Magi Classleads/Skillset

Xith

Magi will be losing Enchantment, possibly within the year. So an additional skill will be added to replace it.

Purpose of this thread:

• To define what the magi class is or is supposed to be
• To suggest changes or additions to Elementalism and Crystalism 
• To help define what new skill might replace Enchantment
• All of the above, focusing on enhancing a Magi's purpose without overpowering or underpowering them

Rules:

1. Retardation is a staple of the class. It is not overpowered just because you can't fight in it. It's not going anywhere.
2. From HELP MAGI, "Perhaps more than just about any other class, a magus has the ability to attack multiple opponents at once."
3. Hinder and Damage class. They cannot lock and while they do break limbs, it is to hinder rather than prep.
4. If a solution/fix/addition makes things too overpowered or underpowered, explain scenarios in which that is the case

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Xith

First, I want to talk about Rule #2. Multi-combat. Magi get to be the 1 vs X class.

Part of the reason that's possible is because of retardation. Skills like deepfreeze, hailstorm, stormhammer, coupled with the vibrations that decay over 90 seconds, they all hit enemies.

Magi are also designed to have multi-enemy combat outside of retardation, able to keep the vibrations active to cause passive damage and hindering to stack with their active damage from hailstorm, stormhammer, and holocaust.

The class has not had any particular attention since the days of Nexus combat, so some of the assumptions on its effectiveness are outdated, at least in the multi-target department.

The chief problem with multi-person retardation combat is that it relies on keeping everyone in the room. Deepfreeze serves to help prevent tumbling, but while a single person can be watched and braziered without a problem, the other two can escape. Adduction was the theoretical counter to this in early days, but that vibe mainly serves as a buffer now due to people always using mass.

The problem with someone getting out of the retardation while the Magi is still in it is that many/most fighters have bows and love delph sniping. This isn't just a problem for the magi but also for their victim. It turns Magi into archers who want to stick people in their vibes and snipe them from outside the room.

"Well if you want to fight multiple people, just don't use retardation?"

This brings us to the damage competition. While not the absolute best, Magi are definite contenders for the most able to outdamage, aided by outhealing with Harmony and blocking damage with reflections. While Stormhammer can target 3 opponents, it's the defensive side of damage multi-combat that falls short as more enemies join the fight.

The one skill that is supposed to equalize this is Energise. A vibration that deals damage to all enemies and stores about 10% of the damage dealt as health that can be used to heal with ABSORB ENERGY. 3 upper level enemies can keep up with repeated stormhammers for a while but it's the holocaust that finishes them. Unfortunately it's a double-edged bomb and can spell death for the magi as well.

What's the point in mentioning these things? Magi can handle people 1v1 just fine. Well, yes, but several skills are supposed to be able to apply to multiple enemies at once, and there is no longer a practical market for that, so my suggestions will try to bring a few things up to par in 1 vs 3 applications. Increasing multi ability without overpowering individual encounters.

Xith

I'll pitch my ideas, improvements first, then new abilities.

Elementalism

Light: The first spell you learn. Fittingly the most useless. I propose changing it to remove blindness from all enemies.

Skills helped: Transfix

Reflection: "One of your reflections has been destroyed! You have 0 left."

The only time that number will read anything other than zero is with a Wand of Reflections. You know, that artefact that nobody has.

Reflection costs 50 mana, 5 willpower, and 1.8s EQ. I propose allowing CAST REFLECTION AT <target> [<#>] to conjure several at once if the target has 0. Each additional reflection x3 mana, x4 willpower, x2 EQ (max 6s eq) (3 reflections = 450m, 80w, 6s .. 4 reflections = 1350 mana, 320w, 6s) Compare with staffcast (30w) and holocaust (1000w).

Skills helped: retardation-arrows, multi-combat, raid support

Erode: Allow up to 2 more targets at a doubled willpower cost

Skills helped: multi-combat

Lightning: Allow up to 2 more targets at a doubled willpower cost

Skills helped: multi-combat

Flood: Largely useless to anyone who isn't a Grook, and race was supposed to stop playing a part in which class you chose. Or visa versa. Let it prevent/cancel firewalls.

Skills helped: icewall

NEW

Vacuum: After a channel of summoning wind, draws all adjacent into the room, massed or not. Can be stopped the same ways as beckon. Warning message in adjacent rooms.

Skills helped: brazier

Windwall: Similar to lightwall, simply reduces arrow accuracy, short duration (~40s, 66%?) and medium willpower cost. Can be removed by casting gust in either room.

Skills helped: retardation, raid support

Flameshield: Short defense that prevents 30% of fire damage. (~10s)

Skills helped: Holocaust.

Crystalism

Energise: Do not destroy vibration on absorb. No point having to respin when it already has to re-syphon health from enemies.

Dissonance: Currently causes damage in enemies without dissonance, has a chance to afflict dissonance. Enemies with dissonance lose defenses periodically. One possible fix to the mass issue is having this vibration strip mass before other defenses.

Skills helped: Gust, Adduction

Gravity: Cause damage to massed enemies on tick, to discourage fighting the magi with mass.

Skills helped: Gust, Adduction

Cataclysm: Instead of requiring 3 Magi, just require 3x the crystals for one mage to spin in adjacent rooms. The class's best raid skill never gets used because it's hard to have 3 magi around at once.

NEW

Resolve vibration: willpower regeneration. Alternatively, just add willpower to the harmony vibe. (1 crystal)

Skllls helped: holocaust, stormhammer, willpower defs

Mirage vibration: Grants the Magi a reflection periodically. Limited to 90s like Plague. (4 crystals)

Skills helped: multi-combat, retardation vs. passive offense classes 

Awakening vibration: Grants insomnia defense to the Magi on tick. Limited to 90s like Plague. (2 crystals)

Skills helped: retardation-arrows 

Stasis vibration: Prevents all vibration decay in its room. Limited to 150s. Like reverb, does not follow focus vibe. (2 crystals)

Skills helped: vibes

Most of the changes and additions are self-explanatory but if you don't understand the balance or see something you think could be exploitable, feel free to point it out.

Xith

Spellweaving

My replacement skill for Enchantment is an idea I was going to incorporate into my battlemage class idea, but given that it had a 3rd skillset that was not only a tradeskill but was called "Talismans"… probably going to scrap the class and just adapt one of its skills to Magi.

Thanks Sarapis Obama.

EDIT: Will touch-up the ability list and submit at a later time. For now, feel free to tear me a new one for my classleads for Elementalism and Crystalism.

Nemutaur

Xith said:

Elementalism

Erode: Allow up to 2 more targets at a doubled willpower cost

Doubled willpower isn't much of a deterrent, there needs to be a stiffer price, like triple the mana cost since it's two more targets as well slightly higher equilibrium.

Lightning: Allow up to 2 more targets at a doubled willpower cost

See above, I think it is likelier that this would be implemented over multi-erode since it's only a chance at a def strip and the damage is much lower than stormhammer.

Flood: Largely useless to anyone who isn't a Grook, and race was supposed to stop playing a part in which class you chose. Or visa versa. Let it prevent/cancel firewalls.

It is one of the very few counters left to runelore and is a nice way to prevent being beckoned if you remove your water walking boots. I could see it maybe cancelling firewalls if the flood gets used up doing so, doubt it will ever prevent them though. 

NEW

Vacuum: After a channel of summoning wind, draws all adjacent into the room, massed or not. Can be stopped the same ways as beckon. Warning message in adjacent rooms.

Skills helped: brazier

How does this help brazier at all? It will just replace brazier if you want to grab someone from an adjacent room since this would essentially be untargetted beckon and that ignores a monolith sigil. Now while I'd love Ashtan to have beckon, I highly doubt they will ever give it to us.

Flameshield: Short defense that prevents 30% of fire damage. (~10s)

Skills helped: Holocaust.

I think @Terra already suggested something similar, only it wasn't a defence itself but changing the ability so that Magi would take less damage from a Holocaust. It's just not going to happen, if you cast something that powerful you have to gamble that you'll outlast your opponent or make sure that you get them lower in health with a nice big staff cast or stormhammer beforehand.

Crystalism

Dissonance: Currently causes damage in enemies without dissonance, has a chance to afflict dissonance. Enemies with dissonance lose defenses periodically. One possible fix to the mass issue is having this vibration strip mass before other defenses.

Not sure if this would really help adduction that much unless your opponent always tumbles out of retardation with a broken limb and is off salve balance. Otherwise you can just tumble out and apply mass on successful tumble. All this does is let people fight in retardation easier since they won't always be worrying about insomnia.

Gravity: Cause damage to massed enemies on tick, to discourage fighting the magi with mass.

If you remove the free tentacle effect from it, sure why not. This is supposed to counter flying out of retardation I think.

NEW

Mirage vibration: Grants the Magi a reflection periodically. Limited to 90s like Plague. (4 crystals)

No thanks, but I hate reflections already since they're essentially a free parry that I can't bypass without wasting time on a filler attack.

Awakening vibration: Grants insomnia defense to the Magi on tick. Limited to 90s like Plague. (2 crystals)

If the person is already outside of retardation and there's no way you're getting them back in can't you just dampen the retardation and be done with it? Also why wouldn't you be fighting with metawake up just to make sure this doesn't happen to you?

Stasis vibration: Prevents all vibration decay in its room. Limited to 150s. Like reverb, does not follow focus vibe. (2 crystals)

I think this had a class lead last time, didn't quite pan out. No harm in asking for it again though, might solve the 'mobility' problem of a Magi being jumped and not being able to fight without full vibes. Retardation should obviously kill this vibration first.

Accipiter

Just a quick note, the changing out of enchantment for something new doesn't mean you are gonna get huge buffs like uber-beckon. Magi are pretty balanced as is, if you suggest buffs you will need to consider what has to be nerfed for it to happen.

Skye

You're jumping to some pretty big conclusions about how our tradeskills are gonna go down. Looking at how Imperian split their trade skills from class skills, I could almost guess that Magi aren't going to 'lose' enchantments entirely, but rather a potentially less potent version of the skill may be made public to non-Magi.

Kaden

Nemutaur said:

Xith said:

Stasis vibration: Prevents all vibration decay in its room. Limited to 150s. Like reverb, does not follow focus vibe. (2 crystals)

I think this had a class lead last time, didn't quite pan out. No harm in asking for it again though, might solve the 'mobility' problem of a Magi being jumped and not being able to fight without full vibes. Retardation should obviously kill this vibration first.

Classlead #39 is currently listed as approved with this decision: We'll be making some changes with an upcoming project which should mitigate costs and such.

Sena

If the tradeskill replacements end up becoming "the same class as always, but with a few additions", it will be kind of disappointing. I'd much rather see more thorough restructuring/redesigning, at least on the level of the occultist changes. Even for the classes that are pretty well balanced already.

Sena

Skye said:

You're jumping to some pretty big conclusions about how our tradeskills are gonna go down. Looking at how Imperian split their trade skills from class skills, I could almost guess that Magi aren't going to 'lose' enchantments entirely, but rather a potentially less potent version of the skill may be made public to non-Magi.

It's been said that the tradeskills are going to be entirely split off from their current classes, with those classes getting entirely new replacement skills (or maybe an aspect of an existing skill being split off and expanded upon). An example Tecton gave was: "For example, with knights we could remove the weaponry-based attacks from chivalry, add some more mount and falcon-related abilities, and then devote an entire skill to using weaponry."

Synbios

Polearm-combat, please.

Kuy

Synbios said:

Polearm-combat, please.

I can teach you.

Blujixapug

I figure they have their own ideas planned out already, but whatevs.

I would love to see specialisations for Elementalism. Fire, water, earth, and air. It's such fertile territory, the ability to become not just a magi, but a fire mage, or ice wizard, or geomancer. It would be a huge opportunity for mage Houses to develop their identity. And it would be a cool new twist on an old class.

The way I envision it, Elementalism would remain largely the same, but there'd be a new 'Specialisation' ability gained either after Skilled (for post-level 20 Journeymen) or after Fabled (post-level 50 full class members only). Specialising would give you a mixture of reskinned but functionally identical abilities - eg. Firelash might become Windslash, Waterwhip, or Stonescourge - and one or two new abilities, largely for flavour, unique to each element.

As for replacing the Enchantment skill...

It's a good opportunity to expand on mages' notoriously simplistic PK, where they've long been limited to damage + retardation + couple of tricks like erode and staffstrike.

I don't know exactly how that might work though, so here's some other ideas instead.

Call the skill Wizardry. Make it about being a kickass wizard. Maybe have elemental specialisation pertain to this skill, instead of Elementalism.

Familiars. Take the slain corpse of any non-sentient NPC and bewizard it, channelling your chosen element through its lifeforce, turning it into your elemental familiar. So you could have "a fiery gorilla familiar", or "an aqueous shark familiar", or "an aeriform lion familiar". They'd all have the base template of 'familiar', and couldn't be targeted as gorilla/lion/shark, but having to go out and kill a thing, and being able to bring its shape under your power, would be awesome fun. Familiars should not have a standard damage attack, because magi already have ample passive damage. They might instead have a couple of affliction combo attacks, and would be able to carry out certain basic orders.

Sigilomancy. Create a list of 30-40 different sigil elements, eg. horizontal line, vertical line, upwards-curving semicircle, vertically bisected circle, incomplete triangle, etc. Similar to the process for Heraldry. A mage mixes and matches 5-6 different elements to create their own unique, personal sigil. The sigil is then used for... I don't know. But it'd be cool.

Elemental Form. Become a rampaging elemental based on your specialisation. Since this is kind of stealing sylvans' Viridian schtick, maybe make it only last for 5 minutes before dumping you out, but be awesome. Water elementals get a tidal surge, turning into a wave to dash several rooms in whichever direction before crashing into an enemy. Air elementals can form a swirling vortex that briefly dumps everyone in the skies.

Elemental nexuses. Ley lines. Planar rifts. No idea how those concepts would be translated into abilities.

Ok my brainstorm is subsiding.

Tharvis

maybe even link the specialising thing to a new area, similar to the occultists their chaos plane, where you go to an elemental lord and ask him/her/it/whatever for his/her/its/whatevers blessing, which tunes everything applicable to that element?

Blujixapug

Tharvis said:

maybe even link the specialising thing to a new area, similar to the occultists their chaos plane, where you go to an elemental lord and ask him/her/it/whatever for his/her/its/whatevers blessing, which tunes everything applicable to that element?

I think the Elemental Lords are cool because their thought processes are meant to be so alien and inhuman. They are wind, and rock. Fire burns, water flows, they don't have the same needs and desires as mortal organisms. Agatheis - a God - supposedly had to spend millennia learning just to communicate with them. From the mythos, "These beings possessed completely foreign thought-patterns and their intentions and goals are to this day utterly unfathomable." They're barely personified at all, beyond possessing names and individuality. If you could just skip into the plane of fire, say a prayer to the Eternal Fire, and get a blessing, I think that might be too easy. And if the planes were bashing areas, if the Elemental Lords were NPCs that any chump dragon could kill with a lucky WSC, that would immeasurably demean them.

So, I don't know. It could be really cool. It would be wonderful if there was more pertaining to the elemental planes in Achaea. It would need the right approach though.

Nim

Blujixapug said:

Call the skill Wizardry. Make it about being a kickass wizard. Maybe have elemental specialisation pertain to this skill, instead of Elementalism.

I would love it if magis were more arcane and wizardy.

For sigils, maybe they could be crazy formula things that create actual, deterministic, but calculated effects, so there's an annoying but cool underlying system to it that makes next to no actual sense, leaving a sense of experimentation and research to the class.

That might not fit mechanically, but my favorite thing about wizards is their ability to research and invent new means of wielding magic. The fact that magi effectively cannot makes them much more boring to me.

Tharvis

Blujixapug said:

Tharvis said:

maybe even link the specialising thing to a new area, similar to the occultists their chaos plane, where you go to an elemental lord and ask him/her/it/whatever for his/her/its/whatevers blessing, which tunes everything applicable to that element?

I think the Elemental Lords are cool because their thought processes are meant to be so alien and inhuman. They are wind, and rock. Fire burns, water flows, they don't have the same needs and desires as mortal organisms. Agatheis - a God - supposedly had to spend millennia learning just to communicate with them. From the mythos, "These beings possessed completely foreign thought-patterns and their intentions and goals are to this day utterly unfathomable." They're barely personified at all, beyond possessing names and individuality. If you could just skip into the plane of fire, say a prayer to the Eternal Fire, and get a blessing, I think that might be too easy. And if the planes were bashing areas, if the Elemental Lords were NPCs that any chump dragon could kill with a lucky WSC, that would immeasurably demean them.

So, I don't know. It could be really cool. It would be wonderful if there was more pertaining to the elemental planes in Achaea. It would need the right approach though.

i'm not saying them themselves, and if anything I'd suggest it to be similar to the chaos plane, only magi can travel there, and it'd probably not even the elemental lords themselves there, but atleast some elementals of power that are perhaps in the middle ground, but I see where you're coming from, would be easy to either trivialize or over-inflate

Melodie

Suddenly Bluj's idea makes me re-consider Magi all over again.

Water mage please!

Penwize

Melodie said:

Water mage please!

If this was TMC, I would have SO much to say about this.  But alas, it is not.

Xith

So my reasoning behind the somewhat small penalty for making zap and erode multi-targeted is that stormhammer has no additional mana/wp/eq cost itself. But I thought erode and zap should given their special functions.

The reason for a multi-targeted erode is that if any of your 3 targets shield on stormhammer, it adds your rebound to the EQ recovery.

Might be a bug but I just tested a stormhammer with the other 2 targets shielded, and my total eq recovery was ~7.8, and that's WITH quick-witted and Aldar. Even without that bug though, the straight damage race gets set back if multiple opponents are just shielding.

The idea with Vacuum was about a 5 second delay (requiring pause) that also gives a warning message to adjacent rooms, so it's not strictly a clone of beckon. I felt that air was a little underrepresented. BUT, this is just one suggested fix to the adduction problem. 

In the beginning, adduction was supposed to contribute to keeping people in the room, but like I said, everyone keeps mass up without regard. So my other suggestion was the Gravity-Mass penalty. So it simply has a ground effect (doesn't damage the people it knocks down if they're massed).

Gravity ticks every 4 seconds from the time it embeds, exceptionally fast for a vibe (Palpitation is 9), so the damage effect should be a little less, but enough to discourage keeping mass up.

A note on the Awakening vibe. It doesn't wake you, simply gives the insomnia defense, meaning if someone shoots you with delph, the damage still wakes you up but the delph doesn't put you back to sleep because your new insomnia absorbed it, giving you the chance to stand and try to shield or reflect, or at least stay awake long enough to start a tumble.

Everyone's instinct with retardation is "Oh, I'll just snipe." which both the mage and his opponent can be guilty of, as well as raiders of all factions. I'd sort of like to see a greatly increased dodging chance in retardation due to the arrow being slowed. Remove a griefy tactic completely.

"You spot the arrow coming and manage to dodge out of the way just in time."

Cooper

Why do you think that losing elementalism makes Magi deserves absolutely enormous, unheard of buffs?

Kyrra

I thought Magi were losing enchanting?

Cooper

Cat's out of the bag, oops.

Just kidding, I meant enchanting.

Trevize

Sena said:

If the tradeskill replacements end up becoming "the same class as always, but with a few additions", it will be kind of disappointing. I'd much rather see more thorough restructuring/redesigning, at least on the level of the occultist changes. Even for the classes that are pretty well balanced already.

You just want something else to test, study, dissect, and examine, admit it.

That said, I do agree. But I don't know how feasible it is.

Xith

Someone mentioned that Magi is "balanced". That's probably true on the 1v1 scale, but again I'm visiting that most unique feature of the class, the ability to multi-target. I think the things that make a class what it is should be emphasized.

That was the reason for my flameshield suggestion, given that any 3 opponents can keep a magi on the defensive enough to not have any advantage in using a holocaust.

How about this instead:

- add the damaging aspect to gravity

- decrease the damage done by Energise but increase the % health stored to compensate (don't consume vibe on use).

The idea here would be that correctly timed "absorb energy" would help offset the holocaust damage. Also remember that this doesn't affect 1v1 combat dramatically because the health stored is per-enemy.

Xith

Cooper said:

Why do you think that losing elementalism makes Magi deserves absolutely enormous, unheard of buffs?

Go read the rules, Cooper. Point out what's so "enormous".

The alternative is to suggest what combat skill is going to replace Enchantment in a balanced way. But I'm primarily addressing multi-enemy things (again, first post) right now.

I'll follow up with 3rd skill ideas later but I figured I'd get this stuff out of the way to see where people feel Magi is at.

Synbios

Kuy said:

Synbios said:

Polearm-combat, please.

I can teach you.

@Kuy: But then you'd have to...

CHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGE?!

Antonius

I was like "But then you'd have to joust"? What is that Synbios on about now?

Synbios

Antonius said:

I was like "But then you'd have to joust"? What is that Synbios on about now?

@Antonius:

Alternatively, since we're talking knight-folk, an era-respective version:

Jarrod

Magi have better group attacking than other classes already. It's still not overly effective solo because no class should be designed around fighting groups.

I liked the post about letting the Magi focus on certain elements. That could be a really cool idea, possibly have the Magi focus on a specific element at a time, maybe something that could be done off balance but not off EQ? That would make it usable with staffstrike. Then have a handful of skills that change effects based on the element they're current focused on.

Aegoth

Elemental Magi is a fantastic idea, and opens enormous possibilities for roleplay. Thumbs way up on that.

I feel that Magi are already a very strong class both 1v1 and in groups, even moreso when artefacts come into play (why do you think magi are always targeted first?). Could it use some tweaks? Certainly, as can every class. We may be a one-trick pony of "prep, retard, damage", but there are a million avenues we can take to achieve that goal. I'm certainly open to discussion about perhaps changing some focus away from retardation, but one has to keep in mind that retardation will always be present, and we have to be mindful of that when asking for any changes to the magi class.