Has anyone considered that a number of recent spell changes may have been released to help compensate for the changes to 515? If 515 was self-cast and had no cooldown, some of these spells like 950 might be changed again.

How much value would be removed from 515 if it only worked on bolt spells?

Re: Doug's post-


Yeah, I do know how Rapid Fire used to work- and had made extensive use of it with 901 back in the day.

I may not have the timelines exactly right, since I was gone for 10 years until a few months ago, but here's a hot take on all the recent developments as I understand them (I may be off by 1 or 2, but I don't think I'm that off- feel free to point out anything I missed):


Buffs:
*Baseline somewhat crit padding, trainable to heavy around cap (520)
*"Always-on" defensive haste (535)
*Better bolts for war mages (513)
*A very powerful maneuver attack spell (917)
*A new, powerful "panic button" (550)
*A devestating room-clearer (950)
*Better e-wave via water and/or air lore (410 / 435)
*Accelerated enchanting via water lore (925)
*Removal of catastrophic enchant failure (925)
*Possbility to enchant elemental flaring items (925)
*A low-level warding attack option (502)
*Another mass disabling option (512)
*Can now easily eblade 1x weapons and higher with dedication (411)
*Minor Elemental Edge better for your war mages (902)
*Increased physical AS for war-mages (509)
*Free action knock-down (909)
*Improved box popping via water lore (407 / 408)
*Cone of Lightning now element-selectable (518)
*Increased temporary mana recovery via water lore (418)

Nerfs:
*Rapid Fire 1-second RT (515)
*Rapid Fire cooldown, but can be trained away post-cap (or at-cap with sacrifices, if it's important to you.) (515)
*Slower enchanting due to increased popularity, if you opt out of water lore (925)
*Previous full offensive benefits of 506 now require air lore (506)
*Immolation now less lethal- more of a "disabling" spell (519)


Unless I'm missing something here, there has been no "Great Wizard Nerfing of 2016." Stuff changed. Many new strategies, tactics, and choices have been opened. And some pre-existing strategies aren't as good now. If you gave me a choice between 2015-wizards and today-wizards, I'd take today-wizards easily.

I'm legitimately excited about the new options available. Can we explore and discuss that? I bet there's some really powerful hunting options buried in all that new stuff! But we seem to get stuck only on what we lost. (Or really what got down-tweaked- nothing that people cared about was completely taken away.)

The relevant question to ask is "are wizards still fun and viable?" Not "can I point to anything I've lost?" Now I understand loss aversion is a very real human thing, and game devs should be very wary of it. But I don't think it explains the entire situation here. Apparently this is a problem specific to the wizard boards- and I doubt no other classes have seen their tactics and strats shaken up a bit.

No other class has had their post-cap power ceiling utterly demolished to accomodate the pre-cap, who were already powerful pre-nerfs vs. spiritual pures with warding spells. That's what the debate is all about. There is nothing more to strive towards at the post-cap level now.

>If you gave me a choice between 2015-wizards and today-wizards

And most post-cap pure wizards would disagree, but all we can do is move forward. I'm not looking to be "viable". A level 10 character with terrible stats is "viable" and can gain experience by some method. What post-cap pure wizards no longer are, in my view, is fun, instead of tedious and underwhelming compared to what we used to be and any other post-cap pure still enjoys today.

>>515 should be self-cast anyway. There's no reason it should be able to be other-cast when it applies to combat spells, when it is used far more effectively and efficiently by sorcerers and even clerics who pay far cheaper costs even with a mana penalty to run cheap but highly lethal warding spells with enough casts.

This feels a bit like unproductive envy to me. :/

Here's a serious question to ask yourself: Why are you advocating for this specific nerf when in general you claim to hate any and all nerfs? Making 515 self-cast only would absolutely remove utility from the spell. What if I want to give my hunting buddy a boost? Now I can't. (In that hypothetical world.)

Not that I'd lose any sleep over a self-cast-only 515, if it's decided that makes sense for balance, but there's probably something telling worth examining in why you actively want that specific nerf. (But that's a question you have to ask yourself.)

>Enchant is simply a much more powerful service than ensorcell and needs to be treated as such.

This statement reflects a lack of understanding of the advantages of TD immunity in capped hunting. Ensorcell is far more powerful than enchanting. The ensorcell system shows that it's also flexible enough to address different types of equipment differently. The bonus applied to an offensive weapon need not be the same as on armor or a shield. Or they might do the best of both, like for a runestaff. A statement that says "enchanting is far more powerful" just because of AS dismisses all the other advantages of the ensorcell system, when AS from a weapon means next to nothing these days anyway.

>Remember how much people just spent on enchant certs at last DR?

Remember how much people spent on a single +5 TD cert last DR? Oh right, 150k+ scrip.

>Here's a serious question to ask yourself: Why are you advocating for this specific nerf when in general you claim to hate any and all nerfs? Making 515 self-cast only would absolutely remove utility from the spell. What if I want to give my hunting buddy a boost? Now I can't. (In that hypothetical world.)

515 was not meant to be a "utility" spell. It cannot be a "utility" spell and provide the same level of offensive power that Estild claims it does, but it does not. There is no other spell in the game that can be other-cast and is not imbeddable, so it is yet again another design inconsistency for wizards.

I prefer wizards to be given the same consideration as every other profession when it comes to balancing their spells to benefit the profession first and outsiders second. As with 319, all changes were made to accommodate the class intended to use them. 515 was never balanced to provide combat advantages to pures with far cheaper and more effective warding spells, such as sorcerers and clerics, and also stack with other true boosters like 240. This is an actual balance concern, not "unproductive envy". As long as a spell or ability is available to everyone, the power ceiling will always be much lower for the native class. That's the entire reason that 319 was changed the way it was, otherwise any subsequent changes would have been much more punitive than necessary.

515 was nerfed anyway, but the nerf did not need to be so punitive if wizards were given the same native casting consideration.

<<Remember how much people spent on a single +5 TD cert last DR? Oh right, 150k+ scrip.

First off, I honestly don't appreciate the sarcasm and bite as a contrast to the way I'm trying to approach you. :/
(I don't want to derail the conversation, just pointing out that these are real people your talking to- both other players and GMs.)

Anyway, max TD bonus from Ensorcell is +10, an additional +5 above the normal "cap" is a massive increase over that. It's just not comparable to going from 5x to 6x in a system that's already very used to 6x equipment.

To be comparing apples to apples, you'd need a world where 10x enchants were very common and easily achievable by capped wizards, and then they offered a "10x to 15x" cert. And I'd expect that item to for for way more than 150k scrip. Even treating 7x as a "cap", a "7x-to-10.5x" cert would go for way over 150k.

I personally feel that a scorecard is meaningless without context and whitewashes the actual reasons behind people voting a certain way on particular topics. It doesn't reveal anything about why people feel the way they do about specific areas of change.

The main areas of concern I feel are still pressing are a post-cap pure wizard tool for reliable single target killing and the direction of lores for wizards vs. the other professions, as revealed in this thread. If we only have one sphere, there are ways to compensate for training costs that don't involve only allowing a sub-par result to be achieved at best. See clerics.

>>(that's nice and all, but not something most well post-cap wizards will achieve)

One minor correction - by generally agreed convention (twixt a very few real wizards - but I'll take the win) well post cap means the wizard has maximally trained all magical skills. That would mean by definition all well-post cap wizards should have zero recovery time due to maximally trained EMC.

At cap and before cap - needless to say the maff's not there.

As an idea - I wonder if there would be benefit to scaling the EMC equation to level. So if the wizard is 2x (even at level 20, for example) in EMC, then no recovery period. Kinda sorta like the lore scaling for Wizardly Clench or whatever your favorite non-working spell is. . .

Doug

You are confusing topics and posters. I will answer the part with my quote in it from a different topic. "Current Summary State of Wizards Scorecard - Discussion"

"My hope is that whenever I max CS I will be able to 504/912/410/909 a room and bolt things to death before they can move. I think it will work very well as it works amazingly well in the sanctum and the confluence.-GBB"

That is my quote above. To which you asked.


"I'm a little confused...how does any of that work amazingly well in the confluence when out of 504/912/410/909, 504 is the only thing that works at all in the confluence? And with everything in there being immune to crits, how is 917 returning these amazing results"
~ Methais"

Part one of the answer
"My hope is that whenever I max CS I will be able to 504/912/410/909 a room and bolt things to death before they can move. I think it will work very well as it works amazingly well in the sanctum and the confluence.-GBB"

Right so 515+504 and bolt is how I hunt the confluence 1.907 vs fire creatures 2. 903 steam everything else. A mixture of 912/410/909 is how I hunt the sanctum. Add those two groups of spells together make up the majority of what I use versus creatures hence 504/912/410/909. I guess I should add 505 bolt as well there but really I do not like taking the chances and go with 410 most, 909 second, and 912 when I am hunting with a sword swinger. The sanctum is extremely swarmy so dropping 950 bombs on it is usually a mana saver.

Now to the second part of your quote it was answered with.
"I use 917 on TD/bolt high creatures but it really works best for me only on scaled shapers and bandits. -GBB"

Bandits have a crazy high TD (common problem even with my cleric until he reached max CS) So my Halfling wizards 525CS vs their max 444 TD plus heavy armor is a bad combo. Good old 410+917 or bolt is fine but 917 works as well. With shapers 410/912/909 plus bolt isn't always going to work because some of them have super high DS as well and that is where 917 comes in.

Now my Halfling wizard only has 87 Wizard ranks. I really have really only touched the edges of what the spell can do. Will I be able to use it on other sanctum creatures? Sentinels, fanatics, monstrosities, lurks? Will 917 eventually work on rift/scatter creatures? I do not know.


Now onto the first part of your post which wasn't asking me but someone else

"Which do you think is the overall weaker one? The 2015 wizard or the today wizard? If today, why?-Methais"

Now we have a problem here as in 2015 my wizard was precap. He did not use rapid fire and hunted the bowels/bandits exclusively until cap. He was overtrained for 500 CS and very low in wizard ranks. Now my wizard is 11 million xp and trying to catch up to the Major elemental ranks I lost to wizard ranks/lores over the last year. My wizard is better off now but that is more of a function of the xp I have gained. I do hunt/train with a much higher experience DE wizard that was hit very hard by the 519 nerf + 917+ lore requirements. That wizard went from a 569 CS to 554 (unenhanced) CS in the 500's, but that wizards 950 is bestial, generating 581 CS for the 500's unenhanced and 544 minor elemental CS. 950 413+519 combo is crazy good. Not 240+317 crazy good. For sure not 240+1115 crazy good, but good enough for the pain of the 519 nerf not to be so dramatic. In the end I think and have continued to say that I would like to see some more tweaks to wizards (I illustrated a few in the post you quoted and moved) and have recently even had my own post on my ideas but by no means do I see wizards gimped in any way.

GBB

>>Which do you think is the overall weaker one? The 2015 wizard or the today wizard?

2015 wizard. Today's wizard is significantly superior. There are things I don't like and that I would see changed. But in terms of sheer power and surviveability across the board - save two exceptions - yesterday's wizard loses. Most importantly, that statement holds true in almost every case at every level, as well.

Perhaps you mean to ask 'which wizard do you enjoy playing more - the 2015 wizard or the today wizard?'

Doug

Today's post-cap pure wizard is vastly weaker vs. the 2015 post-cap pure wizard in terms of quality life, high probability of a reliable instant kill, and suffering unnecessary cooldowns that no other pure is subject to. The fun factor, vs. tedium, in achieving a kill is a lot less, and the power ceiling potential is much lower.

I never had survival issues before or after, so that is a non-factor in my assessment of the changes, nor was survival based on magical skills ever what I considered to be exciting. If I don't die, or die once less per month, I don't notice it at all. When the tedium of my hunts increases such that it cannot be mitigated to an acceptable level, it becomes very noticeable and impacts my enjoyment of daily combat and the game.

Absolutely enough of the sniping back and forth at one another. This thread is now closed. Please do not continue it in other discussions on the forums, either.


~Aulis
Forums Manager
QC'er