Discuss: Level VII life buffs?
George
being discussed on the Leafcull board of CoD.
I am torn on the issue of level seven life buffs if the continue with
the pattern set down by the level seven item spells.
I like to see the game move forward but I can't help but think that
level seven life with a greater duration would only break it more.
Melee defense would truely become an obsolete skill and you would have
truely indestructable characters running around.
Isn't life magic enough of a "gotta have it" skill?
Thoughts?
Nasier
Leafcull
--
to reply: change .com to .net
Colson
to come by and then difficult to cast. Is armor self VII better than
impen VII on armor and shield? If we get level VII war casting critters
you'll need these spells. Many players (not me!) are topped out already
and need new quests, challenges, and content. I would assume we
continue to evolve into more dangerous critters and places that almost
require level VII's of all schools.
Fist de Yuma
where others cannot. I'm at the point where only the really big stuff can
lay a paw on me. Other than chain casting monsters I can beat anything I
can hit. So nice to see, Evade, Evade when fighting a Diamond Golem.
George
<Col...@Thistledown.com> wrote:
> Well if the war and item VII's have sown us anything they will be tough
> to come by and then difficult to cast. Is armor self VII better than
> impen VII on armor and shield?
What I fear is armor VII AND impen VII on armor and shield. A carefully
selected bane and protection and we have indestructable characters.
When we have indestructable characters, a way must be found to
challenge them and historically speaking this has been at the expense
of marginalizing everyone else.
> I would assume we
> continue to evolve into more dangerous critters and places that almost
> require level VII's of all schools.
Why? What is wrong with a good mystery or puzzle? Why does everything
have to be a contest about who has the most free time to powerlevel?
Longer duration buffs make the three school approach even more
valuable. This means more/bigger/badder to challenge those people and
everyone who isn't a three school dagger/UA gets left behind.
Again, it's all conjecture since we haven't seen what (if any) form
level seven life will take.
It would be a damn shame to have such a flexable character creation
system only be used to make the same two characters with different
facial features.
Colson
item and life and shields and nothing but magic can hurt you.
George
<Col...@Thistledown.com> wrote:
> Everyone is already indestructible against physical attacks. Level VI,
> item and life and shields and nothing but magic can hurt you.
That is my point. That is currently balanced by a (relatively)
reasonable duration. If they are marginally more effective, then even
magic will have a hard time hurting you.
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> Everyone is already indestructible against physical attacks. Level VI,
> item and life and shields and nothing but magic can hurt you.
>
You are assuming that everyone has Life magic. Not so. You are also
assuming that everyone likes to buff everything they wear to the max.
Not so.
I think Turbine should take into account my suggestions on my "nerf" of
Life magic. The primarily outbalancing aspect of Life/Item buffs is that
they are overlappable (is that a word? hehe). I say, make Life buffs
only work versus magic attacks (not physical), and make Item buffs only
work on ARMOR (not clothing). This would stop the trend of people going
out with 1000+ AL and wearing a robe, PLUS having Prot VI's all over,
taking 0 damage from every physical attack. THAT is why melee defense
and damage from physical attacks is becoming a joke at higher levels.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
bane VI on robe and gloves, Bludgon protection VI, Impen V/Bludgeon bane VI
on shirt; Armor VI.
I don't even want to talk about Putrid Moarsmen <G>.
Granted, anyone with a reasonable Melee defense is probablly indestructible
... or near so. My Melee guy last night Solo'd Fen again.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Colson" <Col...@Thistledown.com> wrote in message
news:3A94156F...@Thistledown.com...
Penne
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Fist de Yuma" <c...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:Or4NjlDnAHA.2088@tkmsftngp05...
George
<penne_a...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'm not, just died last night again to a Tusker.
The olthoi didn't get the memo either ; )
RumblePen
I just levitated...
"Penne" <penne_a...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:OO#zxOEnAHA.2268@tkmsftngp05...
RumblePen
specialize Mel Def and what did you start with in Coord/Quick?
Just want to know if my guy will be evading them, Coord 100/Quick 60,
Specialized.
"Fist de Yuma" <c...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:Or4NjlDnAHA.2088@tkmsftngp05...
Fist de Yuma
a +12% weapon and defender VI. I found out today that it is not the all to
end all. I took a 26 point hit from an Olthoi Soldier (best creature for
keys).
RumblePen <Rumb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:#HTuDeEnAHA.464@tkmsftngp04...
Legiondel II
Soldier, rather than lots of them. <g>
--
Legiondel II, Archmage of Frostfell
"Fist de Yuma" <c...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:uRznFWGnAHA.1336@tkmsftngp05...
Penne
Not sure you're listening. I buff the way you mention and still got pounded
by 3 tuskers last night. I was trying to do a Cassius's ring of fire, so I
drained one, flame vuln'd, drain the 2nd, flaim vuln'd it, and died before I
could get enough health from the 3rd to continue. You can't heal fast
enough to overcome the damage.
Mind you, if I had a reasonable melee defense you might be right, but about
every third hit or so is a critical, and even with all that armor (AL 400
w/Unparalled vs Bludgeonging on everything, so 800 AL roughly), you still
die.
If I forget a buff, which is roughly what you are talking about, I take
about 20-40 pts per hit. If I forget two buffs, i.e. armor drops or impen
drops, then it's one shot time. Your suggestion might balance things for
hybrid char's, but it would doom me to fighting drudges. And I don't mean
Ravener's.
Turbine has to consider *everyone* when they make a change; although I've
often thought it was weird that war magic essentially went through armor,
but if life spells only protected against war spells, I would be dead. It
would be too unbalancing.
If everyone was a melee char, then it would work, but robe wearing mages
have their own drawbacks; hollow weapons, buff's dropping, etc.
Physical damage is only a joke for spec Melee defense characters, and that's
because the damage is taken care of before it gets to them. Evades happen
before the damage gets knocked down by armor or bane's. My UA guy takes
20-40 per Gigas hit (more than I do), but he only gets hit about once out of
every two or three hits. Also, he almost never gets those critical hits.
--
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A9420DB...@dsrnet.com...
Penne
Don't laugh, a Blood shreth killed me on the way to Mayoi. I was low on
mana and only had Armor IV on.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"RumblePen" <Rumb...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:#mebieEnAHA.1636@tkmsftngp03...
Windblade
> I've never gotten 0 damage.
>
You're not alone. In order to take 0 damage from a high-level melee mob,
you need a shield. So theoretically a mage can do it, but he's not going to
be attacking anything in the process.
Fist de Yuma
have to heal. I did not have my armor VI and the hit was from behind.
Legiondel II <n...@email.please> wrote in message
news:#O2l$YGnAHA.1636@tkmsftngp03...
Jordan Jacobs's laptop
wrote on 22/2/01 3:51 am:
i am a lvl 66 mage who casts VIs in everything and VII in critter and item
and because i know BDVII and imp VII i break into melee mode. And with a 280
buffed melee/staff skill theres not to much that i cant tank :)
Windblade
"Jordan Jacobs's laptop" <Webm...@jas-tech.co.uk> wrote in message
news:B6BA7CDF.423E%Webm...@jas-tech.co.uk...
You have me on a technicality. What I meant was "He's not going to be
attacking anything AS A MAGE in the process."
Laz al-Farah
but seeing as the reasoning behind the original post was partly due to the
concern that Life VII spells would make melee defence obsolete, I'll add my
opinion:
Melee D has a problem. Its trained and spec'ed cost need to be set high
simply to stop the creation of an indestructible character. A spec'ed melee
with spec'ed offensive and life skills would be just that - indestructible.
But, the advantages gained by a melee type character who has spec'ed melee D
do not Imo warrant its cost. The majority of high level critters are magic
casters, only a few are melee only. There's an obvious reason for this...
the school of life magic provides any user with the ability to both
withstand physical damage and regain health at the expense of his enemies -
against this background melee only creatures don't stand a chance.
We don't want to nerf life magic, too many people now use this as their
primary skill of both defence and offence so there needs to be another
solution. We need to even the playing field - the benefit of spec'ing
melee d needs to be made obvious, much like the benefit of spec'ing war
magic is now.
Turbine has been making critters more magic resistant in an effort to
provide an equal opportunity for both melee and life magic users. However,
from what I understand Turbine is now turning away from the magic resistant
creatures. In any event, magic resistant critters did not benefit the
spec'ed melee d character, rather it benefited anyone with melee d trained.
The benefit of spec'ing melee d needs to be amply provided. With only a 30
(?) point difference between trained and spec'ed there is a very fine line
along which this can be done. It has been done with war magic, and although
the cost of melee d is less than that of war, it is still very high for the
benefits gained.
I'm not a designer so don't even know if this is possible within the
constraints of the current game, but if war magic can be fine tuned so that
the difference between trained and spec'ed is the difference between life
(it works) and death (it fizzes), cannot the same be done for melee d?
If critters were put in game that weren't magic resistant, but were
extraordinarily strong in the melee department they could be fine tuned to
the degree that an evade (it works - you live) would be much more probable
with spec'ed rather than trained melee d. As it is now, the formula that is
used to calculate evades just isn't up to the job of properly
differentiating between a spec'ed melee d user and a trained melee d user.
I appreciate that a fizz with magic or being hit in melee doesn't mean
instant death, it just brings it that much closer; that is the context I
intended the preceding sentence to be read in.
Life VII spells would be cool for all those spec'ed in life magic, and why
shouldn't they have them? After all, Item VII's now exist and they are
generally used as a defensive measure. Life VII's would be used in the same
way as I can't see anyone trying to cast Drain VII :P . But before they
do, the balance towards character types needs to be addressed. Turbine have
done a pretty good job of balancing the offensive capabilities of the
character types, now its time to turn their attention to the defensive.
Life magic is over powered purely because of the ability of a user to cast a
level one spell that does considerable damage and replenishes the attackers
health; if it did one or the other it would be fine, but both.... as I said
previously, changing this now would amount to a nerf so it can't be done.
Although this may seem like a contradictory statement, life magic should be
the last to be upgraded because it's most commonly used defensive (I assume
it was created as that) spell is also one of the most powerful offensive
attacks in the game. Imo, providing level VII life protection spells,
assuming they are primarily duration benefited, won't put the character in
an indestructible position, but will be more of a 'convenience' to the
user - less down time. However, before that's done we need to bring the
defensive abilities of melee in line with Life magic in its current form.
--
Lazir
George <deer...@blazenet.com> wrote in message
news:210220011339056457%deer...@blazenet.com...
George
make some great points I don't want to snip.
As a matter of fact, it would be in the best interests of most magi to
have the power/cost issue of melee defense revisted. "Why?" The most
frequently seen device to check the power of mulit-layered magical
protection is hollow monsters...Y'all *really* don't want more of the
damn things, do you?
Nasier
Leafcull
In article <e8FXbGMnAHA.2100@tkmsftngp05>, "Laz al-Farah"
Colson
minions. I'm thinking hollow pincered Olthoi defending the Queen if or
when she shows up. I'm thinking bigger nastier stuff that cuts through
level VI protects like butter.
Vinod al-Ahmad
I don't think everyone is understanding what I'M trying to say. I think
Mages going in to attack (and TANK) more than ONE tusker is
overbalancing. Mages shouldn't be ABLE to stand up to that kind of
punishment. Monsters that hit you that hard should be for MELEE
characters (or mages that wear heavy armor, which isn't very many). My
suggested "nerfs" are meant to balance so that Mages fight better
against MAGIC-USING creatures, and melees are better against MELEE-USING
creatures.
As it stands now, a mage w/ a matty coat and layered buffs and protects
at higher levels will not take hardly any damage from just about ANY
physical attack thrown his way. Magic will ALWAYS do some damage (unless
resisted). How fair is that? I think a little distinction is necessary
to make things a little more balanced.
So you got pounded by 3 tuskers last night? Think about what you just
said. Tuskers are what, 156th level each? And you are 40th? How's that
for unbalanced? any monster almost four times your level SHOULD be
wasting you anyways, let alone THREE of them. Would you even CONSIDER
going up against three Umbris shadows at the same time and expect to
live more than 10 seconds? They're about the same level. This is what
I'm getting at. Magic monsters are too powerful, and melee monsters are
too weak, because layered buffs combined w/ Life prots mean ou take too
little damage from melee attacks.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Vinod al-Ahmad
No, in order to take 0 damage from a high level melee mob you need Life
prots. No matter how high your AL is, it will NEVER reach 0 damage
without that Life Prot backing it up.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Legiondel II
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A953445...@dsrnet.com...
> I don't think everyone is understanding what I'M trying to say. I think
> Mages going in to attack (and TANK) more than ONE tusker is
> overbalancing.
>
[snip]
> So you got pounded by 3 tuskers last night? Think about what you just
> said. Tuskers are what, 156th level each? And you are 40th?
>
First of all, if relative level mattered then no existing melee should be
hitting the things either. Second, as Turbine has said many times before,
the level of a monster does not and was never meant to correspond constantly
on a 1:1 basis with opposing human character levels. Monster level is more
of an indicator of where that monster stands within its own species. So,
relative level doesn't matter :-)
Mage Ghoti
Or that shield absorbing some either.. I can buff my level 41 mage w/
every level 6 in the book.. I go in to fight Luggies ! and I get hit for
1 - 7 points... I buff a melee w/ those same level 6 spells.... He has a
shield.. he gets hit for 0.. except the odd critical for 2 or 3...
And to Penne... Don't waste mana on Flame Vulns.. Just tank em straight.. I
back into a corner and kill 5 - 7 and come out of it w/ 70%+ health.. Nearly
full Stam. and at least half my mana..
Drain S, Drain H, Drain H, Drain H, S-M 1, Drain S, S-M1, Drain H, Drain H,
Drain H, Flame 5, Flame5 (if not dead yet.)
or if they are stuck behind a wall.. I harm 4 them 2 or 3 times.. end result
is the same.. Dead tusker fast.. Maxed XP.. Averaging 190k per buff cycle...
takes me about 1 minute to buff.. So fast I always think I forgot some..
;-)
Wearing V-mask, Matty COAT, and Celdon leggs.. cheap gloves which I never
impen.. and sollz.which I also never impen...
Mage Ghoti
Penne
You aren't listening.
I HAD LIFE PROTECTS ON, level VI's. (Highest level).
Still take 4-15, absolute minimum. That can add up, and I DO DIE. Often.
I don't know where you get this 0 from, it doens't happen, unless you are
using a shield.
What they need to do is fix the shield bug. It gives melee people an
unfair advantage.
They also need to fix magic resistance - monster's is too high, and
players's is too low.
THAT would fix 'the problem'.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A9534BD...@dsrnet.com...
Vinod al-Ahmad
I'm not saying it does. But in this case, the fact that any mage from
level 35+ can walk into the BSD and pretty easily start killing tuskers
and making 12-15k a pop without much danger is absurd, considering
Tuskers are just about the hardest straight melee monster out there (as
far as their melee defense/speed/damage go). IMO, Mages should be able
to walk into the Virindi Fortress and tank all the Virindi they want,
not worrying about that much, but the tuskers should be kicking their
butts. The opposite should apply to melee fighters (it already does,
actually).
To make this happen, Magic Defense needs a little more twinking to make
it more viable. That way mages can "evade" more magic spells like
melee'ers do physical attacks. . The most important thing to do,
however, is make Life less powerful, and for god sake, take away all the
dang layering for clothes! Make Impen/Banes only work on ARMOR (or at
least something with a base armor value).
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
Turbine has made MOST monsters more magic resistant than Melee. I just
checked the Sybex charts, and the magic resistance is similar on most
monsters to their melee (or close to it, or higher). However, everyone
forgets that mage skills are /4 not /3; the net result, for example, is that
at level 40 I can *just* get to 270 in Life (my spec skill). My level 30 UA
guy can *just* get to 270 in UA (his spec skill). Check the charts, most
monsters have, in this light, an insane magic resistance. Putrid Moarsmen,
for example, so far have resisted me 18 times out of 18. I now simply run
when I see them. There is literally nothing else I can do.
Due to the way magic resistance works, it's not that usefull. A pure mage
(like myself) fears both physical attacks AND magic attacks. A malee char
doesn't really fear physical attacks, but does fear magic attacks. That's
the balance issue that would need to be addressed, if anything. (I actually
don't think there needs to be much 'fixing').
I think what you are trying to say is that a spec Melee defense, Spec life
char is unstoppable. This could be true - but I doubt seriously that this
character can use the drains you mention. I'm spec life, and my focus/self
is 200/200 (I started with 100/100). Most of the high level monsters my
melee peers fight resist me. I can't imagine how many XP's it would take to
get a life skill up to my level if I didn't start with 100/100 and get
focus/self to 200/200. The hybrid is going to be able to do VI protects
only, IMHO. (Maybe tuskers, the poster boy for the 'mages are over powered'
crowd), due to the magic resistance of monsters, AND the fact that many of
the monsters that have been designed lately have been specifically designed
to resist drains.
Also, drains only work to regain health when the monster has a lot of health
and is 'full up'. Once you get to two or three drains, you start takign
less health than the monster takes away. Viriindi, for example, only give
you a few points when you drain them because they don't have as much health
to start. Tuskers are the obvious best thing to drain due to their high
health. However, draining a tusker only gives you net health on the 2nd or
3rd drain (which is why skimmers are hated so much). Once you get to
draining 10 health, you flame the tusker with a level V bolt, and that'll
kill it about half the time (unless you vuln'd it) Crank time for two level
V's is about 10-30 health take OUT of you, which adds up (they pound you
while you're cranking up). Again, this is with level VI's on everything;
life and item, and layered protection.
If anyone disputes this, I'll cut and paste a battle log some time and show
everyone how it works with real numbers. The above was a rough guide.
Also, you ask if the magic resistance can be fine tuned so that a fizzle
(not the issue, it's a resist issue) can be the difference between spec war
and non spec war. This definitly occurs today, but the thing you're
forgetting is that it depends on the level of the monster and the level of
the player. A spec war mage can compete 50/50 witha non spec war mage, just
at lower level. Just as my level 30 UA guy can take a kill from a level 40
warrior template. However, from personal experience adventuring with a
friend who was pretty much a stock Spec war template (90 focus/self I think)
at level 41, myself at level 40, hunting aroudn teth there are many monsters
I can vuln and he can blast. For example, high level bandies resist me
about 2 out of 3 times in life, 3 out of 5 times in war. However, if I get
a Vuln on them, my friend can flame bolt them to death. So I'd say you've
already got what you want.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Laz al-Farah" <dhod...@millhouse.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote in message
news:e8FXbGMnAHA.2100@tkmsftngp05...
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> Vinod:
>
> You aren't listening.
>
> I HAD LIFE PROTECTS ON, level VI's. (Highest level).
>
> Still take 4-15, absolute minimum. That can add up, and I DO DIE. Often.
>
> I don't know where you get this 0 from, it doens't happen, unless you are
> using a shield.
>
> What they need to do is fix the shield bug. It gives melee people an
> unfair advantage.
>
> They also need to fix magic resistance - monster's is too high, and
> players's is too low.
>
> THAT would fix 'the problem'.
>
> == Penne al-Dente ==
> ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
> Harvestgain
Penne, I'm sorry if I'm coming off as abrasive....not trying to be. And
I'm not trying to say that you are taking little to no damage from
Tuskers. BUT, are you wearing a robe? If so, that validates my whole
argument. IMO, a mage with simply a robe and some buffed T-Shirts should
NOT be able to walk into the BSD and Tank even ONE tusker without
getting killed almost every time. IMO, if you want to go up against
hard-hitting melee monsters, wear armor. It just seems kind of
ridiculous that someone with no armor on whatsoever can stand up to just
about the hardest hitting melee monster in the game and live to tell
about it.
The shield "bug" is there so that melee's can TAKE the physical
punishment they're supposed to able to take.
Magic Resistance is the key here. If they raised it so that mages can
resist a LOT more spells, Mages would have a much easier time going up
against MAGIC wielding monsters.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Legiondel II
> I don't know where you get this 0 from, it doens't happen, unless you
are
> using a shield.
>
about wimpy low level creatures either... it can be done vs. olthoi, though
not with a robe. But even with a robe you can bring the damage down to where
it doesn't really matter (workers 1-2, soldiers 1-3). I've considered going
through OHN (to the bottom) with my mage, to see how tough it would actually
be. With as little damage as you take with full buffs on, you can probably
rebuff during an attack if you need to, with intermittent heals when needed.
Dragon XZane
Hilltop and ran to the tower. I didn't see that apparently all the drudges
and reedsharks from all around were stuck in there. Me in my Frore robe. I
got stuck and thought hah they can't touch me =) evade,evade starts
scrolling by like there was no tomorrow. Then I notice that my stam dropped
100 points in just a few seconds. eeekk get weapon out llllaaaaggggg doh
out of stam, llllaaaagggg ack down to 30 health, drink stam, drink stam,
kill one critter, guh stam gone, Elder reedshark kicks your lagged ass back
to Teth. This time run back loaded for bear to take the lag out. It was a
hard fought battle but the lag beasts minions were all killed and one
percent of vitae was gone.news:e9IrDmGnAHA.1804@tkmsftngp02...
Peter Duniho
> [...] Second, as Turbine has said many times before,
> the level of a monster does not and was never meant to correspond
constantly
> on a 1:1 basis with opposing human character levels. Monster level is more
> of an indicator of where that monster stands within its own species. So,
> relative level doesn't matter :-)
You are mostly right. However, the fact is that XP for a monster is only
reduced once player level exceeds the monster's level.
So at least in one respect, the player and monster levels are comparable.
Pete
Fist de Yuma
There is a reason we are called a tank. My mage can take a large hunk of
hit points with a level one drain. I have killed a 600 hit point Bandy with
one war spell. My fighter will do a low of 4 a hit. A full power hit
against an Olthoi Soldier does from 12 to 155. I have hit for 12 a lot and
only 112 a few times. The protections I have were costly in both lore
points and hunting/trading time.
My mage has all protection and buffs with half the experience points of my
fighter. He takes on things my fighter could only run from at his level.
There is balance. Statements about a "Shield Bug" are a bit ignorant.
Penne <penne_a...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:u6bVUOPnAHA.2276@tkmsftngp05...
Windblade
*sigh*
Yes, I'm fully aware of that. I thought that was understood.
Let me rephrase yet again: "In order to take 0 damage from a high-level
melee mob you need a shield IN ADDITION TO THE LIFE PROTECTS. So
theoretically, a mage can do it, but he's not going to be attacking anything
AS A MAGE in the process."
Anyone else? Should I rephrase a third time to implicitly state that the
above is not going to work if the mob is behind you?
Windblade
"Windblade" <wind...@nunya.com> wrote in message
news:ObNDPSQnAHA.1804@tkmsftngp02...
Er, that'd be "explicitly state..."
Am I the only who thinks today is a Monday in denial?
Legiondel II
> Er, that'd be "explicitly state..."
>
> Am I the only who thinks today is a Monday in denial?
>
Windblade
"Legiondel II" <n...@email.please> wrote in message
Ah well, as it turns out it's nothing a quick dose of Thorogood couldn't
solve.
George
<n...@email.please> wrote:
> "Windblade" <wind...@nunya.com> wrote in message
> news:#D5DpUQnAHA.1852@tkmsftngp05...
> > Er, that'd be "explicitly state..."
> >
> > Am I the only who thinks today is a Monday in denial?
> >
> LOL! I'd have to agree.
It's a zippity, do-dah day on my end.
To bring everyone up to speed on my personal life ; )
I am settling on a house tomorrow, I get a call from the title company
for the amount I need to bring and it's about four thousand dollars
less than the estimate I was given.
I have had very few days that an unexpected $4k left in my pocket
doesn't improve.
Penne
Been fighting Mire witches lately, boy is the loot good. I actually have 17
C notes now.
I checked the magic resistance of Olthoi though, and it's pretty high, I
think they'd be resisting a lot. It's still worth a shot, maybe I could
team up with some melee guys in AB for a run ("free level VI buffs in return
for body recovery if I need it <G>").
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Legiondel II" <n...@email.please> wrote in message
news:#vE3zjPnAHA.1356@tkmsftngp04...
Penne
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Windblade" <wind...@nunya.com> wrote in message
news:ObNDPSQnAHA.1804@tkmsftngp02...
Penne
It's not THAT easy. I die all the time. And it's not tactics either.
There is danger:
1) any one of the 10 buffs drops
2) too many at one time
3) Virindi casts Bludgeon bane VI on you
4) down time for comp shopping
5) down time for buffing.
So sure, 12K per pop (not sure I get quite that much, I'll calculate it),
but how much xp do you get while sitting at Mayoi buying comp's?
I get so tired of the BSD and tuskers being the example of how mages need to
be nerf'd.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A954D4A...@dsrnet.com...
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> Have YOU gone into the BSD as a mage?
>
> It's not THAT easy. I die all the time. And it's not tactics either.
>
> There is danger:
> 1) any one of the 10 buffs drops
> 2) too many at one time
> 3) Virindi casts Bludgeon bane VI on you
> 4) down time for comp shopping
> 5) down time for buffing.
>
> So sure, 12K per pop (not sure I get quite that much, I'll calculate it),
> but how much xp do you get while sitting at Mayoi buying comp's?
>
> I get so tired of the BSD and tuskers being the example of how mages need to
> be nerf'd.
>
> == Penne al-Dente ==
> ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
> Harvestgain
>
I never said "Mages" need to be "nerfed". I said Life Magic needs to be
"nerfed". And I'm not using BSD as the sole example of this. You could
use OHN (going off Windblade's example from above of only taking 1-2/1-3
damage per hit from buffed robes), heck even the Cit for lower level
mages. Any place that has relatively fast spwans of melee wielding
creatures in it could be used.
And yes, I HAVE gone into the BSD as a mage. Not for a while, mind you,
but I did it.
Take melees as comparison. Taking Vinod into the BSD, I also have these
dangers:
1) any of my weapon buffs drop, especially HS, and I start missing a LOT
more.
2) too many at one time
3) Virindi
4) down time for potion/stone/comp shopping (not as much as mages, but
still significant)
5) minimal down time for buffing (some weapon/armor buffs)
As a primary melee fighter, I don't cast many buffs on myself when I go
fight. As such, my AL overall is less than yours is, plus I only have
Bludgeon Prot IV compared to your VI. I take about the same damage as
you do from tuskers, and I don't have a drain spell to counteract this.
I use potions. If I get surrounded, I'm toast just as much as you are
(probably more so, because I can't just quickly hit a hot key and portal
out). At my level, evasding is more of a stam drain than a helper,
really, since I don't evade nearly as much as I should be.
I'm not making these statements to say that mages are overpowered (well,
maybe the stereotypical robe mage is a little out of whack to me), just
that Life Magic in particular is overpowered. Doesn't matter who uses it
- Hybrids, mages, archers....whatever. And, Item magic is overpowered
since it can be used to buff clothes. That just doesn't make sense to
me. I don't care if mages wear robes. Make them AL 10 for all I care.
But don't let CLOTHES be buffed underneath, so that the shirt + robe =
850 AL put together. Doesn't this sound silly to anyone else?
The basic fact is, YOU'RE WEARING A ROBE.....you shouldn't be able to
take that kind of damage.....
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Mage Ghoti
> take that kind of damage.....
Since when do you really wear that much under a robe anyway ? Maybe
underwear.. Not A Doublet and Breeches.... (Although I can see wearing
clothing under armor.. comfort factor and all)
Keep in mind this is coming from a mage..... That only wears clothing that
has life prots.. and then doesn't impen / bane it. (even then.. usually only
for running around in Eastern Dereth.. )
Mage Ghoti. Level 41
PS. Been hunting in BSD for 6 levels only died 2 times in there. Once
from Skimmers.. Once a Virindi spawned next to me while I was fighting 4
tuskers.. Luckily I LSR and he got me in portal.. no recovery.. just had to
turn around and loot my body @ the LS. ;-)
Legiondel II
defense. I don't remember what my skill was when I soloed the Crater Lair
(workers and soldiers) but it was probably in the ~260 range. Was mostly 1-
and 2-hit kills, with bludgeon vuln IV and shock wave V or VI. They have
enough health and stamina to make draining worthwhile, too.
Just remember to buff your gauntlets... I know I'll never forget that again.
<bg>
--
Legiondel II, Archmage of Frostfell
"Penne" <penne_a...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:eRE#B0QnAHA.2164@tkmsftngp05...
Penne
forget that in BSD. I forgot ONE of the 10 buffs one day (Impen VI on the
gloves, I had Bludgeon bane VI), and died. If Olthoi hit there, I'll buff
there.
I've got a pretty reasonable set of AL 130 gaunts with good elemental
protects, so a lot of times I don't bother to buff them if I'm fighting
'normal' stuff.
The interesting thing I guess about Olthoi is that I'd have to buff both
Piercing AND acid. The one really nice thing about BSD is you only have to
buff one thing.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Legiondel II" <n...@email.please> wrote in message
news:ebooI1RnAHA.2184@tkmsftngp02...
Penne
When we closed last year, turned out the 100% loan was actually a 98% loan,
so we had to cough up about 10K *more* than we expected. Glad it worked out
for someone the other way! And I thought we had enough for a small down
payment *lol*.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"George" <deer...@blazenet.com> wrote in message
news:220220011459450250%deer...@blazenet.com...
Legiondel II
--
Legiondel II, Archmage of Frostfell
"George" <deer...@blazenet.com> wrote in message
news:220220011459450250%deer...@blazenet.com...
Penne
>
> I never said "Mages" need to be "nerfed". I said Life Magic needs to be
> "nerfed".
And that would affect mages how?
How many mages do you know that don't have life?
You also called for Item magic to be nerfed by making it not work on
anything but 'armor', and on Life to be nerf'd to only protect against magic
attacks. (What about Gromnie breath?).
Your nerf would affect hybrids to an extent, but not that bad due to their
melee defense. It would KILL ME. That's the point I'm trying to make.
It's the equivalent of giving every melee monster in the world a hollow
weapon.
It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
If all you are trying to do is balance the world for hybrids, maybe it would
work.
A mage SHOULD be able to buff a robe, it's 'classic fantasy'. And the
weakness I have to melee attacks while wearing that ultra buffed robe is
100% classic also, and doesn't need changing.
It would mean that a mage would be almost completly defensless against any
melee attacks unless they wore armor.
That means you're making wearing armor a basic requirement in the game.
> And I'm not using BSD as the sole example of this. You could
> use OHN (going off Windblade's example from above of only taking 1-2/1-3
> damage per hit from buffed robes), heck even the Cit for lower level
> mages. Any place that has relatively fast spwans of melee wielding
> creatures in it could be used.
>
> And yes, I HAVE gone into the BSD as a mage. Not for a while, mind you,
> but I did it.
>
> Take melees as comparison. Taking Vinod into the BSD, I also have these
> dangers:
> 1) any of my weapon buffs drop, especially HS, and I start missing a LOT
> more.
> 2) too many at one time
> 3) Virindi
> 4) down time for potion/stone/comp shopping (not as much as mages, but
> still significant)
> 5) minimal down time for buffing (some weapon/armor buffs)
>
> As a primary melee fighter, I don't cast many buffs on myself when I go
> fight. As such, my AL overall is less than yours is,
The shield makes it significnatly more; and you can layer also. You've got
far less comp weight than I do, and more strength, so you could layer fairly
easily and have MUCH higher AL than I do with the robe.
> plus I only have
> Bludgeon Prot IV compared to your VI. I take about the same damage as
> you do from tuskers, and I don't have a drain spell to counteract this.
I bet you don't. Do you get a critical hit every third hit?
I put Armor VI on melee guys down there all the time, actually (even ones I
don't know).
> I use potions. If I get surrounded, I'm toast just as much as you are
> (probably more so, because I can't just quickly hit a hot key and portal
> out). At my level, evasding is more of a stam drain than a helper,
> really, since I don't evade nearly as much as I should be.
>
> I'm not making these statements to say that mages are overpowered (well,
> maybe the stereotypical robe mage is a little out of whack to me), just
> that Life Magic in particular is overpowered. Doesn't matter who uses it
> - Hybrids, mages, archers....whatever. And, Item magic is overpowered
> since it can be used to buff clothes. That just doesn't make sense to
> me. I don't care if mages wear robes. Make them AL 10 for all I care.
> But don't let CLOTHES be buffed underneath, so that the shirt + robe =
> 850 AL put together. Doesn't this sound silly to anyone else?
Without layering, I take about 30% more damage. It's still far less of a
helper than melee defense would be, to avoid those crit's.
> The basic fact is, YOU'RE WEARING A ROBE.....you shouldn't be able to
> take that kind of damage.....
I can't when I'm wearing a robe. Even WITH those life buffs I die, and
fairly quickly too. Friend of mine without life buffs and with Amuli armor
(al 120 or so plus impen IV I think) got one shotted by a Tusker. While he
was running from Teth, I started my buff cycle so we could get his body.
You know what? He was still waiting on me when he arrived ;-) (not
complaining, just saying there's a check and balance).
I can only take that kind of damage when the robe is enchanted. There are
many checks and balances in that; limits on mana (buffing shirt and outer
wear takes at least 2 'tanks' of mana), limit's on comp's, that it's
certainly not the imbalancer that you seem to think it is.
Robe wearing is not something I do for choice, it's because six of my packs
are full of nothing but pea's and spell comps; at 100 strength, my burden is
about 90% for an hour's worth of traveling. The robe is the only reasonable
thing to do.
Now, this is partly due to a choice I made when I created Penne; I decided
on more stamina and less strength. I never imagined that I'd have to look
like the 'Hulk' to be a mage. A friend of mine with more strength (about
160 I think) wears Amuli. Personally, I don't think of a mage as being
someone that looks like Arnold, but this game may require it. Then again, I
have 230 end or so and almost 300 mana, which my friend does not.
In any event, it's not a Faran robe I'm wearing, it's a 600bu Gelidite robe;
that sucker is thick. It weighs almost as much as my studded leather
leggings, and it's got almost no AL if it's not charged or impen'd.
Laz al-Farah
were my staple diet for quite a few levels as a Mage.
In response to your points its pretty similar for a melee -
1. If my shield buffs drop I die fairly easily.
2. Too many at one time.
3. Virindi casts Bludgeon bane VI on you
4. down time for comp shopping
5. down time for buffing.
As a spec'ed weapon and Melee D user with maxed out stats I couldn't hope to
hunt in BSD *effectively* until I was near level 40, as the Mage I was
hunting effectively at level 32 and that was in the fast spawn days. God
knows what would happen to my Melee even now if the fast spawn returned.
But at the end of the day all we are talking about here is one or two
creature types which is inconsequential in the context of the general
Mage/Melee issue. As I said previously and as I have iterated else where in
this topic, Mages are more powerful than Melee except against very few
creatures (hollows / extreme Magic d creatures) and these are few and far
between when the whole creature population is taken in to account.
I've played both, I enjoyed both, those are my observations. Put the pros
and cons together and Mages will win every time.
Had Splitpea not arrived then things could have been looked at differently.
Brute forcing that huge spell book a Mage has, would have deserved a more
powerful character. (A little extra I thought I'd add) :P
But always remember, if you don't like it then don't play it :) There's
always EQ <--- did I say that? arghhhhhhh (hate EQ personally) ;)
--
Lazir
Penne <penne_a...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:#$DRc7QnAHA.1220@tkmsftngp02...
Legiondel II
that much in less than half that time when I hunted in BSD, and when I
finally got some sense, I went out to the Plains and started making
750,000-1,000,000 per hour of tusker bashing.
No reason to die, either. <g>
http://www.vbthunder.com/tuskerfest.jpg
... BSD campers, eat your heart out :-)
--
Legiondel II, Archmage of Frostfell
<klbu...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:u1mc9tklcrso098o5...@4ax.com...
> A buddy of mine (uses a flaming staff) and I both went into the Plains
> BSD yesterday and spent the whole day in there (well, like 5 hours
> play time). When we came out, we compared XP. I'd made about
> 500kxp... he'd made about a million. I'd died twice... he hadn't died
> at all. True, he's level 40 and I'm 36, but it sure doesn't seem like
> Mages "own" the BSD. The down time that Penne talks about is a
> serious impediment.
>
> Of course, I still think that a mage is the most fun character to
> play.
>
> Vinood, I started throwing Sword Mastery VI on some of the other
> players, in addition to Blud Prot VI... boy, you should hear the nice
> words that come my way. :-)
>
> -Asha'man
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> "Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
> news:3A95824B...@dsrnet.com...
> >
> > I never said "Mages" need to be "nerfed". I said Life Magic needs to be
> > "nerfed".
>
> And that would affect mages how?
>
> How many mages do you know that don't have life?
What I meant was that mages aren't the only ones to have Life Magic, so
my comment was directed more towards those who have it, not mages in
particular.
>
> You also called for Item magic to be nerfed by making it not work on
> anything but 'armor', and on Life to be nerf'd to only protect against magic
> attacks. (What about Gromnie breath?).
I believe Armor Self VI helps against physical attacks.
> Your nerf would affect hybrids to an extent, but not that bad due to their
> melee defense. It would KILL ME. That's the point I'm trying to make.
>
> It's the equivalent of giving every melee monster in the world a hollow
> weapon.
No it isn't. You still have Armor Self VI. Plus, I said wearing a Robe
isn't a problem, as long as it has some kind of AL to start with. How
would that kill you? You wouldn't be able to fight Tuskers, but then
again, I don't think MAGES should have the easiest time against them. I
don't think it's fair that mages should be able to go out with a robe
and a T-Shirt and have well over 1000+ AL, PLUS the Life Prots to lessen
the damage. Doesn't anyone else?
> It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
No, it's the equivalent of telling mages they have to wear armor if they
want to fight TUSKERS effectively. If you want to go up against very
hard hitting melee monsters, wear armor or expect to get hit very hard.
Most of the other monsters hardly damage you even NAKED (from melee
attacks, that is).
>
> If all you are trying to do is balance the world for hybrids, maybe it would
> work.
I could care less about hybrids. I think Hybrids have messed up the game
for everyone else, since they have no real sacrifice to speak of, and
can effectively do anything they want.
>
> A mage SHOULD be able to buff a robe, it's 'classic fantasy'. And the
> weakness I have to melee attacks while wearing that ultra buffed robe is
> 100% classic also, and doesn't need changing.
Buffing a robe is not classic fantasy. WEARING a robe is. From playing a
lot of the different pen and paper RPG games out there, I can remember
that mages with robes were never that armored (or at least not as
armored as a paladin or warrior). From what I remember, the most
powerful robe out there was either a Robe of the Archmagi or a Robe of
Protection +5. From what I remember, CLASSIC fantasy had the warriors
walking around in Plate Mail being the ones who could take the most
damage and had the best armor. NOT mages. That's the way it is now.
Mages walk around with more AL than most STANDARD warriors (I don't mean
hybrids).
>
> It would mean that a mage would be almost completly defensless against any
> melee attacks unless they wore armor.
>
> That means you're making wearing armor a basic requirement in the game.
>
No....see above comments about relative damage. Seems to me you're only
taking into account the damage a Tusker does, and no other monster.
> The shield makes it significnatly more; and you can layer also. You've got
> far less comp weight than I do, and more strength, so you could layer fairly
> easily and have MUCH higher AL than I do with the robe.
I could layer, yes...If I had more mana. I'm talking about a STANDARD
warrior here, not some hybrid who can fight his way through the BSD
without hardly ever equipping his weapon. For me, I cast all 4 weapon
buffs, and I'm done for mana. Unless I put considerably more XP into
ManaC and Self/Mana, that fact won't change for a long time either.
Another fact you fail to see is that while Faran Robes weight only 200
BU, armor weighs a lot more. A full set of amuli weighs around 5000 BU,
plus about another 700 for a light heaume, plus about another 600 for a
shield (these are just averages. Some might have lighter ones). Now take
the AL. A robe-wearing mage with layered clothing (and Armor Self VI)has
around 1050 AL. With no layering, a person in the BEST Amuli (AL 185 w/
Imp VI) plus a good shield (AL 80 w/ Imp VI) would be AL 665, 865 if
they somehow also could wear (or even find) an Armor Self VI item. We
all know the average warrior less than 40th level will have nowhere NEAR
this kind of equipment though. Usually AL (again, WITHOUT layering) will
be around 500-600, and at the cost of a LOT of weight. WHy should your
200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
> > plus I only have
> > Bludgeon Prot IV compared to your VI. I take about the same damage as
> > you do from tuskers, and I don't have a drain spell to counteract this.
>
> I bet you don't. Do you get a critical hit every third hit?
Not every third, but about every 6th or 7th. I can't tank more than 2 or
3 either (and only that many because I become a potion-a-holic), or else
I WILL die, same as you.
> I can't when I'm wearing a robe. Even WITH those life buffs I die, and
> fairly quickly too. Friend of mine without life buffs and with Amuli armor
> (al 120 or so plus impen IV I think) got one shotted by a Tusker. While he
> was running from Teth, I started my buff cycle so we could get his body.
> You know what? He was still waiting on me when he arrived ;-) (not
> complaining, just saying there's a check and balance).
How many times have you been one-shotted? Like I said, Armor is heavier,
and should give us more AL than a robe-wearing mage.
> I can only take that kind of damage when the robe is enchanted. There are
> many checks and balances in that; limits on mana (buffing shirt and outer
> wear takes at least 2 'tanks' of mana), limit's on comp's, that it's
> certainly not the imbalancer that you seem to think it is.
>
> Robe wearing is not something I do for choice, it's because six of my packs
> are full of nothing but pea's and spell comps; at 100 strength, my burden is
> about 90% for an hour's worth of traveling. The robe is the only reasonable
> thing to do.
Heh....burden for me is usually more than that when I go out hunting.
You don't have weapons to lug around, which for me is about another 4000
BU. Add in the weight of my armor (about another 7000 BU), and that's
well over 11000 BU, which equates to about 73 points of strength needed
to carry this much. Now take into account all the extra health/stam
potions, heal kits, mana stones, etc...
> Now, this is partly due to a choice I made when I created Penne; I decided
> on more stamina and less strength. I never imagined that I'd have to look
> like the 'Hulk' to be a mage. A friend of mine with more strength (about
> 160 I think) wears Amuli. Personally, I don't think of a mage as being
> someone that looks like Arnold, but this game may require it. Then again, I
> have 230 end or so and almost 300 mana, which my friend does not.
You don;t have to look like the "hulk". I'm just saying that I think
Mages should have to wear armor in order to survive against hard hitting
melee monsters. If you don't want to wear armor (or do not have the
strength to wear it), don't go up against tuskers/Lugis/Olthoi.
I never imagined I would have to have a super brain on Vinod in order to
survive. But, it appears that the only way to survive ANYWHERE is have a
focus over 100, a Self over 100, 200+ mana, magic skill, comps,
wands....not the kind of picture I had in mind when I created Vinod.
The fact is, melee's with no magic cannot stand up to the same amount of
punishment that mages can. With no way to buff their armor/clothes, they
have to live with what they have to get by with. And don't say melee
defense will make the difference here. Most melee's will not see melee
defense make them nearly unhittable until around level 50+. Until then,
they have to live with hard hits (beacuse of their relatively MUCH lower
AL) and running. Why is this so? Shouldn't pure melees be nearly
unstoppable when going up against MELEE monsters? Instead, mages rule
the day usually.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2001 06:55:55 -0700, "Legiondel II" <n...@email.please>
> wrote:
>
> >Ouch. Heh, a million xp for 5 hours in BSD is not that great... <g> I made
> >that much in less than half that time when I hunted in BSD, and when I
> >finally got some sense, I went out to the Plains and started making
> >750,000-1,000,000 per hour of tusker bashing.
> >
> >No reason to die, either. <g>
> >http://www.vbthunder.com/tuskerfest.jpg
> >... BSD campers, eat your heart out :-)
>
> a mage. This is proof enough to me that Mages do not own the BSD.
>
> -Ash
But what was his level compared to yours? And is he a Hyrbid staffer?
Were you vulning the tuskers for him? Was he vulning the tuskers
himself?
If any of these are true, this is not proof that mages don't own BSD.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
types do well or better down there. I'm sure hybrid guys do well too, or at
least earlier, but pure melee can do very well once they get down there.
Don't forget that every third hit for me is a critical - that has a huge
effect that a melee char just doesn't have. A friend of mine (non extreme)
at level 37 went in there and stood fine against the tuskers with no special
armor on (level IV's from jewelry). My buff's had dropped and he hadn't
told me, which made me panic (I was afraid he'd get one shotted) but he said
it was no big deal. Maybe they weren't hitting him due to the target
switching thing, I don't know.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A96953D...@dsrnet.com...
Penne
> Penne wrote:
> >
> What I meant was that mages aren't the only ones to have Life Magic, so
> my comment was directed more towards those who have it, not mages in
> particular.
I understand that, but it would hurt mages much more than other characters
that have life.
> >
> > You also called for Item magic to be nerfed by making it not work on
> > anything but 'armor', and on Life to be nerf'd to only protect against
magic
> > attacks. (What about Gromnie breath?).
>
> I believe Armor Self VI helps against physical attacks.
Exactly, so if Life spells only affected magic attacks, a Gromnie would kill
a mage on the spot. Unless they were wearing armor, of course.
>
> > Your nerf would affect hybrids to an extent, but not that bad due to
their
> > melee defense. It would KILL ME. That's the point I'm trying to make.
> >
> > It's the equivalent of giving every melee monster in the world a hollow
> > weapon.
>
> No it isn't. You still have Armor Self VI.
Uh, that's a life spell? If it only protects against magic attacks, then
the Armor Self VI wouldn't help at all.
>Plus, I said wearing a Robe
> isn't a problem, as long as it has some kind of AL to start with.
*lol* what robes have al? (actually, I believe all clothing has an al of
something like 5, but not sure - some of that is spell economy).
>How
> would that kill you? You wouldn't be able to fight Tuskers, but then
> again, I don't think MAGES should have the easiest time against them. I
> don't think it's fair that mages should be able to go out with a robe
> and a T-Shirt and have well over 1000+ AL, PLUS the Life Prots to lessen
> the damage. Doesn't anyone else?
And as I've pointed out, that doesn't completly help anyway. It's not quite
the perfect protection you seem to think needs nerfing.
> > It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
>
> No, it's the equivalent of telling mages they have to wear armor if they
> want to fight TUSKERS effectively.
huh? Any melee monster would OWN me. Iron golems killed me a while ago -
resisted 4 times in a row, I didn't evade their melee attack. A few
crititcal hits, dead. I wasn't as buffed as I was for BSD (I hadn't done
the shirt/pants), but I did have impen and bludgeon bane on. Dead.
To a pure mage, any melee attack is dangerous. Removing life buffs would be
lethal.
> If you want to go up against very
> hard hitting melee monsters, wear armor or expect to get hit very hard.
> Most of the other monsters hardly damage you even NAKED (from melee
> attacks, that is).
That's what I've been trying to tell you. Most melee monsters kill me
naked, often in only one or two shots. NOT just tuskers. For example, I
had armor IV and impen V on my robe the other day, and hadn't healed myself
after Subway. Blood shreth killed me. I was not naked, I had minimal buffs
on.
> > If all you are trying to do is balance the world for hybrids, maybe it
would
> > work.
>
> I could care less about hybrids. I think Hybrids have messed up the game
> for everyone else, since they have no real sacrifice to speak of, and
> can effectively do anything they want.
Then please don't kill me to balance them.
> >
> > A mage SHOULD be able to buff a robe, it's 'classic fantasy'. And the
> > weakness I have to melee attacks while wearing that ultra buffed robe is
> > 100% classic also, and doesn't need changing.
>
> Buffing a robe is not classic fantasy. WEARING a robe is. From playing a
> lot of the different pen and paper RPG games out there, I can remember
> that mages with robes were never that armored (or at least not as
> armored as a paladin or warrior). From what I remember, the most
> powerful robe out there was either a Robe of the Archmagi or a Robe of
> Protection +5. From what I remember, CLASSIC fantasy had the warriors
> walking around in Plate Mail being the ones who could take the most
> damage and had the best armor. NOT mages. That's the way it is now.
> Mages walk around with more AL than most STANDARD warriors (I don't mean
> hybrids).
In D&D typically a mage can wear bracers of armor class 0. This effectivly
gives them plate armor.
> >
> > It would mean that a mage would be almost completly defensless against
any
> > melee attacks unless they wore armor.
> >
> > That means you're making wearing armor a basic requirement in the game.
> >
>
> No....see above comments about relative damage. Seems to me you're only
> taking into account the damage a Tusker does, and no other monster.
No, you're assuming melee damange isn't a problem. It is, even from a low
level monster like a blood shreth (see my comment above about dying on teh
way to Mayoi).
> > The shield makes it significnatly more; and you can layer also. You've
got
> > far less comp weight than I do, and more strength, so you could layer
fairly
> > easily and have MUCH higher AL than I do with the robe.
>
> I could layer, yes...If I had more mana. I'm talking about a STANDARD
> warrior here, not some hybrid who can fight his way through the BSD
> without hardly ever equipping his weapon. For me, I cast all 4 weapon
> buffs, and I'm done for mana. Unless I put considerably more XP into
> ManaC and Self/Mana, that fact won't change for a long time either.
I run out of mana doing the layering buffs also.
> Another fact you fail to see is that while Faran Robes weight only 200
> BU, armor weighs a lot more. A full set of amuli weighs around 5000 BU,
> plus about another 700 for a light heaume, plus about another 600 for a
> shield (these are just averages. Some might have lighter ones). Now take
> the AL. A robe-wearing mage with layered clothing (and Armor Self VI)has
> around 1050 AL. With no layering, a person in the BEST Amuli (AL 185 w/
> Imp VI) plus a good shield (AL 80 w/ Imp VI) would be AL 665, 865 if
> they somehow also could wear (or even find) an Armor Self VI item. We
> all know the average warrior less than 40th level will have nowhere NEAR
> this kind of equipment though. Usually AL (again, WITHOUT layering) will
> be around 500-600, and at the cost of a LOT of weight. WHy should your
> 200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
> close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
Because it can drop, and I burn a lot of comp's casting those spells.
There's a cost.
> > > plus I only have
> > > Bludgeon Prot IV compared to your VI. I take about the same damage as
> > > you do from tuskers, and I don't have a drain spell to counteract
this.
> >
> > I bet you don't. Do you get a critical hit every third hit?
>
> Not every third, but about every 6th or 7th. I can't tank more than 2 or
> 3 either (and only that many because I become a potion-a-holic), or else
> I WILL die, same as you.
Then we're at parity. They why do you think I've got it better and need to
be nerf'd?
Don't forget, tuskers are the exception for a mage. Against most stuff in
the Versayan [sp?] islands, for example, I get too many resists and that
drain doesn't help at all. If that Virindi master shows up, I have to pray
there's a melee guy around, I can't drain enough health to make up for the
melee attack, much less the war bolts.
> > I can't when I'm wearing a robe. Even WITH those life buffs I die, and
> > fairly quickly too. Friend of mine without life buffs and with Amuli
armor
> > (al 120 or so plus impen IV I think) got one shotted by a Tusker. While
he
> > was running from Teth, I started my buff cycle so we could get his body.
> > You know what? He was still waiting on me when he arrived ;-) (not
> > complaining, just saying there's a check and balance).
>
> How many times have you been one-shotted? Like I said, Armor is heavier,
> and should give us more AL than a robe-wearing mage.
It does .. if I wear a GSA top and bottom and cast the same spells, my AL
will be much higher. That's just two more buffs out of 10.
The layering trick doesn't halve the damage, it only reduces by about 30%.
Beyond a certain point, it seems to me that increased al has a lower payoff
than you think.
> Heh....burden for me is usually more than that when I go out hunting.
> You don't have weapons to lug around, which for me is about another 4000
> BU. Add in the weight of my armor (about another 7000 BU), and that's
> well over 11000 BU, which equates to about 73 points of strength needed
> to carry this much. Now take into account all the extra health/stam
> potions, heal kits, mana stones, etc...
Sure, but that's still reasonable for you. 11000 burden more would flatten
me. Mind you, other mages have higher starting strength, I never realized
that a mage would be a pack mule in this game. Again, six packs full.
> > Now, this is partly due to a choice I made when I created Penne; I
decided
> > on more stamina and less strength. I never imagined that I'd have to
look
> > like the 'Hulk' to be a mage. A friend of mine with more strength
(about
> > 160 I think) wears Amuli. Personally, I don't think of a mage as being
> > someone that looks like Arnold, but this game may require it. Then
again, I
> > have 230 end or so and almost 300 mana, which my friend does not.
>
> You don;t have to look like the "hulk". I'm just saying that I think
> Mages should have to wear armor in order to survive against hard hitting
> melee monsters. If you don't want to wear armor (or do not have the
> strength to wear it), don't go up against tuskers/Lugis/Olthoi.
Again, your change would mean that everything would kill me.
> I never imagined I would have to have a super brain on Vinod in order to
> survive. But, it appears that the only way to survive ANYWHERE is have a
> focus over 100, a Self over 100, 200+ mana, magic skill, comps,
> wands....not the kind of picture I had in mind when I created Vinod.
>
> The fact is, melee's with no magic cannot stand up to the same amount of
> punishment that mages can.
I disagree. I haven't tried my level 30 UA guy against tuskers, even as an
extreme I think he's a bit too low level. But I'll tell you right now we're
taking on similar creatures, with the exception of the tuskers.
> With no way to buff their armor/clothes, they
> have to live with what they have to get by with. And don't say melee
> defense will make the difference here. Most melee's will not see melee
> defense make them nearly unhittable until around level 50+. Until then,
> they have to live with hard hits (beacuse of their relatively MUCH lower
> AL) and running. Why is this so? Shouldn't pure melees be nearly
> unstoppable when going up against MELEE monsters? Instead, mages rule
> the day usually.
My UA guy is fairly unstoppable. ;-)
I understand your point but I'm not sure I agree. you seem to think that
the higher AL due to the robe is the big difference, and it's something
melee guys can never get. The shield bug is what makes a significant
difference; with the shield, my UA guy takes significantly less hits than
Penne does with full armor. This is against Gigas, Golems, and Rev's.
If I can get another 4 shards, I'll recall my UA guy out of Fenmalain and
try the BSD, just to see what it's like. This would be interesting if I
could get my GSC and compare that.
Penne
I'd very happily hunt shadows, but I have a hard time with Lt's; I killed an
Umbris the other day just because it was stuck inside the mage shop at teth.
They resist like all get out.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 40
Harvestgain
<klbu...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:2klc9tsh3j15fu89l...@4ax.com...
> >As it stands now, a mage w/ a matty coat and layered buffs and protects
> >at higher levels will not take hardly any damage from just about ANY
> >physical attack thrown his way.
>
> Try it some time. There's a big difference between "will not take
> hardly any damage" and reality.
>
> >Magic will ALWAYS do some damage (unless
> >resisted).
>
> ... or fizzled... or left haning in front of you because of the
> pathing bug... or simply missed... or "missfired".
>
> >Would you even CONSIDER
> >going up against three Umbris shadows at the same time and expect to
> >live more than 10 seconds? They're about the same level. This is what
> >I'm getting at. Magic monsters are too powerful.
>
> I think it boils down to Penne's comments about Magic Defense being
> screwed up. You don't think Mages would be hunting Umbris if we stood
> the same chance against them? The problem is that no one (not melee,
> mage, archer, or vagabond) can stand up to a magic using monster.
>
> -Asha'man
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> "Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
> news:3A968D79...@dsrnet.com...
> > Penne wrote:
> > >
> > What I meant was that mages aren't the only ones to have Life Magic, so
> > my comment was directed more towards those who have it, not mages in
> > particular.
>
> I understand that, but it would hurt mages much more than other characters
> that have life.
What I'm proposing is that Mages SHOULD be hurt by melee guys, and take
down MAGIC guys with ease. The opposite should apply for melees.
> > >
> > > You also called for Item magic to be nerfed by making it not work on
> > > anything but 'armor', and on Life to be nerf'd to only protect against
> magic
> > > attacks. (What about Gromnie breath?).
> >
> > I believe Armor Self VI helps against physical attacks.
>
> Exactly, so if Life spells only affected magic attacks, a Gromnie would kill
> a mage on the spot. Unless they were wearing armor, of course.
I guess I should have been more specific then. Life PROTECTIONS should
only help against magical attack damage. Armor Self should work as it
does right now.
>
> >
> > > Your nerf would affect hybrids to an extent, but not that bad due to
> their
> > > melee defense. It would KILL ME. That's the point I'm trying to make.
> > >
> > > It's the equivalent of giving every melee monster in the world a hollow
> > > weapon.
> >
> > No it isn't. You still have Armor Self VI.
>
> Uh, that's a life spell? If it only protects against magic attacks, then
> the Armor Self VI wouldn't help at all.
See Above.
>
> >Plus, I said wearing a Robe
> > isn't a problem, as long as it has some kind of AL to start with.
>
> *lol* what robes have al? (actually, I believe all clothing has an al of
> something like 5, but not sure - some of that is spell economy).
What I meant is that if mages are stuck with wearing a robe, then make
them have 10 Al or seomthing. Clothing/most robes currently have no AL.
They only become "Armor" when you buff them.
> > How
> > would that kill you? You wouldn't be able to fight Tuskers, but then
> > again, I don't think MAGES should have the easiest time against them. I
> > don't think it's fair that mages should be able to go out with a robe
> > and a T-Shirt and have well over 1000+ AL, PLUS the Life Prots to lessen
> > the damage. Doesn't anyone else?
>
> And as I've pointed out, that doesn't completly help anyway. It's not quite
> the perfect protection you seem to think needs nerfing.
Why doesn't it? if you have better AL than me, do you think the code
looks at you and says, "hey, he's a mage...ignore his super AL and do
more damage."? Better AL is better AL.
>
> > > It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
> >
> > No, it's the equivalent of telling mages they have to wear armor if they
> > want to fight TUSKERS effectively.
>
> huh? Any melee monster would OWN me. Iron golems killed me a while ago -
> resisted 4 times in a row, I didn't evade their melee attack. A few
> crititcal hits, dead. I wasn't as buffed as I was for BSD (I hadn't done
> the shirt/pants), but I did have impen and bludgeon bane on. Dead.
The same would apply if walked up to an Iron without any Life Prots on.
2 or 3 spells later, I'm dead.
>
> To a pure mage, any melee attack is dangerous. Removing life buffs would be
> lethal.
Not true. When I played my mage more frequently, I used to walk around
all the time in a chain hauberk and yoroi legs, buffed w/ Impen ONLY. I
hardly EVER wore Life Prots, except when fighting stuff like Bone
Knights/Grievers/Magic monsters. I survived just fine.
>
> > If you want to go up against very
> > hard hitting melee monsters, wear armor or expect to get hit very hard.
> > Most of the other monsters hardly damage you even NAKED (from melee
> > attacks, that is).
>
> That's what I've been trying to tell you. Most melee monsters kill me
> naked, often in only one or two shots. NOT just tuskers. For example, I
> had armor IV and impen V on my robe the other day, and hadn't healed myself
> after Subway. Blood shreth killed me. I was not naked, I had minimal buffs
> on.
Unless you dodge, monsters would do the same damage to a melee as a
mage. Armor is Armor.
> > > A mage SHOULD be able to buff a robe, it's 'classic fantasy'. And the
> > > weakness I have to melee attacks while wearing that ultra buffed robe is
> > > 100% classic also, and doesn't need changing.
> >
> > Buffing a robe is not classic fantasy. WEARING a robe is. From playing a
> > lot of the different pen and paper RPG games out there, I can remember
> > that mages with robes were never that armored (or at least not as
> > armored as a paladin or warrior). From what I remember, the most
> > powerful robe out there was either a Robe of the Archmagi or a Robe of
> > Protection +5. From what I remember, CLASSIC fantasy had the warriors
> > walking around in Plate Mail being the ones who could take the most
> > damage and had the best armor. NOT mages. That's the way it is now.
> > Mages walk around with more AL than most STANDARD warriors (I don't mean
> > hybrids).
>
> In D&D typically a mage can wear bracers of armor class 0. This effectivly
> gives them plate armor.
Huh? I've never heard of Bracers AC 0 (unless some DM made them up.) The
highest AC bracers I know of are AC 2, and they were pretty hard to come
by. This hardly equates to buffing either way though. Mages AND warriors
(and thieves especially) could wear these bracers with equal
effectiveness. No skill was involved.
>
> > >
> > > It would mean that a mage would be almost completly defensless against
> any
> > > melee attacks unless they wore armor.
> > >
> > > That means you're making wearing armor a basic requirement in the game.
> > >
> >
> > No....see above comments about relative damage. Seems to me you're only
> > taking into account the damage a Tusker does, and no other monster.
>
> No, you're assuming melee damange isn't a problem. It is, even from a low
> level monster like a blood shreth (see my comment above about dying on teh
> way to Mayoi).
Magic damage is the same. Just the other night, my humbled butt was
killed by a Red Phyntos Wasp. I was trying to take a shortcut to Uziz,
so I went into a portal. I arrived, then was promptly smacked by one of
those Squid looking things (the 50th level ones) for 97 points of
damage. The reason? I wasn't wearing my armor. After running (there were
4 of the things around me), I ended up with about 9 health in a little
cave that led underground. 3 Red Wasps followed me in. I thought I was
ok, and started to heal myself. Imagine my surprise when I looked up at
the Lifestone a few seconds later. All in all, bad things happen to
everyone.
> > > The shield makes it significnatly more; and you can layer also. You've
> got
> > > far less comp weight than I do, and more strength, so you could layer
> fairly
> > > easily and have MUCH higher AL than I do with the robe.
> >
> > I could layer, yes...If I had more mana. I'm talking about a STANDARD
> > warrior here, not some hybrid who can fight his way through the BSD
> > without hardly ever equipping his weapon. For me, I cast all 4 weapon
> > buffs, and I'm done for mana. Unless I put considerably more XP into
> > ManaC and Self/Mana, that fact won't change for a long time either.
>
> I run out of mana doing the layering buffs also.
Yes, but you don't run out of mana after castine 4 level IV spells, do
you? I do.
> > Another fact you fail to see is that while Faran Robes weight only 200
> > BU, armor weighs a lot more. A full set of amuli weighs around 5000 BU,
> > plus about another 700 for a light heaume, plus about another 600 for a
> > shield (these are just averages. Some might have lighter ones). Now take
> > the AL. A robe-wearing mage with layered clothing (and Armor Self VI)has
> > around 1050 AL. With no layering, a person in the BEST Amuli (AL 185 w/
> > Imp VI) plus a good shield (AL 80 w/ Imp VI) would be AL 665, 865 if
> > they somehow also could wear (or even find) an Armor Self VI item. We
> > all know the average warrior less than 40th level will have nowhere NEAR
> > this kind of equipment though. Usually AL (again, WITHOUT layering) will
> > be around 500-600, and at the cost of a LOT of weight. WHy should your
> > 200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
> > close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
>
> Because it can drop, and I burn a lot of comp's casting those spells.
> There's a cost.
I think the cost is a little different. We have to lug around heavy
armor, that can be lost on death, burns up mana, has protection holes
(especially metal armor), and is hard to find for the better stuff. You?
you lose your robe, you go buy a new one for a few hundred pyreals. You
lose a few comps, I lose mana stones/weight allowance.
> > > > plus I only have
> > > > Bludgeon Prot IV compared to your VI. I take about the same damage as
> > > > you do from tuskers, and I don't have a drain spell to counteract
> this.
> > >
> > > I bet you don't. Do you get a critical hit every third hit?
> >
> > Not every third, but about every 6th or 7th. I can't tank more than 2 or
> > 3 either (and only that many because I become a potion-a-holic), or else
> > I WILL die, same as you.
>
> Then we're at parity. They why do you think I've got it better and need to
> be nerf'd?
>
> Don't forget, tuskers are the exception for a mage. Against most stuff in
> the Versayan [sp?] islands, for example, I get too many resists and that
> drain doesn't help at all. If that Virindi master shows up, I have to pray
> there's a melee guy around, I can't drain enough health to make up for the
> melee attack, much less the war bolts.
I think the trend of super high resists should stop also. This was
brought into existance to combat the Uber characters walking around with
ungodly magic skills (and usually a Robe) killing anything and
everything they see. If all of a sudden mages were to be more vulnerable
to physical attacks, this wouldn't be so much of an issue.
>
> > > I can't when I'm wearing a robe. Even WITH those life buffs I die, and
> > > fairly quickly too. Friend of mine without life buffs and with Amuli
> armor
> > > (al 120 or so plus impen IV I think) got one shotted by a Tusker. While
> he
> > > was running from Teth, I started my buff cycle so we could get his body.
> > > You know what? He was still waiting on me when he arrived ;-) (not
> > > complaining, just saying there's a check and balance).
> >
> > How many times have you been one-shotted? Like I said, Armor is heavier,
> > and should give us more AL than a robe-wearing mage.
>
> It does .. if I wear a GSA top and bottom and cast the same spells, my AL
> will be much higher. That's just two more buffs out of 10.
Like I said, you're casting spells though. I have to FIND armor with
those kind of spells on it. The point is, your AL would be higher
because you're wearing ARMOR. Thus, you're having to sacrifice weight
for much higher protection.
>
> The layering trick doesn't halve the damage, it only reduces by about 30%.
> Beyond a certain point, it seems to me that increased al has a lower payoff
> than you think.
So in other words, it acts like an ADDITIONAL Life prot III spell (on
top of the high AL and existing LIfe Prot VI spell). Boy, wouldn't that
be nice for melees to have?
>
> > Heh....burden for me is usually more than that when I go out hunting.
> > You don't have weapons to lug around, which for me is about another 4000
> > BU. Add in the weight of my armor (about another 7000 BU), and that's
> > well over 11000 BU, which equates to about 73 points of strength needed
> > to carry this much. Now take into account all the extra health/stam
> > potions, heal kits, mana stones, etc...
>
> Sure, but that's still reasonable for you. 11000 burden more would flatten
> me. Mind you, other mages have higher starting strength, I never realized
> that a mage would be a pack mule in this game. Again, six packs full.
I never realized a melee would be a mage in the game either. Some things
are just that way. I might be able to carry more due to the fact that I
naturally have more strength for my attack skill, but then again, you
can ID just about anything you want because of your focus, and you have
a higher loyalty/leadership.
>
> > > Now, this is partly due to a choice I made when I created Penne; I
> decided
> > > on more stamina and less strength. I never imagined that I'd have to
> look
> > > like the 'Hulk' to be a mage. A friend of mine with more strength
> (about
> > > 160 I think) wears Amuli. Personally, I don't think of a mage as being
> > > someone that looks like Arnold, but this game may require it. Then
> again, I
> > > have 230 end or so and almost 300 mana, which my friend does not.
> >
> > You don;t have to look like the "hulk". I'm just saying that I think
> > Mages should have to wear armor in order to survive against hard hitting
> > melee monsters. If you don't want to wear armor (or do not have the
> > strength to wear it), don't go up against tuskers/Lugis/Olthoi.
>
> Again, your change would mean that everything would kill me.
Not true. In the brief time I spent as a robe mage (before I got tired
of it and started wearing armor), I didn't die too much from going up
against monsters.
>
> > I never imagined I would have to have a super brain on Vinod in order to
> > survive. But, it appears that the only way to survive ANYWHERE is have a
> > focus over 100, a Self over 100, 200+ mana, magic skill, comps,
> > wands....not the kind of picture I had in mind when I created Vinod.
> >
> > The fact is, melee's with no magic cannot stand up to the same amount of
> > punishment that mages can.
>
> I disagree. I haven't tried my level 30 UA guy against tuskers, even as an
> extreme I think he's a bit too low level. But I'll tell you right now we're
> taking on similar creatures, with the exception of the tuskers.
But he's a Hybrid, right? You said you're already casting Item V spells?
That helps a LOT.
>
> > With no way to buff their armor/clothes, they
> > have to live with what they have to get by with. And don't say melee
> > defense will make the difference here. Most melee's will not see melee
> > defense make them nearly unhittable until around level 50+. Until then,
> > they have to live with hard hits (beacuse of their relatively MUCH lower
> > AL) and running. Why is this so? Shouldn't pure melees be nearly
> > unstoppable when going up against MELEE monsters? Instead, mages rule
> > the day usually.
>
> My UA guy is fairly unstoppable. ;-)
That melee defense will start to wear off in a little while.
"Unstoppable" will be an entirely different animal once you get a little
higher and see that taking out a shadowLT here and there and tanking 15
lugis at once is easy stuff. Heck, my dagger guy can knock out TONS of
stuff, not afraid of getting hit by very many things, but I sure
wouldn't go up against a Panumrbis, and I wouldn't go up against a
Tusker either. For him, Melee is around 240, dagger 260 (he's level 25).
>
> I understand your point but I'm not sure I agree. you seem to think that
> the higher AL due to the robe is the big difference, and it's something
> melee guys can never get. The shield bug is what makes a significant
> difference; with the shield, my UA guy takes significantly less hits than
> Penne does with full armor. This is against Gigas, Golems, and Rev's.
This shield "bug" you keep talking about is not NEAR as big of a
modifier as everyone thinks it is. True, the devs admitted the shield
more effective than meant to be, but not quite as bad as what all the
people say it is. And the monsters you named don't even hit that hard.
With my dagger guy, I used to walk around in this setup:
AL 62 w/ Imp IV Rejuv IV gromnie shirt
AL 122 w/ Imp III Str III bracers
AL 30 w/ Imp V Flame V Lightning V leather legs
Superior helm
AL 64 w/ Imp IV shield.
As you can see, the highest AL on any part of my body (from the front)
was 334. I wore this setup all through my brief citadel phase, and Gigas
failed to do more than 10 damage on any given hit, unless it was a crit.
Irons did even less, and Revs (do you mean Raveners, or Revenants?)
about 3-4 when I fought them once or twice.
I think maybe this is getting a little too strained. Maybe we should
just agree to disagree. Apparently, we have played both sides of the
fence (melee/mage), and agree that Evading attacks is much better than
higher AL overall (why else would you create a dagger guy than to evade
the most? hehe).
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Legiondel II
news:lpvc9t4eahv0v3n54...@4ax.com...
> (lol) My point was that he made twice what I did. He's melee and I'm
> a mage. This is proof enough to me that Mages do not own the BSD.
>
can't compete with them for tuskers. There are extreme examples like
Frostfell's Sword of Truth, who was level 90 something when I was in BSD at
the time. But even by the time they reach levels 45-50 they can give mages a
run for their money.
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> > WHy should your
> >200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
> >close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
>
> guys keep the BSD scraped clean when mages cannot? (Or at least mages
> *did* not before the Bandit Hilts made every sword guy a meat grinder
> for Tuskers.) Even draining stamina, I can't keep my mana reserves
> high enough to be constantly ready for battle. I see melee guys
> finish off a double handful of tuskers, heal themselves two or three
> times, maybe suck down a stam elixir, then hit the next spawn. I
> often have to hide in a corner while my stam recovers enough to
> convert to mana.
>
> -Asha'man
Mages can carry around stam elixirs/mana potions just as well as
warriors can.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Vinod al-Ahmad
> higher than me. We did not fight together... I only vulned a few
> tuskers that he ended up killing. Yes, he's a hybrid melee... just
> like *every* melee I've known personally since I started playing. I
> consider someone who uses a shield and a weapon to be melee,
> regardless of what magic schools they know. I consider a mage to be
> someone who uses War magic to finish the foe, since it's too
> underpowered to do all the killing.
>
> -Asha'man
My point is that if he's a hybrid, he ain't a melee. A "Melee" can't
cast level V/Vi protects on himself, vuln a monster, then run in and hit
it 3 or 4 times and kill it. Any combination of high AL armor (and
layering), PLUS life prots, PLUS high melee defense, PLUS vulns, PLUS
high hit precentage is of course going to rule BSD. IMO, people that
wield that much magic in combat is not a Melee, but a mage that wields a
weapon. In that scope, he's a mage. Thus, "Mages" (whether war mages or
weapon mages) rule BSD.
Any non-magic using melee would not be NEARLY as effective in there, and
everyone knows it.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
Yea, could be ;-) It's an interesting discussion though. Hope you stick
with it for a little while longer.
> Maybe we should
> just agree to disagree. Apparently, we have played both sides of the
> fence (melee/mage), and agree that Evading attacks is much better than
> higher AL overall (why else would you create a dagger guy than to evade
> the most? hehe).
I think we both DEFINITLY agree that magic resistance is broken. I've
posted about thsi before. I agree that a mage should be able to fight a
magic casting monster much better than a melee guy, and vice versa. The big
difference between our views, is that you think one of the ways to fix that
is to make melee more scary for a mage. I think this isn't needed at all,
and this is the big disagreement. In any event, this doesn't fix the real
problem, typically that mages almost never resist monter's and monster's
frequenty resist mages. The system might be balanced for PvP, but not at
all, IMHO, for PvM.
Futher comments below ....
"Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
news:3A96B71E...@dsrnet.com...
> Penne wrote:
>
> What I'm proposing is that Mages SHOULD be hurt by melee guys, and take
> down MAGIC guys with ease. The opposite should apply for melees.
All you have to do is to make magic resistance on monsters much lower. That
would change what you want, it's what I've been calling for, for a while.
In my case, I AM hurt by melee guys, and quite a lot <G>.
BSD is an isolated situation, due to the ONE damage type, and single type
spawns. If you want to fix BSD for mages, just have Turbine sprinkle more
Virindi in there.
> > Exactly, so if Life spells only affected magic attacks, a Gromnie would
kill
> > a mage on the spot. Unless they were wearing armor, of course.
>
> I guess I should have been more specific then. Life PROTECTIONS should
> only help against magical attack damage. Armor Self should work as it
> does right now.
Still doesn't help with the Gromnie .. that's an acid attack. Gold wasps
would be totally insane. Most armor has poor elemental protections, and if
it does have good protection it 'usually' isn't high AL.
> > >Plus, I said wearing a Robe
> > > isn't a problem, as long as it has some kind of AL to start with.
> >
> > *lol* what robes have al? (actually, I believe all clothing has an al
of
> > something like 5, but not sure - some of that is spell economy).
>
> What I meant is that if mages are stuck with wearing a robe, then make
> them have 10 Al or seomthing. Clothing/most robes currently have no AL.
> They only become "Armor" when you buff them.
So this implies the layering is the big problem. Layering does help a lot,
but it's not the huge difference.
> > And as I've pointed out, that doesn't completly help anyway. It's not
quite
> > the perfect protection you seem to think needs nerfing.
>
> Why doesn't it? if you have better AL than me, do you think the code
> looks at you and says, "hey, he's a mage...ignore his super AL and do
> more damage."? Better AL is better AL.
Sure, but what happens is due to my crappy melee defense, every third attack
or so is a critical hit; that lessens dramatically the AL difference.
Again, hybrid's are different - I'm talking about a non tank mage here.
Tank mages (Lord Bane's template) have their own issues, namely non-spec,
which will affect their ability to get past the high magic resistance of
most stuff.
> > > > It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
> > >
> > > No, it's the equivalent of telling mages they have to wear armor if
they
> > > want to fight TUSKERS effectively.
> >
> > huh? Any melee monster would OWN me. Iron golems killed me a while
ago -
> > resisted 4 times in a row, I didn't evade their melee attack. A few
> > crititcal hits, dead. I wasn't as buffed as I was for BSD (I hadn't
done
> > the shirt/pants), but I did have impen and bludgeon bane on. Dead.
>
> The same would apply if walked up to an Iron without any Life Prots on.
> 2 or 3 spells later, I'm dead.
You miss the point, it was melee that killed me. I had protects on, just
not buffed to the 9's.
> >
> > To a pure mage, any melee attack is dangerous. Removing life buffs
would be
> > lethal.
>
> Not true. When I played my mage more frequently, I used to walk around
> all the time in a chain hauberk and yoroi legs, buffed w/ Impen ONLY. I
> hardly EVER wore Life Prots, except when fighting stuff like Bone
> Knights/Grievers/Magic monsters. I survived just fine.
So we're back to mages HAVE to wear armor?
> >
> > > If you want to go up against very
> > > hard hitting melee monsters, wear armor or expect to get hit very
hard.
> > > Most of the other monsters hardly damage you even NAKED (from melee
> > > attacks, that is).
> >
> > That's what I've been trying to tell you. Most melee monsters kill me
> > naked, often in only one or two shots. NOT just tuskers. For example,
I
> > had armor IV and impen V on my robe the other day, and hadn't healed
myself
> > after Subway. Blood shreth killed me. I was not naked, I had minimal
buffs
> > on.
>
> Unless you dodge, monsters would do the same damage to a melee as a
> mage. Armor is Armor.
And a pure mage doesn't dodge. Dev's have confirmed chance of a critical
melee hit are increased by a lower target melee defense. So not only does
the mage NOT dodge, they take MORE damage per hit, on average.
Plus, there are unconfirmed rumors that spell casting counts as peace mode
for melee attacks, as archers say they take less damage while in attack mode
than while buffing. I'm not sure about this, but it might actually make
some sense (i.e. mages are poor at melee).
I didn't play D*D 2, I was playing one, so I'm not sure about the AC0
bracers. In any event, the whole point here is that mages typically didn't
wear armor, usually as a class restriction. AC doesn't enforce that, but
you're proposing sort of the opposite ... although an armor spell would
help, most mages to protect against a gromnie for example would HAVE to wear
armor.
> > No, you're assuming melee damange isn't a problem. It is, even from a
low
> > level monster like a blood shreth (see my comment above about dying on
teh
> > way to Mayoi).
>
> Magic damage is the same. Just the other night, my humbled butt was
> killed by a Red Phyntos Wasp. I was trying to take a shortcut to Uziz,
> so I went into a portal. I arrived, then was promptly smacked by one of
> those Squid looking things (the 50th level ones) for 97 points of
> damage. The reason? I wasn't wearing my armor. After running (there were
> 4 of the things around me), I ended up with about 9 health in a little
> cave that led underground. 3 Red Wasps followed me in. I thought I was
> ok, and started to heal myself. Imagine my surprise when I looked up at
> the Lifestone a few seconds later. All in all, bad things happen to
> everyone.
True, but my point was I had 70 health when the blood killed me, armor on,
and an armor IV spell <G>
The magic damage hurts me a lot as does melee damage. The concept that
melee damage is not a problem is realy only from melee guys.
> > > ..... WHy should your
> > > 200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
> > > close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
> >
> > Because it can drop, and I burn a lot of comp's casting those spells.
> > There's a cost.
>
> I think the cost is a little different. We have to lug around heavy
> armor, that can be lost on death, burns up mana, has protection holes
> (especially metal armor), and is hard to find for the better stuff. You?
> you lose your robe, you go buy a new one for a few hundred pyreals. You
> lose a few comps, I lose mana stones/weight allowance.
I don't mean drop on death, I mean the buff's can (do) drop in the middle of
a battle .. if I die, I still have to do corpse recovery; all those magic
mastery wands and jewelry that I rely on because creature buff's suck in
duration drop pretty well ;-) (Yes, I have master robes. Don't get me
started on how useless those are).
Lugging around the heavy armor has the big of not suddenly disappearing in
battle. it's not always possible to rebuff right away, it depends on the
situation. Again, BSD is a very isolated example; your buffs drop, you
recall out. That's not always possible, and it's not unusual to be out of
mana when your buff's drop. That's why the in vogue thing now is for mages
to start with high ST, so they can carry shadow armor.
> I think the trend of super high resists should stop also. This was
> brought into existance to combat the Uber characters walking around with
> ungodly magic skills (and usually a Robe) killing anything and
> everything they see. If all of a sudden mages were to be more vulnerable
> to physical attacks, this wouldn't be so much of an issue.
*sigh* they are ...
I do agree with the high resists, it's really bad. Tuskers are the
exception, but everything else seems to have a slightly higher magic
resistance than melee resistance .. which makes me think Turbine forgot that
magic schools are focus+self/4, not /3 like most melee skills are. With a
magic resistance equal to melee resistance, means a mage has to be higher in
level than an equivalent melee, ROUGHLY.
> Like I said, you're casting spells though. I have to FIND armor with
> those kind of spells on it. The point is, your AL would be higher
> because you're wearing ARMOR. Thus, you're having to sacrifice weight
> for much higher protection.
Sure, that's the tradeoff; but I start at 80% burden with comp's, nothing
else. Potions/mana stones/jewelry/death items adds up. Then I start
looking at armor. Mages will generally always be unable to wear the
heaviest armor due to these comp burden issues (which does make sense).
> So in other words, it acts like an ADDITIONAL Life prot III spell (on
> top of the high AL and existing LIfe Prot VI spell). Boy, wouldn't that
> be nice for melees to have?
Sure, but it's not nice when it wears off <G>. (or a magic trap ... )
It's also not nice when you run into a hollow weapon ...
> I never realized a melee would be a mage in the game either.
That's Steve's definition .. but I understand what you are saying.
> Some things
> are just that way. I might be able to carry more due to the fact that I
> naturally have more strength for my attack skill, but then again, you
> can ID just about anything you want because of your focus, and you have
> a higher loyalty/leadership.
Sure, that's the natural tradeoff. Plus, you probably have melee defense,
for me to be an archmage, it's really not possible (unless unspec'd
everything).
> > Again, your change would mean that everything would kill me.
>
> Not true. In the brief time I spent as a robe mage (before I got tired
> of it and started wearing armor), I didn't die too much from going up
> against monsters.
What did you go against?
"Everything" is a bit of a stretch, but it would be a HUGE nerf. Having at
least Armor self would help, but I think it's still seriously a nerf.
> > I disagree. I haven't tried my level 30 UA guy against tuskers, even as
an
> > extreme I think he's a bit too low level. But I'll tell you right now
we're
> > taking on similar creatures, with the exception of the tuskers.
>
> But he's a Hybrid, right? You said you're already casting Item V spells?
> That helps a LOT.
Actually, I wouldn't say he's a hybrid much, he's only got Item due to the
fact that UA weapons are crappy. Most of the time he uses BD IV weapons
anyway, and just uses item for recalls.
When I say he's taking on similar monsters, it's not due to the Item
helping, it's the fact that with 100 quick and 100 coord, his melee defense
is fantastic. He's very rugged. Half the time I die I don't bother with
backup armor, I just go get my body <G>.
> > My UA guy is fairly unstoppable. ;-)
>
> That melee defense will start to wear off in a little while.
Interesting ... my point I guess is that my melee guy fears spells, as do I.
I also fear melee attacks, he doesn't much.
> This shield "bug" you keep talking about is not NEAR as big of a
> modifier as everyone thinks it is. True, the devs admitted the shield
> more effective than meant to be, but not quite as bad as what all the
> people say it is. And the monsters you named don't even hit that hard.
> With my dagger guy, I used to walk around in this setup:
>
> AL 62 w/ Imp IV Rejuv IV gromnie shirt
> AL 122 w/ Imp III Str III bracers
> AL 30 w/ Imp V Flame V Lightning V leather legs
> Superior helm
> AL 64 w/ Imp IV shield.
>
> As you can see, the highest AL on any part of my body (from the front)
> was 334. I wore this setup all through my brief citadel phase, and Gigas
> failed to do more than 10 damage on any given hit, unless it was a crit.
> Irons did even less, and Revs (do you mean Raveners, or Revenants?)
> about 3-4 when I fought them once or twice.
If AL doesn't matter as much, why are you upset I can buff to 1000?
> I think maybe this is getting a little too strained.
Yea, could be ;-) It's an interesting discussion though. Hope you stick
with it for a little while longer.
> Maybe we should
> just agree to disagree. Apparently, we have played both sides of the
> fence (melee/mage), and agree that Evading attacks is much better than
> higher AL overall (why else would you create a dagger guy than to evade
> the most? hehe).
True, it's better to be not hit than to be hit and be tough!
Penne
> higher than me. We did not fight together... I only vulned a few
> tuskers that he ended up killing. Yes, he's a hybrid melee... just
> like *every* melee I've known personally since I started playing. I
> consider someone who uses a shield and a weapon to be melee,
> regardless of what magic schools they know. I consider a mage to be
> someone who uses War magic to finish the foe, since it's too
> underpowered to do all the killing.
That's one of the big differences here in the group - I call a mage anyone
that uses MAGIC to kill with; Steve's view is that anyone WITH a magic
school is a mage. I just try and use the phrase 'pure mage' to discuss what
I consider a mage.
Vinod al-Ahmad
>
> > I think maybe this is getting a little too strained.
>
> Yea, could be ;-) It's an interesting discussion though. Hope you stick
> with it for a little while longer.
Well, I guess I could...I just wanted to make sure this didn't turn into
a flame war. Not my intention.
>
> > Maybe we should
> > just agree to disagree. Apparently, we have played both sides of the
> > fence (melee/mage), and agree that Evading attacks is much better than
> > higher AL overall (why else would you create a dagger guy than to evade
> > the most? hehe).
>
> I think we both DEFINITLY agree that magic resistance is broken. I've
> posted about thsi before. I agree that a mage should be able to fight a
> magic casting monster much better than a melee guy, and vice versa. The big
> difference between our views, is that you think one of the ways to fix that
> is to make melee more scary for a mage. I think this isn't needed at all,
> and this is the big disagreement. In any event, this doesn't fix the real
> problem, typically that mages almost never resist monter's and monster's
> frequenty resist mages. The system might be balanced for PvP, but not at
> all, IMHO, for PvM.
>
If you make Magic monsters LESS scary for mages and don't make melee
monsters MORE scary for them, then mages would have little to fear from
many monsters. Magic monsters already scare me; Virindi, shadows (even
LTs)...they aren't worth the effort for the XP they give. Why can't that
150th level tusker scare mages a little more? Being able to tank 3 or
more isn't what I call scary.
> Futher comments below ....
>
> "Vinod al-Ahmad" <jre...@dsrnet.com> wrote in message
> news:3A96B71E...@dsrnet.com...
> > Penne wrote:
> >
> > What I'm proposing is that Mages SHOULD be hurt by melee guys, and take
> > down MAGIC guys with ease. The opposite should apply for melees.
>
> All you have to do is to make magic resistance on monsters much lower. That
> would change what you want, it's what I've been calling for, for a while.
> In my case, I AM hurt by melee guys, and quite a lot <G>.
But not as much as magic hurts melee guys. I;m saying there should be a
balance in that magic and melee monsters should be EQUALLY scary. If
that means making magic monsters a little less scary, and making melee
monsters a little MORE scary for mages, so be it. The alternative is to
make Melee monsters a LOT more scary for EVERYONE, and then monsters
would be equally scary for all classes.
>
> BSD is an isolated situation, due to the ONE damage type, and single type
> spawns. If you want to fix BSD for mages, just have Turbine sprinkle more
> Virindi in there.
No, that would make BSD scary for melees more than mages.
>
> > > Exactly, so if Life spells only affected magic attacks, a Gromnie would
> kill
> > > a mage on the spot. Unless they were wearing armor, of course.
> >
> > I guess I should have been more specific then. Life PROTECTIONS should
> > only help against magical attack damage. Armor Self should work as it
> > does right now.
>
> Still doesn't help with the Gromnie .. that's an acid attack. Gold wasps
> would be totally insane. Most armor has poor elemental protections, and if
> it does have good protection it 'usually' isn't high AL.
Armor Self protects against ALL damage types. AL 212 from Armor Self VI
is AL 212 against elemental AND regular, equally.
> > > > > It's the equivalent of telling mages they HAVE TO WEAR ARMOR.
> > > >
> > > > No, it's the equivalent of telling mages they have to wear armor if
> they
> > > > want to fight TUSKERS effectively.
> > >
> > > huh? Any melee monster would OWN me. Iron golems killed me a while
> ago -
> > > resisted 4 times in a row, I didn't evade their melee attack. A few
> > > crititcal hits, dead. I wasn't as buffed as I was for BSD (I hadn't
> done
> > > the shirt/pants), but I did have impen and bludgeon bane on. Dead.
> >
> > The same would apply if walked up to an Iron without any Life Prots on.
> > 2 or 3 spells later, I'm dead.
>
> You miss the point, it was melee that killed me. I had protects on, just
> not buffed to the 9's.
No, I got your point. Melee killed you. Magic killed me. You can
cast/wear armor pretty easily, and not get killed that quickly by irons
any more. I have to go find 3 or 4 different Life prots of level IV or
higher to be safe from them.
> > >
> > > To a pure mage, any melee attack is dangerous. Removing life buffs
> would be
> > > lethal.
> >
> > Not true. When I played my mage more frequently, I used to walk around
> > all the time in a chain hauberk and yoroi legs, buffed w/ Impen ONLY. I
> > hardly EVER wore Life Prots, except when fighting stuff like Bone
> > Knights/Grievers/Magic monsters. I survived just fine.
>
> So we're back to mages HAVE to wear armor?
No, just that they wouldn't have the same problems (as you say) if they
wore armor.
> > > > If you want to go up against very
> > > > hard hitting melee monsters, wear armor or expect to get hit very
> hard.
> > > > Most of the other monsters hardly damage you even NAKED (from melee
> > > > attacks, that is).
> > >
> > > That's what I've been trying to tell you. Most melee monsters kill me
> > > naked, often in only one or two shots. NOT just tuskers. For example,
> I
> > > had armor IV and impen V on my robe the other day, and hadn't healed
> myself
> > > after Subway. Blood shreth killed me. I was not naked, I had minimal
> buffs
> > > on.
> >
> > Unless you dodge, monsters would do the same damage to a melee as a
> > mage. Armor is Armor.
>
> And a pure mage doesn't dodge. Dev's have confirmed chance of a critical
> melee hit are increased by a lower target melee defense. So not only does
> the mage NOT dodge, they take MORE damage per hit, on average.
>
> Plus, there are unconfirmed rumors that spell casting counts as peace mode
> for melee attacks, as archers say they take less damage while in attack mode
> than while buffing. I'm not sure about this, but it might actually make
> some sense (i.e. mages are poor at melee).
This could be true, since in combat mages are allowed to do a lot more
things that melees aren't. For instance, mages can select Items while on
combat, melees can't. Mages can select people while in combat, melees
can't. Maybe this has something to do with it.
I know that if I were to take off my shield, equip my wand and attempt
to recall while getting attacked, I would get pounded pretty easily.
But, my dagger guy just the other day did it. He was in the SIK room of
the Cit to cash in a key or 2 (where I go some KILLER items for just 2
keys, btw). WHen he saw his Oswald's buffs run out, he calmly came out
of combat, put on his wand, buffed the dagger again, came into combat,
and started killing more Gigas. All this while 3 Gigas and 3 Lithos were
"attempting" to make Gharu puree out of me. Maybe some are more lucky
than others.
D&D didn't have mages go up against some of the hardest hitting monsters
in head to head combat either (at least not with much chance of
survival, anyway). They stayed back and blasted stuff while the warriors
did the gruesome work.
See above comment on the effectiveness of Armor Self versus Gromnie
breath.
> > > No, you're assuming melee damange isn't a problem. It is, even from a
> low
> > > level monster like a blood shreth (see my comment above about dying on
> teh
> > > way to Mayoi).
> >
> > Magic damage is the same. Just the other night, my humbled butt was
> > killed by a Red Phyntos Wasp. I was trying to take a shortcut to Uziz,
> > so I went into a portal. I arrived, then was promptly smacked by one of
> > those Squid looking things (the 50th level ones) for 97 points of
> > damage. The reason? I wasn't wearing my armor. After running (there were
> > 4 of the things around me), I ended up with about 9 health in a little
> > cave that led underground. 3 Red Wasps followed me in. I thought I was
> > ok, and started to heal myself. Imagine my surprise when I looked up at
> > the Lifestone a few seconds later. All in all, bad things happen to
> > everyone.
>
> True, but my point was I had 70 health when the blood killed me, armor on,
> and an armor IV spell <G>
>
> The magic damage hurts me a lot as does melee damage. The concept that
> melee damage is not a problem is realy only from melee guys.
Maybe, but you take a lot less from magic than I do. You can cast level
VI prots. I can wear IV's. So, the spell that does 150 damage
unprotected does 84 to me, and a lot less to you (I seem to have
forgotten how much a level VI prot takes away. Boy am I embarassed).
>
> > > > ..... WHy should your
> > > > 200 BU robe (plus a 100 BU shirt) give you more AL than a warrior with
> > > > close to 6000 BU armor? That just doesn't seem fair.
> > >
> > > Because it can drop, and I burn a lot of comp's casting those spells.
> > > There's a cost.
> >
> > I think the cost is a little different. We have to lug around heavy
> > armor, that can be lost on death, burns up mana, has protection holes
> > (especially metal armor), and is hard to find for the better stuff. You?
> > you lose your robe, you go buy a new one for a few hundred pyreals. You
> > lose a few comps, I lose mana stones/weight allowance.
>
> I don't mean drop on death, I mean the buff's can (do) drop in the middle of
> a battle .. if I die, I still have to do corpse recovery; all those magic
> mastery wands and jewelry that I rely on because creature buff's suck in
> duration drop pretty well ;-) (Yes, I have master robes. Don't get me
> started on how useless those are).
Creature magic may suck, but you can still cast your spell Mastery buffs
with a racial wand. You aren't very effective against stuff with
store-bought Yoroi/Plate/Scale.
If a piece of armor's mana runs out, most melees would be in big
trouble. Add in the shield, and it's even worse. Most melees carry
around low AL base shields (mine is an AL 64 buckler, and that's pretty
high) due to the massive stam drain tower and large shields have. If
their buffs drop, losing an average of 200+ AL is deadly usually. I'm
not trying to say that running out of mana is the same as a buff
dropping, but at least all you have to do is recast that spell. I have
to take off the item, pop in another mana stone, probably monkey around
with some items to rasie arcane high enough to activate it, and put it
back on.
> > I think the trend of super high resists should stop also. This was
> > brought into existance to combat the Uber characters walking around with
> > ungodly magic skills (and usually a Robe) killing anything and
> > everything they see. If all of a sudden mages were to be more vulnerable
> > to physical attacks, this wouldn't be so much of an issue.
>
> *sigh* they are ...
>
> I do agree with the high resists, it's really bad. Tuskers are the
> exception, but everything else seems to have a slightly higher magic
> resistance than melee resistance .. which makes me think Turbine forgot that
> magic schools are focus+self/4, not /3 like most melee skills are. With a
> magic resistance equal to melee resistance, means a mage has to be higher in
> level than an equivalent melee, ROUGHLY.
Don't say everything else. A lot of the new monsters have a high magic
D, but a lot of the older ones do not. It seems they made primary melee
monsters with realtively low magic D (tuskers, lugis, monougas, olthoi).
How hard is it to land a spell on a Ravener? Not too hard.
You have to remember that although Magic D is higher for some of these
guys, you usually only need to land 2 or 3 spells to kill them. Melees
have to land a LOT more (unless they have Vuln'ers to help them).
> > Some things
> > are just that way. I might be able to carry more due to the fact that I
> > naturally have more strength for my attack skill, but then again, you
> > can ID just about anything you want because of your focus, and you have
> > a higher loyalty/leadership.
>
> Sure, that's the natural tradeoff. Plus, you probably have melee defense,
> for me to be an archmage, it's really not possible (unless unspec'd
> everything).
Which is why I suggested Magic D be twinked to help mages out. Melees
have high Coord/Quick, Mages have high Focus/Self. Makes sense to me.
> > > Again, your change would mean that everything would kill me.
> >
> > Not true. In the brief time I spent as a robe mage (before I got tired
> > of it and started wearing armor), I didn't die too much from going up
> > against monsters.
>
> What did you go against?
I must admit, I was primarily a Teth junkie. I stopped playing him
before the citadels were even in existence, so I never got the chance to
see him in action in there. I did frequent other Lugi spots though (Old
Mines, the "Lugi landing pad", Lugi Fort, etc). I did the Hamud's quest
a few times, I did the fire stone quest a few times, and hunted a lot in
the Linvaks.
> "Everything" is a bit of a stretch, but it would be a HUGE nerf. Having at
> least Armor self would help, but I think it's still seriously a nerf.
Of course it's a nerf. The fact is, Melees are more scared of magic
monsters than mages are of melee monsters. I don't think this is
balanced. If they fixed it so that mages were as scared of melee
monsters as melees are scared of magic monsters, THAT would be fair.
> > This shield "bug" you keep talking about is not NEAR as big of a
> > modifier as everyone thinks it is. True, the devs admitted the shield
> > more effective than meant to be, but not quite as bad as what all the
> > people say it is. And the monsters you named don't even hit that hard.
> > With my dagger guy, I used to walk around in this setup:
> >
> > AL 62 w/ Imp IV Rejuv IV gromnie shirt
> > AL 122 w/ Imp III Str III bracers
> > AL 30 w/ Imp V Flame V Lightning V leather legs
> > Superior helm
> > AL 64 w/ Imp IV shield.
> >
> > As you can see, the highest AL on any part of my body (from the front)
> > was 334. I wore this setup all through my brief citadel phase, and Gigas
> > failed to do more than 10 damage on any given hit, unless it was a crit.
> > Irons did even less, and Revs (do you mean Raveners, or Revenants?)
> > about 3-4 when I fought them once or twice.
>
> If AL doesn't matter as much, why are you upset I can buff to 1000?
>
AL didn't matter that much for the creatures you gave an example of,
simply because I dodged often enough that it didn't matter. I'm upset
because you can stand up to very hard hitting melee monsters with a
robe. Tuskers aren't the only example. Extas Lugis (not the hollow
kind), Grievers (not that you'd be fighting them much, as they have high
Magic D), Moarsmen, Bone Knights, Ursuins....I think these monsters
should hurt more for robe wearers.
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
> Well, I guess I could...I just wanted to make sure this didn't turn into
> a flame war. Not my intention.
Cool!
> If you make Magic monsters LESS scary for mages and don't make melee
> monsters MORE scary for them, then mages would have little to fear from
> many monsters. Magic monsters already scare me; Virindi, shadows (even
> LTs)...they aren't worth the effort for the XP they give. Why can't that
> 150th level tusker scare mages a little more? Being able to tank 3 or
> more isn't what I call scary.
The goal, from what I understand you saying, is the same for both of us;
magic monsters should be more scary to melee than mages, and melee monsters
should be more scary to mages than melee. (note that many 'magic' monsters
are in fact magic casting melee attackers, but I think we both realize
this).
The difference betweeen us is that you seem to think that melee monsters
need to be made more scary for 'pure' mages, and that the way to do this is
to remove Life protections (NOT including Armor).
I think all you have to do is to reduce a Monster's magic resistance and
their effective spell level. (I've always thought the Dev's forgot players
are /4 not /3 on prime stats for magic schools).
The reason I think this is that most melee attacks I fear at present, and
due tothe way magic resistance works, I fear the magic attack just as much.
Now, to specifics:
Futher comments below ....
> > In my case, I AM hurt by melee guys, and quite a lot <G>.
>
> But not as much as magic hurts melee guys.
Hmm ... possibly.
> I;m saying there should be a
> balance in that magic and melee monsters should be EQUALLY scary. If
> that means making magic monsters a little less scary, and making melee
> monsters a little MORE scary for mages, so be it. The alternative is to
> make Melee monsters a LOT more scary for EVERYONE, and then monsters
> would be equally scary for all classes.
No, I don't think we need that. I think we are both going for the same
goal.
> > BSD is an isolated situation, due to the ONE damage type, and single
type
> > spawns. If you want to fix BSD for mages, just have Turbine sprinkle
more
> > Virindi in there.
>
> No, that would make BSD scary for melees more than mages.
Due to the fact that Virindi cast spells? True, but I thought they went
down pretty quick to a sword. In any event, not a big deal. Actually, if
they were Virindi Masters, you'd get so many Melee guys camping it, that the
place would be picked clean <G>.
> > Still doesn't help with the Gromnie .. that's an acid attack. Gold
wasps
> > would be totally insane. Most armor has poor elemental protections, and
if
> > it does have good protection it 'usually' isn't high AL.
>
> Armor Self protects against ALL damage types. AL 212 from Armor Self VI
> is AL 212 against elemental AND regular, equally.
Hmm .. good point, but the same basic problem is there; without the life
buff's the mage would be at 1/2 the effective AL. If a mage takes the time
to cast protects (which means you have to know ahead of time what to cast),
then you should get the protection.
Except under certain circumstances, you don't always know what to expect.
If I'm in the crater, fine, but a lot of magic casting monsters use all
damage types.
The net result is that if you use tactics, or use the brute force method of
casting ALL buffs, you'll be much better off, but this takes a lot of buff
time and mana comsumption and comp's, all of which is the 'payback' for
getting the protection it the first place.
Again, critical attacks often double damage (I don't know the exact number),
so not letting the mage have the protection spell is in effect signficantly
hurting them, as assuming the mage has a poor melee defense, you're taking a
lot more criticals. I had Acid bane V and Acid protection V on me the other
day and took a 40 hit from a putrid moarsmen. The number seemed pretty
high, so maybe I forgot one of the protections, but I knew the Moarsmen
where there so I'm pretty sure I had both buffs. No, I didn't layer. The
only reason I survived is because I knew I'd be going past there and used
Sprint V and Quickness V (I also outran the melee guy protection me <G>).
In this case, without the level V life protect, I'd have taken 60-120
points. Per hit.
That's not 'more scary' that's terrifying. If you dispute the numbers
(reasonable) I'll do another check. I thought it was odd because I was
taking a lot more damage from that one acid hit than I normally do from a
tusker - and you wouldn't think the Moarsmen are doing that much damage.
Maybe they do, I don't know. I'm NEVER going up agains them again (they
resisted me 100% and I evaded them never).
> No, I got your point. Melee killed you. Magic killed me.
Actually, he'd blasted me to 1/2 health with magic, then he and his friend
stepped in to finish me off. I thought 'great, I can drain some health'
(you can't drain when they are far away) and unfortunatly both resisted 100%
for the five or so tries I made until I died. Now, this is just bad luck
(Iron's resist more than you'd think).
Note I couldn't dodge from the war bolt my way as I was in the middle of a
Life IV vuln and a War V crank up. Takes a while (I don't practice run
casting).
So Melee kills me, Magic kills me.
If it was truly only ". Melee killed you. Magic killed me. " then we'd be
balanced.
> You can
> cast/wear armor pretty easily, and not get killed that quickly by irons
> any more. I have to go find 3 or 4 different Life prots of level IV or
> higher to be safe from them.
It's not that easy for the melee side, although I understand your point.
Certainly, you and I both fear the magic attack very much (and I fear the
melee attack).
> > So we're back to mages HAVE to wear armor?
>
> No, just that they wouldn't have the same problems (as you say) if they
> wore armor.
Not sure I understand. You're saying the robe, buffed, is too high an AL
for too little burden, yet you seem to think that I'd fare better if I had
armor.
Most of the times I get hammered I've had the impen working. If the impen
drops, I think we both know I'll be paste <G>.
> > Plus, there are unconfirmed rumors that spell casting counts as peace
mode
> > for melee attacks, as archers say they take less damage while in attack
mode
> > than while buffing. I'm not sure about this, but it might actually make
> > some sense (i.e. mages are poor at melee).
>
> This could be true, since in combat mages are allowed to do a lot more
> things that melees aren't. For instance, mages can select Items while on
> combat, melees can't. Mages can select people while in combat, melees
> can't. Maybe this has something to do with it.
Could be .. you really need to be able to select that stuff of course as a
mage; it took me some getting used to the fact as a melee char I
couldn't<G>.
> I know that if I were to take off my shield, equip my wand and attempt
> to recall while getting attacked, I would get pounded pretty easily.
> But, my dagger guy just the other day did it. He was in the SIK room of
> the Cit to cash in a key or 2 (where I go some KILLER items for just 2
> keys, btw). WHen he saw his Oswald's buffs run out, he calmly came out
> of combat, put on his wand, buffed the dagger again, came into combat,
> and started killing more Gigas. All this while 3 Gigas and 3 Lithos were
> "attempting" to make Gharu puree out of me. Maybe some are more lucky
> than others.
I've had mixed results with that; sometimes I recall, sometimes they kill me
where I stand, and sometimes I've had my body appear at the lifestone.
> D&D didn't have mages go up against some of the hardest hitting monsters
> in head to head combat either (at least not with much chance of
> survival, anyway). They stayed back and blasted stuff while the warriors
> did the gruesome work.
True, then again you don't have to worry about hitting your friends in the
back <G>. This was one of my big problems in the old mine near Qalabar; War
was pretty useless in there.
> See above comment on the effectiveness of Armor Self versus Gromnie
> breath.
Conceded, I was getting the poor acid protection of a piece of armor (robe)
confused with the life protects - but don't forget that the Gromnie damage,
being melee, is going to be higher for the non melee defense mage.
> > The magic damage hurts me a lot as does melee damage. The concept that
> > melee damage is not a problem is realy only from melee guys.
>
> Maybe, but you take a lot less from magic than I do. You can cast level
> VI prots. I can wear IV's. So, the spell that does 150 damage
> unprotected does 84 to me, and a lot less to you (I seem to have
> forgotten how much a level VI prot takes away. Boy am I embarassed).
Hmm .. that's assuming you're buffed for all the damage types; all seven.
That's 14 more buff's at least. I have to admit I rarely buff this much; if
I know I'm facing a certain damage type I'll buff that (on robe and on
myself). If you tried to layer all of these buffs, then that's a lot of
buffs. Some of this may be tactics, I'm used to attacking Lugians (with my
friends) or Tuskers (BSD) so I rarely buff this much.
Still, I thought the point of mages vs other magic using char's is that they
are supposed to take less damage?
> Creature magic may suck, but you can still cast your spell Mastery buffs
> with a racial wand.
Huh? No such thing - all wands are 'pure' arcane requirement, just like
jewlry. The racial requirements are almost always on armor/shirts; it's to
make stuff easier to use for Melee types who have lower focus overall.
The impeous staff is racial, but that's just to fire the force bolt, there's
no racial mastery spell on it.
>You aren't very effective against stuff with
> store-bought Yoroi/Plate/Scale.
Sure .. and you can't buy a single school mastery wand either.
> If a piece of armor's mana runs out, most melees would be in big
> trouble. Add in the shield, and it's even worse. Most melees carry
> around low AL base shields (mine is an AL 64 buckler, and that's pretty
> high) due to the massive stam drain tower and large shields have. If
> their buffs drop, losing an average of 200+ AL is deadly usually. I'm
> not trying to say that running out of mana is the same as a buff
> dropping, but at least all you have to do is recast that spell. I have
> to take off the item, pop in another mana stone, probably monkey around
> with some items to rasie arcane high enough to activate it, and put it
> back on.
Hmm .. my UA guy only has one piece of armor that needs a charge, and that's
only because it's ST IV, AL 90, Impen II, and Sho (low diff). The ST IV is
nice. Every shield except an al 64 buckler is 120+ (no towers). Good
shopping <G>, all store bought. (Oh, the Fen shield is only al 90). Still,
quite a difference from Penne suddenly standing there in street clothes ..
that's one shot time <G>.
> Don't say everything else. A lot of the new monsters have a high magic
> D, but a lot of the older ones do not. It seems they made primary melee
> monsters with realtively low magic D (tuskers, lugis, monougas, olthoi).
> How hard is it to land a spell on a Ravener? Not too hard.
Olthoi have a high resistance, I thought ... had a hard time with soldiers,
but I haven't tried recently. The Sybex book that was posted here a while
ago had 300+ or so I think.
> You have to remember that although Magic D is higher for some of these
> guys, you usually only need to land 2 or 3 spells to kill them. Melees
> have to land a LOT more (unless they have Vuln'ers to help them).
True .. although the 'crank time' on all but the level VII spells means
about the same amount of time as say an Archer, or Melee if already engaged.
> Which is why I suggested Magic D be twinked to help mages out. Melees
> have high Coord/Quick, Mages have high Focus/Self. Makes sense to me.
I definitly agree! The only issue I think is PvP ... I've heard others say
that mages are much more powerfull in PvP than in PvM. This is really the
balance issue ... irritating a bunch of monsters that their Magic defense is
nerf'd isn't a problem <G>. I'm not sure what they could do, but I do think
something should be done.
It probably wont' be though, too late for sweeping changes.
> I must admit, I was primarily a Teth junkie. I stopped playing him
> before the citadels were even in existence, so I never got the chance to
> see him in action in there. I did frequent other Lugi spots though (Old
> Mines, the "Lugi landing pad", Lugi Fort, etc). I did the Hamud's quest
> a few times, I did the fire stone quest a few times, and hunted a lot in
> the Linvaks.
Hunting is a bit better when carrying a robe; often I'd let my buff's drop
and just run if something got close, although that's a quick way to die.
> Of course it's a nerf. The fact is, Melees are more scared of magic
> monsters than mages are of melee monsters.
Hmm .. true, but the mages are as scared of the magic monster.
>I don't think this is
> balanced. If they fixed it so that mages were as scared of melee
> monsters as melees are scared of magic monsters, THAT would be fair.
Only if a mage was as UNscared of the magic using monster as a Melee char is
of a Melee monster.
That would be a huge change, but it would, at least, be fair.
What always bugged me is that there is no defensive magic, other than the
Life protects. I wish I had the opportunity to 'block' a war bolt. The
Dispell's help a bit, although the spell comp is so damned difficult for a
mage to get.
> AL didn't matter that much for the creatures you gave an example of,
> simply because I dodged often enough that it didn't matter.
Exactly, and I won't dodge; even at 3-10 points of damage, it still adds up.
>I'm upset
> because you can stand up to very hard hitting melee monsters with a
> robe. Tuskers aren't the only example. Extas Lugis (not the hollow
> kind), Grievers (not that you'd be fighting them much, as they have high
> Magic D), Moarsmen, Bone Knights, Ursuins....I think these monsters
> should hurt more for robe wearers.
I guess this is where we won't ever agree - I'm saying they hurt a lot
already, and you are saying they should hurt more. We probably won't be
able to resolve this past this point, I'd think. We'll have to agree to
disagree.
I may tentativly agree that I fear melee less than you fear magic. At lower
levels, this wasnt' true at all, of course.
Last time I ran into a Moarsmen where I thought I'd try and take it on, it
killed me, even with Acid Bane V and Protection V on myself. having it
resist 18 out of 18 times didn't help (Life 270, War 260). That drain
doesn't do any good then <G>
I'm not sure how much harder they need to be.
Bone knights .. I have killed one, but got to 10 health on the 2nd, then I
was at 10/10/10 (health/stamina/mana), so that's pretty much nothing you can
work with. That Acid Vuln IV to V (I forget) hurts ...
Vinod al-Ahmad
LOTS of liberal snipping involved...
Penne wrote:
> I think all you have to do is to reduce a Monster's magic resistance and
> their effective spell level. (I've always thought the Dev's forgot players
> are /4 not /3 on prime stats for magic schools).
>
> The reason I think this is that most melee attacks I fear at present, and
> due tothe way magic resistance works, I fear the magic attack just as much.
But if they did that, then mages would have an easy time against magic
monsters AND not much problems from melee monsters. I can tank a few
melee monsters at a time. You should be able to tank a few magic
monsters at a time. That shouldn't really be interchangeable. If you can
tank 3 or more Tuskers/Lugis/Olthoi, then it isn't. If all of a sudden
you can ALSO tank 3 or more Virindi and not fear much, that would be
inbalancing.
> > No, that would make BSD scary for melees more than mages.
>
> Due to the fact that Virindi cast spells? True, but I thought they went
> down pretty quick to a sword. In any event, not a big deal. Actually, if
> they were Virindi Masters, you'd get so many Melee guys camping it, that the
> place would be picked clean <G>.
Only if you get them with some good hits. Otherwise, they can cream you
with a spell or two. I tried going up against a puppet the other day
with my dagger guy. Not a very good encounter. After charging him, he
got me with one Drain Health IV, for 43 points. I stopped and healed. I
then started in on him. He casts Flame Bolt V, for 86 points (I'm
wearing Flame Prot IV). I heal (very quickly, I might add, since I only
have 106 health without my Baron's amulet on). I start to hit him again.
He drains, I heal. Repeat that about 4 times, and effectively, we are
both at the same place we were when we started this fight (except I'm
down about 7 health potions). I think in all, he got me about 4 or 5
times with war spells, and about 10 drains. I eventually had to run,
because I ran out of health potions, and he had about half health.
I admit this encounter isn't exactly normal, but it isn't far from it.
While Virindi don't have a lot of health, they can lay down some very
punishing spells. If you can't damage them fast enough, they WILL hurt
you.
> Again, critical attacks often double damage (I don't know the exact number),
> so not letting the mage have the protection spell is in effect signficantly
> hurting them, as assuming the mage has a poor melee defense, you're taking a
> lot more criticals. I had Acid bane V and Acid protection V on me the other
> day and took a 40 hit from a putrid moarsmen. The number seemed pretty
> high, so maybe I forgot one of the protections, but I knew the Moarsmen
> where there so I'm pretty sure I had both buffs. No, I didn't layer. The
> only reason I survived is because I knew I'd be going past there and used
> Sprint V and Quickness V (I also outran the melee guy protection me <G>).
> In this case, without the level V life protect, I'd have taken 60-120
> points. Per hit.
Them Moarsmen are scary for me too. Since most armor doesn't have very
good elemental prots, and they can breath Fire, Acid, AND cold, they
hurt pretty badly. They must have a darn good melee attack skill too,
since I don't dodge them very often, and they evade a lot too. All in
all, scary monsters for most people (melee OR mage). I avoid them like
the plague.
> > > So we're back to mages HAVE to wear armor?
> >
> > No, just that they wouldn't have the same problems (as you say) if they
> > wore armor.
>
> Not sure I understand. You're saying the robe, buffed, is too high an AL
> for too little burden, yet you seem to think that I'd fare better if I had
> armor.
I'm saying right NOW, the robe buffed (with layering) is too high AL for
too little burden. If we went with my plan, mages would need to wear
armor to go up against melee attacks of that caliber.
> Conceded, I was getting the poor acid protection of a piece of armor (robe)
> confused with the life protects - but don't forget that the Gromnie damage,
> being melee, is going to be higher for the non melee defense mage.
Are we speaking of Ash Groms, or Azure Groms? If Azure, and the hunting
spot is Eastham beach, I think mages have the advantage. Most of the
time, they can go out there with Acid Prot II AT LEAST, plsu a robe that
can be buffed to about 60 AL (effectively AL 75ish with Acid Bane). Most
melees go out there with metal armor, which is poor versus Acid (AL 80
yoroi becomes AL 16). Who is better again?
> > > The magic damage hurts me a lot as does melee damage. The concept that
> > > melee damage is not a problem is realy only from melee guys.
> >
> > Maybe, but you take a lot less from magic than I do. You can cast level
> > VI prots. I can wear IV's. So, the spell that does 150 damage
> > unprotected does 84 to me, and a lot less to you (I seem to have
> > forgotten how much a level VI prot takes away. Boy am I embarassed).
>
> Hmm .. that's assuming you're buffed for all the damage types; all seven.
> That's 14 more buff's at least.
14? Did I miss some Life spells? I thought there were only 7 life prots?
I'm speaking of Life protections only, not banes.
> > Creature magic may suck, but you can still cast your spell Mastery buffs
> > with a racial wand.
>
> Huh? No such thing - all wands are 'pure' arcane requirement, just like
> jewlry. The racial requirements are almost always on armor/shirts; it's to
> make stuff easier to use for Melee types who have lower focus overall.
No, I think you misunderstood. I meant the racial wand you start the
game with, the cheap no-drop wand that has no spells on it. WIth
creature magic, you can still buff your magic skills with even this
humble piece of equipment.
> >You aren't very effective against stuff with
> > store-bought Yoroi/Plate/Scale.
>
> Sure .. and you can't buy a single school mastery wand either.
No, but at least you can CAST the stuff you need with ANY wand.
>
> > If a piece of armor's mana runs out, most melees would be in big
> > trouble. Add in the shield, and it's even worse. Most melees carry
> > around low AL base shields (mine is an AL 64 buckler, and that's pretty
> > high) due to the massive stam drain tower and large shields have. If
> > their buffs drop, losing an average of 200+ AL is deadly usually. I'm
> > not trying to say that running out of mana is the same as a buff
> > dropping, but at least all you have to do is recast that spell. I have
> > to take off the item, pop in another mana stone, probably monkey around
> > with some items to rasie arcane high enough to activate it, and put it
> > back on.
>
> Hmm .. my UA guy only has one piece of armor that needs a charge, and that's
> only because it's ST IV, AL 90, Impen II, and Sho (low diff). The ST IV is
> nice. Every shield except an al 64 buckler is 120+ (no towers). Good
> shopping <G>, all store bought. (Oh, the Fen shield is only al 90). Still,
> quite a difference from Penne suddenly standing there in street clothes ..
> that's one shot time <G>.
Not EVERY shield is 120+. Good ones are, and I have plenty. No bucklers
are above 80, to my knowledge. If you want higher AL, you have to get
higher burden as well, and that means MUCH higher stam drain. I don't
even think my axe guy (Vinod) could even WIELD a tower shield and expect
to swing his weapon more than 10 or 15 times without running out of
stam. I use an AL 123 w/ Imp IV Rejuv V shield with Vinod right now, but
the burden is 700-something. I;m not saying ALL shields are AL 64 or
below, but if you started with 10 END and want to swing more without
running out of stam, nothing beats a Buckler.
> > Don't say everything else. A lot of the new monsters have a high magic
> > D, but a lot of the older ones do not. It seems they made primary melee
> > monsters with realtively low magic D (tuskers, lugis, monougas, olthoi).
> > How hard is it to land a spell on a Ravener? Not too hard.
>
> Olthoi have a high resistance, I thought ... had a hard time with soldiers,
> but I haven't tried recently. The Sybex book that was posted here a while
> ago had 300+ or so I think.
I don't think it's NEARLY that high. I went to the OHN with an archmage
buddy of mine, he was only level 38, I was 35. He was Vulning/Imperiling
soldiers left and right for me. I think his Life magic skill was around
230 or something like that.
> > You have to remember that although Magic D is higher for some of these
> > guys, you usually only need to land 2 or 3 spells to kill them. Melees
> > have to land a LOT more (unless they have Vuln'ers to help them).
>
> True .. although the 'crank time' on all but the level VII spells means
> about the same amount of time as say an Archer, or Melee if already engaged.
Uh...please don't include Archers in this. Everyone knows their damage
per shot is FAR above what melees do. Mages will usually do more damage
than that archer though, because arrows are still physical attacks, and
all monsters have at least SOME armor.
>
> > Which is why I suggested Magic D be twinked to help mages out. Melees
> > have high Coord/Quick, Mages have high Focus/Self. Makes sense to me.
>
> I definitly agree! The only issue I think is PvP ... I've heard others say
> that mages are much more powerfull in PvP than in PvM. This is really the
> balance issue ... irritating a bunch of monsters that their Magic defense is
> nerf'd isn't a problem <G>. I'm not sure what they could do, but I do think
> something should be done.
Balance in PvP? Hah! When Vinod was PK for a VERY short time, I was
DEATHLY afraid of mage PKs FAR more than melee PKs. I can't tell you how
many times I would be standing in the shop trying to buy mana stones
only to have some a**hole cast some level VI vuln on me and then try to
drain me to death before I could recall out of there. I didn't DARE come
out of the shop, because he would have blasted the crap out of me. I'm
not going to get into saying I'm ANY kind of expert on PK, along with
all their weird strategies (run-casting, god mode, etc etc), but IMO,
straight PvP is mage heavy. Melees have Hollow weapons to kill robe
mages with, Mages have drains/harms to kill melees with.
> It probably wont' be though, too late for sweeping changes.
>
> > I must admit, I was primarily a Teth junkie. I stopped playing him
> > before the citadels were even in existence, so I never got the chance to
> > see him in action in there. I did frequent other Lugi spots though (Old
> > Mines, the "Lugi landing pad", Lugi Fort, etc). I did the Hamud's quest
> > a few times, I did the fire stone quest a few times, and hunted a lot in
> > the Linvaks.
>
> Hunting is a bit better when carrying a robe; often I'd let my buff's drop
> and just run if something got close, although that's a quick way to die.
>
> > Of course it's a nerf. The fact is, Melees are more scared of magic
> > monsters than mages are of melee monsters.
> Hmm .. true, but the mages are as scared of the magic monster.
I don't think this is quite right. You have Life Prot VI's, I don't, and
don't expect to have them until around level 50 at LEAST. Even then, I
probably won't have access to ALL of them for a LONG time. Therfore,
magic attacks versus your Life Prots do less damage than they do to me.
Also, when they smack you for a lot, all you have to do is hit a
hot-keyed spell and heal a good amount of that back. I have to wait for
the healing kit/potion animation that takes forever when you only have
10 health left.
>
> >I don't think this is
> > balanced. If they fixed it so that mages were as scared of melee
> > monsters as melees are scared of magic monsters, THAT would be fair.
>
> Only if a mage was as UNscared of the magic using monster as a Melee char is
> of a Melee monster.
That's my proposal. Make melee mosters scary (not just bothersome) for
mages, and magic monsters scary for melees (most already are).
>
> That would be a huge change, but it would, at least, be fair.
>
> What always bugged me is that there is no defensive magic, other than the
> Life protects. I wish I had the opportunity to 'block' a war bolt. The
> Dispell's help a bit, although the spell comp is so damned difficult for a
> mage to get.
Well, I think it would be nice if War could be dodged by Missile Defense
(now THAT would generate a LOT of rerollers, huh? Would see a lot of
spec'd UA/Missile Def clones...hehe). Since War is not guaranteed to
hit, makes sense it can be "dodged", right?
--
Vinod al-Ahmad
Morningthaw
Penne
I think we're winding down - the root of the issue is that we'll never agree
on how much mages can get protected against melee attacks with life magic.
> Penne wrote:
> > I think all you have to do is to reduce a Monster's magic resistance and
> > their effective spell level. (I've always thought the Dev's forgot
players
> > are /4 not /3 on prime stats for magic schools).
> >
> > The reason I think this is that most melee attacks I fear at present,
and
> > due tothe way magic resistance works, I fear the magic attack just as
much.
>
> But if they did that, then mages would have an easy time against magic
> monsters AND not much problems from melee monsters.
Here's the part we're not going to get over. I don't necessarily disagree
that if mages had an 'easy' time of Magic monsters, life would be much
better as a mage. I also don't want you to get the impression that melee
attacks are as bad for a mage as they are for magic attacks for a mage (i.e.
I fear melee attacks and magic attacks, but I have to admit I probably fear
magic attacks more). However, even if life protects made life as a mage
getting pounded by melee easy (as you think they are) they still don't need
to be changed, due to down time for research/shopping, 'oops' like having a
protect drop at the wrong time, and running out of a critical comp at a bad
time (which happens fairly often).
> I can tank a few
> melee monsters at a time. You should be able to tank a few magic
> monsters at a time. That shouldn't really be interchangeable. If you can
> tank 3 or more Tuskers/Lugis/Olthoi, then it isn't. If all of a sudden
> you can ALSO tank 3 or more Virindi and not fear much, that would be
> inbalancing.
That's true, but so far I have about a 50/50 chance with three tuskers. If
I do everything right, I do ok, but if I get one resist or a streak, and
miss a stam2mana, it's death time, or I finish the fight so low that a 4th
would finish me off. "low" in any 2 of the 3 stats. Right now, even with
life protects, a mage can't tank melee monsters as easily as you think. It
can be done in very unique circumstances (BSD) and for a short period of
time (about 10 minutes, maybe 15).
> I admit this encounter isn't exactly normal, but it isn't far from it.
> While Virindi don't have a lot of health, they can lay down some very
> punishing spells. If you can't damage them fast enough, they WILL hurt
> you.
True, but again, they resist me, so I can't damage them fast enough, and
they'll get me with slashing pretty good, and i'ts impossible right now to
damage them fast enough. I can kill them, but they resist enough they don't
get off the attack mode and into heal mode.
> Them Moarsmen are scary for me too. Since most armor doesn't have very
> good elemental prots, and they can breath Fire, Acid, AND cold, they
> hurt pretty badly. They must have a darn good melee attack skill too,
> since I don't dodge them very often, and they evade a lot too. All in
> all, scary monsters for most people (melee OR mage). I avoid them like
> the plague.
True, but with your example, I should have been practically invulnerable
against them; I buffed for acid and fire (didn't do cold but didn't get hit
for cold). I still ran up 40 vitae trying to get my body, those islands are
nasty. Ulu sclavus used acid too, you'd think I could have looted two
bodies. After I hit 5 vitae, I even layered every buff, acid on
shirt/pants/gloves and on robe, and life protections for acid (and fire
too).
> I'm saying right NOW, the robe buffed (with layering) is too high AL for
> too little burden. If we went with my plan, mages would need to wear
> armor to go up against melee attacks of that caliber.
Again, the big difference is 'melee attacks of that caliber' vs my feeling,
'melee attacks of any type'.
> Are we speaking of Ash Groms, or Azure Groms? If Azure, and the hunting
> spot is Eastham beach, I think mages have the advantage. Most of the
> time, they can go out there with Acid Prot II AT LEAST, plsu a robe that
> can be buffed to about 60 AL (effectively AL 75ish with Acid Bane). Most
> melees go out there with metal armor, which is poor versus Acid (AL 80
> yoroi becomes AL 16). Who is better again?
True, but mages of that level don't have enough mana to buff themselves to
the 9's. I usually relied on just an armor spell and maybe an acid spell.
> > Hmm .. that's assuming you're buffed for all the damage types; all
seven.
> > That's 14 more buff's at least.
>
> 14? Did I miss some Life spells? I thought there were only 7 life prots?
> I'm speaking of Life protections only, not banes.
It would be 8 total I guess for 'just' life, but you need to do the Bane's
on the outer layer at least, plus bane's on the inner layer. To really
survive in BSD, that's what it takes - banes and life protects. One night I
went in and wasn't really carefull and missed one of the buffs and died
tanking 2 (one time it was the bludgeon bane on the glovs, they were still
AL 330, and one time it was the Bludgeon protection on me).
> No, but at least you can CAST the stuff you need with ANY wand.
That is an advantage; but assuming you have mana and assuming you take the
time to shop shop shop. The mage pays for the flexibility for down time -
the down time of shopping all the time, and the limit of the protection
running out. The mage doesn't need to pay for it again by having it not
work for all situations.
> Not EVERY shield is 120+. Good ones are, and I have plenty. No bucklers
> are above 80, to my knowledge. If you want higher AL, you have to get
> higher burden as well, and that means MUCH higher stam drain.
Stam drain is nothing compared to mana from casting spells; other than that,
I agree of course.
> I don't think it's NEARLY that high. I went to the OHN with an archmage
> buddy of mine, he was only level 38, I was 35. He was Vulning/Imperiling
> soldiers left and right for me. I think his Life magic skill was around
> 230 or something like that.
Mine's 270 with normal buffs (Jewelry) so I'll have to try them. Lost over
11 master robes this weekend trying to recover some bodies near the Jungle
shadows (yes, fully buffed to the 9's) so I could use some more loot. BSD
is terrible for loot.
> > > You have to remember that although Magic D is higher for some of these
> > > guys, you usually only need to land 2 or 3 spells to kill them. Melees
> > > have to land a LOT more (unless they have Vuln'ers to help them).
> >
> > True .. although the 'crank time' on all but the level VII spells means
> > about the same amount of time as say an Archer, or Melee if already
engaged.
>
> Uh...please don't include Archers in this. Everyone knows their damage
> per shot is FAR above what melees do. Mages will usually do more damage
> than that archer though, because arrows are still physical attacks, and
> all monsters have at least SOME armor.
I actually do better with UA than with xbow, even with greaters, but my UA
guy's xbow is only 170 or so, UA skill is 230, so it's not a complete
comparison. Agreed, archers can hammer some stuff with the speed up's
lately.
When I was down to 40 vitae this weekend, I headed to the Lugian citadel to
work some vitae before trying to recover all my bodies. When I got down to
5 vitae, I was reasonably normal and was fighting Gigas. Two level 28
fighters in the room were getting the kill about half the time if I buffed
them with BD IV / SK IV / HS IV, even when I was draining. I rarely got a
drain / drain / drain / war IV off, normally the gigas was dead after I did
a drain / drain (which doesn't give you the kill).
My point here is that everyone compares the fact that I can kill an Iron say
with a Vuln V then a War V blast. However, the combo of the two spells
takes time.
> > > Which is why I suggested Magic D be twinked to help mages out. Melees
> > > have high Coord/Quick, Mages have high Focus/Self. Makes sense to me.
> >
> > I definitly agree! The only issue I think is PvP ... I've heard others
say
> > that mages are much more powerfull in PvP than in PvM. This is really
the
> > balance issue ... irritating a bunch of monsters that their Magic
defense is
> > nerf'd isn't a problem <G>. I'm not sure what they could do, but I do
think
> > something should be done.
>
> Balance in PvP? Hah! When Vinod was PK for a VERY short time, I was
> DEATHLY afraid of mage PKs FAR more than melee PKs. I can't tell you how
> many times I would be standing in the shop trying to buy mana stones
> only to have some a**hole cast some level VI vuln on me and then try to
> drain me to death before I could recall out of there. I didn't DARE come
> out of the shop, because he would have blasted the crap out of me. I'm
> not going to get into saying I'm ANY kind of expert on PK, along with
> all their weird strategies (run-casting, god mode, etc etc), but IMO,
> straight PvP is mage heavy. Melees have Hollow weapons to kill robe
> mages with, Mages have drains/harms to kill melees with.
Uh, I think we agree here - supposedly, the Dev's balanced magic defense for
PvP. My point has been that it's broken magic defense / mage skills for PvM
very badly.
> > > Of course it's a nerf. The fact is, Melees are more scared of magic
> > > monsters than mages are of melee monsters.
> > Hmm .. true, but the mages are as scared of the magic monster.
>
> I don't think this is quite right.
I don't think I'll convince you, we'll have to agree to disagree. Last
night a level 41 friend was helping my level 30 UA guy get the few remaining
shadow spec's he needed for GSC. We each died as often down there fighting
shadows (admitedly horribly resistant).
> You have Life Prot VI's, I don't, and
> don't expect to have them until around level 50 at LEAST. Even then, I
> probably won't have access to ALL of them for a LONG time. Therfore,
> magic attacks versus your Life Prots do less damage than they do to me.
Assuming I have all 7 buffs on (with some monsters such as Moarsmen an
exception as you can buff the one spell. Too bad those Zofit's and Mire
witches are around <G>).
> Also, when they smack you for a lot, all you have to do is hit a
> hot-keyed spell and heal a good amount of that back.
Assuming you have mana. Two of the times my friend died, he was out of
mana, and one time out of comp's.
> I have to wait for
> the healing kit/potion animation that takes forever when you only have
> 10 health left.
True - that's why I hot key a potion or two (and have the strength to carry
them) with my UA guy. My mage doesn't have enough strength to carry any
really.
Also, don't forget at 10 mana you really can't heal.
> That's my proposal. Make melee mosters scary (not just bothersome) for
> mages, and magic monsters scary for melees (most already are).
Again, we're not going to agree on this - Melee monsters are much more than
bothersome IMHO for mages.
> Well, I think it would be nice if War could be dodged by Missile Defense
> (now THAT would generate a LOT of rerollers, huh? Would see a lot of
> spec'd UA/Missile Def clones...hehe). Since War is not guaranteed to
> hit, makes sense it can be "dodged", right?
he he it would makes sense, frankly. Although it's trivial to dodge a war
bolt in the open - up close the missle def would help.
I miss fairly often with War - terrain effects, missing an attack height
button, and sticky melee dragging monsters around a corner make war less
than usefull sometimes.
Penne
<klbu...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:6h7q9tguk29s2tnj6...@4ax.com...
> >Well, I think it would be nice if War could be dodged by Missile Defense
> >(now THAT would generate a LOT of rerollers, huh? Would see a lot of
> >spec'd UA/Missile Def clones...hehe). Since War is not guaranteed to
> >hit, makes sense it can be "dodged", right?
>
> ways to completely fail to do any damage (not counting protects on the
> target) without adding a sixth way.
Oh, I think Melee should 'fumble'. You could drop your weapon and have to
pick it up. <G>.
It works in every other RPG that I know of. Spells and melee attacks can
both fail - for us, we've got fizzle's, melee has nothing. An evade is not
the same thing.
No, I don't seriously mean this, it would really piss a lot of people off.
(almost as pissed off as I was at the drain nerf's <G>).
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 41
Harvestgain
Penne
Yes. The drain spell got nerfed'd a lot.
One thing I'm doing lately that seems to help, is that I do a drain, flame
vuln V, drain, Drain stam, drain, Stam2Mana, Drain .. drain flame bolt.
It seems to work a bit better - if I wait to do the flame vuln just before
blasting, that's when your'e getting the least amount of health back, and
need to finish the thing off or die yourself. I used to wait until after it
was dead to the the Stamina2Mana, but find that if I do it in the middle,
even though I take a fair amount of damage while doing it (level IV), I
still end up a bit better off due to the personal spell economy on the
drain.
People don't talk about that, I'm sure the dev's specifically made the drain
recover slower so it couldn't be used to kill with, just the occaisonal
heal.
== Penne al-Dente ==
ArchMage, specialized in Life, level 41
Harvestgain
<klbu...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:k08q9t85blu85ckj3...@4ax.com...
> >When I was down to 40 vitae this weekend, I headed to the Lugian citadel
to
> >work some vitae before trying to recover all my bodies. When I got down
to
> >5 vitae, I was reasonably normal and was fighting Gigas. Two level 28
> >fighters in the room were getting the kill about half the time if I
buffed
> >them with BD IV / SK IV / HS IV, even when I was draining. I rarely got
a
> >drain / drain / drain / war IV off, normally the gigas was dead after I
did
> >a drain / drain (which doesn't give you the kill).
>
> ... and people seems to forget (ignore?) the fact that personal spell
> economy on drains recovers VERY slowly and makes a HUGE difference.
> This is the main reason that I can't take more than three or four
> tuskers in quick succession... I just can't heal any more.. even with
> tons of stam and mana... the drains just aren't effective.
>
> I'm sure Penne is WELL aware of this fact. :-)
>
> -Asha'man