Inner Power, thoughts, observations, and suggestions.

[edge2054]

It seems like this talent is bleeding into a lot of imbalance for the mage class. Having played both a Mage and an Arcane Blade with the talent I can see how it has taken the Glass Cannon Mage and turned him into a Battle Tank on steroids.

Here's some points and some things I fear may get nerfed if Inner Power isn't fixed.

- Inner Power effects pretty much every things your character does. It gives more HP, Stam, SP, resists, defense, crit, and damage. Even if you don't use Cunning who doesn't like some more crit? Even if you never swing a weapon it's nice to have more defense even if you can't use the hit. Just because Magic and Willpower are a mage's primary stats it doesn't mean they don't get anything out of other stats, it just means they don't get as much. When all the stats are increased across the board by 20 or 30 points they get a lot!

- Inner Power gives access to skills and abilities that the class may not otherwise meet the prereqs for. For instance Health and Heavy Armor seem to be coming up a lot on these boards. I put forward that neither of these talents are broken. Having played through with a Warrior I needed every bit of HP I had and every point I put into Con to get Health was one point I was taking away from my Str or Dex (two other stats I really needed to keep high so I could hit, dodge, do damage, and wear the equipment I wanted). The last part of that last sentence plays right into the Heavy Armor issue with mages. A mage in heavy armor isn't the issue, a mage wearing the best Heavy Armor in the game without having to invest a single natural stat point into Str though is!! Same thing goes for Health. While my warrior had to give up some Str and Dex to keep my Health talent maxed a mage does not, all he gives up is the initial investment in Inner Power.

The implications keep going, +30 magic screws with the scaling on pretty much every mage skill and talent. It's a domino effect that effects everything the class does. Arcane Blades have the same issue but that's a class that frankly is balanced around Inner Power and pretty much sucks without it and will get hit really hard by any nerfs to the ability.

Which brings us to the issue at hand. How do we balance Inner Power so that Arcane Blades don't get hit so hard to be useless and mages don't get so much out of it that they're broken?

Well the first and most obvious suggestion is to simply take Inner Power away from mages but I don't know that it's really the best option. The enhancement tree opens up some interesting options like making mages that are super specialized in Fire or Frost through the respective talents or who concentrate on melee attacks which every talent in the tree lends support too.

Another option is to simply continue to nerf the ability, but this could make Arcane Blades unplayable. Arcane Blades need the stat points just to survive. They are melee ranged combatants and they arguably need every stat in the game to function right aside from cunning. Unless the Arcane Blade gets rebalanced (which might not be a bad idea) nerfing Inner Power isn't the right option.

The final option that I see, and the one I suggest, is to buff Inner Power back to +2 points per level and nerf or remove its scaling completely. Spellpower is what's breaking Inner Power and there by breaking the two classes that have access to it, Mages much more so then Arcane Blades (and I say that because one class was fine without the ability and the other practically needs it to survive).

[darkgod]

A very nicely thought out post, well done!

I too think this is one of the big problems of beta6, I wanted to remove it from Archmages in beta7 but I forgot :/
Still I have restrained it to a max of +11, which is already a lot IMO. If arcane blades do not work with it maxed at 11 then it's the class that needs fixing.

I allowed enhancement to Archmages because as you say it opens some good possible builds but it also indeed make them go over the top.
Maybe I should take out inner power from Enhancement and put it in Arcane Combat instead, but it's less "logical", and what would replace it ?

[SerPounce]

What if inner power:
1. Increased only "physical" stats, namely str, dex, and con.
2. Stat buff do not count towards qualifying for talents (probably something that should be done anyway)

That addresses with both the spellpower buff problem, and the qualify for everything problem.

[edge2054]

I could see Arcane Destruction being replaced by Inner Power. You're right that it feels less logical but Arcane Destruction is somewhat redundant since the talent tree already has a talent that adds damage to the strike (albeit through a random proc). And then we have the question of what to replace Inner Power with. This would probably need to be a new talent of it's own, maybe a weapon speed effect would work? Or how about something that resets the cooldown on all abilities that cost stamina and has it's own cooldown reduced by how many talent points are invested? We could also cannibalize some old Mindcrafter abilities for ideas, both Character Armour and Adrenaline Channeling being good candidates (the later as an activated rather then sustained ability with the bonuses split evenly between some global haste and some hit, otherwise we'd again have issues with mage abuse). Really just tossing ideas out, can't say I'm to keen on any of them and really this is just if this needs to be done.

Assuming Mages and Arcane Blades have relatively similar base line Spell Power, which is to say factoring in just talents and no gear since gear no longer seems to effect scaling on sustained effects, +11 to all stats should be good for the Arcane Blade and not make Mages to overpowered.

(@ Ser Pounce who responded while I was typing)

Arcane Blades rely on both Magic and Willpower as well though. The only stat that doesn't do much for them is cunning. If it only effected those three stats then it would only be marginally better then the Skeleton racial which doesn't require mana to sustain and doesn't require investing in three other talents to get access too.

As to your other point, I agree. Though equipment requirements and talent requirements should be kept separate in this regard, you either have the stats to use something or you don't. Talents on the other hand are tricky because the current system begs the question, what happens when your stats drop, should you forget the talent?

If something like that does get implemented the player should be able to see both baseline and adjusted stats, so they can understand why some talents aren't available.

[edge2054]

And I had typed up something on Arcane Blade balancing but I accidentally deleted it from the previous post.

I think that giving Arcane Blades access to Water instead of Air might help the class with some of it's balance issues. It'd give them better CC through Freeze, something to keep from getting overwhelmed in Tidal Wave, and a spell that does tons of damage when you're up close and personal through Ice Storm. Also it synergizes with Frost Hands.

Maybe just drop Conveyance and Divination and give them both Water and Earth as greyed out trees. I realize this makes them more into Elemental Blades then Arcane Blades but the class seems to lean that direction anyhow between it's spell selection and the abilities in the enhancement tree. If anything Conveyance and Divination don't fit.

[SerPounce]

Arcane Blades rely on both Magic and Willpower as well though. The only stat that doesn't do much for them is cunning. If it only effected those three stats then it would only be marginally better then the Skeleton racial which doesn't require mana to sustain and doesn't require investing in three other talents to get access too.

Oh, I get that Arcane Blades use magic and willpower also. I've played two AB's one to L20 and another to L16, so I have gotten a bit of a feel for their basic abilities. If arcane blades are too weak there are probably other things that could be besides keeping inner power as a general supercharge ability with essentially no trade-off or downside.

I'm not sure I see the relevance of whether inner power is better, worse, or the same as the skeleton talent. They're different talents, you could have one, both or neither.

I like the idea of of a talent called "inner power" being a trade of magical abilities (mana) for physical power rather than an across the board increase that improves magical and physical abilities.. You can calibrate the exact bonus the talent should give to make sure it's balanced.

As to your other point, I agree. Though equipment requirements and talent requirements should be kept separate in this regard, you either have the stats to use something or you don't. Talents on the other hand are tricky because the current system begs the question, what happens when your stats drop, should you forget the talent?

If something like that does get implemented the player should be able to see both baseline and adjusted stats, so they can understand why some talents aren't available.

Yeah, that all sounds right

Maybe just drop Conveyance and Divination and give them both Water and Earth as greyed out trees. I realize this makes them more into Elemental Blades then Arcane Blades but the class seems to lean that direction anyhow between it's spell selection and the abilities in the enhancement tree. If anything Conveyance and Divination don't fit.

Ouch, if we're worried about underpowered arcane blades I sure wouldn't take away Conveyance! Targeted phase door saved my butt far more times than a stat increase could.

[edge2054]

Yeah, phase door saved mine too. Granted that was off a scroll because it was the beta before the skill/talent split so I didn't want to dump points into phase door.

I'm just saying thematically it doesn't seem to fit the class, I won't argue the value of phase door, targeted or otherwise.