Well then, Bane, since you CLEARLY know game mechanics better than anyone else, perhaps you could offer solutions instead of (deservedly or not) calling people idiots. Considering how smart you are, surely your solutions would be the best for the game.
Well, first off, if you read my post again, the question I posed was, if this post would even be a valuable use of my time. As I explained, they tend to do the opposite of what I want. But that said, you do have a point. I am being very negative and condescending, but can you blame me? Most of my experiences here have been with disrespectful ****lings that suck at this game, and do nothing but insult you instead of making intellectual points. But anyhow, I've read through the thread, and I'm actually impressed with the maturity of it, and sorry about my initial reaction. But hey, if you want some suggestions, here's the changes I would suggest. Get ready for a wall of text (Bane style):
1. Moving Shot changes: First off, Chad has a good point about the moving shots. Idk about making them physical damage, it's one of those things that just doesn't make sense if a bow is already 100% cold. In terms of balancing the game it would make sense, but conceptually, it still doesn't sit well with me. Then again, maybe I'm an RP'er at heart
. One reason I'm not a fan of it though is because it would reduce the effectiveness of corpse skin significantly. This combo corpse + moving shots is one of the major proponents that makes a necro viable again. Something definitely should be done about moving shots though. Either the damage should be decreased (by like 20% or so) or it should take more mana than it currently does. The problem though is that if you nerf the regular damage of moving shots (by say 20%? disregarding damage type), then archers will have a much harder time killing anyone 1v1, and they already have a difficult time against parry characters. But I can't think of anyway around this at this moment. Maybe moving shot itself won't need a nerf though if you consider my next few suggestions (1. Reduced base dmg on weapons 2. apple timer reduction 3. removal of LMC bonus for specific skills). These changes alone would significantly lower the damage that archers do overall while moving shott'ed a cursed/corpsed target.
2. Reduced Base Damage on Bows: Perhaps the damage on bows should all be reduced marginally. I'm not talking 2min-3max base damage, which is what they'll probably do because every time you make a suggestion they take it too far. I'm talking maybe 1-1 damage less base damage per bow. It doesn't seem like much, but when you consider that the base damage is amplified by tactics, anatomy, strength, and damage increase, that 1 base damage turns into a 2-3-4 actual damage. It adds up. So my suggestion is this, reduce the base damage on each bow by 1-1, slightly increase the amount of mana that moving shot takes. This is a much better idea than capping stam at 181, because at 181 Archers will not only disrupt mages less, but a pvm archer's dps will be reduced by 20%. A quarter of a second is 1/5th of 1.25 seconds. Alternatively, reducing the base damage by 1 will reduce their damage per shot by about 5%.
3. Reduced timer on Apples: Reduced apple timers to 20 seconds would help diminish the effectiveness of the Curse + Moving shot combo that Chad was referencing, and it would also reduce the effectiveness of Corpse Skin- which everyone seems to think is OP atm (although it would still be highly effective).
4. Un-do Mortal Nerfs: A lot of people's first reaction will be that that's crazy, but consider that the past 2-3 suggestions combined would seem to be a heavy nerf on archers; but to counter-balance that, I would also suggest un-doing the recent mortal nerfs. This would keep Archers highly relevant and valuable in group PvP, but their damage output would not be as high, and mortals would still be effective, just not as overpowered with reduced apple timers.
5. 20 SDI cap for non-focused mages: The SDI cap increase suggestion is one that I've been making for a long time. For a long time I've been complaining about the damage of non-alchy/scribe mages, and people would constantly say it would be too op to increase the SDI of a mystic mage to 30. But that said, I'm sure they can do something less, like increase the overall SDI cap on mages to 20 instead of 15. If you know something needs to change, but you're afraid of it becoming OP, then just increase it marginally, see if it works, and if it still needs a buff, you can increase it another 5 sdi to a 25 cap. But anyhow, that's my suggestion to increase the effectiveness of mystics and necros- increase their sdi cap to 20. With suits now a days people can easily put together mystic/necro wrestle parry suits.
6. Buff Heal Stone & Spirit Speak: To make Mystics and Necros more viable defensively, and more viable overall, I would make Healstones heal for as much as a g-heal does (50-60 dmg), and make Spiritspeak un-interruptable- which would be a good counter for mortals. That's all I can think of defensively atm. These two changes could go a long way to making these templates viable again imo.
7. Buff Cleansing Winds when healing mortal'ed targets: Of course mortals were nerfed recently, but we can un-do the nerf, as I suggested before, and buff cleansing winds, making mystics more effective in group fights. We can make cleansing winds heal someone after removing the mortal (the way it did originally) except at a reduced amount- the same way it works with poisoning. Idk why I have yet to see someone make this proposal. This will not only help make mystics more viable without making cleansing's OP, but it will also counter-balance mortals- which as I proposed before, would be un-nerfed.
8. Corpse Skin Changes: Corpse Skin shouldn't need "focused necromancy" to reduce max resists. It should reduce the max resists regardless. Requiring "focused necromancy" does nothing but makes corpse skin useless for Necro Mages. Without reducing the maximum resists, the spell is useless, considering everyone has 90's+ of every resist now a days; and this is one of several reasons that Necro Mages are useless in field pvp. It probably should've been this way for a long time. However, groups stacking Corpse Skin with curse can be a bit OP atm. To counter-balance this- make it so Corpse skin doesn't stack with Curse, and also make it so that corpse skin increases the target's maximum cold/physical resist by 15. With 100% elemental weapons against 55 resists (or even 60 resists with refined armor) it will still be effective for archers with elemental weapons as well as for 20 sdi necro mages (my prior suggestion). It will also help to make Necro mages more viable in the field again.
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9. Undo Skill LMC bonus: Mages don't play with focus or med anymore, and need so much skill inc for dex on parry and healing mages that dexxers often have more mana and better mana regen than mages. Archers/Dexxers pretty much never run out of mana anymore and it's insane. There's no reason they need the extra LMC bonus. Undo the extra LMC that dexxers get from having 200-300 of select skills. It might have been a good idea when it was made, but it's completely unecessary in 2016-17.
10. Specials toggles while holding spells: As numerous people have suggested, specials should be able to be toggled while holding spells. This will make certain temps far more fun to play, and will be counter-balanced by the LMC nerf and the reduced damage on bows. It will also make certain templates far more viable, like a deathstrike mage, or a bushido mage.
11. Un-Nerf Frenzied Whirlwind: I'm sure this won't be popular with a lot of people, but hear me out. I thought waki's were OP as fk when I was playing a mystic ninja-mage, and they WERE op as fk in those days (comparatively speaking). But everyone plays healing mages, bushido archers, or bushido parry dexxers (often with chiv and/or spellweaving). I don't believe it would be OP at all anymore. Right now it slows targets for 1.5 seconds- when before it was 4.5 seconds. I think changing it to a 3 second slow that can be removed with an apple would be fair and reasonable, considering every good player knows that wakis are useless against mounted targets these days. Chasing people on a melee dexxer is a lot harder than casting spells or shooting at people from a range, and Frenzied Whirlwind was a good way to line up your next hit. Deathstrikers in particular took a very hard hit when they nerfed wakis, because A. their greatest strength was their offensive damage output (being that they have much less utility than archers or mages) and B. they are the least tankiest template; usually not having parry or healing needed to counter-balance the heavy damage output that is required to get in close to your opponents to do damage. Yes, they can smoke bomb, but running and hiding is not the same thing as staying on screen while parrying blows, or evading. What happened was, Mages got better at survivability with healing, Archers got better at survivability with bushido and better at damage with better gear, and the one thing that Deathstriker's excelled at (damage output) got nerfed. Reviving the effectiveness of Waki would counter-balance melee dexxers lack of ranged abilities and would also help melee dexxers counter-balance the defensiveness of today's templates (healing mages/bushido archers/etc). It would also make playing those templates more fun again- as well as playing other melee chars in general.
Edit: After some discussion in response to this post, on top of this suggestion, I would also suggest allowing apples to remove the slow affect for waki. The one instance where I concede that a 3 second slow from a waki may be a little over-powered is when it comes to groups setting up people for dumps. I don't think it's overpowered for me, but then again I was very good at avoiding it. For most players, it might be a little overpowered though. Most players wouldn't waste an apple timer on a waki slow, but if you're getting dumped by a group, the apple can save you from that dump. With reduced apple timers to 20 seconds, and with allowing apple's to remove the waki slow, I think we could increase the waki slow time to 3 seconds, which would make melee dexxers more viable and fun to play without over-powering the waki.
12. Un-nerf Animal Form: I would undo the animal form changes that were done a couple of years ago. Again, this is probably another one that many will think is stupid, but think about it. Groups already do tons of damage when you're on foot, and if you agree with my mortal un-nerf and my waki un-nerf, then un-doing the animal form nerf would be a good way to counterbalance dismount ganks. I would not be against this if I was not for the waki un-nerf, but the ninja form nerf only helped groups that were too noobie to kill someone before they could form off, and even if it did make sense at the time, it is definitely dated right now. Barely anyone plays with ninja anymore. Animal form still is not the same as remounting a pet. They cannot cast or use many abilities, and they have to unform off and remount before they can do anything- so it already has some major trade-offs. I was completely against the nerf, back when people played mystic ninja mages, as it gave disarm archers and waki dexxers a super easy time ganking people on foot, but people do ever more damage now a days than they did back then. There's no reason animal form needs to be nerfed still. If we undo the waki-nerf nerf, I think it would give us even more reason to un-do the animal form nerf- and btw, this nerf would help the survivability of mage weapon chars with ninjitsu- not that they will ever necessarily be viable again.
13. Buff Mage Weapons: We can lower the amount of magery mage weapons reduces skill by from -15/-20 to -0/-5. This alone would do little to make mage weapon chars viable again, but it's all I can think of right now tbh. The problem is that Dexxers/Archers have such heavy damage output compared to what they used to, that Parry is really the only way to counter-act that. Less -magery would mean more stat/skill inc for mages. Maybe with enough skill inc they can pick up bushido or something. I fear that mages with mage weapons will never fully be able to counteract the insane gear that dexxers/archers run with now a days. But I do think my other suggestions will go a long way in helping.
14. Revive Mage Dueling: We need to do some things to revive dueling. Mage Dueling was a major aspect of UO PvP back in the day, and now it's completely ****ing pointless. We'll never get it back to what it once was, but we could at least make it fun again. The UO dev's could EASILY add options to the Arena system to turn off Casting focus for the sake of a duel, or to automatically equal someone's stats to have 9 hpr, 30 SDI. It's very inconvenient for a lot of people to put together suits just to duel with old rules, and there's no reason they can't just make it an option on the Arena rule list. They can also get rid of the auto cure that people get when they don't have the poisoning skill. No one in pvp gives a **** about RNG auto-cures, except when they're dueling. It's not because of Jack of All trades either, it happens for elves and gargoyles a lot too, and it makes about zero sense. All it does it help to kill dueling, which many UO pvpers used to enjoy doing.
I believe that all of these changes combined will not only balance the game in a way that will be fun for everyone, but will also add a lot more diversity to the pvp. Sorry for the wall of text, unfortunately many people will pick this apart and argue that one specific change is a terrible idea. They will say things like Mortals were OP before, but what people need to do when they read all of these proposed changes and imagine how all of them will work together. Think about the big picture and how each change will affect the overall balance and fun of the game. My suggestions will probably be ignored as always, but you never know...
@Bleak