Obersvations

[Zyon Rockler]

I have been getting upset lately. I'm not sure if it's just me or if there are some serious issues. I thought the game was supposed to be fun but I find myself getting frusterated and bewildered.

One of the problems that I had, is knowing that i'm playing a complicated character but it seems to be out dated and I don't want to change characters to make it easy. I just want it to be more comparable.

One of the things i've noticed is with the new UI, i'm alot more capable. I'm faster and I can do alot more but the game seems to slow me down. Now, I know that might sound funny but i've had some problems. For example: Looting rights. A Sampire came up and whacked the Boss about 5-6 times and killed it but even though I did the whole spawn, I did not get any looting rights.

Maybe we should get looting rights based on the spawn damage as well. So, if I kill 25% of the spawn but do zero damage to the Boss, I would still earn the right to loot.

When I go to cast an EV sometimes the EV just goes away, up the road while the spawn comes and attacks me or they'll just sit there.

At 115 Magery, I will try to get an EV out and fail and then fail again and then fail again. This causes me to have to run off the screen and heal making me work more than I am able to enjoy myself.

If I have to peace and then discord, I find in alot of cases area peace fails completely. Some of the spawns just keep coming at you or if you peace something directly it keeps walking towards you.

When you use peace or discord you can't use spirit speak to heal. It says, You must wait and alot of times this gets stuck until you are killed. It'll just keep saying, You must wait.

The bard songs don't seem to do as much damage as other templates and the EVs are so weak compared to a collosus or a greater dragon, making magery almost worthless.

The Necro has no way of using a slayer type. Why not make the revenant alittle stronger and allow it to be slayer so that any spawn that it's set on, it will do extra damage.

The Necro spawns do not follow fast enough. They lag behind and get lost. Why don't they work to help protect the Necro that has summoned them?

If spirit speak and peace are both skills and must have a timer than why is the timer so long between them? It makes spirit speak worthless and like I said above, it's bugged.

If a mage has poisoning then the spawns they create should also have poisoning. Like, a Green EV, A Poisoned Energy Vortex or a Daemon spawn that casts DP.

They're always trying to nerf DP and they're always trying to nerf everything else. They should just be making other things more balanced and stronger rather than making everything so weak. The PvP people are making the PvM people bored. I like to be able to do alot of things with my character and so far, the Bard/Necro/Mage seems to be the most fun.

But with being able to do so much with the slow times on the spells, the you can't use this yet and the fails and then the bugs that just cause death or the skills that technically just do not work, it just becomes frustrating and slow.

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

1. If you did a noticeable amount of damage to the boss you would have got looting rights.
2. You get the chance to recieve the replica by doing the spawn, not the boss. If you want to protect your boss be ready to kill any blue invaders.
3. Not saying the EV doesnt act ******** sometimes, but i've never had the issue (not saying it doesnt happen)
4. Get 120 magery...
5. All area peace does is break the target, it doesnt actually "peace" anythign just makes them retarget, If the target peace is bugged as you say it def needs a fix.
6. Agreed, SS should work independant of other skills
7. The bard songs are geared toward group playing, if you dont like it then dont use them.
8. Agreed necros need slayers, Also agree the rev needs a boost. Its mainly a pvp summon though because it teleports to ppl and reveals stealthers.
9. I think the necro summons should act this way also.
10. Agreeed ss and bard should work independant of each other
11. If you want stronger summons get spellweaving and cast arcane empowerment

12. All of you people that do not understand balance are crying about the PvP'ers. We want things balance because it effects us. When your just fighting AI, the AI cannot state what is imbalanced. Everyone knows RC is OP but the trammies are the reason it hasnt been balanced. Trammies are the reason stoneform is still the ONLY chokepoint pvp form that is still viable. You trammies make the game boring for us. And by the way all the pvpers also pvm. You are the ones who do not experience the full game.

 

[Tjalle]

Can´t necro spellbooks be crafted with slayer mods on them?

Or can´t a necro use a magery spellbook with slayer mods on it?

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

no and no necro spells are not effected by slayers no matter what kind of books its on

 

[frostbolt]

They're always trying to nerf DP and they're always trying to nerf everything else. They should just be making other things more balanced and stronger rather than making everything so weak. The PvP people are making the PvM people bored. I like to be able to do alot of things with my character and so far, the Bard/Necro/Mage seems to be the most fun.

But with being able to do so much with the slow times on the spells, the you can't use this yet and the fails and then the bugs that just cause death or the skills that technically just do not work, it just becomes frustrating and slow.

Exactly nerfing is not fun and is totally unnecessary when its just as easy to buff gimped skills and abilities instead. The first thing they should do is make player hp scale the same as monster hp. The fact that we are still running around with a cap of 150 hp while monsters have like a 100000 is kind of getting ridiculous.

Secondly magery needs a buff especially in the summoning department. Energy vortexes are pretty much obsolete at this point in the game and they could use 120 wrestling, 100 or so more hp as well as the ability to cast spells. Reduce their chances to be dispelled as well. Also its probably a good idea to remove damage split on stuff like chain lightning so that its actually worth casting as an aoe spell.

This goes for tamer pets as well. Tamer pets need a buff in the wrestle skill department so that the greater dragon isn't the only viable pet to use in high end stuff.

Properly balanced PVM is all about making as many skills and templates viable and on par with each other in terms of utility, solo capability, and damage dealing capacity. And magery is falling behind in two of these criteria.

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

Magery is not as powerful on damage output as some others but magery is by far the most diverse skill in the game. Thats the balance there.

 

[Anon McDougle]

Only speaking on the bard songs I disagree the Disco ones work great !!

 

[O'Brien]

11. If you want stronger summons get spellweaving and cast arcane empowerment

Yes, and also there's dyrad allure, which you can now use to get a 2000 hp cave troll with high resists.

You trammies make the game boring for us. And by the way all the pvpers also pvm. You are the ones who do not experience the full game.

I agree with most of your post, but come on. Trammie-hate much?
<edit>Oh I just realized that was in response to comments made by the OP about pvpers. Carry on then </edit>

 

[O'Brien]

Exactly nerfing is not fun and is totally unnecessary when its just as easy to buff gimped skills and abilities instead. The first thing they should do is make player hp scale the same as monster hp. The fact that we are still running around with a cap of 150 hp while monsters have like a 100000 is kind of getting ridiculous.

They just increased the monsters hp because they were too easy at 150 hp. Do you think they should be easier, or do you propose another way to make monsters challenging?

Secondly magery needs a buff especially in the summoning department. Energy vortexes are pretty much obsolete at this point in the game and they could use 120 wrestling, 100 or so more hp as well as the ability to cast spells. Reduce their chances to be dispelled as well. Also its probably a good idea to remove damage split on stuff like chain lightning so that its actually worth casting as an aoe spell.

Magery doesn't need a buff. It's only 120 skillpoints, is easilly supplemented by many skills, and remains to be one of the most popular skills in the game. EVs have their uses, but if you need something stronger, add mysticism, taming, or spellweaving to your template, as most mages do. Also, I happen to find chain lighting quite useful while in wraith form.

This goes for tamer pets as well. Tamer pets need a buff in the wrestle skill department so that the greater dragon isn't the only viable pet to use in high end stuff.

Never played a tamer, but I think they use more than just greater dragons on high end stuff.

Properly balanced PVM is all about making as many skills and templates viable and on par with each other in terms of utility, solo capability, and damage dealing capacity. And magery is falling behind in two of these criteria.

Doing just fine over here as a full-time mage. No, I don't solo peerless or champs, but I find the spawn fit for me and still make a nice profit on it. I think the problem people have with magery is it isn't a skill you master in 2 days like most of the other PvM templates.

 

[frostbolt]

They just increased the monsters hp because they were too easy at 150 hp. Do you think they should be easier, or do you propose another way to make monsters challenging?



Magery doesn't need a buff. It's only 120 skillpoints, is easilly supplemented by many skills, and remains to be one of the most popular skills in the game. EVs have their uses, but if you need something stronger, add mysticism, taming, or spellweaving to your template, as most mages do. Also, I happen to find chain lighting quite useful while in wraith form.



Never played a tamer, but I think they use more than just greater dragons on high end stuff.



Doing just fine over here as a full-time mage. No, I don't solo peerless or champs, but I find the spawn fit for me and still make a nice profit on it. I think the problem people have with magery is it isn't a skill you master in 2 days like most of the other PvM templates.

1) Uh theres a difference between harder and annoying. Monster hp being high just makes the game more annoying, it doesn't make it harder or more challenging. Time spent to kill one thing=/= difficulty. The proper correlation you are looking for when talking about difficulty is monster fighting skills and damage per hit vs player hp. Not monster Hp vs player Hp.

Example
They can increase Travesty hp by another 100000 and it would still be easy. but it would just be super annoying to try and kill it.
They can decrease Medusa hp by 50000 and it would still be intermediate difficulty, Medusa having 100000 hp doesn't make it harder. Its harder because its got specials and does more damage than Trav. If i already tanked medusa for 10 min its pretty obvious i'm gona kill it eventually. Theres no difference in terms of difficulty if i've been there for 10 min or 20 min. More hp = timesink
They can decrease Osiredon hp by 30000 and it would still be hard because of its specials, damage, and mechanics.

Hp = Amount of time it takes to kill something
Damage and specials = difficulty level of monster

Example
Chief paroxymus poison nova and Dreadhorn's aoe poison instantly makes them higher tier in terms of difficulty than something like grizzle who doesn't have any specials that either does massive damage or causes it to target switch. All 3 of them have about the same number of hitpoints.

Also on the opposite side of the spectrum giving a monster the ability to 1 shot as a skill or such extreme damage that you dying is inevitable no matter what, that does not make it harder or more challenging. That just crosses the line into annoying. Giving them an ability to one hit you without chance of recovery is akin to a monster i-win button and there's no "challenge" if there is no mechanic that allows you to avoid it.

Dying a lot to unavoidable damage =/= measure of difficulty.
Not dying because of the ability to react to monster specials and use fight mechanics to avoid it = pvm objective with good fight mechanics and potential challenge.

Therefore increasing the amount of hp of the player isn't the problem. Keeping the players at 150 hp while they scale things like lizardmen to have 500 hp and the ability to do like 30 damage a hit is annoying and not challenging. If you care about challenge then you would be asking for better pvm fight mechanics as well as more player character skills that let them defend themselves against said fight mechanics. You would not be asking for more monster hp or to ramp monster damage up till the only thing that can tank it is a greater dragon thats being healed by more than 2 people.


2) Magery is only popular because its got utility. You remove recall/mark and invisibility and the only thing its got is different colored damaging spells (for pvm).
Magery may have healing and cure, but cleansing winds is better.
Magery may have aoe but wither and hailstorm is better
Magery may have poisoning and fields but who really relies on poisoning and fields in pvm anyway. Fields maybe if you are trying to solo melisande but outside of that its not really used in anything.

3) Um no tamers don't use anything but greater dragons and maybe a cusidhe on high end stuff if soloing. High end stuff is peerless and Champ spawn bosses not something like an oni.

4) Yea you don't solo peerless or champs so you aren't doing high end stuff. Its not about mastering a skill especially when the skill in question is only good for utility (heals, invisi, marking). If something is less powerful than something else in 2/3 departments (utility, damage, soloing capability) then chances are its just gimp and could use a buff.

PVM Balance should revolve around.
Utility
Damage (direct damage spells and attacks)
Solo capability (High end stuff) (This is a break down of the skill by itself not in conjunction with other templates)

A Skill/template is balanced if its got 2/3 compared to another skill/template.
If its only got 1/3 then its gimp
If its got 0/3 then its so bad that its not even worth using.
Having 3/3 in comparison to something else makes it overpowered in comparison, because no one will use another skill/template except whatever has the 3/3.


Example
[Magery]
Utility (Score 1/1)
-mark/recall
-invisibility
-fields
-healing/cure
-polymorph (good for some encounters like succubus if male)
-paralyze
-protection
-resurrection

Damage (Score 0/1)
-Assortment of damage types, however these spells do not do more or less damage than nukes from other skills/templates in terms of single target
-Damage split on aoe is bad

Solo Capability (Score 0/1)
Magery has nothing that by itself allows you to solo high end monsters, and does not function as a pivotal part of a functioning template that can solo such things.
You can argue that invisibility is that pivotal role, but the function can be replicated by chugging an invisibility potion. And even if i remove potions from the equation, i still have no reason to bring magery above 60 if the only thing its good for is invisibility.

Final analysis
Magery is only good for utility and nothing else. Many of its functions can be replicated by a scroll (protection scrolls) or a potion. There is no real benefit to bring magery all the way up to 120. Magery has a score of 1/3 and could use a buff in the damage dealing department, or an extreme buff to its summons which would then bump its solo capability score to 1/1.

[Necromancy]
Utility (Score 1/1)
-Corpse skin
-Forms (Necromancy forms such as vampire form and wraith form are pivotal in a number of templates including but not limited to sampires, whammies, and peerless soloing casters)
-Evil Omen

Damage (Score 1/1)
- Best caster aoe in game

Solo capability (Score 0/1)

Final analysis
-Necromancy while weak by itself serves an important function in various templates. It gives sampires/whammies the ability to solo peerless and champs, and casters the ability to clear champ spawns fast.

[Mysticism]
Utility (1/1)
-Cleansing winds
-Mass sleep
-Healing stone
-Spell trigger
-Colossus

Damage (0/1)
-Limited number of damage types, does not do more or less than other types of damage from other skills/templates in terms of single target.

Solo capability (1/1)
Mysticism by itself allows for soloing of a number of high end monsters.

Final analysis
- Mysticism utility rivals that of magery having better heals, summons, and CC but lacking out of combat utility such as mark and recall. Its got high solo capability by itself, and when used in conjunction with other casting skills, it plays an important part in allowing a caster to actually solo a number of peerless that have been closed to them before the creation of mysticism.

[Spellweaving]
Utility-0/1
While spellweaving has a number of utility spells gift of life, attunement, ethereal voyage, etc. The cooldown (like 5 min) makes these spells too situational to use.

Damage (1/1)
Word of death is the best nuke in the game as soon as monster hits 30% hp
Essence of wind in conjunction with wraith form can also do a significant amount of damage. Its like a wider area wither, but takes a whole lot more mana.

Solo capability (0/0)

Final analysis
- Spell weaving has a lot of potential but the unnecessarily long cooldowns make the skill gimp. Its only functioning at 1/3 of its potential when it could easily be a 2/3

[Weapon skills]
Utility -0/0

Damage -(1/1)
Armor ignore

Solo capability -(0/1)(1/1)
Keep in mind that even though i gave weapon skills a solo capability of 0/1 by itself, this score will instantly become 1/1 when used in conjunction with other weapon associated skills.


Final analysis
Casting skills can function by themselves, but weapon skills do not. Therefore solo capability of weapon skills have to be measured with associated skills attached.
Weapons with armor ignore will pretty much always hit for higher damage against a high resist monster than any casting skill. So weapon skills trump all casting skills in terms of damage except for spellweaving at 30% monster hp.

 

[Redxpanda]

I have had some issues with peacemaking where creatures i calm immediately re-target me. Sometimes they agro and just sit there but sometimes they come after me immediately. It almost seems as if i failed to calm at times because they barely lose a step. I cursed the day they changed provoke but being a bard is super difficult already so i feel the OPs pain when it comes to issues with that.

I really enjoy the updates that we get but some comparable changes to characters and skills should come with all these changes.

 

[Meatbread]

Final analysis
Casting skills can function by themselves, but weapon skills do not. Therefore solo capability of weapon skills have to be measured with associated skills attached.
Weapons with armor ignore will pretty much always hit for higher damage against a high resist monster than any casting skill. So weapon skills trump all casting skills in terms of damage except for spellweaving at 30% monster hp.

What an awful post.

Hey devs, let's make players able to seriously solo stuff with just magery. After all, you can solo things with a weapon skill, as long as you also have a bunch of other skills. But magery shouldn't require a bunch of other skills. Because... uh... well just look at my awesome 0-to-1 scoring system!

 

[frostbolt]

What an awful post.

Hey devs, let's make players able to seriously solo stuff with just magery. After all, you can solo things with a weapon skill, as long as you also have a bunch of other skills. But magery shouldn't require a bunch of other skills. Because... uh... well just look at my awesome 0-to-1 scoring system!

At 60 -70 points you already have access to 90% of magery utility and further skill in magery provides nothing for a caster template that utilizes another skill for damage in pvm. When used by itself magery is clearly absurdly underpowered when compared to something like mysticism, the only skill that can be directly compared to magery due to the fact that they have very similar functions in the utility and damage spells. Not only this but most of the important Magery utility spells can be completely replaced by carrying 30 invisiblity potions and 10 protection scrolls. At this point you can just drop magery to 0 and not notice a difference. Therein lies its problem.

And of course weapon skills have to be measured differently from casting skills. Casting skills +their synergy skill have the capability of functioning by themselves because most of them contain both damaging and healing spells while weapon skills do not.

Casting skills have at its disposal a wide variety of spells that serve different functions which can be activated whenever they are needed without the aid of a 3rd skill.

Weapon skills+their synergies (tactics anatomy etc) however only have 2 at a time, and only 3 of them actually serve any real function in pve. The rest of their functionality comes from separate supporting skills like healing or necromancy. Nevertheless when a dexxer has access to a healing skill as well, weapon skills have a solo capability of 1/1. The point for solo capability was not placed in necromancy, or the healing skill because the weapon skill (feint and armor ignore) is what allows the template to solo things in the first place. Without those skills it you would be hitting peerless for 30 points of damage and getting killed due to not leeching enough back. Necromancy and healing themselves do not provide the most important mechanics that allow the template to solo anything.

Weapon skill solo capability without healing 0/1
Necromancy solo ability 0/1
Healing solo ability 0/1
Weapon skill solo capability with some form of healing ability 1/1
Clearly weapon skill brings the most important mechanics here. Because as i said above, u can have 120 weapon skill and necromancy but if you don't have armor ignore and feint as melee or just armor ignore as range then you are probably not gona be killing anything worth mentioning.

Magery solo capability by itself -0
Magery solo capability with mysticism - 0
Its actually the mysticism thats allowing the caster to solo anything not the magery skill itself. Therefore the point for solo capability goes to mysticism not magery.

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

Magery is plenty strong by itself. With just magery, no eval you can... Heal, cure, arch cure, greater cure, invis, teleport, telekenisis, mind blast, energy field, paralize field, resurect, mark and gate. Magery is by far the most diverse skill ingame. The problem seems to be you dont know how to use it. If your fighting mobs that have high cold then hailstorm isnt doing you any good is it. Like at the Nierra champ, the split damage of meteor swarm is better than hailstorm for the most part. But you dont understand these mechanics. Oh and dont talk about tamers not have any other pets to "solo" things. A greater dragon is a tank nothing more, this is an MMO, if you want tank and DPS find some friends (hence the MMO part). But we always take a rune beetle to our harries that we do on LS. The armor curruption of a rune beetle makes it an amazing dps pet.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I'm only just discovering the joys of a fully skilled mage - always before magery has been a support skill for a tamer etc, without the back up of eval and full medi. With my first 120/120/120 mage char I'm having a ball. But then I don't expect to do higher than the mini champ renowneds solo.

Full template also included provo/disco/music, but those aren't fully trained yet so I reach a stage where I get 'your skill is not up to that task'.
EVs tend not to go walk about if you've cast them close enough to the target, and if they do, provo reminds them where they should be. With full medi, max lmc and significant mr, if they get squished or dispelled I just cast another - meditating for as long as I can fit in before I have to cast another, even if that's only a second. I think some folk have forgotten about active meditation.
Last mini champ I did net me a cool 600k. 40k from the spawn, 10k from handing in the ancient tome I got at the museum and 550k from the stall in Magincia that I discovered bought that particular spawn's essence for 50k per.

 

[frostbolt]

Magery is plenty strong by itself. With just magery, no eval you can... Heal, cure, arch cure, greater cure, invis, teleport, telekenisis, mind blast, energy field, paralize field, resurect, mark and gate. Magery is by far the most diverse skill ingame. The problem seems to be you dont know how to use it. If your fighting mobs that have high cold then hailstorm isnt doing you any good is it. Like at the Nierra champ, the split damage of meteor swarm is better than hailstorm for the most part. But you dont understand these mechanics. Oh and dont talk about tamers not have any other pets to "solo" things. A greater dragon is a tank nothing more, this is an MMO, if you want tank and DPS find some friends (hence the MMO part). But we always take a rune beetle to our harries that we do on LS. The armor curruption of a rune beetle makes it an amazing dps pet.

Mysticism has 3 types of damage types, cold physical and energy. Eagle strike does 50 damage when u wear a slayer. Therefore the diversity of magery damage types count for a whole lot less because its not like i don't have access to other damage types with other casting skills. So like i said magery is really only good for its utility.

And ill reiterate whats the point of bringing magery above 60-70 skill if i only ever really need to use greater heal, cure, and invisibility? paralyze can be subsituted by sleep. And recalling/mark is not a mechanic that improves the skills combat capability.

Magery is diverse yes, but that doesn't mean it couldn't use a buff in various places. damage split and improved summons.

If you want to go the "nerfing" route then remove cleansing winds from mysticism and give it to magery instead. A lot of mysticism spells are almost as or just as good as the magery variant, honestly i havn't used magery for anything cept recalls and invisibility for the longest time. Healing stone/cleansing wind is better. Sleep is better than paralyze because it doesnt break instantly on damage etc.

On the subject of tamers, i'm not the only one who's been asking for higher pet skills or pet power scrolls. there was an entire thread dedicated to that a while ago.

 

[SugarSmacks]

If a mage has poisoning then the spawns they create should also have poisoning. Like, a Green EV, A Poisoned Energy Vortex or a Daemon spawn that casts DP.

Yes lets all summon some polar bears so they can have dp yey for dp polar bears!

This makes as much sense as them having poisoners resistant to poisoning. Both are on track with the same believablity it should be implemented immediately!

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

Gdragons are strong enough. A pet should not be all kill easy mode. I agree there should more more pets on level with the Gdragons that deal dif damage types and have a dif resist breakdown but nothing more than that. Magery is plenty powerful if you know how to use it. Poison fields while out alot of lower spawn if you know how to play them. I can push any champ spawn to level 2 (except oaks) using nothing but poison fields if i wanted. Then you can push it to level 3 using chainlighting or meteor swarm. Then slayer and proper single target spell to get champ up. No its not as much damage as a thrower or samipre but the diversity is so much greater than those and mystics. Also on a mage you have at least 240 skill points left over (thats assuming you have resist) so you can have music/disco/peace/provo, inscription for more DI but i think this is a waste in pvm, weaving for all its goodies, mystic/focus, necro/ss, taming/lore... the utility that magery adds to anything is priceless. If you cant see that you do not know how to use magery

 

[frostbolt]

Gdragons are strong enough. A pet should not be all kill easy mode. I agree there should more more pets on level with the Gdragons that deal dif damage types and have a dif resist breakdown but nothing more than that. Magery is plenty powerful if you know how to use it. Poison fields while out alot of lower spawn if you know how to play them. I can push any champ spawn to level 2 (except oaks) using nothing but poison fields if i wanted. Then you can push it to level 3 using chainlighting or meteor swarm. Then slayer and proper single target spell to get champ up. No its not as much damage as a thrower or samipre but the diversity is so much greater than those and mystics. Also on a mage you have at least 240 skill points left over (thats assuming you have resist) so you can have music/disco/peace/provo, inscription for more DI but i think this is a waste in pvm, weaving for all its goodies, mystic/focus, necro/ss, taming/lore... the utility that magery adds to anything is priceless. If you cant see that you do not know how to use magery

I'm not saying that you can't do these things. im saying that other skills simply do them better. If i were running a full caster template in a champ spawn i wouldn't even be casting magery spells for the first 2 levels of spawn. I'd be using wither which is faster for those first 2 levels, and its more beneficial to have necro+spirit speak on the template than to have poisoning anyway. And for the higher levels of spawn id be using rising colossus. and hailstorm or bombard +slayer book.

Yes magery has a lot of utility, but its not worth bringing magery all the way up to 100 for utility alone. Hence the reason why i only gave magery points in the utility department. Since its other damaging capabilities can be performed just as well if not better by another skill that's most likely going to be on the template as well. I mean obviously i acknowledged magery utility. I just don't think magery is good enough in any other department.

The only peerless where magery fields actually make a difference between whether you can solo it or not on a caster template is melisande. In which you wall melisande off on one side of the map and cast summons and damaging spells at it from the other side.

Example
[Magery]
Utility (Score 1/1)
-mark/recall
-invisibility
-fields
-healing/cure
-polymorph (good for some encounters like succubus if male)
-paralyze
-protection
-resurrection

Damage (Score 0/1)
-Assortment of damage types, however these spells do not do more or less damage than nukes from other skills/templates in terms of single target
-Damage split on aoe is bad

Solo Capability (Score 0/1)
Magery has nothing that by itself allows you to solo high end monsters, and does not function as a pivotal part of a functioning template that can solo such things.
You can argue that invisibility is that pivotal role, but the function can be replicated by chugging an invisibility potion. And even if i remove potions from the equation, i still have no reason to bring magery above 60 if the only thing its good for is invisibility.

Final analysis
Magery is only good for utility and nothing else. Many of its functions can be replicated by a scroll (protection scrolls) or a potion. There is no real benefit to bring magery all the way up to 120. Magery has a score of 1/3 and could use a buff in the damage dealing department, or an extreme buff to its summons which would then bump its solo capability score to 1/1.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

If you have 100 points into poisoning, then you should get your 100 points worth. It has alot of potential. What I was referring to was the fact that we can cast poison. So, then why wouldn't the summons we create be able to do the same? Why would the energy we create not be a poisonus energy and why would not a polar bear be rabbit or festering? You have to remember it's created by the mage. It's not a polar bear that is born from 2 other polar bears, it's summoned with the knowledge of poisoning and in some cases if you train poisoning and you taste the poison each time your body will work up an immune resistance to poison to the point where it will kill someone else and not affect you at all.

There's a huge double standard here that I was trying to point out. They give me a stronger poison and it does an awesome affect on a monster then some guy dies in PvP and they nerf poison but it's ok if I die by the monster.

Alof of this to me, is a matter of perspective, just compare the skills. We can break it down in each category. For example: Followers, The Necro gets the revenant, The Mage gets the EV, Mythic Collosus, and The Tamer Greater Dragon. So, for example, just for the sake of arguement, 2 EVs and 1 Greater Dragon, quesiton, "Are they comparable? They take up the same follower space. Should they not be close to Hit Points, Spell Capacity and speed of kill possibly.

So, if I have 120 120 skill then use equally followers spots, I am making a choice of what to use. So, if I think Mystic is better than Mage/EV does that not dictate I should change skills making EVs and Magery obsolete? That's how I am looking at it. All same amount of skiill and followers but some alot better? Is this why everyone is a Mystic or Tamer?

Same with Bard Song, Disco, just focus on bard skill. 120 music, 120 disco, compare 120 Magery, 120 Eval.

Mana used equal to damage done? No, why not? ? Because Mage should be better than Bard?

It's not like I can use the mana twice once you use the mana it's gone and you can't use different types of followers. So, why are some so much better and others so very weak? For example, If I choose to use The Necro Revant and an EV together, i'm using all of my followers but how do they compare to other skill sets and this is assuming that you have both skills. What if you only had Necromancy?

Like I said, I do not think I should change out Mage for Mystic but at this point it seems the best choice because of how much more powerful Collusus is compared to EVs and do you notice in this statment, that, I only really care about those 2 things? We're not even talking about all of the other spells.

Also, you take a Sampire and a Bard to kill the Devourer of Souls and see if you can get rights. Use Disco then cast EVs. Oh wait the time it takes to cast the EVs, is the same the Sam takes to kill, plus the EV doesn't seem interested today. Try Bard Song, that should work right? Ok try a revanant or wither.

You can also make both temps and time how long it takes for each one to kill it. Let's see, Bard 5 minutes, Sampire, 8 seconds. In addition, Wrath Form moves slow. Vamp seek and destroy under 1 minute. Bard/Necr seek and find next spawn because Boss is dead. So, just by comparing the differences, makes me wonder, why everything is unbalanced and why not each skill more independant and capable.

 

[frostbolt]

you cannot compare a bard to a sampire like that. Bard skills are pure support abilities and Magery is pretty gimp in the summoning department. A sampire is tiers above a bard mage in pvm in terms of soloing, not to mention that their functions are different anyway. Sampire = DPS tank, Bard = debuffer and CCer

Furthermore you can't compare magery to discordance. Discordance wasn't meant to do damage at all. It has no purpose except to serve as a monster debuff to help you do more damage with something else, whereas magery can function as a stand alone skill.

 

[Lynk]

Yes, and also there's dyrad allure, which you can now use to get a 2000 hp cave troll with high resists.

Where is this troll?

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

Do not forget the *almost* free defense advantage of mage weapons. Also swordsmanship by itself does not do much of anything without tactics and anat at the minimun. Mystic doesnt do anythign without focus/imbue, necro doesnt do anything without ss. Its up to you the player to use these skills to build something powerful. When you combine the versitility of magery with something like bard/mystic/necro then you have a real template

 

[Gorbs]

Yes lets all summon some polar bears so they can have dp yey for dp polar bears!

This is without a doubt my favorite post you have ever made.

 

[Aurelius]

If you have 100 points into poisoning, then you should get your 100 points worth. It has alot of potential. What I was referring to was the fact that we can cast poison. So, then why wouldn't the summons we create be able to do the same? Why would the energy we create not be a poisonus energy and why would not a polar bear be rabbit or festering? You have to remember it's created by the mage. It's not a polar bear that is born from 2 other polar bears, it's summoned with the knowledge of poisoning and in some cases if you train poisoning and you taste the poison each time your body will work up an immune resistance to poison to the point where it will kill someone else and not affect you at all.

Well, it could be argued that since it's 'summoned', not 'created', your bear isprecisely 'born from two polar bears'.... the mage just hauls the poor thing away from home for a few minutes before a presumably very confused bear reappears back in his cave.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

Well, it could be argued that since it's 'summoned', not 'created', your bear isprecisely 'born from two polar bears'.... the mage just hauls the poor thing away from home for a few minutes before a presumably very confused bear reappears back in his cave.

I don't see a summoning as just the moving of something from point A to point B or it would be called Transport Spell and have Rel Por sound. They would look the same and act the same as they normally do when you encounter them in the world.
When you summon you first created in your mind using the outer shell of the creature to transpond your energy and then call it forth in your image. So, the simple part is the image because to conjure, you need to have a base to build on or energy could turn into air.

It appears and you are its' master. If you had just transported it, it would act like EVs and just look at you funny and walk away or if you simply transported an alligator or a skunk what do you think would happen?

You really think you could just pluck a daemon from hell and not need to answer to its' true master? I do not believe your idea of a summon even has an arguement. You create it in your mind and then call it forth, it's not even real. It's a magical image that is a manifestation not some type of gateway.

you cannot compare a bard to a sampire like that. Bard skills are pure support abilities and Magery is pretty gimp in the summoning department. A sampire is tiers above a bard mage in pvm in terms of soloing, not to mention that their functions are different anyway. Sampire = DPS tank, Bard = debuffer and CCer

Furthermore you can't compare magery to discordance. Discordance wasn't meant to do damage at all. It has no purpose except to serve as a monster debuff to help you do more damage with something else, whereas magery can function as a stand alone skill.

The reason you cannot compare them is, because of their design. For example: If you just switched the summons around like, give Mysticsm the Revanent and give Necromancy the Collusus or give it to Bard. Is Bard still just a support character?

I mean, I understand how things are, you don't have to explain that. What you have to explain is why they are like they are and answer the question. Is this why there are a select few templates because if that is the case, then the designers are going to essentially be making skills or spells or even templates obsolete.

You see, you somehow seem to have the idea that a Bard would become to powerful or that a Necromancer would be to powerful and the underlined question would be, Why would they be to powerful because it would affect PvP, because it would make killing a monster to easy but then again we are talking about balance and what is the difference to have one over-powered template or 2 that are selected rather than a wide range of possibilities that each skill would have the unique capabilities of but instead the system is defined. This does not make sense.

So, you're saying, because this is, therefore it must be. That's not an answer. I have well over 13 years experience. I understand how the things work. The question is, Why?

Yes, a Bard is a support character but does it have to remain limited simply because you say it does?

 

[Aurelius]

I don't see a summoning as just the moving of something from point A to point B or it would be called Transport Spell and have Rel Por sound. They would look the same and act the same as they normally do when you encounter them in the world.
When you summon you first created in your mind using the outer shell of the creature to transpond your energy and then call it forth in your image. So, the simple part is the image because to conjure, you need to have a base to build on or energy could turn into air.

It appears and you are its' master. If you had just transported it, it would act like EVs and just look at you funny and walk away or if you simply transported an alligator or a skunk what do you think would happen?

You really think you could just pluck a daemon from hell and not need to answer to its' true master? I do not believe your idea of a summon even has an arguement. You create it in your mind and then call it forth, it's not even real. It's a magical image that is a manifestation not some type of gateway.

It has an extremely good argument - the spell is 'summon' creature, or summon elemental, or summon daemon .... if as part of the summoning you also compel actions, that doesn't change what you do - you summon, not create, invent or construct.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

The summon part in the name is referring to the end result not in the process.

For example: Conceiving a child that is later born, can finally be summoned by using a name. The name refers to the end result of the creation. For example: If you were to summon someone you would call them by their name but that does not define how they came to be. It only refers to the end result of whom they are.

When you summon creature you're not calling it, you're creating it. The word call is the same as create, to call forth or to create are the same.

Summon means call in this name it's a reference to create, meaning the creation of, the calling of. That's why there is a word that is spoken so that at the end of the process it is given a name and then becomes physical.

This does not explain the process of how it is called or how it is created. If you look at the mechanics of the game itself, of the real fact of energy being manipulated by programming you can understand its' true form, which is basically data and energy being summoned by a program and created just as imagination perceived it and was then created or called forth by its' designer. For it to be a simple tranferance, we would have to assume that it was already created, which would be impossible if it did not exist beforehand. So, there can be only one conclusion, that the creature is created within the mind not part of an existing world that is simply revealed or moved. This would be the foundation of time itself as to the present, it does not exist but as to the future, it will be. I summon the future. I call forth the future. I create it in my image.

 

[SugarSmacks]

If you have 100 points into poisoning, then you should get your 100 points worth. It has alot of potential. What I was referring to was the fact that we can cast poison. So, then why wouldn't the summons we create be able to do the same? Why would the energy we create not be a poisonus energy and why would not a polar bear be rabbit or festering? You have to remember it's created by the mage. It's not a polar bear that is born from 2 other polar bears, it's summoned with the knowledge of poisoning and in some cases if you train poisoning and you taste the poison each time your body will work up an immune resistance to poison to the point where it will kill someone else and not affect you at all.

The image of rising collusses with deadly posion comes to mind. Im sure that will really just be a community pleaser.

If you are going to suggest a change in game mechanics you should first look at how that game mechanic can be exploited to its worst potential first, because in the world of Ultima Online, it will be.

 

[Petra Fyde]

You 'summon' a creature in that you are calling it forth from the void, to which it returns when released.
Is the power of the rising collosus not offset by the very short amount of time it lasts?

 

[Aurelius]

The summon part in the name is referring to the end result not in the process.

For example: Conceiving a child that is later born, can finally be summoned by using a name. The name refers to the end result of the creation. For example: If you were to summon someone you would call them by their name but that does not define how they came to be. It only refers to the end result of whom they are.

When you summon creature you're not calling it, you're creating it. The word call is the same as create, to call forth or to create are the same..

Sorry, but this makes no sense .... the child, in your example, already exists - and you 'call', or 'summon', the existing thing by name. Summon means to bring an existing thing to you. Not to make something.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

But then you're only calling the name. There has to be a point where something is created or nothing can appear. For example: Just calling me by name, does not make me appear. I have to be born first.

You 'summon' a creature in that you are calling it forth from the void, to which it returns when released.
Is the power of the rising collosus not offset by the very short amount of time it lasts?

No, the collosus doesn't seem to be off set by time. I gave my Smith Mysticism. I had 120 Imbuing and now 120 Mysticism and he is now a Lord and probably the most capable character I have. A bunch of alligators and lizardmen can gather around while i'm smithing and 1 Hailstorm and they're dead. I get healing stones, I can pre-cast healing stones. Compared to Magery it seems more powerful.

If you build a character and you don't have imbuing at 120 or focus at 120, they do not last very long. Most of my designs are set up with 4 people in mind. So, this is off set by the ability to just keep casting. For example: If my collosus poofs then there's a good chance there will still be 3 others.

The main reason I put this on the smith was because of fishing, where I used to use magery at 120, a mage weapon bow and I would shoot the serpents with the bow.

Now, I am a Mystic with probably more power than any other template exists. It would be interesting to see if I could fight my other chars. If my smith could now take them but there is a big difference if you only have Mysticism as far as the timer goes.

That's an interesting question because I was going to talk about that because to change the current character I have now, I need to add another 120 skill and to achieve this, believe it or not, I would have to lower my skills so that I could place +15 on my jewelry. I find it interesting that I will be lowering my skill to become more powerful. The skills that I have, I have worked very hard for. For example: Spirit Speak or Magery or Discord, Necromancy. These are skills that take some time to build to 120 but now I will be lowering them and using items with skill gain on them so that I can use Mysticism with the bonus of focus which gives you a mana regeneration gain as well and then with liche form, I will be at max regeneration where I can then switch to wrath form if there are enough spawns to maintain a steady flow of mana from wither and at the same time maintain a collosus and area peace.

With this template, in our team we have alternating skills, so 1 of us is a provoker while the other one is a discorder. Once this template is mastered I plan on making 2 more where I believe I will be able to completely destroy any spawn but it just seems sad that magery has become the skill that will be stoned.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

If you have 100 poisoning and you create a collosus and the collosus poisons you it should DP you. There should be chance of lethal and that chance should be in some cases, fatal. Death is something you should accept. Other templates could be made to have the same abilities where certain spells or action could result in death.

If you're going to Player vs. Player you could always set up rules, that say no summon but if you're field fighting and I have 100 poison and I take the time to create a collosus then why should it not DP?

You don't hear me go crying when I fight a poison elemental. Dear Devs, Please remove the poison skill from the game. A poison elemental poisoned me and I died because I could not cure its' poison.

Dear Devs, A mage with poisoning has to much ability. When they summon things I die from their poison. It's not fair that their summons cast DP. Please nerf this so I don't have to die. Also, I do not want to work the poisoning skill. I hear it's very tough to do.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

 

[SugarSmacks]

If you have 100 poisoning and you create a collosus and the collosus poisons you it should DP you. There should be chance of lethal and that chance should be in some cases, fatal. Death is something you should accept. Other templates could be made to have the same abilities where certain spells or action could result in death.

If you're going to Player vs. Player you could always set up rules, that say no summon but if you're field fighting and I have 100 poison and I take the time to create a collosus then why should it not DP?

You don't hear me go crying when I fight a poison elemental. Dear Devs, Please remove the poison skill from the game. A poison elemental poisoned me and I died because I could not cure its' poison.

Dear Devs, A mage with poisoning has to much ability. When they summon things I die from their poison. It's not fair that their summons cast DP. Please nerf this so I don't have to die. Also, I do not want to work the poisoning skill. I hear it's very tough to do.

First of all player vs player is not (unless your dueling) rules of any sort, the rules are he who lives wins. Perhaps that is your problem with pvp you are asking for rules while your opponent is killing you. PvP is about using what works against your
opponent and typically group of opponents. What honor there was in dueling died many years ago with lack of enforcement of cheating.

By your opinion because i can dp my colluses can, so by this assumption because i can summon a colluses why the hell cant he? Then why cant his summon, summon one also, and so on?

The problems with posioning were created by THIS dev team, unless you are brand new you realize there was a significant change to poisoning not long ago, and by this logic i would say that makes it THEIR problem to fix it.

Finally death is not something you should "accept", most deaths can be avoided. I know personally i have lived through some things that must have amazed my opponents, but i did not give up. Almost every situation has a way to survive, that fact you
do not see that is inexperience. But no, one skill like poisoning should not dominate every other set of skills by everyone.

 

[O'Brien]

And ill reiterate whats the point of bringing magery above 60-70 skill if i only ever really need to use greater heal, cure, and invisibility?

Well, because the higher your magery, the more it heals and cures. <edit>And the longer you have before invis wears off, I believe</edit>

Did you write your long oversimplification of combat skills without even knowing such basics?

 

[Zyon Rockler]

First I want to just say Thank You to everybody for posting replies and I hope you continue to make observations and maybe post some of yours. Like, if you notice a problem with a spell not working, like if you get a target and it doesn't seem to work or if you realize something you're doing is completely different.

The way I look at this poisoning thing, you have to understand people would come into the bank poisoned and we would have 5 or 6 mages who would continuously cast cure and then the person would die. That's what DP was. If you got DPed, you died but it was a lethal poison, mostly from trapped boxes. People would put a box down and then someone who was curious would open the box. They would hear a hissing noise and then see the green appear on their lifebar. This meant that they were going to die.

Now, over the years, the poisoning skill has become more powerful but it has taken years when all along poisoning should of been expanded because it takes 100 skill points. So, finally a mage is able to cast poisoning at a stronger level. So, if you look at the poisoning skill like I was saying above, looking at these skills and what they are capable of and how some are very limited and how some are very powerful but they're using the same amount of skill points.

For example: A Necromancer has poisoning. Let's say he does not have magery. When he casts a revenant, which is apparently transported from Hell, every time it hits your opponent, it should have the chance to poison because that's why you have that skill. You're a poisoner. You put poison on people's food, you put poison on weapons, you put poison into your idealism of spell casting. You lay down poison fields, you use spell weapon moves to poison people with but how limited are you as a poisoner?

Let's say you can poison a weapon, can you use a weapon? Now, I can go down this whole list and show you that unless you can do something else, you cannot poison. That's my logic. Why should I have 100 points in poison and not be able to poison something? Now, by saying these things should automatically have the chance to poison you, is really being kind to your opponent. For example: The collosus would have to cast poison then it would have a chance of that poison DPing.

Also, look at the tamer with the rune beatle. Now, I could be a mage with poisoning and have taming and then have a beatle that DPs but I can't have poison and a summon.

Really, the way it should be, is there should be unlocks where you get so many extra bonuses as soon as you open up one of these skills so that you would have your own different types of summons because you're connecting the 2 together.

EVs would DP more and you could also do blade spirit where it would have a greater chance of poisoning the target. Same thing with the elementals. If you came across an elemental that had poisoning it would DP you. So, now here's a character that has DP or poison skill but he shouldn't be able to poison you through summon.

I think DP should have a chance of poisoning you where you cannot cure it. It's just that simple and I believe your summon should be DP capable, just as well as your fields and spells. Now you take away that 100 points and you can take away the DP. Until then, when you die from somebody because of DP, you should accept the death. They have won fairly by using a skill and no item can save you. That's just the way I think it should be.

 

[O'Brien]

First I want to just say Thank You to everybody for posting replies and I hope you continue to make observations and maybe post some of yours. Like, if you notice a problem with a spell not working, like if you get a target and it doesn't seem to work or if you realize something you're doing is completely different.

Thank you too! One would just hope that before suggesting changes to skills, that one would first have experience with using said skill at its current potential.

The way I look at this poisoning thing, you have to understand people would come into the bank poisoned and we would have 5 or 6 mages who would continuously cast cure and then the person would die. That's what DP was. If you got DPed, you died but it was a lethal poison, mostly from trapped boxes. People would put a box down and then someone who was curious would open the box. They would hear a hissing noise and then see the green appear on their lifebar. This meant that they were going to die.

Maybe we're thinking different eras, but in my experience, arch cure worked whenever cure didn't.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

This was a time before power scroll, a time before Trammel. A time when there were ideas of what today is like before you could cast poison with DP, before the change of total skill needed to cast DP where it would be split between magery and poison rather than just on poison. There were several changes.

It was an exploit actually that was removed, a type of bug where someone could trap a box but not receive a count. I'm not sure what else but it was a fun time because every time someone opened up a special box, inside was a special reward.

And yes, we had 100 magery and can you guess why they would run to the bank because at this time there was no insurance. So, the only hope of saving your things was to quickly open up your bank box and quickly unload. You see at that time, when you died people would swarm around your corpse and pick it apart like vultures. There were only a few kind and honorable people who would attempt to help. Maybe, by gathering up your belongings and holding on to them but there was always a thief or someone who would use the guards or some type of exploit to simply pick you clean of everything.

This was in Yew Abbey, around the time you would of seen Clan Moore and CHK as well as the YEW guild and the mayor.

So, he runs in, poisoned, and you could tell lethal because it took like a big chunk of life and then would slowly take away life. You knew at that time when people had that red above their head that they were in alot of trouble and GMs, Grand Master Skill was a powerful mage and I began to spam mass cure and as I did others did as well. Probably about 5 or 6 of us, it was like a game trying to keep them alive. I remember his last words, Good Bye.

Of course, there were times somebodies cure would work. I remember the one time, some guy told me to just forget about it and as those words left his lips, my cure was successful.

At the time mass cure was as powerful as cure. It would be much later on that mass cure would have a better chance to cure than regular cure. At that exact time, I believe we would of only used the spell cure but my memory is not clear on that particular day, which spell we had used but I assure you, we would of used the optimal spell. We were highly trained and well experienced players for our time.

 

[SugarSmacks]

Uncurable poison was always limited to being from a trap box from a gm tinker. However also when a gm tinker could do this, you could murder count them for it, yes they murder counted the crafter.

If you want crafters to take counts again then sure let them craft uncurable boxes again.

 

[Zyon Rockler]

You are wrong Sir. Why don't you ask Messana or one of the Devs to pull up the patch notes for you and have them read it to you or read it yourself.

The game was new. This was before people would get a count. The Devs had to fix the exploit so that the tinker would receive a count.

Now, try to understand I lived through this, it was a life experience. If you saw a yellow school bus crash into a pink volkswagon and then explained it to someone who did not see it, what would you think of the person that was telling you it was a green school bus? Now, you're gonna have to start listening to what i'm saying.

You're quoting, what is now. I am telling you why it is the way it is now.

You have to remember we are the ones who asked for poison to be cast. It happened because we wanted it and in the original idea we asked for the possibility of lethal and we never got it. Now, this was how many years ago. I'll give you an assignment. You go look up the patch notes to when they fixed the exploit on the tinker boxes and when you pull up that date, that's when the idea was conceived to cast DP from a mage.

The only focus we had on DP before that, was when someone would DP a dagger. Usually a thief would steal your bandages and then DP you. With there being no way to cure, you would die. This was the balance I hoped to keep within the game, it's original root where DP would actually kill. Now you can see in this scenerio, it would not take lethal because the person would not have any bandages to heal with, a lesser poison would be strong enough but I assure you there is no lethal, simply because of PvP and even though there is more protection against poison. The real problem and I can see that we are getting around that is the fact that we use 100 skill points for poison and it's the hardest skill in the game to learn. So, again, poison should have the random chance of lethal poisoning to be cast. Lethal poisoning should have the chance to be uncureable and cause death.

 

[Phangs_of_Phage]

There is no way that poison should have a chance of not being cureable at all. That is ********... yes I remember those early days but like you said, the game was new.

 

[SugarSmacks]

You are wrong Sir. Why don't you ask Messana or one of the Devs to pull up the patch notes for you and have them read it to you or read it yourself.

The game was new. This was before people would get a count. The Devs had to fix the exploit so that the tinker would receive a count.

Now, try to understand I lived through this, it was a life experience. If you saw a yellow school bus crash into a pink volkswagon and then explained it to someone who did not see it, what would you think of the person that was telling you it was a green school bus? Now, you're gonna have to start listening to what i'm saying.

You're quoting, what is now. I am telling you why it is the way it is now.

You have to remember we are the ones who asked for poison to be cast. It happened because we wanted it and in the original idea we asked for the possibility of lethal and we never got it. Now, this was how many years ago. I'll give you an assignment. You go look up the patch notes to when they fixed the exploit on the tinker boxes and when you pull up that date, that's when the idea was conceived to cast DP from a mage.

The only focus we had on DP before that, was when someone would DP a dagger. Usually a thief would steal your bandages and then DP you. With there being no way to cure, you would die. This was the balance I hoped to keep within the game, it's original root where DP would actually kill. Now you can see in this scenerio, it would not take lethal because the person would not have any bandages to heal with, a lesser poison would be strong enough but I assure you there is no lethal, simply because of PvP and even though there is more protection against poison. The real problem and I can see that we are getting around that is the fact that we use 100 skill points for poison and it's the hardest skill in the game to learn. So, again, poison should have the random chance of lethal poisoning to be cast. Lethal poisoning should have the chance to be uncureable and cause death.

Um before this latest and greatest poison patch you could cast with dp, the problem is the rate of curing combined with the resistance to poison the poisoner received, both the new devs teams ideas.

Your definition of lethal is cant be cured at all, no im fairly certain everyone thought that was lame, which was why it was removed the first time.

Now before i keep hounding you about why you want something that guarantees a kill, especially when i pretty much see this one coming ill ask my own question. Why would you want something that guarantees even a chance of unstoppablly killing someone? What fun or great experience do you think the ability to do one single thing to win a fight can provide? I see this as adding nothing to the greater experience except to get everyone to make a poisoner (that hasnt already) to sit next to their
thrower.

These kind of ideas being perpetually thrown at EA as a "cure" to the problems coming fast at them are compounding the problem.

Diablo 3 is out in May and have you seen the next level gaming they are about to do with Dust514? These are serious game killers, the market is about to experience a serious shift, and if Ultima does not compensate before then by being at least
not frowned upon by their CURRENT players, then the future of Ultima Online is bleak.

 

[O'Brien]

and if Ultima does not compensate before then by being at least
not frowned upon by their CURRENT players, then the future of Ultima Online is bleak.

Oh, I thought it was already bleak
And has been for... 10 years or so? Every new MMO released was supposed to be a "UO killer." If that's true, then UO's death is coming very slowly and painfully.

Hehe but I don't think much of UO's remaining player-base was going to be lured away by a new MMO. We have obviously found something in UO that other MMOs, both old and new, don't offer.

 

[frostbolt]

Well, because the higher your magery, the more it heals and cures. <edit>And the longer you have before invis wears off, I believe</edit>

Did you write your long oversimplification of combat skills without even knowing such basics?

Don't blame me for oversimplifying things if you lack even the basic reading comprehension to understand my so called "simplifications" of the subject.
I like how you quote

And ill reiterate whats the point of bringing magery above 60-70 skill if i only ever really need to use greater heal, cure, and invisibility?

But fail to read the rest of it. And then proceed to take things out of context

If you want to go the "nerfing" route then remove cleansing winds from mysticism and give it to magery instead. A lot of mysticism spells are almost as or just as good as the magery variant, honestly i havn't used magery for anything cept recalls and invisibility for the longest time. Healing stone/cleansing wind is better. Sleep is better than paralyze because it doesnt break instantly on damage etc.

In this entire thread i've been pointing out how magery is gimp as a stand alone skill and is almost entirely functionless in an actual template with other casting skills in high end pvm situations. Naturally one would assume that a reader would "catch on to that" and realize that what i am saying is that there is no point bringing magery up very high if its only useful for the utility spells that it can provide such as greater heal, cure and invisibility. And furthermore you point out that these skills benefit from higher skill levels, but you fail to remember that I stated a number of times previously that these were easily replaced by spells from other casting skills, so therefore there is no reason at all to bring magery up above 60-70. That's why I said I Reiterate because I already talked about this subject in a previous post in detail but that seems to go over your head.

Maybe my posts should be simplified further so that you might be able to understand. Since your memory and attention span doesn't seem to extend beyond a sentence, much less a single post.

Here i will simply it even further for you
1) What is the point of bringing magery up to 60-70 skill if i only ever really need to use greater heal, cure, and invisibility to begin with, and especially after taking into considering that cleansing wind and healing stone is better than magery heals and cures I don't even have to use any of those at all except for invisibility.

There everything from the post was squished into one simple sentence just for you and for anyone who only reads a single line and takes the entire post out of context.

And now for the long RE-explanation for those who aren't impaired in the reading comprehension department

(note- before someone starts pointing out how good fields and poison are, ill restate that fields serve no function against something like slasher, medusa, grizzle, etc in terms of the deciding factor on whether you can solo the monster or not. And poisons do even less to these types of monsters and is therefore not worth mentioning. There is only one peerless where fields and i specifically mean energy field, mean the difference between whether or not a caster can solo it and that is melisande. But that's one out of how many? It does not justify bringing magery above 60-70 for a single peerless alone. Also who wears a mage weapon in pvm over a slayer book if the peerless has one? The ability to wear a mage weapon is more of a pvp thing, so therefore such examples do not fall under what i am discussing.)

My entire premise is that magery is gimp in a full template because most of its utility and damage abilities are easily replaced by or completely overshadowed by spells from necromancy, mysticism, etc.

Sure the only thing i ever need to use in the magery tree are heals and cures and invisibility and that OBVIOUSLY does not justify bringing it above 60-70. Especially in a full template where there are other options for healing. Cleansing wind and healing stone are better so why would i ever cast heals and cures from the magery skill when a healing stone takes care of both in 2 clicks with no casting time. And whats invisibility duration for anyway? do you think I actually sit around invisible for an entire minute while soloing a peerless or something on a mystic mage?

The only thing invisibility is good for is to drop combat. I don't really even care if it only lasted 10 seconds in PVM.

So what exactly does magery have left in terms of combat function <bolded so you don't start telling me how useful marking and recalling is> in high level PVM encounters besides protection and invisibility if i'm running a mystic spellweaving mage with 40/60 necro spiritspeak while wearing a slayer spellbook? Answer is absolutely nothing. (No, level 1-2 spawn in a champ does not count as a high level encounter)

Keep in mind the functions provided by protection and invisiblity are easily replicated through a scroll and a potion [even though the potion is less reliable its not like i havn't been able to use it to drop combat from slasher after it howls on my thrower like 70% of the time]. Keeping magery for protection and invisibility is more of an ease of use thing than a necessity.

As far as i am concerned they can make magery better by either moving cleansing wind and healing stone from mysticism to magery, Or they can buff magery summons and damage so that it can function as a stand alone skill without being overshadowed by every other casting skill until its only useful for recalling, invisibility, and the occasional heal. Hence no reason to bring magery up above 60-70.

Besides they should buff summons anyway because all the casting summons (summons from magery, spellweaving, and necromancy) are pretty useless seeing where the direction new content is going as well as the dungeon revamps that favor sampires more than anything else.

As of yet no one has been able to give an example of where mage spells function better than a spell from another casting skill in an appropriate situation.
Some examples that popped up in this thread
1) low level champ spawn clearing. Poison field vs Wither. wither wins out obviously
2) Paralyze vs Sleep? Sleep is better because it does not break on hit.
3) mage weapons? More of a pvp thing.
4) Fields? Fields don't really serve much of a function in high end pvm (Not talking about level 1-2 spawns or keeping people out which is PVP) as i've stated time and time again except for maybe Melisande.
5) Greater heals /cures vs cleansing winds and healing stone. Healing stone is instant, cleansing winds cures everything

Its not impossible to fit magery, mysticism, focus, and 100/100 necro. Or Mysticism, focus, magery, spellweaving, and 40/60 necro on a template. Either of these would cancel out nearly all of magery's PVM combat utility and damaging functions with points to spare.

A single skill's "strongpoint" being diversity isn't enough to make it good in a game where you can pick up 6 120 skills or 7 100s. You already gain diversity from having a full template to begin with. Without filling a niche, or having something powerful enough that overshadows the equivalent that is available in another skill, then the skill in question is simply put gimp and not worth investing more points than needed to cast the only things you can't replicate with another skill.

Magery was good maybe 2 years ago when they had both diversity as well as the niche of having the strongest summons in the game, which scaled enough to be able to tank at least for a while the strongest monsters at the time.

But no one can honestly say that magery summons are good enough for current content where something like a lizardman in wrong has like 500 hp. In conclusion magery lost its niche to mysticism and needs a significant buff to bring it up to par with current pvm content.

 

[O'Brien]

Yes, I read your tirades, and put more thought into them than I should have.

Here i will simply it even further for you
1) What is the point of bringing magery up to 60-70 skill if i only ever really need to use greater heal, cure, and invisibility to begin with, and especially after taking into considering that cleansing wind and healing stone is better than magery heals and cures I don't even have to use any of those at all except for invisibility.

Is this your simplified question? Promise? Okay I will answer it too. If you only ever really need invisibility, then it probably isn't a good idea to waste any skillpoints on magery. Carry around some invisibility potions instead.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can go about using magery solo and killing with a single explosion/flamestrike combo monsters like white wyrms and shame earth eles.

As I have given you the benefit of reading your tirades, please allow me the benefit of simplify your point even further:

A skill like magery is "gimp" at combat if it cannot be used to solo peerless.

If that is what you're trying to say, then I respectfully disagree.

 

[frostbolt]

Yes, I read your tirades, and put more thought into them than I should have.



Is this your simplified question? Promise? Okay I will answer it too. If you only ever really need invisibility, then it probably isn't a good idea to waste any skillpoints on magery. Carry around some invisibility potions instead.

Meanwhile, the rest of us can go about using magery solo and killing with a single explosion/flamestrike combo monsters like white wyrms and shame earth eles.

As I have given you the benefit of reading your tirades, please allow me the benefit of simplify your point even further:

A skill like magery is "gimp" at combat if it cannot be used to solo peerless.

If that is what you're trying to say, then I respectfully disagree.

Good job answering my rhetorical question again. The first time you missed the entire point of the question, this time you respond with the answers that i gave in the following paragraphs. Answers that i gave in posts before the first time you quoted me even.

Obviously you didn't read as much as you claimed to, thought very little, and answered with another out of context response.

And your inability to read shows through again. Its like you cannot understand that magery contributes nothing pivotal in the process of soloing a peerless. Therefore there is no reason to have magery above 60-70 in high end pvm. Because its a mediocre ability, diversity of the skill or not in the face of current content difficulty. Its not that i think magery should be able to solo peerless by itself, I think that magery needs to be able to contribute something to the process besides just invisibility. Its original niche role- Healing and having the best summons in the game having being usurped by mysticism obviously. And even if mysticism were to be hypothetically deleted, magery would still suck in current PVM content because frankly speaking energy vortexes don't cut it anymore. In other words mages need an all around buff to bring it up to par with "current" content. Not doom, Not mondains legacy peerless, Not harrower, but Current PVM peerless and high level monster content.

If your idea of measuring the strength of a skill or template revolves around boasting of your white wyrm and earth elemental kills then you probably do not qualify to talk about anything at all regarding high level pvm. You can kill either of those without even being GM in the fighting skills of your choice.

Seriously if your argument for keeping mages mediocre is "but they can two shot a white wyrm" there is either something very wrong with you, or you haven't upgraded your account past mondain's legacy and are still farming white wyrms for gold.

 

[O'Brien]

Good job answering my rhetorical question again. The first time you missed the entire point of the question, this time you respond with the answers that i gave in the following paragraphs. Answers that i gave in posts before the first time you quoted me even.

Obviously you didn't read as much as you claimed to, thought very little, and answered with another out of context response.

And your inability to read shows through again. Its like you cannot understand that magery contributes nothing pivotal in the process of soloing a peerless. Therefore there is no reason to have magery above 60-70 in high end pvm. Because its a mediocre ability, diversity or not in the face of current content difficulty.

I get it. You'll say that about any of my posts until I agree that magery is gimp. Good luck/have fun with that.

If your idea of measuring the strength of a skill revolves around soloing white wyrms and earth elementals then you probably do not qualify to talk about anything at all regarding high level pvm. You can kill either of those without even being GM in the fighting skills of your choice.

And if your idea of measuring the strength of a skill revolves around soloing peerless, then you probably don't qualify to talk about anything at all regarding what combat skills are gimp.

 

[Petra Fyde]

I heartily wish everyone would just play the darn game as it is instead of expecting the developers to tailor it to their particular playstyle.
This conversation is going around in circles and getting no where except heated, which leads to personal attacks, which have already started. Time to call a halt.