For the hate of Amakthel, do something with Magic!

[0player]

Rant here: http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?p=163846#p163846
Quoting:

<...> The problem is that magic is... well, it's arcane art.
Magic stat is the most useless stat, ever, for those who don't have it in primaries. I can imagine getting points in Cunning, if only for crit chance, on any character, but Magic? God forbid. I can get decent spellsave from racials or equipment. When I get antibonus to Con or even to Str due to race/class, it's a big deal and I try to fix it. When I got Mag 8... it's probably Mag 8 for the entire run.
Mana is more or less under-used, too. Of three classes that use it, two need two invest into Willpower to raise mana limit, because they use mana limit more actively than actual mana. (Just to be clear, I'm talking about Archmage, who is a creature of shields, and Disruption Shield is garbage without high mana limit, and Necromancer, who probably needs Magic even less as he got minions).
And then there's Antimagic. "You don't need this stat anymore". Lovely.

[Strongpoint]

Problem here is that if you buff magic stat for non-casters to make it a viable choice for them, you buff all casters and they absolutely don't need a buff

[0player]

Problem here is that if you buff magic stat for non-casters to make it a viable choice for them, you buff all casters and they absolutely don't need a buff

Well, maybe, as casters can use nearly whatever they damn want. Every resource has its own semi-melee class and its ranged class and all of them use jujus and infusions and runes and tridents and everything, except maybe plate mail.
But we can always change Mag influence on casters' own abilities, if it turns out to be an issue. My point is that we have primary stat that is extremely niche.

[Strongpoint]

except maybe plate mail.

Wrong. Many caster builds enjoy plate mails, Reavers are the most obvious case.

But we can always change Mag influence on casters' own abilities, if it turns out to be an issue

You mean reducing spellpower gained per Mag point to compensate whatever added benefits for magic? That may be a solution, but it will hurt hybrids, as pure casters get a lot of +mag\spellpower gear and +spellpower class talents aren'r rare


And, most importantly, what do you offer to add? More spell save? Even tripling the amount gained will not change situation much for spelless classes

Melee related magic-based prodigies? There are some and they will be either to weak for melee class\OK for hybrid classes or OK for melee classes\Overpowered for hybrids

Adding magic related trees to every class? That will turn every class into a semi caster... Maybe it would be fun if every class had at least one (locked or otherwise) talent tree based on every stat, but is that good idea lorewise?

Granting additional spellpower based effects for existing talents? Same as above + I fail to see how to apply spellpower for stuff like steady shot or lethelity

Spellpower based generic trees that can gained by quests\from escorts? Proper casters will benefit from that more like it's now with healing light tree

Mag related bonus to use arcane powered items? Huge bonus to main users of arcane items - casters. Besides that will be like - either go high mag and use arcane powered stuff, or go low mag, Zigur and not arcane powered stuff

[Atarlost]

Problem here is that if you buff magic stat for non-casters to make it a viable choice for them, you buff all casters and they absolutely don't need a buff

This varies. I can get to the endgame and win with antimagic using wilders or psionicists, but haven't gotten close with any magic user except a sun paladin.

From my perspective casters, especially blades, play rocket tag with no actual initiative system to let them reliably get the first shot and that's no way to win a long game.

[supermini]

Problem here is that if you buff magic stat for non-casters to make it a viable choice for them, you buff all casters and they absolutely don't need a buff

This varies. I can get to the endgame and win with antimagic using wilders or psionicists, but haven't gotten close with any magic user except a sun paladin.

From my perspective casters, especially blades, play rocket tag with no actual initiative system to let them reliably get the first shot and that's no way to win a long game.

That sounds like a problem with your play style, not an actual balance issue.

If you look at the character vault, arcane casters (especially archmages) do really well even on nightmare.

[Strongpoint]

Atarlost,

What class are stronger or weaker is not the point of the discussion, especially considering that it is a matter of taste and play-style.

My point is that to make my bulwark to choose magic over, let's say constitution, you need to bump secondary benefits to levels that will make mages much stronger than they currently are

There are one interesting moment here, willpower isn't really useful for pure melee classes (stamina is good but not all classes need a lot of it and\or can't regenerate it fast enough) unless you go antimagic

Also, Dexterity for casters is like magic for pure melee class... In fact I can imagine some interesting high magic builds for berserker or brawler but fail to see a good reason to have high dexterity for corruptor, necromancer, archmage, solipsist, summoner

[supermini]

Atarlost,

What class are stronger or weaker is not the point of the discussion, especially considering that it is a matter of taste and play-style.

My point is that to make my bulwark to choose magic over, let's say constitution, you need to bump secondary benefits to levels that will make mages much stronger than they currently are

There's a quite interesting str/dex/magic build for bulwarks. As an example, here's SageAcrin's character from some time ago (the idea got stuck in my head):

http://te4.org/characters/10195/tome/53 ... 2ba9725d5a

I'd argue constitution is not exactly priority for class/race combination with high life rating. As you can see, his char ended with 1566 hp and a 550 strength shield rune. A difference of 120 hp from maxing constitution doesn't do all that much.

Here's another example: My shadowblade that doesn't use ambush tree at all, but tanks like a boss (and still dumps constitution):
http://te4.org/characters/13640/tome/f6 ... 398e5eaa53

Between heroism, time shield and barrier, who cares that I have 1300 hp?

Also, Dexterity for casters is like magic for pure melee class... In fact I can imagine some interesting high magic builds for berserker or brawler but fail to see a good reason to have high dexterity for corruptor, necromancer, archmage, solipsist, summoner

Dexterity allows you to shrug off crits. I'd say in some cases it's better than hp, and that especially applies on higher difficulty levels.

[Strongpoint]

Wow, what a creative build from Sagearcin.... Assault + greater weapon focus + Arcane might + Celestial / Light is a magnificent mix, should try it sometime but only after I'll make myself Staffbashing berserker

[HousePet]

Magic becomes useful if you get some sort of magic ability and there are quite a few on offer from escorts.

We could do with a few more diverse reasons though. From its description Magic should improve the power of all arcane devices. Many arcane artifacts have an activation that scales with Magic. Wands appear to only use Magic for extending their effect range and the wand options are not very good. Runes can scale with any stat, with the exception of two artifact runes, so that doesn't give any use for Magic. However, spellpower may come into play for making the offensive rune debuffs stick. Activations on arcane egos don't appear to scale with Magic either, unless they are directly plugged into a talent.

To summarise: Add scaling with Magic/spellpower to arcane charm powers. Also check artifacts. Make better wands. (Wand of Rejection: Teleport target enemy away, Sounds fun.)

I'd like to say runes should scale with Magic, but that would seriously alter the balance and needs careful consideration.

[SageAcrin]

Yeah, as people have already pointed out, Magic is a better stat than it looks on some odd classes. Like Bulwark. That Bulwark was so good that I think I consider that their optimal build, humorously.

This isn't necessarily arguing that it's kinda weak on non-magic builds. I think, optimally, some interest-boosting ego and artifact tweaks, that give bonuses for Magic, are good. There's already some ammo like that, though it's not immediately obvious that it calculates off Magic.

More spell procs on physical hits and more weird abilities that check Magic on gear seems like the best way to go to improve it.

Though, having it give 1.5 Spellsave per point, instead of 1, would be fine for a flat rate bonus.

[Doctornull]

I wonder if all the weapon special damage effects which secretly scale with Spellpower is enough of a perk. If that were more visible -- so for example an Acid Blind weapon might show "5 Blinding Acid (spellpower 32)" instead of just "5 Blinding Acid" -- it might be enough to motivate more magical martial characters.

[Atarlost]

How common are those? I don't remember seeing a lot of the special elements (even assuming ice is one of them).

[HousePet]

Fairly common. They would include: ice, acid blind, lightning daze, maybe fire burn?
These by default use spellpower to apply the effect.

[Doctornull]

How common are those? I don't remember seeing a lot of the special elements (even assuming ice is one of them).

I'm not entirely sure how common they are

The list includes (but this probably isn't all of them):
- Ice
- Acid Blind
- Gravity
- Lightning Daze