How about adding a Damage Modifier on Wands and Orbs

[Andiglo]

Next month, if I had my choice if BL was left on Weeping Weapons, I'd add the following to the Jan Patch (IMO).

(1) Reduce war damage amount by 40% (or so) across the board for all war spells.
(2) Add an attribute like the existing Mana Conversion on wands and orbs that contributed to the amount of damage the wand would use for war spells, like 'War Damage Bonus'. Base wands and orbs could have a certain percentage on some.
(2) Create an Item Enhancment spell that would increase this base war damage bonus on wands such that (important), a fully buffed wand would produce the same damage as a war mage currently does now (basically replacing the 40% damage reduced accross the board. (NOTE: Yeah you'ld buff your wand all the time, just like a melee or archer does now).
(3) Then create a Item Enchantment Debuff Spell to match that would decrease the damage of bonus for war damage on wands and orbs (and weeping).

Yes it's exactly what melee weapons and bows have now. I'd also add a tink material that would add damage like iron does to melee weapons, or Mahog on Bows, some material could add or increase the damage mod on wands.

Just a quick thought, and I think it would be fun, fix the BL issue (IMO), bring a lot of tinkers out, and add more dynamic into mage power (instead of just war spells). Since creatures don't use wands to cast, it wouldn't upset the monster balance. It might be a lot of work to code and test though.

Ok, Flame me, let me have it.

[pacesetter]

doesn't make sense to me.

[Riverwave]

First, I think this is a PvP issue, and I'm not a PvP kinda guy. Just want to insure no one thinks I'm claiming I am.

I do however play a few war mages, so this issue does concern them.

The most problematic issue I see is the balance between what percent you decrease the war spells by, and what effect this new mod has on bringing that back up.

If, let's say, the war spells are nerfed by 40%. What value would the mod need to be to bring it back up to full power? What would a fully tinked wand do? What would a non-tinked, low/no mod wand do?

It seems to me there would be many mages spewing out weaker spells because they had no tinks on their wands. And there would be some with the same skill levels , blasting out really powerfull ones, because they got a high mod wand, and tinked it fully.

See the problem?

This doesn't even address the issue of all the old wands (many imbued) that would be useless, or at least of much less use, unless the mod was added retroactivly (and at what level?).

I think the concept is interesting. And maybe the Devs can take such an idea and run with it (I've mentioned in other post that I have the imagination of a duck!). But I think it would open a larger can of worms than most would care to see opened.

Again, not being a PK player, I have nothing to say about if or how the debuffable WW should be handled, but I think there must be a better way, if one is needed.

[Sprawl]

Balenced properly, it makes perfect sense to me.

Sprawl

[Ash_Forest]

wouldnt a big prob be every quest wand/orb wouldnt have one, every nice tinkered Rendering wands player have will not have em

[sylphia]

Thats reminiscent of the way mages work in AC2. It would not, however solve the BL on WW problem. What it WOULD do is to create a downward spiral on damage for all classes (instead of just melee and archer) and lead to stalemates when neither player can do enough damage to the other player, thanks to all the damage-reductions. As I said in a post in another thread, this is exactly what we do NOT need to do. And its another example of trying to nerf all the other classes just to compensate for an unnecessary nerf that was made to non-mages this patch. We dont need to keep looking for ways to reduce the damage a class does compared to another class. Rather than do that, the BETTER solution would be to remove the mistake that was made, rather than doing a backwards Arms Race. WW's prior to the patch did a pretty good job of balancing the amount of damage a player could do vs the skill credits they had spent on their given skill. Perfect? Not by any means. But better than nerfing everyone into oblivion and reducing us to pecking each other for 5-10 points of damage. :)

[Sprawl]

They can adjust quest wands as they have been doing. They have also "screwed" atlatl users (raising the max mod from 130 to 150) as well as others in the past, so this really isn't an issue from their prospective.

Sprawl

[Andiglo]

I think if done right it would be fine and balanced. I'm not sure it's any different than what we already do with the Damage modifiers on existing melee weapons and bows.

I think it would add a nice dynamic to the game, and open the doors for more opportunities for mages to tweak out weapons to their desire, instead of just focusing on mana C modifiers on wands and orbs alone.

Mages are used to damage only based on 1 factor (war skill), it would be nice to make it a bit more dynamic, like damage is a function of Strenth/Coord or Quick and Weapon Stats for everybody BUT mages.

It would have to be well thought out however, and may not be doable at all.

[sylphia]

One of the things that makes mages fundamentally different from other classes IS the fact that our damage is based on skills, rather than weapons. Even rending weapons (wands) are based on our skill, as far as how effective they are, and can still be over-ridden by our skill (using cast vulns instead of the rending property). Slayer properties are about the only wpn attribute that really affects a mage's damage. No reason to make everyone carbon copies of each other. Mages are based almost 100% on skill. Melee's are based on a combination of 1 primary stat, their wpn variance, and in some cases, skill level. Archers are based on a primary stat, damage variance on their ARROWS, and modifiers on their launchers.

And each class's skill level comes into play along the way; archers in what lvl of mod allowed on their bow, as well as what type of arrow they can wield; melee's in the damage cap per wield level, and mages in what level of spells they have acces to. Variety is what makes the game fun; make mages "more like everyone else" and you remove one of the things that makes them fun to play.

I dont like the idea of reducing war damage on one end, then trying to compensate for it on the other end; its just not the way mages should be designed. And especially not as a "fix" for something that should not have been altered in the first place (WW's).

[MaddyFF]

If something like this was possible you could just create an item debuff spell that would lower damage output on a wand, least I think you might be able too. :P

One issue, a melee/archer item magic skill is going against a mage's magic d skill, who do you think would win?

Oh yeah, another issue, melee/archer has to do the weapon/wand/weapon switch, while the mage is blasting away at them.

[sylphia]

Originally posted by MaddyFF
If something like this was possible you could just create an item debuff spell that would lower damage output on a wand, least I think you might be able too. :P


Pretty sure that was the whole pointin the first place :D The idea is to make a portion of a mage's damage tie more directly into the focus item, like a melee's or archer's weapon does. Then you could simply BL the focus item to reduce that damage in a similar manner.

Now, I will grant that wehn I first saw this applied across the board in AC2, I thought: "Well that will certainly make balancing PK alot easier." If one class is way more powerful than another, you can retrocatively increase or reduce the modifiers as needed. Unfortunately, in AC1, you have the added complication that your chosen character class pretty much determines how many skill credits you must spend in order for that class to be viable. The more skill credits, the more damage you should do; it costs you more to get there. The skill-tree system in AC2 works on a fundamentally different principal.

Then there is the undeniable fact that this would pretty much make all classes "vanilla". Its the differences between classes that make them each desirable for playing. If you make them all the same, it removes any reason to play multiple classes. And again, this is an effort to rebalance something that was relatively well-balanced already, then thrown OFF balance by a change that was uncondtionally rejected by the majority of players. The solution is to change it back and lok for other alternatives, rather than spend further resources trying to FORCE this change to work.

[Virindi Clown]

Or we could stop trying to do everything the hardest way possible and change it back the way EVERYONE wanted it because it was perfectly fine. Take a hint.

[MaddyFF]

Originally posted by sylphia
Pretty sure that was the whole pointin the first place :D

I probably wasn't clear in my post. If this was possible, I don't think you need to change the damage output for mages nor give them a spell to increase their damage, but rather just a spell to decrease their damage.

[sylphia]

Being able to do so would certainly at least give melees a chance to do to mages what mages can do to them already. If everything else was left a lone, and BL could be cast on a focus item in order to reduce a mage's damage, it would certainly add more of a concept of "fair" to the mix. The problem is that you have to decide to do one of two things:

1) Focus items do not have a damage-spread on them that can add to a mage's damage, therefor no reason to change the base damage of spells in order to compensate for the increased damage. If this is the case, a mage could carry a pack full of store-bought wands, compared to the melee/archer needing "real" weapons with rending properties, etc.

2) Focus items DO have a damage modifier built into them, so you must lower mages' base damage to compensate. After all, if you dont drop the base damage when you add more from a wand, it rather defeats the purpose, since all you do is effectively raise an mages un-BLed damage, then BL it back to normal. This penalizes NON PK mages for the sake of attempting to balance PK; once again, not something I want to see anymore. Not to mention that, as I said, mages shouldnt be carbon copies of the other 2 classes.

But once again, this would be a moot discussion if WW hadnt been changed. This proposal is an attempt to offer some way to balance the damage of mages to that of other classes. The problem is that the only balance is that all classes can be reduced; constantly reducing damage may eventually balance everything out, but it also makes it that much harder to finally get the kill in. If we keep reducing damage, that pretty much FORCES folks to gang up on someone in order to kill them. And last I checked, that was the reason for starting this silliness with the WW in the first place :rolleyes:

I have to vote no on this one. Dont mess with what already works just to try and fix another mistake. Correct the mistake (Put WWs back the way they were) and find another solution.

[Mageman]

Personally, if this had happened a long time ago, it would have been ok. However, since the tinkering effects came into being along with Mana C bonuses on wands. I would hate to have to go hunting again and replace all my imubed wands with new ones.

P.S. Anyone remember when Bows had an AS modifier and no Melee modifier (and since they had an AS mod, people were casting HS on bows)? I've still got a couple of 113% mod bows inscribed a long time ago by people who no-longer play with the stats (since you had to be able to ID the item). Then Turbine came out with "AS Modifier has never been used on bows, so we're removing that from the bow". Then Turbine came out with bows that have a Melee Bonus, but in their infinate wisdom, they never transfered that AS modifier to the new Melee Bonus.

I think it would be fair if they went back through all those old bows and transfer the AS mod to Melee.