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Nerfing of Mystics
- Thread starter UODevTracker
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Hopefully I wont de-rail the discussion.
Currently I do not have a mystic mage. He's in progress.
But I have a few variation on my casters
Pure mage. Wrestle-120/Scribe-GM/Magery-120/Eval-120/Med-GM/Resist-120 with 40 focus.
I run a LRC suit with 30 DCI, 40 LMC 6 MR and 8 Stam regen.
The combination of the focus and the stamina regen (and my low stamina) seriously lower the damage strangle does.
If I could squeeze a bit more DCI onto the suit, I wouldnt have to run in to disarm archers as much. They have got to be the most difficult for me to kill on this template.
I run that same template, with Mysticism /Focus swapped out for magery/Eval and instead put the extra points into Ninjitusu, (which I get a +12 to from items.) This gives me enough to spam a whole lotta mirror images when I'm dismounted.
On this template dexers in general are much easier to fight against, but mages prove to be more difficult. The burst damage is nice, but mages can mini heal enough to survive the bursts, and its costing me alot of mana.
Overall I find this template a bit easier to survive ganks with than my pure mage.
My necro mage, I use mostly for group/gank type fighting. I think necro mages are pretty powerful, but the template is a bit cramped and I dont like to use mageweapon items but with the resonant staves, I find the resonance bonus does help alot.
My swords Mystic, is actually an intersting combination. When I use a good cleaver, I can alternate between bleed and poison, to proc my spell plague and dish alot of damage out in a short time. The special moves do drain my mana pretty fast though which I find to be the main downfall of that template.
I think mysticism stands well on its own, but I dont find that when I stack it with magery , that I get a more powerful template than my necro mage.
I find them to be pretty well balanced, that I select them based on how I feel, or what exactly my aim for that gaming session is.
I also try to avoid item crutches as much as possible so I dont use pots, apples, trapped pouches etc unless I'm out for a faction fight type session or a spawn/raid type deal.
I think I need to try some bokuto heavy template ideas out and see how that goes.
Currently I do not have a mystic mage. He's in progress.
But I have a few variation on my casters
Pure mage. Wrestle-120/Scribe-GM/Magery-120/Eval-120/Med-GM/Resist-120 with 40 focus.
I run a LRC suit with 30 DCI, 40 LMC 6 MR and 8 Stam regen.
The combination of the focus and the stamina regen (and my low stamina) seriously lower the damage strangle does.
If I could squeeze a bit more DCI onto the suit, I wouldnt have to run in to disarm archers as much. They have got to be the most difficult for me to kill on this template.
I run that same template, with Mysticism /Focus swapped out for magery/Eval and instead put the extra points into Ninjitusu, (which I get a +12 to from items.) This gives me enough to spam a whole lotta mirror images when I'm dismounted.
On this template dexers in general are much easier to fight against, but mages prove to be more difficult. The burst damage is nice, but mages can mini heal enough to survive the bursts, and its costing me alot of mana.
Overall I find this template a bit easier to survive ganks with than my pure mage.
My necro mage, I use mostly for group/gank type fighting. I think necro mages are pretty powerful, but the template is a bit cramped and I dont like to use mageweapon items but with the resonant staves, I find the resonance bonus does help alot.
My swords Mystic, is actually an intersting combination. When I use a good cleaver, I can alternate between bleed and poison, to proc my spell plague and dish alot of damage out in a short time. The special moves do drain my mana pretty fast though which I find to be the main downfall of that template.
I think mysticism stands well on its own, but I dont find that when I stack it with magery , that I get a more powerful template than my necro mage.
I find them to be pretty well balanced, that I select them based on how I feel, or what exactly my aim for that gaming session is.
I also try to avoid item crutches as much as possible so I dont use pots, apples, trapped pouches etc unless I'm out for a faction fight type session or a spawn/raid type deal.
I think I need to try some bokuto heavy template ideas out and see how that goes.
I like my pure mystic, I think right now I get alot more kills just by being under estimated and people not understanding the skills.
Usually I can pull off a bombard between most hits from dexers. Which opens up a nice sleep/ plague combo
then I'll usually stack another plague on and open up with some nice eagle strike spam.
Also before plague or sleep, I like to throw in a purge if possible. It tends to get under-rated, but the mana cost increase is useful, and that tiny damage can trigger an extra plague explosion. Allowing for a bit of an extra burst.
Also I tend to hit with a sleep ever so often so that I can get a cleansing winds off.
I also found that while on production I do pretty ok with my pure mystic, all my casters improved significantly on test because I used the casting focus artifacts. Occasionally also used resonance artifacts. (On prod I only have 2 caster specific artis)
The combination of resonance and casting focus +the 5% casting focus bonus from scribe) meant I could be alot more aggressive with my casting. I was more willing to attempt bigger spells because I new that there was a chacne I would get them to fire off. As a result I was dealing alot more damage to the players I was fighting because they were expecting me to be interrupted, but I was dropping the spells anyway.
I still timed my heals so that I wasnt relying on interrupt protection that way, but it definitely made a difference in my offensive tactics on all my casters.
Though in this case I think that the resonance and casting focus properties have been overlooked by alot of the player community and so they've stuck to the usual playstyle of only attempting stuff they think they can get fired off.
Usually I can pull off a bombard between most hits from dexers. Which opens up a nice sleep/ plague combo
then I'll usually stack another plague on and open up with some nice eagle strike spam.
Also before plague or sleep, I like to throw in a purge if possible. It tends to get under-rated, but the mana cost increase is useful, and that tiny damage can trigger an extra plague explosion. Allowing for a bit of an extra burst.
Also I tend to hit with a sleep ever so often so that I can get a cleansing winds off.
I also found that while on production I do pretty ok with my pure mystic, all my casters improved significantly on test because I used the casting focus artifacts. Occasionally also used resonance artifacts. (On prod I only have 2 caster specific artis)
The combination of resonance and casting focus +the 5% casting focus bonus from scribe) meant I could be alot more aggressive with my casting. I was more willing to attempt bigger spells because I new that there was a chacne I would get them to fire off. As a result I was dealing alot more damage to the players I was fighting because they were expecting me to be interrupted, but I was dropping the spells anyway.
I still timed my heals so that I wasnt relying on interrupt protection that way, but it definitely made a difference in my offensive tactics on all my casters.
Though in this case I think that the resonance and casting focus properties have been overlooked by alot of the player community and so they've stuck to the usual playstyle of only attempting stuff they think they can get fired off.
I'd definitely agree that lack of debuff type skills makes mysticism a bit challenging. Though I'll say its difficult to balance the solo mystics power in comparison with the group mystic. (Not alot of feed back on group pvp ) (and by group I dont mean gank)
The 2 handed staves would be rediculously overpowered if that 20% resonance was placed on a shield.
The balance to having 20% chance continue casting when being hit with a certain damage type is that you cannot chug potions.
This also allows for mage necro /mage mystic combos to save skill invested in weapon or wrestling.
Basically you traded up to 110 free skill points for your ability to drink potions.
To me thats a great deal.
I could see maybe adding casting focus to jewels or spell books in the future.
Resonance will only go on 2 handed weapons and shields.
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I dont find spell plague to be overpowered. I see alot of people favoring the Bombard/Plague Instant Bombard route. Which probably does as much as XP FS EB. Which for me means around 70 - 80 damage total depending on if the target is cursed or not. Swapping out Xplosion for the first bombard can squeeeze an extra 10-18 damage out if both the explosion and the bombard cause spell plague damage to proc. Which is about the same as an archer hitting 2x armour ignores for 35 proccing 8 velocity and 8 fireball each time.
The difference being of course that the caster spent oh about 100 base mana and 6 seconds. While the archer spent 75 Mana and 2.5 seconds.
Additionally the point after which the caster cannot use that combo again without a significant break to re-stone the spell trigger. Now if you added necro in there you could get a huge bonus damage with a pain strike at the end that may trigger the final plague explosion, but that would be Necro/SS/Mage/Eval/Mystic/Focus To compete with Weaponskill/Tactics.
In the last 12 years I dont know of many practiced pvpers who dont assume if they see a mage suddenly casting fs that he didnt already stack an explosion before.
Mysticism is still new and many havent adapted to it. As such I cant remember the last time I saw anyone eat an apple or rem curse to get rid of spell plague. It may seem over powered if it was guaranteed every explosion every time, but thats not the case. And more importantly,every single followup explosion can be negated by eating an apple.
The balance to having 20% chance continue casting when being hit with a certain damage type is that you cannot chug potions.
This also allows for mage necro /mage mystic combos to save skill invested in weapon or wrestling.
Basically you traded up to 110 free skill points for your ability to drink potions.
To me thats a great deal.
I could see maybe adding casting focus to jewels or spell books in the future.
Resonance will only go on 2 handed weapons and shields.
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I dont find spell plague to be overpowered. I see alot of people favoring the Bombard/Plague Instant Bombard route. Which probably does as much as XP FS EB. Which for me means around 70 - 80 damage total depending on if the target is cursed or not. Swapping out Xplosion for the first bombard can squeeeze an extra 10-18 damage out if both the explosion and the bombard cause spell plague damage to proc. Which is about the same as an archer hitting 2x armour ignores for 35 proccing 8 velocity and 8 fireball each time.
The difference being of course that the caster spent oh about 100 base mana and 6 seconds. While the archer spent 75 Mana and 2.5 seconds.
Additionally the point after which the caster cannot use that combo again without a significant break to re-stone the spell trigger. Now if you added necro in there you could get a huge bonus damage with a pain strike at the end that may trigger the final plague explosion, but that would be Necro/SS/Mage/Eval/Mystic/Focus To compete with Weaponskill/Tactics.
In the last 12 years I dont know of many practiced pvpers who dont assume if they see a mage suddenly casting fs that he didnt already stack an explosion before.
Mysticism is still new and many havent adapted to it. As such I cant remember the last time I saw anyone eat an apple or rem curse to get rid of spell plague. It may seem over powered if it was guaranteed every explosion every time, but thats not the case. And more importantly,every single followup explosion can be negated by eating an apple.
I don't know where those formulas came from.
But Resonance on all current artifacts is random at the time of spawn.
Personally I find myself altering between fire and physical most of the time.
Casting focus works similarly to resonance except it doesnt care about what type of damage it is. Also casting focus is augmented by Inscription.
So you can get up to 12 from items. and 5 from inscription.
(Formula for casting focus edited in:
Interrupt Chance = 100 -Total Casting focus from items + Inscription bonus. Then random roll from 1-100. If your roll is higher than the interrupt chance, CONGRATS you continue casting)
So 5% casting focus really is 5% Chance to ignore an interruption.
If you run 10 physical resonance, and 12 casting focus. (Since they get factored separately.) thats a 1 in 10 and a 1 in 8 Chance of avoiding interruption.
So if you figure that fighting a dexer if you tried to cast a lev 7 spell, (FS or Spell plague) And you did it right after his last swing.
You have better than a 1 in 8 chance to get that spell off.
Now I don't know about other mages, but with those numbers I'm way more inclined to attempt to fire off a high damage spell when fighting a dexer, than always relying on faster low damage spells combined with poison to take them down.
Also in caster vs caster, I know that with 0 casting focus that when he's at 40 health and I'm at 40 health, and he's firing magic arrows at me, that I have to stick to my faster spells. With my casting focus up or resonance, I may just try to hit with an explosion instead of pew pew pew with magic arrow/harm etc back and forth.
The important thing with alot of the new spells, and properties, is they are not like potions, defence chance etc, the reliable guaranteed known effect stuff. Yeah, it may save your butt allowing you to get a lucky heal off that you otherwise would have been interrupted on, but getting that lucky heal is SO not worth building the suit over because it isnt reliable/dependable.
However if I know that I can take 3 hits before I die, I might be willing to take the risk of getting my big spell off, knowing that if I get fizzled I can recover, and if I dont get fizzled, well I'm not the one who's in trouble.
But Resonance on all current artifacts is random at the time of spawn.
Personally I find myself altering between fire and physical most of the time.
Casting focus works similarly to resonance except it doesnt care about what type of damage it is. Also casting focus is augmented by Inscription.
So you can get up to 12 from items. and 5 from inscription.
(Formula for casting focus edited in:
Interrupt Chance = 100 -Total Casting focus from items + Inscription bonus. Then random roll from 1-100. If your roll is higher than the interrupt chance, CONGRATS you continue casting)
So 5% casting focus really is 5% Chance to ignore an interruption.
If you run 10 physical resonance, and 12 casting focus. (Since they get factored separately.) thats a 1 in 10 and a 1 in 8 Chance of avoiding interruption.
So if you figure that fighting a dexer if you tried to cast a lev 7 spell, (FS or Spell plague) And you did it right after his last swing.
You have better than a 1 in 8 chance to get that spell off.
Now I don't know about other mages, but with those numbers I'm way more inclined to attempt to fire off a high damage spell when fighting a dexer, than always relying on faster low damage spells combined with poison to take them down.
Also in caster vs caster, I know that with 0 casting focus that when he's at 40 health and I'm at 40 health, and he's firing magic arrows at me, that I have to stick to my faster spells. With my casting focus up or resonance, I may just try to hit with an explosion instead of pew pew pew with magic arrow/harm etc back and forth.
The important thing with alot of the new spells, and properties, is they are not like potions, defence chance etc, the reliable guaranteed known effect stuff. Yeah, it may save your butt allowing you to get a lucky heal off that you otherwise would have been interrupted on, but getting that lucky heal is SO not worth building the suit over because it isnt reliable/dependable.
However if I know that I can take 3 hits before I die, I might be willing to take the risk of getting my big spell off, knowing that if I get fizzled I can recover, and if I dont get fizzled, well I'm not the one who's in trouble.
Risk and reward 
It was much easier to take advantage of casting focus and resonance when I started to play on the EC.
Now I swap between EC and 2D. I find it was difficult to get the timing of spells down in the EC at first. And I was also learning a pure mystic template.
If I'd tried to go straight into it playing as my regular mage, I probably wouldn't be liking it as much as I do now.
It tends to be easier to learn alot of new things at once, than learning one thing and being great at everything else, because there are less preconceptions of how to do things.
It was much easier to take advantage of casting focus and resonance when I started to play on the EC.
Now I swap between EC and 2D. I find it was difficult to get the timing of spells down in the EC at first. And I was also learning a pure mystic template.
If I'd tried to go straight into it playing as my regular mage, I probably wouldn't be liking it as much as I do now.
It tends to be easier to learn alot of new things at once, than learning one thing and being great at everything else, because there are less preconceptions of how to do things.