>However, if 415 is indeed broken, I guess it's just the Devs saying that wizards shouldn't have a competitive CS attack alternative.

I wish they would just come out and say it if that's the case. Saying "Wizards are bolters first" means nothing. Clerics/empaths/sorcerers are warders first but they can bolt hunt with plenty of effectiveness. Can the same be said for wizards with CS spells, not including 415's so-called "bug" (which I still don't believe)? The fact that wizards shouldn't be forced into a 415 build to have a good warding spell shouldn't be necessary in the first place, but we take what we can get since our other options have been ripped from us.

>Well, it certainly sounds like the warmage has become far more dynamic. That's good. But it sounds like the ELR is forcing wizards to go for the lower level lore benefits because they don't scale well with continued training. Perhaps if we had more attractive options for heavy investment in a single lore, we might start to see a distinctive pure build emerge?

If I remember right, Estild did say he wouldn't be opposed to some sort of "reward" for going 202 in a single lore or something to that extent. This was either during the ELR last summer, or after the nerfs wrecked us in January, I can't remember which. Either way, nothing has been mentioned about it since then.

Perhaps Estild will pop in and give us some sort of update on if this is being considered or not.

I wish they would just come out and tell us what the new spells are that are being worked on. We accept the fact that Konacon or whoever could get hit by a bus tomorrow and all that progress will be washed away.

~ Methais

Reading the wizard nerfs:
http://i.imgur.com/hNaDm98.gif

>Ideally, our goal is to promote both diverse and specialized lore training. As you note, a summation model tends to heavily favor being more diverse, and a good majority of spells use that. We definitely need to add more incentive for specialized training (not to the extent of EL:F with the old version of 519 though). I will note that when players complain about not being able to train in all the lores they want, it's an affirmation for the design goal of making each lore competitive. It should be a difficult training choice and you should not be able to train in everything you want.

What are the chances that air lore could be made less mandatory? Because any post cap wizard with a clue is going to be trained heavily in air lore for Haste, because the haste nerf pretty much made this required training just to be almost as good at dealing with RT issues as we could pre-nerf.

When you have 4 lores and one of them HAS to be trained if you don't want to gimp yourself, that's not promoting much diversity.

~ Methais

Reading the wizard nerfs:
http://i.imgur.com/hNaDm98.gif

DESTINY14

There's a vast difference between forced mediocrity and competitiveness. Right now wizards are forced to make the least harmful choices to their character's builds instead of choosing to train in any specific lore because there are valuable strengths.

This is a world of difference from the SLR, where each of religion, summoning, and blessings lore provide very tangible offensive benefits.

Methais

What are the chances that air lore could be made less mandatory? Because any post cap wizard with a clue is going to be trained heavily in air lore for Haste, because the haste nerf pretty much made this required training just to be almost as good at dealing with RT issues as we could pre-nerf.

When you have 4 lores and one of them HAS to be trained if you don't want to gimp yourself, that's not promoting much diversity.

I don't which of you to believe...

GameMaster Estild

I don't which of you to believe...

GameMaster Estild

Prior to the ELR and after the ELR I have Air Lore only. It's not a hard choice for me. I don't feel like I'm giving up anything because the other options offer me nothing at this moment.

PC1234

Prior to the ELR and after the ELR I have Air Lore only. It's not a hard choice for me. I don't feel like I'm giving up anything because the other options offer me nothing at this moment.

So you would agree there is no "forced mediocrity" since you're not required to train in 4 different lores?

GameMaster Estild

DESTINY14

I classify disablers as utility, not offensive. I only consider bolt and pure warding attack spells that deal damage as offensive. 502 is the weakest of the bunch, for which the air lore is not really necessary. Hand of Tonis has among the worst crit table of the bolts. Celerity is utility. Rapid Fire air lore proc is essentially meaningless. Cone of Elements does not require air lore, and there are better options. Minor Shock and Major shock both cannot be used in many capped hunting grounds. Call Wind is unreliable and Sandstorm is useless.

It's trained by warmages precisely due to its UTILITY benefits for Celerity and/or Haste, but there's no reason for most pure wizards to go that route.

Disablers are offensive spells. You can't cast them in a sanctuary. Whether you use all the spells I listed, or none of them, it doesn't change the fact that Elemental Lore, Air provides an offensive perk for said spells. EL:A impact on 506 is offensive in nature. Attacking faster is an offensive perk (and a significant one). EL:A's impact on 535 is utility and defensive. It allows you to perform non-offensive actions faster (such as foraging, searching, etc) and helps you recover from attacks which induce RT. This very distinction is the reason we separated out the benefits for these two spells.

DESTINY14

Forced mediocrity means that no matter how much you train in any lore or what split you choose, you are still mediocre. There's no option to be powerful due to one type or combination like clerics enjoy with a religion/blessings lore split.

If a wizard is planning to hunt with offensive warding spells, Elemental Lore, Fire has a very significant impact, as illustrated by Methais. What huge offensive benefit do you think clerics get out of Spiritual Lore, Religion? For post-cap, their main attack spell, Divine Fury (317) hardly factors in SL:R at all, as noted before. 202 ranks of SL:R lowers the average casts-per-kill of 317 by .2 at the greatest level. By comparison, EL:F will lower Immolation's (519) average casts-per-kill by up to 1.5. For EL:F with 519, it's literally up to 7.5x more effective than SL:R for 317.

I promise, I am willing to be convinced there is a problem between high level warding spells. But I haven't seen anything that convinces me as such yet. If you want to make the case that 240 is better than 515, that's a different story and I plan to respond to that latter. But at their base level, all the attack warding spells are fairly competitive.

GameMaster Estild

Taverkin

Don't pat yourself on the back just yet, Estild. One is telling you they feel compelled to train heavily in air lore to recoup a fraction of the power they lost. The other is telling you they don't like any of the lores, but what else are you going to put points in as a post-cap wizard? I'd believe both of them if I were you.

So I'm supposed to believe Elemental Lore, Air is worth training in (to "to recoup a fraction of the power they lost" or for any reason), but none of the Elemental lores are worth training in. Got it.

GameMaster Estild

Whirlin

If this is the case, two simple requests: Don't touch 415 til the fun stuff gets released... sweep back after it all! And more fixskills when the dust settles!

I don't really understand where we are on the wizard project anymore... I wasn't anticipating 512 getting touched, and was unaware that we were still things coming.

We won't be correcting Elemental Strike's (415) lore benefit until at least 4 other wizard spell updates have been implemented.

GameMaster Estild

Each of the lores is worth training up to a small degree (25-35 ranks or so), air a bit more than the others. None of them are very compelling to train in heavily in my book. Assuming 925 is still slated to benefit from water lore I'll eventually put the rest of my lore points there because... over 2x post cap and why not? But it's not like it's a hard decision or I feel I am losing anything for that choice given I don't even bother to 2x my lore training now.

From your posts I think you have a similar assessment so hopefully there's something to look forward to down the road that makes higher end elemental lore training a harder decision between all of the lores.

-- Robert

"I never knew there were so many ginger-haired step-wizards in the lands." -- Anonymous

925 and 950 for sure.

-- Robert

"I never knew there were so many ginger-haired step-wizards in the lands." -- Anonymous

Whirlin

I believe the only one that we're aware of are the pending changes to 925? Or have other spells been identified previously?

Those 4 don't actually include the updates to 925, which will be out soon though.

GameMaster Estild

I promise, I am willing to be convinced there is a problem between high level warding spells. But I haven't seen anything that convinces me as such yet. If you want to make the case that 240 is better than 515, that's a different story and I plan to respond to that latter. But at their base level, all the attack warding spells are fairly competitive.

GameMaster Estild

I believe I can make a case for this if you are willing to give us accurate data.

I want to see the Cleric/Empath/Wizard spreadsheet that you provided previously, but I want the characters to be trained the way actual players train.

That means 169 profession/67 major/67 minor for Empaths and Clerics. For Wizards I believe it's 161 MjE/75 MnE/67 Wizard.
Do like you previously did with 0x lore, 1x lore, 2x lore.
But the d100 should be the same for all casts. You didn't specify if you use the same d100 roll or not for all casts.

Then, after showing us this data, show us data that includes 240 for Empaths and Clerics for comparison.

I think there is a reason you didn't show us this data, and I believe that reason is because it proves just how much better it is for the spiritual classes. Please prove this to be wrong if that's not the case.

> I believe the only one that we're aware of are the pending changes to 925? Or have other spells been identified previously?

At least two of those spells haven't been identified previously (That I'm aware of) except for maybe a sly hint here and there.

~ Konacon

I'm guessing the spell you're excited to showcase is 917, revamped.

stop time we know is inbound
boil has been explicitly stated to be in testing internally

"two level 50 spells" was a thing someone mentioned, not sure on the non-time stop spell from that. Leaves 1 other, I'll go with changing weapon fire to be unlockable to hit multiple targets at seed 20 of water lore. Thus all wizard problems solved.

>I don't which of you to believe... -Estild

It seems that Destiny was speaking about offensive stuff, and I was speaking about defensive stuff.

In regards to defense, air lore is for all intents and purposes mandatory training for any wizard that prefers to stay alive at high level/post cap, which leaves a whole lot less room for all this diversity you were referring to. Nobody in their right mind is going to gimp themselves like that just so they can talk about how diverse their lore training is.

Regardless of what new stuff comes out, there's an extremely high chance I'm going to have to keep my air lore training for Haste, and I would imagine most if not all 2x lore builds are going to still have heavy air lore, literally just for Haste.

~ Methais

I'd like to see 535 Haste swapped around, instead of 60 MjE/101 EL:A being the cap, it should be vice versa, 101 MjE/60 EL:A for max reduction.

While on the topic of 535 Haste, the spell is still bugged and provides no message when cast sometimes.

J>inc 535
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Haste...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
J>535
[voodoo]>incant 535
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Haste...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
J>stop 535
With a moment's concentration, you terminate the Haste spell.
You notice that things have returned to their normal speed.
J>535
[voodoo]>incant 535
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Haste...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
J>535
[voodoo]>incant 535
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Haste...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.
J>535
[voodoo]>incant 535
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Haste...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

>> that there is SOMEBODY that won't like it

Hey!

Doug

>If a wizard is planning to hunt with offensive warding spells, Elemental Lore, Fire has a very significant impact, as illustrated by Methais.

Except even with massive fire lore, 519 is still essentially useless in practice at cap even with two-open handed channeling. And it doesn't work at all on a large range of capped creatures. This is a very different story from 317. 240 makes a world of difference even if you don't think it does.

>What huge offensive benefit do you think clerics get out of Spiritual Lore, Religion? For post-cap, their main attack spell, Divine Fury (317) hardly factors in SL:R at all, as noted before.

Well, until you told us this, I has been thinking it did help, but it doesn't matter because 240 results in 1.0 casts-per-kill on a very reliable basis anyway.

>I promise, I am willing to be convinced there is a problem between high level warding spells. But I haven't seen anything that convinces me as such yet. If you want to make the case that 240 is better than 515, that's a different story and I plan to respond to that latter. But at their base level, all the attack warding spells are fairly competitive.

Please read my comments about 240 and 515 and bolting vs. warding spells in the "Estild" thread you had been posting in yesterday. I'm also interested in your thoughts on warding spells that bypass EBP completely vs. bolts. That's another reason bolts will unlikely achieve a 1.0 cast-per-kill level ever, even with an aimed bolt booster, since it involves luck instead of pure skill checks.

Finally, is there an option of the 525 booster proposal to allow 30 seconds of old style Immolation casts? It's useless for us to have a spell we aren't even allowed to cast without killing ourselves, others, or violating policy.

Thanks for your input on these discussions.

>I'd like to see 535 Haste swapped around, instead of 60 MjE/101 EL:A being the cap, it should be vice versa, 101 MjE/60 EL:A for max reduction.

Not sure where you're getting your info, but according to the wiki, these two training levels ARE equivalent for 535 Haste. 506 Celerity is the one with the 60 MjE cap (in the quickstrike stamina reduction formula). For haste, the MjE benefit is only supposed to be capped at level. (The extra 1 rank makes no difference for EL:A or MjE -- the benefit comes from multiples of 5 ranks, and rounds down.)

All of these pictures are win.

But cute cat pictures really get me.

~ Konacon

Drumpel

Okay, it took me a while, but I tracked down Estild's comment. Under the "Developer's Corner - Wizards" topic, post # 2438.

It's definitely still a goal of mine, just not high on the priority list.

GameMaster Estild