Magi Classleads/Skillset

Asmodron

Though I currently do not have a developed skill to present, I do have an idea I would like to share. This is mainly a post concerning aesthetics and flavor.

I have always been a fan of diversity, especially in the fashion that one would feel their character or class is 'unique' in the fashion that they can somehow customize it. The concept of the Mage archetype has always had a quality to it (Im speaking in all manner of fantasy games) that there are several 'schools' of magic one can study and embrace. I would love to see this developed in the Mage tertiary skill.

How it would be developed is if a Mage could choose an 'elemental' school to focus upon, thus their abilities becoming customizable or changed in such a fashion. I do not mean to say that we now develop 4 new skills, in place of the one, but rather that the skill itself be flexible to the point it would seem like a new skill each time.

I would suggest the skill itself be focused upon a 'neutral' energy concept, and early on in the skill they gain the ability to select a school of magic. Upon selection, several of the abilities in the skill will be changed accoring to the element they select (perhaps even some abilities in the other two skills as well), additionally they will gain possibly 2 or 3 new abilities according to the element. Would these new abilities be game changing? Of course not, in my opinion they should mainly just give the mage a little flair.

Perhaps when I have alittle more time, I will flesh this idea out a bit, but currently what does everyone think?




P.S:  +1 to those that know where pic is from. ^^
It was too cute not to put!

Aegoth

Here's some food for thought: We want to open up other avenues for mages to get kills, yes? Aetolia has something along those lines for Sciomancy (which also has crystalism as a secondary skillset, ie. retardation.). Now, I do not know whether or not the mechanics translate very well from Aetolia to Achaea, but I just wanna lay this stuff down as food for thought and to stimulate discussion as to alternate avenues we can take from the stale prep/retard/damage strategy of a mage. Below are the skills that Sciomancy has for their buildup to their instakill. Recall: just food for thought

Sciomancy - Stonebrand

Usage: CAST STONEBRAND <target>

Elements: Earth

Place the Brand of the Stone upon your foe, increasing their elixir

balance by 1 second.

H:3649 M:3496 B:99% [eb]ab sciomancy windbrand

Sciomancy - Windbrand

Usage: CAST WINDBRAND <target>

Elements: Air

Place the Brand of the Wind upon your foe, causing your opponent to miss

20% of their physical attacks.

H:3649 M:3496 B:99% [eb]ab sciomancy shadowbrand

Sciomancy - Shadowbrand

Usage: CAST SHADOWBRAND <target>

Elements: Shadow

Place the Brand of the Shadow upon your foe, which will burn them for

40% of the mana that they lose.

H:3649 M:3496 B:99% [eb]ab sciomancy fluxus

Sciomancy - Fluxus

Usage: CAST FLUXUS <target>

Elements: Shadow

With the Shadow, Air, and Earth Brands upon your foe, you may force

their own shadow to merge with their corporeal form, triggering a

breakdown of their body into its constituent elements.

Jarrod

Something I thought about for other methods of kills for Magi before, without new skills, was a way for them to deliver increased magic damage to a target. My thought at the time was a stacking % increase in damage taken from Elementalism skills based on the number of elements hit with via staffstrike in a certain window. Hit with air on a leg to prone and break leg, 10% damage boost, hit with fire on the other leg to strip frost defense (ideally this would delay the next frost defense too), 20% damage boost, hit with water on head to concus/shiver, 30% damage boost, then either have a holo go off or staffstrike fire or something for insane damage potential.

Obviously a very rough cut idea, but something to give Magi a kill route that isn't 'embed retard and hope they're stuck in it'.

Alrena

The one problem with Magi is that, especially for unartied ones, your only reliable kill method would be retardation. While you can do a lot about it, you are far more vulnerable to outside attack during it than any other class is during a fight. Beyond that, it is extremely easy to catch a magi off guard, as they'll lack any vibes. No other class is completely helpless when jumped, as Paladins can fight without, or a minimum, of Rites. A bard can do the same without harmonics. 

I'd like it if Magi were put in a similar spot. Able to fight, even if not at full strength. It would be great if we had some kind of fancy instant-kill attack that requires some things, like freezepound, brokenstar or vivisect does(obviously not exactly these). Alternatively, something that was suggested above, something that could help us boost damage on people and give us an alternative path to kill.

Santar

Magi is a top tier class. One of the strongest purely unartied classes, and completely ridiculous with arties.

Regarding the vibe/harmonic thing, I already proposed a suggestion in the past: Vibe/harm sanctuary to leave them in at a very slow tick down rate, allowing you to call them whenever. Probably wouldn't allow every single harmonic/vibe for this, but the majority would be fine.

Xith

The thematic consensus seems to be that there should be more of each element. I've heard a couple of ideas about specialising in specific elements for added benefit. Currently the only thing in Achaea where specialisation affects your abilities is Seafaring. General combat needs to be a little more spur of the moment (a la homunculi germinations).

I recently noted how "elemental" staves are not actually elemental but actually made of wood. So I thought maybe the magi could CAST STAFF <fire|earth|air|water>, and depending upon which staff type they have wielded, certain abilities of that type get a small boost. Or additional spells can be cast with it. Random examples:

Water staff abilities: True freeze (single target, 3 levels of freeze), Rainstorm, freeze opponent's entities

Fire staff abilities: Fireball (LoS), +50% Firelash damage, etc.

Air staff abilities: Hurricane (lifts enemies into the skies), Airwall (illustrated before), Truegust (ignores mass)

Earth staff abilities: Graniteskin, Quicksand, Stonewall, Earthquake (active tremors effect)

Jacen

@Xith please go monk so we can have an unartied monk buffs thread. Magi don't need no buffs.

Aegoth

Not so much buffs, @Jacen... but rather a divergence from the stale, boring Magi strategy of prep/retard/damage. I think we can all agree that monk would be boring as shit if their ONLY kill method was prep legs and torso then bbt

Kafziel

Aegoth said:

Not so much buffs

Half of what @Xith proposed is over the top ridiculously strong.

Aegoth

I'm ignoring Xith's buffs for a discourse on other avenues of magi combat. Feel free to join in, you know your shit @Kafziel

Saeva

I'm not incredibly well versed in combat, but I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out magi combat so .. I guess when I read through all this, the only real suggestions and comments I have would be these:

Enchantment: Pretty much super lame. Glad to say goodbye to it, if it's going away.
If it were are third combat type skillset replacement, more elemental based options would pretty interesting. It'd be nice to have a new variety of strategies to pick from. As for what those would be, I'm not going to sit here and try to hash out a whole new skillset, but if you could choose from water, earth, fire or wind magus forms... that would open up a lot of different avenues. There would need to be a clear sign as to which form you were in though, so that the opponent could identify it and form a strategy without it being cheaty and overly sneaky. I imagine it somewhat likened to dragon, where your colour defines your attack type.

And vibe stasis... 150s stasis is not really very helpful, tbh. I mean it would absolutely be better than nothing...
But as Kaden said, that classlead 39 got approval and I'll be waiting eagerly to see what change comes from it.
Alrena is right. Magi are pretty much screwed in gank situations. Unless you're a super magus, your best option is generally to try to gtfo. And that's not very fun for either party involved. But without vibes or a lot of artes, it's sort of pointless.
I don't think anyone is saying magi combat, in 1v1 or group situations, needs buffs. But there are still some downfalls to magi combat, mostly based around vibes and their accessibility themselves.

Xith

Kafziel said:

Aegoth said:

Not so much buffs

Half of what @Xith proposed is over the top ridiculously strong.


As the OP stated, explain the basis for your statement. The thing about my ideas is I consider their power and then dial them down accordingly before posting. Try to bring more than a knee-jerk anti-Xith response to the thread, thanks.

Maybe I'm not seeing the "ridiculous" strength in the small changes I propose. So please enlighten me (I'm already prepped with mental affs).

Sena

Xith said:

I've heard a couple of ideas about specialising in specific elements for added benefit. Currently the only thing in Achaea where specialisation affects your abilities is Seafaring. General combat needs to be a little more spur of the moment (a la homunculi germinations).

I disagree with this (not in general, but as an objection to specialisations). It's entirely reasonable for a semi-permanent specialisation to be balanced and not need to be switched. Each specialisation should be thought of as a complete class (even if they're still mostly the same), so a fire mage would be balanced around not having access to the air mage abilities in the same way a runewarden does fine without being able to use devotion, and each specialisation could have different strengths and weaknesses in the same way (but to a lesser extent) that different classes have strengths and weaknesses.

Or, as Blujixapug suggested, the specialisations could be primarily for flavour and not have much (if any) impact on combat.

Asmodron

Seriously, no one likes my cute chibi. to hell with you all

Tharvis

@Asmodron don't worry, everybody loves Korra.

Also, I absolutely love the idea for the elemental thematics, and what @Xith suggested actually sounds good flavour-wise aswell, all it needs is some tweaking to make it all balanced in the bigger picture. (+50% firelash damage would allow Tharvis to do 1300 damage with a 1 room LoS ability, I can already hear the raging)

Kafziel

Xith said:

As the OP stated, explain the basis for your statement. The thing about my ideas is I consider their power and then dial them down accordingly before posting. Try to bring more than a knee-jerk anti-Xith response to the thread, thanks. Maybe I'm not seeing the "ridiculous" strength in the small changes I propose. So please enlighten me (I'm already prepped with mental affs).

I have nothing against you at all on a personal level, so it's not anti-Xith knee-jerk reaction. I just think OP ideas are OP. The onus shouldn't be on me to point out why some of your ideas are overpowered when anybody with a good knowledge of combat mechanics is probably going to reach the same conclusion I did. I rather think that it's YOUR responsibility to intimately know the functionings of Achaea's combat system before you try to add things into the delicate combat balance. But since you asked:

Magi don't need beckon.
Reflection is already an extremely powerful defence without having multireflection as an option.
Mirage and awakening vibration are both way too strong for a passive defence. Retardation should be a double-edged sword, and passive insomnia/reflection would take away a large part of one of those edges.
Single magi cata vibe means you have to run 3 rooms away to escape a magi's damage. Icewalls/freeze ground all around, staffcast them when they tumble/leap out? No thanks.
Additionally almost all of your random examples for staff powers were OP. Stonewalls, truegust, instantfreeze? None of these are anywhere close to needed for magi combat. Hurricane + gravity = whole enemy raid party hits totem every time it's cast. Enemy friendlies and hurricane when they're about to die, free escape.

Mithridates

Retardation should instantly mangle both arms and a leg, prep the head, and give impatience when dropped. 

PLZ FIX

Xith

They were "random" examples for a reason. And not needed is not the same as overpowered. 

 The thing about a periodic (~18s) passive reflection is that you're in the middle of offense most of the time and you're as likely to drop it yourself as have it be of excessive defensive use. We're addressing stagnant magi gameplay, both with a 3rd skill and with fixes to the existing. In this case, retardation snipe. 

The reflection buffs are intended to benefit multi-combat as well without having a grand effect in 1v1. Put up 3 reflections at once with 6s eq and a heavier willpower drain, won't slow combat as long or efficiently as you think. Plus magi could discourage heavy LoS on their allies in raids, encouraging the melee rush a Mage could be more use in. My first list of suggestions kind of offered multiple solutions *each to a couple of problems.

I'm asking which is most appealing.

*EDIT

Mithridates

I'd say the first concern would be a bit more mobility or hindering abilities. 

Blujixapug

Xith said:

As the OP stated, explain the basis for your statement. The thing about my ideas is I consider their power and then dial them down accordingly before posting. Try to bring more than a knee-jerk anti-Xith response to the thread, thanks. Maybe I'm not seeing the "ridiculous" strength in the small changes I propose. So please enlighten me (I'm already prepped with mental affs).

I think the issue is that magi are already balanced as a PVP class with the two skills they have. If you give them a ton of PVP buffs - even small ones - they could easily end up much too strong. So I think you need to ensure that any new abilities you give them either aren't relevant to PVP, or don't have strong synergy with what they already have. No new passive damage, no new defenses that would overlap with Stoneskin/Diamondskin, no new passive afflictions since they already have one of the best passive-based skills in the game (Crystalism), nothing that would be crazy in Retardation unless it's designed with Retardation in mind, etc.

Giving mages Beckon (Vacuum) for example is an untargeted, unnecessary buff, apparently with little heed for the way this would take a strong, tactical ability restricted to two factions - Light and Evil - and give it to a neutral class available to every faction.

I do think there's plenty of room to add complexity to mages without stacking new power on top of old power. Right now their tactics are limited to, embed vibes, sic ents, erode/lightning a few times, staffcast a few times, try a holo/hailstorm stack, and if you don't have the artie advantage to make damage work, resort to retardation, rapier jabs, and staffstrike. Level-creep and dragon-creep have left damage an increasingly outdated tactic. The removal of racial damage weaknesses also removed some of the minimal offensive strategy from mages' variable damage types. So you could try and come up with a more strategic, alternate offense for mages, something that doesn't revolve around damage, and it wouldn't be too tricky to design it so that cannot be used simultaneously with their existing damage offense.

Jarrod said:

Something I thought about for other methods of kills for Magi before, without new skills, was a way for them to deliver increased magic damage to a target. My thought at the time was a stacking % increase in damage taken from Elementalism skills based on the number of elements hit with via staffstrike in a certain window. Hit with air on a leg to prone and break leg, 10% damage boost, hit with fire on the other leg to strip frost defense (ideally this would delay the next frost defense too), 20% damage boost, hit with water on head to concus/shiver, 30% damage boost, then either have a holo go off or staffstrike fire or something for insane damage potential.

Obviously a very rough cut idea, but something to give Magi a kill route that isn't 'embed retard and hope they're stuck in it'.

I suggest that if mages receive a new kill technique, it be designed to beat tanky opponents like dragons, without making mages too strong against the regular chumps who have a mere 3k health. A 30% damage boost probably wouldn't help much against a dragon with maxed miniskills, but would be overwhelming vs 3k max health. Maybe make attacks deal a percentage of the target's max health, in true damage? Or instead consider a conditional instakill, rather than damage buffs.

Sena said:

It's entirely reasonable for a semi-permanent specialisation to be balanced and not need to be switched. Each specialisation should be thought of as a complete class (even if they're still mostly the same), so a fire mage would be balanced around not having access to the air mage abilities in the same way a runewarden does fine without being able to use devotion, and each specialisation could have different strengths and weaknesses in the same way (but to a lesser extent) that different classes have strengths and weaknesses.

Or, as Blujixapug suggested, the specialisations could be primarily for flavour and not have much (if any) impact on combat.

IMO it's a tradeoff: unique skills vs powergaming. Having specs differ only in flavour is the easy way out, because it means they're all identically balanced, so people are choosing between them for their RP, not for the strongest abilities. Just look at dragon colours, and how people choose between them based on something as minor as damage type and breathstorm afflictions. I'd be sad if this all went through and the Warlocks ended up becoming water mages, because they decided the Icebreaker instakill in the water spec was better than the Bright Shadow defense in the fire spec. But the best outcome would be four unique and balanced specs.

Makarios

The problem (from my perspective, at least) with giving mages any form of conditional nonchanneled instakill is that retardation makes any requirements we could impose for such a skill (assuming they were affliction based) either (1) trivial or (2) a necessity to cure at all costs, buffing the already high passive advantage mages gain by result of you no longer being able to contribute your limited actions towards curing said passives, as they're lower priority than the instakill. Kind of a rock and a hard place situation, which I don't think will be fun for anyone (except the mage).

Cooper

@Mithridates - You mean hindering like icewalls, freeze ground, transfix, retardation, staffstrike, amnesia vibe (okay this one is kind of a stretch), deepfreeze, plague breaking legs and arms, and dissonance giving you dizzy?

@Xith - I'm not going to go through all your suggestions and point out why they are overpowered and not balanced in the slightest, necessary, or why the entire premise of your suggestions is wrong (hint: Magi are already the strongest in the game at fighting/damaging/hindering multiple people by a long shot and are already amazing at this). You should have a better understanding of the strengths of your class and combat in general before suggesting massive, sweeping changes to a class.

To give you an idea of how ludicrous your changes seem to the rest of people, I'll make up some monk class changes on the same scale:

New trans tekura ability called DragonCatScorpion stance - has the best of all the stances (balance and eq speed plus maximum defense, strong kicks and strong punches. Trans skills should be powerful and mnks are supposed to be masters of body AND mind so this makes sense).

Skills helped: master of body and mind class strength

Mind batter to be changed to a charges type skill. You gain one charge every 10 seconds, for a maximum of 3 charges. If you have a charge the mana and eq cost of the ability is cut in half, if you don't have a charge it is doubled (having a negative aspect of an ability makes the powerfulness of it balanced).

Skills helped: telepathy combat viability

Kai choke: allow up to two more targets at an increase of 5 kai per extra target. If you only choose one target the damage is increased by 40%.

Skills helped: single target damage

Kai heal: change to not use kai on use. No point in having to gain more kai from enemies when you'll have enough anyway.

Skills helped: retarded tanking ability made even stronger for no reason

Thrustkick: bypasses mass so you can easily kick people into guards or totems

Skill helped: griefing

Split mind: add double meditation willpower regeneration to this, because even though large willpower use is somewhat of a balancing factor of monks defense and offense they shouldn't be restricted in that way cause balance

Skills helped: removing a balancing aspect of your class

I'm being blunt here, but I hope those examples help you understand that most/nearly all of your changes are over the top, not balanced and not necessary.

I do support the elemental flavor changes though.

Santar

Mages are plenty strong already. They have the most extreme damage in the game, any sort of extra hindering or mobility would just make them over the top. Retardation also allows you to kill virtually anyone.

Any changes for them should be quality of life changes like the vibe-sanctuary idea.

Xith

What the Garden is going to be considering with incoming changes is what each class's intended purpose is. I'm pulling straight from the help file stating that "multi-combat" is important. That's why the majority of my ideas were based around increasing 1 vs 3 combat while not affecting 1 v 1 or raid combat.

While Magi were super effective hinderers and everything in the beginning, there is now retardation curing and the 'multiple opponents' feature is less valid.

I kind of what to hear admin input on whether or not this is a feature that will be retained. If so, it needs emphasis, because with modern curing, vibes are a small hindrance outside of retardation. That being said, if retardation is the answer for multiple targets, then multi-tumble or snipe need to be addressed.

If damage is the expected strategy against multiple targets, the mage needs to survive his opponents' damage while being able to put damage pressure on multiple targets, and possibly even account for them leaving the room (adduction?).

And I'll leave this here:

Message #276        Sent by Achaea

2/04/18:53 Your bug report (detail: When Stormhammering additional targets, if 

they are shielded, the rebound EQ currently gets added to the successful EQ on 

the first target getting hit. So with q-witted and Aldar, my 4.5 stormhammer 

transforms into 7.8 if the other two people were shielded.) - has been removed 

because it is not a bug (usually meaning that this is the way things are 

intended to be). Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience or 

misunderstanding that may be involved.

Xith

So I want to narrow my solutions down by readdressing their respective problems. Again, I'm assuming 1 vs 3 viability. If you're wholeheartedly against that, I guess say why, and explain what Magi are supposed to become instead.

Problem: no means of bringing multiple escaped targets back into retardation

Solution #1: Vacuum. Never intended for raids, ~5 uninterruptable channel with beginning warning, followed by ~3.5s EQ upon completion.

Solution #2: Adduction fix. It is inert. I suggested dissonance and gravity fixes to address mass.

Solution #3: (unlisted) Singularity vibration (2 crystals) single-use ~8s, similar to displace. Embed in anticipation of tumble so it completes after target(s) leave.

Problem: weak multi-target defense

Solution #1: Multi-reflect, longer eq than a shield and multi-hits like DSL, tekura, or entities will still remove them fairly fast in 1v1 (I can't think of a class that doesn't have a counter to it. help?)

Solution #2: Energise/absorb. Infrequent benefit. Increase health % stored per tick.

Solution #3: Mirage vibration. Slow ticking passive reflect

Problem: multi-target damage

Solution #1: multi-erode to remove shields for stormhammer. multi-lightning

Solution #2: Cataclysm. Firelash doesn't cut it when trying to finish off a target that got out.

Solution #3: Energise/holocaust compatibility. Drain your vibe to restore some health right after a bomb hits.

Problem: retardation arrows

Solution #1: Cause 'sluggish arrows' that are most often dodged by all residents (prevents magi from using)

Solution #2: Windwall, reduce arrow accuracy

Solution #3: Flood extinguishes firewalls (to allow icewall replacement)

Solution #4: Multi-reflect

Solution #5: Awakening or Mirage vibrations

Light fix was added so you could strip all enemy blindness at once, while still having to transfix individually in retardation.

Jacen

I think that you shouldn't let what's possibly a very outdated description dictate the state that a class needs to be in as opposed to the current balance of combat. 

If you would like for a mage to withstand 3 opponents worth of damage long enough to kill them, how do you expect that to be remotely fair in a 1v1 scenario against a damage class?

Xith

Cooper said:

@ Mithridates - You mean hindering like icewalls, freeze ground, transfix, retardation, staffstrike, amnesia vibe (okay this one is kind of a stretch), deepfreeze, plague breaking legs and arms, and dissonance giving you dizzy?

@ Xith - I'm not going to go through all your suggestions and point out why they are overpowered and not balanced in the slightest, necessary, or why the entire premise of your suggestions is wrong (hint: Magi are already the strongest in the game at fighting/damaging/hindering multiple people by a long shot and are already amazing at this). You should have a better understanding of the strengths of your class and combat in general before suggesting massive, sweeping changes to a class.

To give you an idea of how ludicrous your changes seem to the rest of people, I'll make up some monk class changes on the same scale:

<...several paragraphs of useless snark...>

I'm being blunt here, but I hope those examples help you understand that most/nearly all of your changes are over the top, not balanced and not necessary.

I do support the elemental flavor changes though.

Yeah, pretending that your 1v1 class should be more griefy really puts things into perspective when I'm suggesting an underdeveloped aspect of the magi class be developed more.

But I think I already asked you to take things seriously, so please contribute or just troll somewhere else.

EDIT: To answer for Mith, plague is random, disorientation gives dizziness, deepfreeze/transfix does nothing outside retardation, and the ice hindering is very counterable by mountjump. Might have been what he was referring to.

Xith

Jacen said:

I think that you shouldn't let what's possibly a very outdated description dictate the state that a class needs to be in as opposed to the current balance of combat. 

If you would like for a mage to withstand 3 opponents worth of damage long enough to kill them, how do you expect that to be remotely fair in a 1v1 scenario against a damage class?

Because the primary fix to that issue is the Energise vibration. Let me spell it out this time:

1 opponent = ~275 damage per tick (stores 10%, or 28 health), 4 ticks would be 112 health

3 opponents = ~275 damage per tick (stores 10%, or 83 health), 4 ticks would be 332 health

For those curious, these ticks are every 11 seconds. And the Energise vibration is destroyed upon using ABSORB ENERGY.

Granted, absorb energy is only prevented by being asleep or dead and consumes no bal/eq, but against 3 opponents you'd have to survive 44 seconds of damage just to heal 332 health. And then you only get to heal it once.

It would be an awesome skill to survive a monk's backbreaking combo since you can use while prone/broken, but by 44 seconds you can heal up a whopping 112 health, and again it destroys the vibe (which is also a retardation buffer for keeping your vibe stack).

Proposed change was to increase the health stored and stop it from being consumed on use. Ideally you'd also add some balance/eq requirements to it because frankly that could get overpowered once the vibe is fixed.

Sena

Xith said:

That's why the majority of my ideas were based around increasing 1 vs 3 combat while not affecting 1 v 1 or raid combat.

It seems to me that most of your suggestions would be significant buffs to 1v1 and raids, instead of only helping 1v3. Going through all of the suggestions (and keep in mind that I'm not a combatant in any sense of the word, so I'm likely to be wrong about at least some of it):

Xith said:

So I want to narrow my solutions down by readdressing their respective problems. Again, I'm assuming 1 vs 3 viability. If you're wholeheartedly against that, I guess say why, and explain what Magi are supposed to become instead.

Problem: no means of bringing multiple escaped targets back into retardation

Solution #1: Vacuum. Never intended for raids, ~5 uninterruptable channel with beginning warning, followed by ~3.5s EQ upon completion.
This ability would be very valuable in raids, and isn't really focused on fighting multiple enemies at once.

Solution #2: Adduction fix. It is inert. I suggested dissonance and gravity fixes to address mass.
Always useful, not just 1v3.

Solution #3: (unlisted) Singularity vibration (2 crystals) single-use ~8s, similar to displace. Embed in anticipation of tumble so it completes after target(s) leave.
"Similar to displace" isn't enough information to figure out how this ability works. Displace is ranged, single-target, channeled (you can't do any actions for the entire 9 seconds), stopped by monolith. That doesn't sound like it would make sense for a vibe. Who would this ability target? All enemies in the area, all enemies (or all adventurers) in the room when it's embedded, specific targets? Would it still be stopped by monolith? Would anything else stop it?

All 3 of these solutions would be buffs to 1v1 and raids just as much as 1v3+.

Problem: weak multi-target defense

Solution #1: Multi-reflect, longer eq than a shield and multi-hits like DSL, tekura, or entities will still remove them fairly fast in 1v1 (I can't think of a class that doesn't have a counter to it. help?)
This one would actually be least useful 1v3, it would help primarily in 1v1 and raids.

Solution #2: Energise/absorb. Infrequent benefit. Increase health % stored per tick.
A general defence buff regardless of the number of opponents, although this at least scales with the number of enemies in the room.

Solution #3: Mirage vibration. Slow ticking passive reflect
Primarily useful 1v1, not that great against multiple enemies.

2 sounds fine (no opinion on whether it's actually necessary), 1 and 3 are focussed on 1v1. Reflections are always going to be far more effective against single opponents and do very little when you're being attacked by 3+ enemies.

Problem: multi-target damage

Solution #1: multi-erode to remove shields for stormhammer. multi-lightning
I like these, absolutely no benefit 1v1.

Solution #2: Cataclysm. Firelash doesn't cut it when trying to finish off a target that got out.
This isn't for multiple enemies at all, it's a very massive buff to 1v1 and raids. If you remove one of the biggest limiting factors to cataclysm, it's going to require either some huge nerfs in exchange, or a fundamental redesign.

Solution #3: Energise/holocaust compatibility. Drain your vibe to restore some health right after a bomb hits.
I'm not sure what the suggestion is here. Are you suggesting that this happen automatically? Or maybe just saying that the previously mentioned energise buff would help here as well?

Only #1 is really focussed on multi-target damage.

Problem: retardation arrows

Solution #1: Cause 'sluggish arrows' that are most often dodged by all residents (prevents magi from using)

Solution #2: Windwall, reduce arrow accuracy
These two sound okay to me.

Solution #3: Flood extinguishes firewalls (to allow icewall replacement)
Always useful, not just 1v3+.

Solution #4: Multi-reflect
Already covered above.

Solution #5: Awakening or Mirage vibrations

Again, primarily useful 1v1, not as useful when you're being attacked by multiple enemies.

Light fix was added so you could strip all enemy blindness at once, while still having to transfix individually in retardation.
This sounds okay.

Kafziel

nvm not worth it