Suggestion for the mage's rune

Suggestions
#1

I am not an expert of mage but I have a suggestion to improve the rune recognising so that more players can be the experts of mage.

I don’t know why sometimes I can make the Greater Affliction Spell and the Arcane Missile frequently but sometimes not. However, for the Teleportation Spells and the Revive Spell, the successful rate is over 90%. If most of players agree with me, I think I may assume that the high failure rate caused by too many rune on the first layer. Let me explain below.

I try to define the meaning of ‘layer’ first. The number of ‘layer’ is the number of rune you have to draw. Besides the Teleportation Spells and the Revive Spell are 3-layer spells, all other spells are 1-layer spells.
For example:
The first layer of the Teleportation Spells to Cailo Fa Ki in Desert is:

And then, the second layer is:

Finally, the third layer is:

On the other hand, the first layer of Fireball Spell is:

Obviously, every spell must has its first layer. You can imagine that there are so many variations of rune for the first layer. We always fail on the first layer because the rune is difficult to be matched accurately from so many rune symbols. Once you complete the first layer, the 2nd and 3rd layers are not the problem because there are only 4 different rune symbols for the 2nd and 3rd layers each.

To improve the low recognising rate, I think the number of rune symbol should be limited to 3 or 4 on each layer. Instead of 1-layer spells, 3 or more layers’ spells are preferred. There will be 27 combinations if there are 3 layers and 3 different rune symbols on each layer.
For instance, there are only 3 rune symbols for every layer:



For the first layer, it represents the type of spells:

is spell for single target

is spell for AoE

is spell for DoT

And then, the second layer represents the spell you want.
For example,
if a symbol ‘F’ is drawn for first layer, then the meaning of symbols for second layer are:

is Fireball Spell

is Icebolt Spell

is Pushback Spell

As for the third or higher layers, it may be a strengthening effect since the strength of spell should be proportional to the number of layer.
For example,
if it draws symbol ‘B’ for second layer, then the meaning of symbols for third layer are:

is Icebolt1 Spell

is Icebolt2 Spell

is Icebolt3 Spell

For higher layers, it can also be buff effect.

Furthermore, quick spells are also allowed. Player can only draw the first layer and then release the spell.
If a player draw the symbol ‘F’ for example, her wand will carry a spell (Fireball Spell, Icebolt Spell or Pushback Spell) which is randomly chosen from the second layer. Player can press the touchpad on vive controller again to release the spell or continue to draw a second layer by using trigger.

However, failure happens when the system really can’t recognise the symbol no matter which layer it is. Therefore, the risk is increasing for doing a high-layer spell.

Multi-layer for discharging a spell not only increases the successful rate, but also acts like a real mage that required to draw a lot. The much time (no. of layer) you spend, the more power/buff you gain. Consequently, mages will more likely to play with others since they need a tank to earn some time for making a super powerful spell.

#2

Highly skilled mages having fire, frost, and pushback being chosen randomly would infuriate mages. Bell mage will be even harder than normal due to the need to cast frost 2 quickly, it would cause raid boss 4 to need the tank to not make a single mistake as frost 3 would be rare to see in combat. Dot spreading as mage would be very hard, runemage power leveling if the mage is good enough would be utterly broken.

The problem is drawing the runes wrong, not having to recognize so many at once. Your system seems to favor low levels and work with low level areas. The problem is that the mages who have put in the hours to practice the spells to death and can cast really fast would either have to be content loosing a whole bunch of dps yet still get artificing buffs, or loose less dps but not get any artificing stacks.

The mages already have a lot of power and at high levels have to draw a whole lot. The only reason you have mages in high level content is decent dps, dot spread, and decurse. If you make it so some spells are even slower to cast then right now the only reason you would have a mage is if you need decurse. Dot spread would be unreliable and without artificing archers would do far more damage than mages.

The current system works and favors those who are willing to put in time and get good. Having this system would hurt high level mages while not helping casting for lower level mages. If you practice the spells they are very easy. At level 20 you rarely see a mage fizzle on something that is not affliction 2. Low levels would not benefit due to the fact that casting will not get easier; its a muscle memory thing. And would hurt the high levels who put the time in due to loss of constancy or speed. If you are consistent and draw all the runes, you loose speed. If you speed cast by drawing only the first layer as you say, you loose consistency in what spells get flung at the enemy. Its a loose loose for everyone!

4 Likes
#3

In most bossfight the mage is already the only one who is not able to hit bosses and trash just so, with a press of the button and aiming. And the one who is super-exhausted after fight because, as Rickness stated, he does draw alot already :wink:
Speed is everything, mages are required to chain-cast spells quickly, so if basically every spell takes 3 times as long it would weaken this class alot - or each and every bossfight would need to be adapted. In theory it’s good to ponder how to make the mage class more accessible, in comparison to other classes like musky or ranger it needs that much practice and hours put in before it becomes useful that I don’t think I can play the mage class on endgame-level, additional to my two others which is kinda sad.
But making them cast even more before anything happens (with 3 times more of a failing chance) is liikely not the way to achieve that.

#4

probably the easiest way to make runemage more accessible for beginners is to make the ‘first layer’ ignore differences in the third dimension. for example, on fireball 3, the ‘B’ would ignore forward and backward variations, but the dots/curve would not.

This way, the biggest difficulty of the runemage will be ignored for the lower level spells, making it much easier to cast L2 spells and below without changing anything for the better players.

That being said, runemages in fantasy are slow casting glass cannons that sit behind people in the front and launch gigantic spells to decimate armies. It would also make sense to slow them down from the ridiculous speedcasters they are currently (according to lore).

1 Like
#5

Thanks all of you reading this post. There is no doubt that to be an expert of mage, we must hard work on practice. I have to say that I am not going to suggest an method to weaken this class or to suit my clumsy drawing on spells.

I know that the veterans practised a lot and thus they can do the spells very fast. However, I wonder that are they do the same drawing as the drawings showed on journal? We all know that there is a simple way to draw the Greater Affliction Spell or Arcane Missile. And that simple drawing is obviously different to the drawing showed on journal. Those players who can do the spells very fast are not really can do the correct drawing fast. They just found the simplest way to draw the rune. As a result, I may say that there are some bugs on recognition.

For example, the gesture of ‘provoke’ combo for warriors is ‘slide leftwards, slide rightwards, slide upwards’ which is the instruction on journal. If someone find that he just need to slide leftwards and rightwards repeatedly for 5 times within a second, the provoke combo was reached. I wonder should we call him a expert of warrior? Absolutely not. There was a bug for recognising the ‘provoke’ combo and someone use the bug only.

Similarly, many players claim that they can draw the rune very fast and in a simple way. I may say that they just found some bugs on rune drawing recognising and they use them.

In conclusion, the reason to write this post is not going to weaken mage class or to suit my clumsy drawing on spells. It is a good direction on creating complex drawings of rune. However, it is not enough of technic to achieve that so far. A simplified drawing of rune should not be allowed anyway. Multi-layer drawing system may be one of alternative method to fix the bug on poor rune recognising until there is enough of technic to recognise a complicated drawing accurately.

#6

i dunno about your point that they have to draw the rune the exact correct way. Lore for runemages has them doing research to find better ways to draw runes that have the same effect, or even coming up with completely new rune combinations to cast better spells.

Makes perfect sense from this standpoint. If the laws of the world allow for spellcasting by using runes to channel mana, then finding a way to channel the mana in the same way while making the casting faster works with the laws of the world. Afterall, magic cant improve as a whole if everyone always follows what ppl did previously without doing their own research.

#7

The Devs have already commented on this; “simplified” runes have a higher likelihood of fizzling and less chance of being perfectly cast, so they’re fine with what runemages have done. The class is only limited by the speed and accuracy of the caster’s runes.

What could be nice, however, is having more multi-tier spells/more spells in general to provide more flexibility and more interesting effects in combat. At present, basically DPS on mage is keeping up affliction and hitting with fireballs in the interim. Maybe a periodic frost to slow. Runemages are the most versatile class, but even then they still have limited applications.

#8

Are those research information released by developers?
To be faster is not the reason to use bug.
We must not write short form such as ‘info’, ‘gonna’ during written test even it is a faster way to complete the writing.
One more example, every warrior in game want to active the combo faster. Player A can complete the ‘provoke combo’ with gesture ‘left,right,up’ in 1 second. Player B can finish in 0.5 seconds. Player C is the fastest one who can active in 0.3 seconds. We can say that player C is the expert of warrior. However, once a player find that there is a easier way to active the provoke combo with gesture ‘left,right,left,right,left’ which is not the official instruction to active the combo and he can active the combo by using this gesture in 0.2 seconds. I must to say that he isn’t the expert of warrior and he should report and stop using the bugs immediately.
Go back to mage. No one doubts that we should active the spells faster and faster, however, we have to follow the official instructions but not the research. I believe that many so called ‘experts’ of mage have their own simplified drawing pattern, different to the official one, and they never share those pattern to others.

#9

Does the ‘Devs’ mean developers? If yes, I am sorry about I have said that simplified drawing should not be allow. Thank you

#10

You obviously have not been paying attention in Highsteppe, youtube, or in the discord chats; almost every high level mage in this game is willing to take time to teach people spells. Just ask how to cast something and people will show you. Or you can look them up online or on the discords and see videos and photos explaining the spells. The patterns are definitely shared. Extensively.

#11

Yes. Dev = Developer.

The point of the Runemage class is that it’s not limited in the way most mage classes are (via Mana or some other kind of limiting powersource). It’s purely about speed and accuracy of the runes. Even without using a shorthand, you could still become extremely proficient in casting the standard runes.

#12

i’m just going to be a devil’s advocate here and say that no, it is not possible to be a top mage without using the shortcuts. the official runes take way too long to draw comparatively.

1 Like
#13

Riley has said before that shortcuts are a part of the game if I am not wrong, wish I could find that post.

#14

Perfect casting from testing does not seem to have a noticeable effect on damage, it sometimes can have no effect besides making the lowest number of damge around 400 points higher and the maximum 400 points higher. It is very negligible. You also should be rotating frost and fire to be more effective with artificing.

#15

Personally, I like it that Mage is hard. I wouldn’t mind if they introduced another class that is even harder to master. It is good that the game offers different levels of difficulty depending on what the player wants out of the game. Well designed IMO.

#16

only problem i see with the skill cap class is that a mediocre mage and great ranger do the same dps. a great mage does tons more dps than the best ranger. they also have way more versatility. This is caused by the rangers only having two arrows to use out of 5 (and they only choose these two). the other arrows are so useless that even when clearing trash, noone uses them.

Imo, if they want to keep the balance they have with mages, then they should give archers 4 arrows at a time (like muskets) and they should probably buff the spread and storm arrows.

1 Like
#17

Sorry Xicor, but I completely disagree with your initial statement. Either you elaborate on what a mediocre mage is or I will assume this “mage” you speak of can cast a spell every 1.5 to 2 seconds. Unfortunately against the best ranger damage is no where near what you state. The best ranger vs. mage with 100 hours is a no contest. Ranger will win. Especially with a proper tileset. In the perfect scenario, the “best mage” vs the “best ranger” would turn over on the mage end strictly due to the extra damage done by DOTS.

In the end I believe that rangers do need a few more utility arrows and something other than the useless trap they are provided. Along with a utility update for the ranger I would also like to see a wider spell range. More complex drawings and different elements. Mana shield 2 anyone?

Most posts I see on the forums complaining about the mage class nowadays are people who have not put enough time and practice into the class. It’s not easy and should not be toned down because some users cannot handle it.

5 Likes
#18

i would say that a ‘mediocre’ mage is someone who can consistently cast fireball 2 and frostbolt 2 and most of the time cast affliction 2 using speed strats to be decently quick. a mediocre mage would be able to keep 1-2 stacks of affliction on the target, but couldnt get 3 stacks. I’m also obviously talking equal gear here… not someone with t12 vs someone with t5(skill level comparison only).

being able to cast only one spell every 1.5 to 2 seconds is what i would consider a ‘bad’ mage.

#19

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.