Rethinking Mages 2: What should elements have in common?

[HousePet]

I've been thinking about a more elegant solution to the problem of mono element builds.
These problems are: Limited talents early on and screwed against an enemy with 100% immunity.
The easiest solution to this is to take an attack spell in another element, but this is offensive to min-maxers as they won't be stack +damage in that element.
The suggestion of moving the res pierce talents to slot 4 of the unlocked category limits what you can put in the category, as that means you only have 3 talent slots to fit in a decent range of offensive talents to get you going. This leaves no room for interesting mechanics, or even defensive/utility talents.
The alteration of the res pierce talents to all have the same extra resistance to self damage means that there would be 5 talents which do basically the same thing. This suggests unnecessary duplication.

So I've been thinking about a new category for Archmage that would start unlocked, and would be designed to assist with mono element builds.
The first talent is a basic attack spell which uses whatever damage type your staff is set to. Like a power Channel Staff. This would mean that single element builds would start with 2 attack spells, and would mean that the element specific one could be more interesting in shape or effect.
The second talent would be an instant buff that gives you +50% res pierce all for 1 turn.
No ideas for the next two talents.

As an aside, instead of making 5 talents that give resistance to self damage, why not just change Spellcraft to do that instead?

[Mordy]

Well, wouldn't an easier access to channel staff itself solve lots of issues for mono element builds in the first place? It'll also help with immune enemies in the early game with a temporary staff element change.

[donkatsu]

I've been thinking about a more elegant solution to the problem of mono element builds.
These problems are: Limited talents early on and screwed against an enemy with 100% immunity.
The easiest solution to this is to take an attack spell in another element, but this is offensive to min-maxers as they won't be stack +damage in that element.

Uh, no, that's exactly what a min-maxer would do. They would just respec out of it afterwards. Why is that offensive?

As an aside, instead of making 5 talents that give resistance to self damage, why not just change Spellcraft to do that instead?

Because Meta already has too much power concentrated into it. It'd be nice to see some Archmages not take Meta.

I like the new unlocked category idea, actually. Something like a mini-Meta, not associated with a particular element. Normally I would suggest just buffing Staff Mastery to fit this function, but it would be better to leave it as the somewhat weak but universally available counterpart to Mindstar Mastery, and just give Mages a stronger, more exclusive class tree version. And I do mean all Mages, so Alchemists and Necromancers too. Necromancers have tier 4 res pen sustains that will probably be changed along with Archmages, and Alchemists need help anyway. Also, this tree could make multi-element builds competitive with mono-element builds, which would be an interesting change of pace. I don't think the res pen talents actually need to be specific to an element, as the game already favors mono-element to a degree that enforcing it even more with talent design is unnecessary.

[HousePet]

Uh, no, that's exactly what a min-maxer would do. They would just respec out of it afterwards. Why is that offensive?

Because that would mean talent point juggling until level 24?

[grayswandir]

I actually had a similar idea. Instead of tying the element to your staff, though, it was tied to whatever res pierce sustains you had going. (This is assuming we're going with the sustains in their new spot.)

[donkatsu]

Because that would mean talent point juggling until level 24?

Since you said level 24, I assume you're referring to the situation right now. Right now, you have mandatory 1/5 Manathrust, Arcane Vortex, Mudslide, and Pulverizing Auger. You might also have 4/5 Illuminate. Also, since from a min-max perspective, fire is the only element that even exists, and 100% resists are rather uncommon. Fire drakes and fire drake hatchlings are pretty trivial, so the only situation where you might have to respec at all is against luminous horrors.

With the proposed changes, you get res pen at level 12, before which you're highly unlikely to run into anything with 100% resistance. Oh, there are the crystals, but that's just one dungeon.

Anyway, I prefer staff element rather than associating it with res pierce sustains, partly because trees that explicitly reference each other are icky, and partly because that way we can freely give this tree to Necromancers and Alchemists without having to mess with them too.

[Effigy]

Because Meta already has too much power concentrated into it. It'd be nice to see some Archmages not take Meta.

Honestly I don't see that ever happening. Meta is the signature Archmage tree and it's vastly useful regardless of your spec.

[donkatsu]

Because Meta already has too much power concentrated into it. It'd be nice to see some Archmages not take Meta.

Honestly I don't see that ever happening. Meta is the signature Archmage tree and it's vastly useful regardless of your spec.

Yeah a lot of things would need to happen in order to make this work, but I think it's theoretically possible. Transfer some of Meta's utility to our hypothetical mini-Meta tree, make the non-Wildfire trees better, nerf Aegis, and you've got it.

[Atarlost]

I've been thinking about a more elegant solution to the problem of mono element builds.
These problems are: Limited talents early on and screwed against an enemy with 100% immunity.
The easiest solution to this is to take an attack spell in another element, but this is offensive to min-maxers as they won't be stack +damage in that element.
The suggestion of moving the res pierce talents to slot 4 of the unlocked category limits what you can put in the category, as that means you only have 3 talent slots to fit in a decent range of offensive talents to get you going. This leaves no room for interesting mechanics, or even defensive/utility talents.
The alteration of the res pierce talents to all have the same extra resistance to self damage means that there would be 5 talents which do basically the same thing. This suggests unnecessary duplication.

So I've been thinking about a new category for Archmage that would start unlocked, and would be designed to assist with mono element builds.
The first talent is a basic attack spell which uses whatever damage type your staff is set to. Like a power Channel Staff. This would mean that single element builds would start with 2 attack spells, and would mean that the element specific one could be more interesting in shape or effect.
The second talent would be an instant buff that gives you +50% res pierce all for 1 turn.
No ideas for the next two talents.

As an aside, instead of making 5 talents that give resistance to self damage, why not just change Spellcraft to do that instead?

I don't think that will work. First, the Arcane Blade needs the generic attack but needs to not be linked to staves so they pretty much have to remain in the elemental trees. Second, 1 turn of resist pierce isn't going to cut it for single element builds when wyrmlings come in groups and are generally going to take more than one spell when they still have 50% resistance after penetration.

And they're all getting the self damage resistance because spellcraft is in a locked tree and when I suggested making it unlocked I was told that doing so would leave an archmage with no unlocks with too few locked trees.

I actually had a similar idea. Instead of tying the element to your staff, though, it was tied to whatever res pierce sustains you had going. (This is assuming we're going with the sustains in their new spot.)

If the sustains are in their new spot why is the extra tree needed? Just make the existing staff combat tree start unlocked. If it's about freeing up the first slots in the elemental trees the needs of the arcane blade still interfere.

[HousePet]

Eh? Since when did Arcane Blades have issues with enemy resistances?
How does a new category to improve the quality of life for mono element Archmages involve Arcane Blade at all??

[Atarlost]

Eh? Since when did Arcane Blades have issues with enemy resistances?
How does a new category to improve the quality of life for mono element Archmages involve Arcane Blade at all??

You proposed putting a variable element attack contingent on staff setting in the first slot of the new tree rather than using the first slots of the elemental trees for basic attacks. That messes up ABs.

The short duration on the proposed penetration talent makes it inadequate for any single element mage of any class. Unless you're suggesting a cooldown of zero, in which case it completely supersedes all other resistance penetration talents at the price of a really cumbersome UI. It could be made to last long enough to handle a typical group of element immune foes, but then it would promote multi-element builds by replacing penetration talents in a tree you proposed to patch single element builds. There's probably a way to get around this, but since the first talent is either unworkable (because it replaces the basic attacks in the elemental trees) or redundant (because it doesn't) because of the needs of the AB this is a tree of one talent.

I suppose if it's in addition to the basic attacks all elemental trees start with it would save floating points until level 4 on single element builds, but that could be just as easily served by starting with staff combat unlocked.

[HousePet]

I never said it replaced them. Only that they could be more interesting than just a beam spell.

[Atarlost]

I never said it replaced them. Only that they could be more interesting than just a beam spell.

Ah. I'd planned on a little variety, though I did wind up with 3 beams in the plan. They still need to be simple enough to play well with arcane combat. Beyond beam, bolt, multi-bolt, and rad 1 ball I don't actually have any arcane combat compatible ideas suitable for a tier 1 talent that don't step on chain lightning's toes.

If we move penetration to the new tree -- and I think we have to do so completely or not at all -- that means moving what I called the killer app utilities back to the unlocked trees, which makes them available for easy grabbing again and I'm not sure I like that. It also means coming up with more spell ideas and I'd already started running out of ideas I liked.

If I were going to put penetration in the new tree I think I'd go with something like 3% per raw point spent in a base elemental tree (so max 60% pen instead of 50%, but without the 10% damage increase of the current pen sustains). Another option would be to make a stacking penetration buff apply any time you cast an elemental spell similar to what exploit weakness in cunning/tactical does for brawlers. I suspect that might be more involved to code than a solution that doesn't create a new temporary stacking buff, though.

Moving the penetration sustains also kills one of my ideas for making arcane combat less punitive towards investing in non-primary trees. I was thinking of having it only select talents for which you had the penetration sustain active if you had any penetration sustains active.

I think it may be about time to open a third thread on the various mage related classes and class specific trees.

[HousePet]

It would be pretty simple to just make Arcane Combat proc a selected spell.