Arcane Blade Discussion

[aztec]

Suggestion for Arcane Combat. Since it automatically gives you a point in this at level 1, can you make it a sustainable skill instead of passive? All it does for me is hinder my magic by randomly wasting mana on an attack against a weak 9hp rat. You could turn it off when you go through an area with weak monsters that you don't need the added damage for and save a lot of mana, and turn it on in tougher areas. Either that or give Arcane Blades the ability to restore mana by resting.

[darkgod]

next beta it is a sustained ability.
Shadowblades get the sametreatment too, no mana regen and some similar talents

[Elkan]

Although the free action is a great mechanic, I find it very frustrating at time, burning chain lightning on the rat that died from the physical hit alone with no other actors in sight, then a flame on on of 12 actors where chain lightning would have been useful. The casino effect I have no problem with what I do find annoying though is this.

melee swing alone is enough to kill actor, yet the spell triggers for no effect and full mana cost. wasting precious mana, there are a couple of improvements to this mechanic I would like to suggest

1: The free action of the spell cast is truly free, and has no mana cost other than the sustain. random worry free pewpew.

2. The free action has a mana cost, and player is given the option to cast or not.

3. The free action has a mana, cost and player is given the option of WHAT to cast from the available damage spells.

4. The player can choose the target of the free cast, Eg. Cleave the rat in melee and fires the flame at the skeleton archer down the hall, one-two, *pose heroicly* cue applause

[darkgod]

I have just made on hit actions not trigger if the target is dead

[Final Master]

Why do arcane blades have frosty hands when they intrinsically have no way to deal cold damage?

[darkgod]

Because this gives them on hit ice attack, which means a chance to freeze

[edge2054]

Hmm... what if earth and air both could be learned by an Arcane Blade with talent category points? The former would give them some good tactical options and the later would synergize well with icy hands and give them ice storm (which would be killer in melee).

[darkgod]

They would be able to have naerly as much ranged attack power as archmages then, I do not really want that

[Fela]

Thread necromancy

I just checked out the arcane blades and something I did not get at all: 1.20 conveyance mastery. Srsly, what's the point? I could understand 1.25, but 1.20 has no effect over 1.0 other than making the investment of an additional category point a valid option. Which it clearly isn't, since they have no spare category points, since at least 3 of the additional categories are pretty much essential - i'd even say all 4 of them were, if that was possible.

[Final Master]

And cases where there are MAD classes like arcane blades is why I say category points should be given at every 10 level mark, all the way up to 50. That way, eventually, you'll have the build you want.

[Final Master]

And cases where there are MAD classes like arcane blades is why I say category points should be given at every 10 level mark, all the way up to 50. That way, eventually, you'll have the build you want.

[Fela]

I'm not really arguing for increasing the mastery. I just can't see a point in 1.20 for a tree where it doesn't seem to have an effect, especially since there is no real reason to have it higher than 1 - which would also be in stride with the general behaviour of hybrid magic.

[madmonk]

I'm not really arguing for increasing the mastery. I just can't see a point in 1.20 for a tree where it doesn't seem to have an effect, especially since there is no real reason to have it higher than 1 - which would also be in stride with the general behaviour of hybrid magic.

The effect is to force players to spend a point on the category to get the full multiplier effect.

[Fela]

Anyone who would give up a category point to safe using arguably 1, maybe 2 generic talent points, please raise a virtual hand

[Grey]

Reviving this discussion a bit, I'd like to suggest some further tweaks to the Arcane Blade class. Currently I feel they lack cohesion - they're half fighter, half mage, and full nothing. They can be very fun of course, but I think they have a real identity problem.

The only properly unique thing they have going is Arcane Combat. Since this is special to them I think it needs to be made more central to the class. Suggestions:

1. Start with 1 point in Arcane Combat instead of Fiery Hands
2. Make Arcane Combat zero time to activate (or very short time). Coupled with the short cooldown this will make it much more of a toggle on and off at will ability. Currently it suffers the same problem as the racial abilities - in the times you want to use it there are more important things to spend your turn doing.
3. Arcane Combat should only activate Flame or Lightning. The other two spells are more tactical in use, and also much more mana-draining. Currently I always avoid putting any points into Chain Lightning because it'll absolutely ruin Arcane Combat.
4. Triple or maybe quadruple the regular cooldowns on Flame and Lightning. This has two effects - firstly, it encourages players to use Arcane Combat to get regular access to their spells. Secondly, it allows you to tactically put one of them on cooldown so that it can't be triggered by Arcane Combat (so one might let off a Flame before meleeing some fire drakes, for instance). Also, it will make them act less like spellslingers as they can at the moment - early game is especially silly, since you can blast everything with spells and still level up before running out of mana. If talents are unable to detect class in deciding cooldown then duplicate the trees for Arcane Blades with the appropriate changes made. I think their range with Lightning should also be drastically reduced to make them feel more melee-centred.

I think they could do with some other tweaks too:

- Change Fiery Hands and Frost Hands to make them look a bit more attractive. The freeze effect of frost hands is obviously killer, but the regular damage and effects are laughable. Especially silly since Arcane Blades have no cold spells. Maybe take out the percentage effects (which are utterly unnoticable) and boost the elemental damage (on the order of 5*TalentLevel). Perhaps add burning on target to Fiery Hands.
- Earthen Barrier doesn't list how long it lasts anywhere in the game. Minor tweak, but could definitely do with adding that in to the talent description.
- Arcane Feed is... well, it's a bit silly in my opinion. It just means you can sit in a safe place and keep using it and resting to fully restore mana. I'd suggest replacing it with actual passive Mana regeneration - +0.1 regen per talent level (so at talent level 5 they'd equal proper mages). I'd suggest the same for Shadow Feed as well. Perhaps as a drawback it would also slightly reduce stamina regeneration (which would not change with talent level).
- Divination spells don't fit in with the class image in my opinion, and should be removed even as an optional tree. Uh, that may not be a popular suggestion though.

Also, not sure if this is possible, but I think the talent window should be organised differently to show the focus of the class better. Something like:

Technique / Two-handed weapons
Technique / Combat techniques
Technique / Combat techniques (which needs a better name by the way - "Combat Veteran" perhaps)
Technique / Combat training
Technique / Magical combat
Spell / Enhancement
Spell / Fire
Spell / Air
Spell / Conveyance
Spell / Divination
Cunning / Survival
Cunning / Dirty fighting

May seem trivial, but I think the Enhancement tree would benefit from being grouped more in the middle, and the ill-fitting (though still of use) Cunning trees being shoved to the bottom.