I may have went a little deep, and sorry if so or if I sounded salty. I just wanted to share my overall first impressions of what I had read through and the potential interactions and issues. I appreciate all the hard work you guys are putting in, and don’t want to discourage you with a wall of negative feedback. So I hope it didn’t come off that way. I’ve got full faith the system will be iterated upon.
Instead of a single-target and multi target tree, I think it might be interesting to do a couple elemental trees with various spell interactions. Maybe one tree be a Frost/Arcane tree that focuses more on utility and helping the group(maybe higher slow, better aoe, maybe a buff to utility spells, add dots, things like that) and a Fire/Affliction tree that focuses more on just being the traditional glass cannon high dps style.
edit: Some sort of talent that makes the high-level, long-draw-time spells worth casting in battle might be worth considering as well.
I’m genuinely not sure where people are getting the idea that Lend a Hand would give a dps increase? There is nothing in the description for this. If you are talking about just being able to land every hit, then I would suggest just practicing chain casting on a dummy with the wand in this case. Advanced mages can land spell after spell after spell with the current setup, which would make static charge a no-brainer, unless I missed something that states Lend a Hand actually gives a damage increase.
Likewise, I am curious to know if the spells will emit from the wand still or from the left hand. If you place the wand out one way with your hand out the opposite direction, would the spell hit your face and cancel? Might be an issue
A lot of us (or at least myself) cannot yet hit targets at anything but point blank range while “chain casting”. And I’d expect a lot more cannot yet chain cast at all.
For those “advanced mages” who can chain cast and land on target while doing so, you are correct. Static charge is a no-brainer.
A lot of us aren’t there (yet). The issue is, with this in place, those people will be less likely to practice being able to pull it off. Thereby having a lower DPS ceiling. They would get an initial boost however in DPS as they are not waiting for the first spell to land before beginning to cast the follow up spell.
Gotcha, and that’s completely fair. However, as I said, I would suggest putting in time at the dummies just working on chain casting accuracy. I don’t feel like the reduced mobility from this talent is worth an extra spell hitting target. Likewise, outside of boss fights, whenever there is an AoE attack from an enemy that you need so dodge, the enemy is right on top of you anyways, so the fact that ranged chain casting is difficult wouldn’t apply as much when soloing
There would be a small dps increase because you would no longer have to wait on a spell, You could cast an affliction and go right into ice lance without having to wait for the affliction to hit, same with frost. The smaller the mob the harder it is to chain cast affliction with ice lance. Distance also plays a factor.
exactly as Johann said, the change I think will be more apparent for awkward to cast spells like affliction 2 fireball 3 etc which are hard to pre-cast even on a stationary target (unless it is huge)
Any plans to add summon spells or class? It’s a basic class in so many rpgs, I miss my minions. Could cost to summon to make it balanced if added to mages.
Any plans to add multi stage damage spells that use mats, flamestrike etc? Like teleport/revive.
Very interesting 3rd tier choice for mages. Keep giving more along this line and less of the %dmg snooze talents please!
I strongly feel that the tier 1 mage talents need to be reworked, simply on the basis that no other class has a row for purely cosmetic purposes.
I am totally okay with this, and frankly I’m glad that each class has a so called “budget” so that each receives around the same benefit from their talents systems as the other classes. With that said, I still believe having a purely cosmetic row of talents on 2 rarely used skills is a bit of a bummer. I would add talents that do not contribute to DPS (since that budget has already been met) but offer some sort of utility or perk outside of just a color change to some skills.
Here are some sample suggestion for Tier 1 Rune Mage skills that don’t contribute to DPS but offer a bit more than the current color change of fireworks/light orb. Obviously there are many similar ideas to this, these are just for example.
Runemaster:
When casting portal or resurrection you have a 35% chance to refund your consumed Runemage Reagent.
Runewarper:
Polymorphed targets become rooted for 2.5s after polymorph ends or is broken early.
Runeguard:
When attacked in melee range the enemy is knocked back 25ft. This ability can only occur once every 45 seconds.
Voidwalker:
Your affliction spells now leave a trail of void on the ground as they travel. Walking on this void increases your movement speed and slows enemy movement speed by 15%.
Runeshield:
Increases the duration of mana shield by 20s.
etc etc.
Overall these changes look good, but just to be nice to the mages I would rework the first mage tier to offer some sort of functional improvement/change over a change to spell color.
So, the first tier of mage talents are purely cosmetic? That’s not at all how talents should work, at least in my humble opinion. Ideally, talent breakpoints should offer a real playstyle change, forcing the player to make a conscious decision about how they approach combat, rather than “do you want pretty colors for spell A or spell B?” I think it would be wise to roll these into class passives and replace them with something more impactful.
Tier two is much better. Being able to choose between solo and group focus, and making it dependent upon the mage being able to reliably cast without fizzling? Solid design!
Tier three is interesting. A choice between potential quality of life change, depending on playstyle (I can’t tell you how many spells have whiffed because I was trying to draw up another one) vs a throughput increase. My one concern is that Lend a Hand may prove to be problematic when attempting to dodge incoming attacks. I tend to keep my right hand casting and use my left for movement. If my left becomes occupied directing spells, I see a lot of potential for missing spells when attempting to blink away from danger. I think Static Charge will probably see more use by far.
Without knowing exact numbers on Elemental Affinity, I’m leaning toward True Affliction for T4. That DoT component is going to help tremendously with sustained throughput especially when you need to move, and spreading DoTs is VERY appealing to me, though it sounds like the way it works is the Arcane Missile explosion performs a check for a target with DoTs, then mirrors those DoTs to any other target struck by the same detonation. This - rather than radiating the effect from the actual target - seems strange to me, but I’m open to trying it out.
Thanks for dropping in the explanation. I hope lend-a-hand isn’t part of the power increase calculation though lol (it does have PvP value, although it might screw with how mages teleport as well… since you typically use your offhand).
I would recommend at least re-working the first tier. Even if behind-the-scenes the “power increase” is the same, up front the talent tree looks like it’s 25% useless, arguably 50%(lend-a-hand) for PvE. May as well spread that power out across the 4 talents. Mages would also feel a gradual progression in the talent tree and not just obtaining a filler skill(which you admit light/fireworks are) until they hit the bottom of the tree. If you guys already have the colored fireworks & light in, it would be neat to see new spells (fireworks with a B, F, etc… drawn in the middle) as way to salvage part of the code.
The 8% damage increase is nice… but it is boring. For limiting the talent tree to 4 abilities(if I am understanding correctly), those 4 abilities should be substantial. Same goes for the 4% increase in the other tree. They are undoubtedly good and desirable. I sort of feel like with mages, people were expecting exploding fireballs with AoE, burning dots, briefly stunning fireball 3’s, snaring frost spells, or ice-buffs(mana shield applies frost when hit + added armor). Arcane magic is annoying sounding and weird looking, even an arcane re-work would have been cool.
The only worthwhile abilities I see are: Elemental Affinity, True Affliction, and Static Charge (which is cool you are using the offhand… but how often will it really charge? Will it do lightning magic? Because people love lightning magic.)
Also for “Tormentor” and “True Affliction”… no buffs to affliction itself? Aside from “True Affliction” none of the abilities really sound like they go with a “Tormentor”. Static Charge almost certainly sounds like a lightning ability, yet an elementalist has no access to lightning spells? Who is really the elementalist here? The nomenclature is sort of meh, it’s bothersome but can be looked past I guess.
Lend-a-hand might help unskilled mages, but is a T3 talent…if they can’t laserbeam fireball 2 or frost 2 by then, idk. If anything, I see it impacting PvP as teleporting targets are hard to chain cast against & aim appropriately. Plus you can self-cast mage armor & decurse this way much easier without awkwardly bending your wand backwards after casting (affects PvE/PvM). I also see two potential negative drawbacks, one being most mages teleport with their offhand since your main hand teleport button is taken up by the spell-submit action. For Oculus, you can click in the joystick with the mainhand to teleport but honestly its kind of buggy and you can “slide” unintentionally afterwards. You also have to stop drawing in order to posture yourself for the teleport. As a mage in PvE, I keep my hand pointed towards a “safe spot” I want to TP towards in case an AoE activates while I continue to chain cast.
Additionally for lend-a-hand, you will be “frankensteining” the entire time to keep your spell straight. It just seems sort of like a boring mechanic to add for your off-hand when there are many other possibilities that you could have done with the offhand, like off-hand items and talents(similar to the other talent tree). Even “touch” spells with a short blast could have been an option here. Or flamethrowing hands, god dangit the endless options… everyone loves a good flamethrowing hand.
I have some other minor points, but I think those are the bigger ones. I’ll be waiting to see how lend-a-hand actually feels when the changes go live. You should almost certainly rework tier 1, imo.
Perhaps even reach out to the community for desirable talent ideas? Not sure if I missed that boat. I’m sure you’ll get varying suggestions(including stupidly unbalanced ideas), but you might like a lot of the concepts the community is interested in. I’ve already heard a lot of cool stuff. Dual wielding warriors with new combos involving the offhand (or 2handers), pistol musketeers or “low damage mini gun(think fishing rod) musketeers” or at least a faster fire rate with the current gun, adding working scopes to guns…you did archers just fine, it was perfect - sniping is much needed rather than spammy arrows. Necromancy or a summoner with more emphasis on spells like like summoning a pet skeleton/elemental and pulling their grasping hand out of the floor after casting. Even new spells unique to talent trees. I could go on for a long time. Using some traditional rpg elements that have withstood time isn’t necessarily a bad idea.
Interesting I mostly agree because reading the Elementalist tree - and particularly lend a hand - I would never choose it. Moving is an essential skill for like, every fight in TM, I can’t remember one where that is not so.
And splitting the trees into single-target damage and multi-target damage is completely disappointing. There’s not a single reason right now to ever spec into multi-target damage, unless you want to be pulling way less weight on boss fights than the single-target damage mages.
Here I disagree, actually the Tormentor tree does not seem to match with this description, at all. Shared Streak isn’t multi-target but an awesome addition for groups fighting one boss, if they play together properly. Static Charge might or might not hit multi targets (nothing stated about that) but sounds good, I imagine it to function like icelance, so it’s more dmg on a boss. Then there is true affliction which is multi only for one single spell, arcane missile, the two others are awesome for single-target. And as for arcane missile spreading DoTs, why not, there are at least 2 bossfights in TM, perhaps 3, where I would find it very useful, and for farming outside the dungeons, and for trash/aberrations in the wilds of course, so I do hope at least one real multi-target skill stays in.
I would really like to chime in and point out that putting the cosmetic stuff in the very first tier of Runemage seems to me akin to putting the game changing talents at the end of Ranger. Early mage is worst mage, and in my opinion the one that needs the most help. Later on when you get your wheels under you and you can chain-cast Frost 3 like an autocannon these things are just nice additions to your kit. Early on when half of your spells fail and every mob can three shot you and kiting while casting is a myth from a distant land is when you desperately need some help. So getting colored lights at that first tier while all this is happening is like giving someone a flower while they’re wrestling a bear.
