Rethinking Mages 2: What should elements have in common?

[Effigy]

This discussion is about the elemental spells. Adjustments to Aegis are a different matter and should probably have their own thread.

[edge2054]

I generally play on normal. Once I had a half decent shielding rune my last mage was pretty much set for the game. I did take disruption shield but I used it to get mana back rather than as a means of defense.

Hurricane already doesn't hit the player. I agree that arcane is very dangerous. Earthquake and Inferno can sometimes be difficult to aim yes. The way wildfire handles Inferno makes spellshaping unnecessary. So there's another way to go about it that doesn't require spellshaping.

Unlocking meta to justify a talent that design wise I don't think is necessary I don't think is the right choice here. I'd prefer to see it dropped and mechanisms to avoid dangerous talents rolled into other talents in the way wildfire did or for more talents to just have selffire off by default as a quality of life hack. While keeping theme and immersion intact is really important I think sometimes we have to make concessions that it's still a game and that not frustrating the player should be top priority. My first Aether mage was killed by a Aether Beam mouse slip and I haven't been back because of it.

Additionally, and I know I'm repeating myself, I don't think giving new mage players yet another unlocked tree is good. The class already has an overwhelming number of options available and a lot of information to digest. In that same vein I don't think two locked base trees is really enough either.

Another way to look at the entire problem of spellshaping is that it is essentially a talent point tax for certain builds. I understand where you're coming from, i.e. it's not good that Arcane et al needs to spend a category point to get spellshaping, but my question is why should they even have to spend five talent points on it when wildfire gives us an example of a much more workable design?

tl:dr Spellshaping, at least the actual spellshaping part, is handled much better by wildfire and I'd prefer to use that model rather than making meta unlocked.

[donkatsu]

I suppose that unlike the other generic spells, Aegis is mage only so it's within the scope of the project. What goes into it? I'm not seeing even 4 digit shields out of it, much less 5. If this is something that only happens with insane/madness drop rates and single minded heal mod stacking I can't see it as a problem with aegis, but rather with Monty Haul. My understanding is that those difficulty levels were never really meant to be balanced.

That said, I don't like Arcane Shield. I don't like what it would do to inscription selection at high heal mod (mages should lean more towards runes) and it seems a bit of a trap to use it with anything but Arcane Shield at low heal mod. An actual straight damage shield talent would be more controllable from a design standpoint.

On normal, I got up to 4k, and this was before Bathe in Light's buff, so while you may not be able to reach that fifth digit it's still way too strong regardless of difficulty. There are three stats and five talents that multiply with each other: spellpower, heal mod, crit mod, every talent in Aegis, and Bathe in Light. Making things even worse is the fact spellpower and crit mod compound multiple times: spellpower increases the multiplier provided by each of the 5 talents, and crit mod is multiplied three times; once in Arcane Reconstruction and twice in Bathe in Light (heal mod and shielding). The way the formula is set up is also what makes Aegis so variable in performance depending on how you stack things. In broad mathematic terms, 1.5 to 2 is not a large increase, but 1.5^8 to 2^8 is a difference of an order of magnitude. That exponent just needs to be brought down, and you have your pick of multipliers to get rid of; I just happened to choose heal mod because it was the least Archmage-y thing.

This discussion is about the elemental spells. Adjustments to Aegis are a different matter and should probably have their own thread.

Hehe, this is actually about Shivrogoth Form and the water element. I'd like to make water competitive with the other elements. I'd like to keep Shivrogoth Form's general mechanic, because it's cool and flavorful. These two desires are incompatible with Aegis in its current state.

[Atarlost]

This discussion is about the elemental spells. Adjustments to Aegis are a different matter and should probably have their own thread.

Last time I tried to start a new thread for a sub-discussion I got several pages of naysaying before any actual discussion happened. Besides, what happens to aegis influences what sort of defenses the elements should give.

tl:dr Spellshaping, at least the actual spellshaping part, is handled much better by wildfire and I'd prefer to use that model rather than making meta unlocked.

Hmm. The penetration talents are frequently after the spells that need to be mitigated and partial mitigation is inadequate at least for some spells. What about giving each element's penetration talent (except air, which if hurricane doesn't damage the caster has no self damaging spells) either spell shaping for just that element or fire's self damage reduction?

New iteration:
Arcane:

• manathrust: I'm tempted to make it 20% beam chance per raw talent, but there's probably a reason not to
• mana steal : like mana clash but instead of dealing damage it gives you mana; possibly add fatigue to the drain target list so it's less situational. Certainly not psi, though because that would make mage rares absolutely wreck solipsists.
• mana gyre (renamed aether beam): Can the range of the beam be set to scale with the distance to the caster at the time of casting so the caster doesn't put himself at risk unless he moves towards the beam origin?
• pure aether: replace rider with raw*20% spell shaping on arcane/aether spells only and at raw TL 5 lifts range restriction on mana stream

Aether:

• disruption shield: absorbs damage equal to 100%-current mana/total mana or current mana-total mana whichever is greater; does not explode.
• aether breach
• aether avatar
• dunno

Fire:

• flame: becomes rad 1 ball at TL 5 instead of beam
• flameshock:
• fireflash: does some damage as 3 turn burn like flame and old blastwave
• wildfire: keeps self damage reduction rider

Wildfire:

• cleansing inferno: inferno with cleansing flames effect removal on itself only
• fire lance: low cooldown beam nuke with 3 turn burn, but proportionately less than flame or fireflash
• burning wake
• dunno

Earth:

• earthen missiles: 3 cooldown; half current damage
• pulverizing augur
• upheaval: moves terrain like old wyrmic quake or creates long duration stone blocks in 50% of empty squares and digs 50% of diggable squares. Large, centered on caster, does not effect caster's square.
• crystaline focus: replace rider with raw*20% spell shaping on earth/stone spells only

Stone:

• stone wall
• body of stone: go with the dreamforge model; gain armor and armor hardiness and lose elemental resist
• earthquake: form factor as aether breach instead of terrain effect
• stone to mud: removes diggable walls in targeted ball and applies DoT field that slows

Water:

• geyser: pushes and wets
• freeze: I feel the cooldown should rise slower than the duration. If reduced from 7+raw to 8+floor(raw/2) with the same 2+raw freeze duration freeze duration wouldn't catch up with cooldown until raw 7 without quicken spells.
• tidal wave: origin targetable at TL 3; does only cold
• uttercold: gains self damage reduction as wildfire

Ice:

• shivgoroth form
• glacial vapour
• shatter
• dunno

Air:

• lightning
• ride the lightning: old chronomancer temporal wake
• chain lightning: this always seemed anemic when available at level 4; at level 8 I'd probably raise the damage to match lightning.
• tempest: replace rider with movement speed from feather wind

Storm:

• gwelgoroth form: active buff with damage avoidance as lightning rune, reduces RtL and nova blink cooldown, makes air spells daze
• nova: gains shock's stun resist reduction
• hurricane
• thunderhead: arcane vortex in lightning with daze

I'm particularly unsure of the new disruption shield and the size reduction on mana gyre

[edge2054]

The adjustable beam range on mana gyre shouldn't be hard to code. Talent description bloat can become an issue.

Freeze I'm fairly sure the intention is that you can't chain them together without some help. It's the only talent in the game that has a cooldown that goes up that I'm aware of.

[edge2054]

The adjustable beam range on mana gyre shouldn't be hard to code. Talent description bloat can become an issue.

Freeze I'm fairly sure the intention is that you can't chain them together without some help. It's the only talent in the game that has a cooldown that goes up that I'm aware of.

Storm really isn't working for me. I think I'd leave the stun reduction off nova and raise the chance to daze up to 100%. With Hurricane it will still be an excellent trash clearer. I'd probably make Thunderhead a buff that applies 50% stun reduction on enemies you hit with lightning damage as well as dropping an extra bolt on X enemies each turn. Basically a buff version of the old Thunderstorm but without the radius thing, or mana drain, and the additional benefit of letting you cut through stun immunity while it's active. I'd have it drop the bolts the turn it's cast as well. So the player doesn't feel like they're having to burn a turn to set it up.

*edit* On second thought I don't know that that's much better. Thunderhead just really isn't doing it for me.

[HousePet]

These categories are a bit boring, they have no interesting synergies.

And why would a Cryomancer want self damage reduction when they have Shivgoroth form?

[Atarlost]

The adjustable beam range on mana gyre shouldn't be hard to code. Talent description bloat can become an issue.

Freeze I'm fairly sure the intention is that you can't chain them together without some help. It's the only talent in the game that has a cooldown that goes up that I'm aware of.

Storm really isn't working for me. I think I'd leave the stun reduction off nova and raise the chance to daze up to 100%. With Hurricane it will still be an excellent trash clearer. I'd probably make Thunderhead a buff that applies 50% stun reduction on enemies you hit with lightning damage as well as dropping an extra bolt on X enemies each turn. Basically a buff version of the old Thunderstorm but without the radius thing, or mana drain, and the additional benefit of letting you cut through stun immunity while it's active. I'd have it drop the bolts the turn it's cast as well. So the player doesn't feel like they're having to burn a turn to set it up.

*edit* On second thought I don't know that that's much better. Thunderhead just really isn't doing it for me.

Chain freezing is already a thing with Ice Shards. It's not as reliable as freeze, but freeze doesn't reliably last out its duration either because iceblocks can be damaged and saves can reduce duration. It seems to be a theoretical concern from before the ice tree existed that isn't really respected anymore.

I'm afraid I don't understand why you want stun resistance reduction moved from the second talent to the fourth. It's on the second in the current storm tree.

These categories are a bit boring, they have no interesting synergies.

And why would a Cryomancer want self damage reduction when they have Shivgoroth form?

I find classes clogged with designed in synergies boring. Water/Ice retains the wet-freeze-shatter chain and has more options about how to apply wet. Earth/stone still has synergy between earthquake's DoT and terrain manipulation. Earth/stone also combos very well with water as a secondary element for terrain manipulation and targeted tidal wave. Wet and shocked can still be used to apply flameshock. The only extant synergies that are going away in the current plan are the synergy between expensive spells and disruption shield and crystalline focus boosting tidal wave. But apart from the wet-freeze-shatter chain those are all emergent and not shoved into the player's face. Why have build complexity in a single player game if not so the player can discover what combinations do or do not work?

Shivgoroth form is an active spell with a duration shorter than its cooldown and is in the ice tree and affinity is calculated before resistance.

[HousePet]

You have also removed the Burning Wake/Cleansing Flame synergy.

I wouldn't say that terrain manipulation synergy is emergent.

Emergent synergy is not superior to designed synergy, and I have no idea how you think a synergy can be shoved in someone's face. I've never heard of anyone being offended by the explicit synergy of Shatter.
You cannot expect 'emergent' synergy to be spread evenly or be balanced either.

Each category is currently a bunch of randomly chosen spells that only share a damage type. They need a theme, flavour or synergy to link them together.

And I thought that self damage resistance was checked before affinity, but its not.

[edge2054]

Chain freezing is already a thing with Ice Shards. It's not as reliable as freeze, but freeze doesn't reliably last out its duration either because iceblocks can be damaged and saves can reduce duration. It seems to be a theoretical concern from before the ice tree existed that isn't really respected anymore.

I'm afraid I don't understand why you want stun resistance reduction moved from the second talent to the fourth. It's on the second in the current storm tree.

The size of the iceblock and damage is what's disconcerting about Freeze. The spell hits really really hard and right after you can't heal, or teleport, and breaking out of it before the duration naturally expires can be impossible for some classes. Fixing the way the cooldown scales without addressing these other issues isn't good. In fact I don't think the talent needs help, I think it just needs better support from the other cold talents.

As to Nova it's because you're encouraging Air/Storm to 5 point Nova just for the radius increase so they can reduce stun immunity semi-safely. But they're still doing it nowhere near as well as Water is with Tidal Wave. Point for point I think going 1/1/5/0 Water and just putting 1 point in Nova is a better investment if you're wanting Hurricane to proc. Most serious Air builds would still probably put 5 points in Nova but again Tidal Wave is just doing it way way better because you don't have to give up the safety of being at range to do it. One thought is to call it Ball Lightning and just let it be targetable.

Thunderhead I don't like because it's just another variation on Chain Lightning and Hurricane. It's also just kinda boring for a capstone. I don't think my version is much better but I really think Storm should have some sort of actual storm talent. Something like a Inferno/Thunderstorm hybrid.

[Atarlost]

You have also removed the Burning Wake/Cleansing Flame synergy.

I wouldn't say that terrain manipulation synergy is emergent.

Emergent synergy is not superior to designed synergy, and I have no idea how you think a synergy can be shoved in someone's face. I've never heard of anyone being offended by the explicit synergy of Shatter.
You cannot expect 'emergent' synergy to be spread evenly or be balanced either.

Each category is currently a bunch of randomly chosen spells that only share a damage type. They need a theme, flavour or synergy to link them together.

Burning Wake/Cleansing Flame wasn't an interesting synergy. It was a single effect split across two talents. Cleansing Flame was just a passive that added a rider to Burning Wake, which itself was a sustain that there was no reason to ever turn off outside escort quests.

And you have heard of someone who doesn't like the explicit synergy of shatter: me. It's staying because it's popular, but I have no intention of adding more. That's water/ice's thing. If I steal water/ice's theme for other elements they're even more samey.

Chain freezing is already a thing with Ice Shards. It's not as reliable as freeze, but freeze doesn't reliably last out its duration either because iceblocks can be damaged and saves can reduce duration. It seems to be a theoretical concern from before the ice tree existed that isn't really respected anymore.

I'm afraid I don't understand why you want stun resistance reduction moved from the second talent to the fourth. It's on the second in the current storm tree.

The size of the iceblock and damage is what's disconcerting about Freeze. The spell hits really really hard and right after you can't heal, or teleport, and breaking out of it before the duration naturally expires can be impossible for some classes. Fixing the way the cooldown scales without addressing these other issues isn't good. In fact I don't think the talent needs help, I think it just needs better support from the other cold talents.

As to Nova it's because you're encouraging Air/Storm to 5 point Nova just for the radius increase so they can reduce stun immunity semi-safely. But they're still doing it nowhere near as well as Water is with Tidal Wave. Point for point I think going 1/1/5/0 Water and just putting 1 point in Nova is a better investment if you're wanting Hurricane to proc. Most serious Air builds would still probably put 5 points in Nova but again Tidal Wave is just doing it way way better because you don't have to give up the safety of being at range to do it. One thought is to call it Ball Lightning and just let it be targetable.

Thunderhead I don't like because it's just another variation on Chain Lightning and Hurricane. It's also just kinda boring for a capstone. I don't think my version is much better but I really think Storm should have some sort of actual storm talent. Something like a Inferno/Thunderstorm hybrid.

If it's a real problem my next choice is probably to make the duration not scale. The increasing cooldown really sabotages it as an offensive spell. The more you invest the worse it combos with shatter.

What about decoupling Hurricane from daze and making it just proc at various defined percentages for various air/storm talents? Then stun immunity won't effect it and stun resistance reduction stops being critical.

I would say Thunderhead is an actual storm talent; it's just not centered on the player. There aren't a lot of lightning themed talents that aren't variations on chain lightning or hurricane that don't involve stealing the wyrmic's tricks. Even thunderstorm has been appropriated by the alchemist. I'd like it to be another mobility talent, actually, but I can't think of any that aren't too close to either RtL or Lightning Speed

[edge2054]

I think that would work for Hurricane.

For the capstone I guess I'd just like something flashy and big. Something I can really look forward to. I see what you're saying about Thunderstorm/Living Lightning overlap.

But what about the targeted Thunderstorm idea? Say radius five. Each turn X random targets get hit by a bolt of lightning from the sky? Basically just take the sustain and turn it into an AoE.

Making it targeted will help with the accidently getting hit with your own bolts bit. Also you could pop Gwelegoroth form and drop Thunderstorm without worrying about hitting yourself.

I don't know. I'm for other ideas just like being able to look forward to something that feels epic, especially for talents that can't be learned until level 22.

[Atarlost]

I think an area targeted storm would fall flat. It would be like a DoT except more computationally intensive and noisier and maybe weaker against really big groups. The only good thing about thunderstorm is that as a sustain it doesn't take an action. I suppose I could move Hurricane to the end if it's about not being capstony enough.

I kind of don't have capstones at all on anything but stone and storm right now.

[edge2054]

Hmm.. I was thinking the opposite about really big groups.

A radius five AoE that drops up to five radius one lightning bolts per turn can have a lot of overlapping areas. I think using something like this in a monster pit would be really fun.

To top it off each of those strikes would have a chance to proc hurricane.

As to noise and sound. We can limit the strike noise to once per turn, I pulled one of the sounds out of earthen missiles recently for this exact reason.

I don't know about being computationally intensive either. I mean thunderstorm works and has worked for as long as I can remember without any complaints of slow down. My suggested version is technically a smaller radius (by 1) which is fewer tiles to iterate over.

[Atarlost]

Hmm.. I was thinking the opposite about really big groups.

A radius five AoE that drops up to five radius one lightning bolts per turn can have a lot of overlapping areas. I think using something like this in a monster pit would be really fun.

To top it off each of those strikes would have a chance to proc hurricane.

As to noise and sound. We can limit the strike noise to once per turn, I pulled one of the sounds out of earthen missiles recently for this exact reason.

I don't know about being computationally intensive either. I mean thunderstorm works and has worked for as long as I can remember without any complaints of slow down. My suggested version is technically a smaller radius (by 1) which is fewer tiles to iterate over.

Computational expense was kind of tongue in cheek. It just doesn't do much besides look pretty. Anything that goes here is going to be able to proc hurricane.

Hmm. What about a temporary effect that makes it possible for hurricane to proc hurricane?