looking through the numbers I don't think you should be so alarmed over this change.


My complaint is these creatures are under my magic skill wise. The creatures I do hunt for magic, Cabs, only get moderate stuns at MAX now. My complaint is being 100% reliant on only my base mental stats which are already all 100's. Debilitation skill, like most magic skills, are all numbers with no meaning. So instead it will take a good years worth of tdps to bridge that gap. This is creature wise and not even mentioning the implications this has on PvP. If I'm having trouble with creatures beneath me I can only imagine the issues that are going to pop up facing another guild that also has all 100 in stats.

Being a defense/survival tert guild, the guild relies soley on its ability to control the fight with disablers and TM. Disablers have diminishing returns, defenders have a chance to succeed better at the contest than they should which still triggers diminishing returns. So yeah, not being able to max duration disable a creature beneath my magical skills does alarm me.


- Erixx

I've already made changes to address just about every legitimate issue you've brought up. It seems your complaint is that a creature you outclass by 52% is receiving a stun of 68% its max duration. Those aren't made up numbers by the way. I can understand some of the alarm, since at the high end of the stat spectrum things were behaving a bit worse than was intended. Considering the recent changes, I'd appreciate your feedback on how it affects you, but please understand that I'm fairly resigned to the idea that I may not be able to please you without completely tossing out any notions of game balance.

ASGM Ricinus
Core, Logistics, Survival
Cleric Advocate

>>Either way, I am not terribly in the mood to argue over a perceived slight.

IMO there is some validity in what Erixx is saying, albeit aggressively. It feels as if Warmages have gone from being PvP powerhouses to average with a couple of holes. Our Terts have always frightened us, to be honest. Anything that widens those holes is a Scary Thing.

I can't speak to game balance decisions on the GM side of things, but I get the alarm, MU wide or guild specific.


In the 300s, i've noticed almost no change. Critters get up faster from Ice Patch, and Vertigo doesn't last as long as it did. They are still silly easy to spam snap cast with min prep so i'm not overly concerned. I should do more testing with frostbite, but been playing in Angisward recently.

>>It seems your complaint is that a creature you outclass by 52% is receiving a stun of 68% its max duration.

And how does that seem ok just by looking at that. What should the numbers be when I don't outclass, and if it's an even matchup? By those numbers, 15% at 100 mana cast. If that is the case what is the point of having a disabler in the first place?

Forgive my frustrations, but its pretty irritating to get things you have worked at for years and years stripped away for no apparent reason, then get no support from developers when voicing valid concerns. Perks of being magic prime and not having an advocate I suppose.

"Precieved Slight" Is half duration than previously on creatures i'm 150 ranks from capping. No sure why i'm mentioning this because we all know magic ranks mean nothing.

Just because changes to WM's happened to be MU changes doesn't change the fact they were massive nerfs to the guild with nothing given to fill the voids. The majority of the warrior mage kit was centered around AOE abilites which are a non-factor in 3.1 world. No other guild relied so heavily on AoE's and no other guild had as many spells rewritten.

Asking for a mental buffs to help fill some of these voids is looked upon like i'm asking for the biggest nuke in the game. It's not an insane request, we can buff fewer stats at one time than any other guild. Of the stats we can buff, none of them factor into our spell contests or make our TM any better. It's kind of a slap in the face to sit back and read other guilds getting concerns addressed. Ambush stat contests were changed to be more in favor of thief strong suits stat wise. Backstab was given a 8x damage multiplier because the "Precieved" damage wasn't enough. Barbarians are getting a extensive rework. I'm not saying any of those aren't warranted, but clearly player experience and concerns are being counted as more than eye rolling complaints.

But what do I know, I'm just here to argue about nothing.

- Erixx

>>then get no support from developers when voicing valid concerns

I have already made 2 changes in the last 2 days based on your valid concerns. I have no idea if those changes have been of any help to you so far since you haven't mentioned them, though based on other feedback I'm receiving, things seem to be working well now. Considering the level of exaggeration and contempt you seem to inject into your posts, I wouldn't be surprised if I've overlooked any other legitimate concerns.

>>"Precieved Slight" Is half duration than previously on creatures i'm 150 ranks from capping.

Based on the logs you've posted you were nowhere near losing half of the duration. A worst case scenario shows you lost 18%. Best case scenario you lost 10% at cap and gained up to 15% for other mana ranges. And those logs were based on a formula that has already been modified specifically for players with high stat scores like yours to even out the disparity better. My comment about 'perceived slight' referred to the mistaken belief that an effort to balance out parts of the entire magic system as a whole was secretly a plot to nerf WMs.

ASGM Ricinus
Core, Logistics, Survival
Cleric Advocate

To update.

Only getting 16 second stuns on drakes at cap casts, oddly enough, the exact same duration on cabs too.

- Erixx

>>Thanks for the update.

So how much should we outclass something now before we even get close to max durations? How much wisdom should I need before I can do what I previously did to a creature I outclass by 50%?

- Erixx

>Lore just cannot fill that gap for combat as a secondary.

Woah! You don't say! Lore has fewer combat applications than Survival?!?!

>And Magic Primary doesnt buff enough to compensate.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Oh god, you're serious.

>A fair and balanced game where everyone is on equal footing rank for rank in combat regardless of whether they use magic survival weapons or lore for their primary.

It's a little crazy considering how stacked against this concept DR's design is. There are good reasons that the PVP muds look nothing like DR!A balanced PVP game is ultimately going to involve smashing DR's square peg into a round hole.

---

>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.

>Unfortunately as the game is today my rank of magic is not as effective as your rank of survival.

Fine, I'll be less snarky. Be specific and exact. What situation do you mean? I honestly have no idea what you're mad about at this point. Is it just 'vs. hiding'? Because your skill in warding is worth a hell of a lot more than their skill in athletics, in a fight.

Hell, the only two survival skills I can imagine even mattering are hiding and evasion. Maybe perception, but if you're a WM who is hiding, that's on your own head.

Meanwhile, for combat application, you have offense, defense, damage reduction, status effect application, etc. in your primary skill set. The magic skill set can literally do anything, especially when you have access to sorcery. Survival doesn't have any sort of breadth or depth to it like that.

How, exactly, is magic getting 'bullied' by survival?

>But I think everyone can agree if you spend an hour in a hunting ground, regardless of your Guild orientation you should be able to glean the same combat effective ranks as any other Guild.

That is not, and never has been, how DR skillsets work. The primary/secondary/tertiary sets would allocate a different amount of exp at the end of that hour.

>The magic skill set can literally do anything,

Well, that's maybe a bit unfair. Magic ranks are expressly forbidden from doing a lot of things -- although almost everything spells have been forbidden over the years can be summed up in 'replicate survival skills;' It's only recently been kicked out of the armor skillset, (though ironically that ended up more of a blow to the value of armor skills), and for most of DR history nobody cared to use lore skills let alone duplicate them. Magic skill does have a (potentially weird) foothold in weapons, though.

I can get the feeling that magic is being beat into place for survival's sake, though I also get that the feeling is a bit silly -- but magic interactions with lore, weapons, and armor haven't been nerfed much since nobody cares about those skillsets as much as they like surivival. Survival has such a varied suite of tools compared to the one-dimentionality of weapons, armor, and lore that it's almost suspicious as a skillset. The entire stealth system (Perception should probably have been in Armor or folded into stealth, it adds almost nothing to the game as-is), the entire loot system (boxes, skins, and crafting materials), the entire travel system, and even a couple feet directly in combat.

All that said, like, calm down. Have some tea.

--
>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.

> Once characters can cap their spells all buffs are the same intensity

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is this true? I thought there were spheres of influence that gave some guilds stronger buffs and debuffs in their sphere than guilds who do not share that sphere?

With 3.0 and beyond, I have felt that the pendulum of magic has swung too far into the "must be the same" area (since that area moved with multiple NMU perks being added in)

The differences between the roles are becoming more flavor and less mechanic, and I for one feel this is not a good thing. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your view) the current direction of GM thought does not agree. I can't really get into a lot of specifics here, because I don't want this to be a GvG argument, even though it kinda is.

>every guild regardless of skillset placement gets cool magic and / or special abilities that are like magic and that run off of skills in whatever their primary skillsets are.

I'm scratching my head at this one, and I know what you're talking about but I can't think of any examples besides backstab. What are the others?

>>Chakram

Isn't he around? Fairly sure he is.

---

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

>> Spell spheres of influence prevent guilds from having crossover skills/spells, even though some still do.

That's not what SoI is for. All SoI does is determine the strength of a buff activated by a guild. If the skill/stat is in SoI then it is 20% if not 15%. SoI has no bearing on spell distribution or development.


>>All the TM stuff.

It sounds like your definition of being master of a skill differs from most others. TM was shared by 2 other guilds before they made damaging spells require TM. TM was never War Mage's guild skill, Summoning became that. Being the master of a skill doesn't mean only a certain guild can use that skill. WMs are still the masters of TM when compared to any other guild though. You have a TM skill buff, pathways that interact with the skill in ways no other guild can (increased damage, shortening the time till full aim, and more), the amount of TM sources and damage that a WM can have going all at once is second to no other guild, plus WMs are the AoE guild.

If you were expecting the DR of 10-15 years ago, the game has moved on, but in a good direction. You should open your mind to what is being gained by the game as a whole instead of perceiving to lose something because you have to share. Current development is to expand skills to be useful by everyone, and to have rules be uniform across the guilds and game. So if your guild has an offensive damaging spell, then it requires TM to use. To take TM away from magic terts would mean to take their damaging spells, and any offensive nature of their magic except Debilitation. This just doesn't seem like a fair thing to do to a MU guild that is already at a disadvantage.