how to rank as a mage?

[Olyn]

In the spirit of making the invoker more of a glass cannon, how about a buffing spell that will increase their own spell damage and lets them cast at half mana cost or something? The spell would need side effects to make sure they don't get too buff in pk. One possibility would be not being able to use this new spell with weapon ward. They could channel the spell damage through their weapon instead. They'd get raped by warrior and rogue classes if they tried to use that spell to go toe to toe in pk later on, but would be a huge difference-maker when ranking. Other alternative gimps while using the spell would be no protective shield, mana shield, or increased physical vuln, depending on what ok situations they would need gimped and which they already need help in pk.

[Ozaru]

im glad that everyone is jumping on davs dick after he agrees with me. My whole point is just the early ranks to actually get people to try them. Mages are going to get replaced from a group unless its an ill. Invokers are dead weight even with mystic tendrils and hell stream, the only viable option would be to create monster potions for healing mana for higher ranking mages.

For lower ranking mages and even noobs having a dirt kicking merc would make a huge difference to rank. Ie my suggestion for ranks 5 to 15 or 20 after you can get monster potions well just farm gold and use them. I am not looking for a easy button from 1 to 50, just 5 to 15 to 22.

[Vevier]

Hm. I wouldn't be opposed to the idea of mana healing potions that were of similar cost to mages. They'd have to sputter out with pk adrenaline, but I think that'd be okay if the purpose was to keep the mage doing his part in group.

[Davairus]

Well take dirt/hobble out of the game, throw 2 defences on every mob, and see how people feel about mages then. Spells would have the advantage of going through defences, if that mattered. I think it would be well worth taking a survey of what kind of damage warriors, thieves , etc are putting out with their new combat module weapon skills. e.g. spamming uncanny attack with no mana cost plus 3 attacks a round dual wielding. It feels to me like certain classes just gimp mobs. Mages would have to hit hard enough with spells to make up that difference (an attack per round is missing, on top of uncanny attack and enhanced damage) and it seems like an awful lot of damage to buff them with. The best advantage I can see to mage is you don't depend so much on your gear to be effective, but the downside of that is warriors outdamage you easily when they have their winter suits. I don't know if a damage buff is the answer, it might just make everyone else die like wildfire and become a PR disaster. Maybe we do need a conditional that makes them do that to mobs at least... I'm honestly worried about introducing it.. .

Umm, invokers can probably carry monster potions and spam tendrils, right? Illusionist has slow. Necro has its mana thing. There is mana regen available.

[Esivole]

not meaning to stray here, but last I checked the mana thing for necro's didn't work, not sure if that was ever fixed.

[Davairus]

should be working, i'm waiting to hear if it is fixed.

[Smotpoker]

how you rank with a mage is you find some warrior, ranger, zerker and kiss their ass so they pull you up through the ranks easy as that

[marsd]

Haha strange thing is I can't think of another way than what smotpoker said

[Smotpoker]

well you can spend about 4 hours with a pet killing things that give you 20xp to level but that would take to long for most people

[Fireballer]

potions from timaran were introduced to make ranking easier.

mobs were then buffed hugely in hp and damage to reflect the fact that people had it "too easy". See the lord of dark oak rage/frenzy whatever buffs as well as people who have played forever who know for a fact that higher level mobs above dryad take a lot longer to kill now.

Ironically, this happens after potions were introduced because ranking was too hard for mages. Seems like reverting changes, not by removing them, but by adding on more stuff to me. its OK to remove things that are detrimental to the game sometimes. Monks case in point.

Counter-intuitively, being too hard to solo causes less people to log on. People being able to solo causes people to log on more often to rank themselves, and groups become a bonus. Now groups are a necessity for most classes, so people don't bother logging on unless its surge time or another popular time. So people have to wait for those times. other people who log on who see noone else because of this think there's noone playing this and leave the game.

I know, the imms say, why don't you go do other stuff while waiting around. What can a caster lower than level 26-30 do? Once all that other stuff has been done, what is there left to do while waiting around *hoping* that someone comes along who can rank you? The imms may know what there is to do thats very advantageous for a magic user, particularly a less-than-20-strength one, to do, but considering the players are overwhelmingly playing physical classes while there's a bunch of magic users sitting inactive, how can an entire group of people miss something thats so obvious?

Additionally, with experience dropping for quests based on an equation of your level compared to the quest's "level", players know its far more efficient use of their time to just wait around for a giant to pull them up the levels. Its a case of their own intelligence in not wanting to waste time leading to an empty game for a lot of the time. Dav, didn't you say something before about "wasting my 20's playing games all the time"? Everyone's being punished for being smart about their use of time.
Time it takes to solo with a mage class, especially with quests, is the polar opposite of just logging in once every two hours and getting lucky to find a tank.

I've spent close to an hour getting 2000 exp around rank 23-24, even with quests involved in that time. Conversely I can just not log on until surge and spend an hour getting 5 ranks as opposed to 0.

[Vevier]

The muds with hundreds of users are pay to play. If you want that kind of pb, go ahead and drop your 10 bucks a month, but we'll be here with player supported advertising and an Imm staff dedicated to balanced gameplay. Most of the mobs that were buffed were eq mobs because it was too easy for players to get equipment above their rank using the potions. That's perfectly fair.

I also don't understand your complaint about the quests. The fact that the experience is scaled to the level means you should BE doing them at low level for the experience and the gains. Also doing quests will allow you to use your quest points to buy extra exp and training for when you actually do get a group.

If you want people to hang around, stop posting inflammatory comments on the forum and work on roleplaying well so that people actually feel welcome here. Helping newbs and creating a good atmosphere for them is the number one way to get them to stay. I can tell you for sure we are getting new people in, but people like you drive them to other muds where they aren't going to get multikilled at level 12.

[Fireballer]

[Davairus]

Actually we ran a banner on TMS for like a year.

[Vevier]

That was the reason it was removed. If you can't tank, then obviously you have the offensive power to make up for it. You should have to work for that, and if that means hanging around for a while, then so be it. You picked your class at creation.

As an immortal, I actually do have knowledge of characters. That aside I was referring to people like you as in people who troll on the forums with inflammatory posts creating a negative atmosphere. I attribute that to driving away as many newbies as being multikilled. I know if had read the forums first, and seen the quality of the people playing by their OOC interactions, I probably never would have rolled another character. As it was, my first interaction were pretty much positive response to how I played my character. So I rolled another one.

Sorry if you took the post as a personal attack, but I am sick and tired of seeing nothing but wah wah from you, and I have yet to see a post that is actually worth reading. It takes a lot to get on my bad side because I'm an overly patient and benefit of the doubt type of person, but you've managed it somehow. I had a lot more written but it was pretty inflammatory, so I erased it. I'll just end with saying please don't post any more crap on my forums.

[Fireballer]

I was stating my way of seeing what could improve the game from here, even as it is managing to grow a little more each day.

And yes, I know you have access to pfiles. My argument that you dont know me is based on you saying I multikill newbies for shits and giggles, or at least comparing me with people who do that. That is not appreciated because its character smearing by a voice of authority.

Anyway, back to the thread.

potions were introduced to make ranking easier, then most mobs got increases to their damage and health, making them take longer. A mage has few attacks and no enhanced damage, meaning they rely more on hitting (apart from necromancers).

all mages have 20 or less strength. this means that they have a much harder time overcoming mobs' parry skill. strength difference check is one thing that helps deal with the parry skill. conversely, this is what gets mages hit more often by mobs. getting hit more and hitting less = not something that can solo very well. This also happens to synergize, in a bad way for the mage, with the fact that to overcome defenses a mage must forgo a certain amount of damroll for hitroll. Fighters and rogues get an added defense for dexterity, that all high dex mages dont get. they also benefit more from natural hitroll with enhanced damage.

physical classes and magic classes are almost like polar opposites. Who knew, right?

However, then theres the issue of status anomaly spells, you might recognize as mals and mentals. invokers dont get quite the number equal to illus/necro, but faerie fire could be turned into a useful spell for ranking with, IF it could hit easily and did something meaningful. it does recude armor some, but its not quite to scale as a hobble costing the mob a defense and increasing damage for fighters in advantaged style. physical skills just synergize so much better with physical classes than having a mage *maybe* hit poison, weaken, slow, or other status anomaly effects. And it doesn't cost mana to do so it can be spammed.

I've recently tried soloing with monster pots. it doesn't go fast at all. the ones you can kill quickly give you around 50-60 exp, the ones you take a long time to kill and lose half health to give around 120-180. This makes it very expensive and time consuming to solo a mage. And then you cant even really do this if you dont have access to the lowest level of monster pots.

In all regards, mages are the guy you take because there's no other third to group with. Some people, and I admit being guilty of this myself, even forgo RP or try to RP around somehow getting mages into groups, because we know that they need it as a player to get any ranking and thus enjoyment out of the game and not get fed up.

What dav suggested off hand doesn't sound like a bad idea in fact. Maybe doubling up the defenses on mobs, but then I add their hp should be halved. This keeps them from being twice as long to kill as now, and increases the value of a nuker a la mage.

Other possible ideas include:

making mobs weaker to spells, but then slap on a DISPELLABLE resist that will cause them to be weak for as long as the dispel lasts, like say 4 hours.

tweaking mobs to have saves against magic of about 5 levels below them, but high saves. mages can then use savebreak to get through the saves and do a lot of damage.

As an aside, I believe that first timers are recommended within the character creation process itself to pick anything BUT mages. Even clerics are okay.

I just remember 2004 ranking with any class being a lot easier than it is now. back then you had dirt - disarm wars, but people loved the game for what it was, and i cant help but feel that ranking being not a loathed but necessary compenent and instead something that took effort but wasn't a drag, I think that might've contributed to the overall enjoyment. Beast rangers were pretty easy to stay alive back then too, so newbies could pick the "hider" classes and be sure of getting away. Looking back the adrenaline changes are for better, but the game's gotten more and more hardcore over the years.

Dark knights with cleave was also hilarious. mage assassins ftw! running around trying to cleave Knight or Legion players who have cabal items and are out of range to retaliate..

[Olyn]

[divsky]

[Ozaru]

Can someone explain what the mage module would kind of be like? I just don't have the vision to see what mages can be equipped with to make casting spells easier or doing more damage spells with things like save breaks already in the game.

You know what could be a simple solution to ranking, is actually leaving everything the same, but creating a double repop so there is less down time. Like in mud school the monsters in the cages repop really fast. During a surge everything should be faster right? If you could kill 10 ladies per round instead of 5 you can maximize your efficiency and you don't have to wait for groups to leave the forest which can get really frustrating.

What shouldn't be lost in this is a lot of people who do play mages make human/ what ever which has a low xp hole to begin with. How many races can roll out an annihilate with sanc dropping, or even make your sanc drop and steam roll you. Granted with saves and save breaks things can get tricky but thats why mages are meant for better players because they are more challenging.

I guess my whole point to starting this thread is when you see the complete dominance of fighter classes it is because they are just easier to rank and you see less people willing to try and play a mage because they all fear they won't get a group. Myself included, like the imms already stated I am sure all of our suggestion are reviewed but lets not beat people over the head with them.

[Fireballer]

a double repop isn't really going to work, because the issue is the time it takes to kill mobs, the amount of damage they do to low defense people, and the lack of consistent killing power for mages onto mobs. mobs have MUCH higher health than players. think 3x more. and then you have to kill 5-8 of them. but we cant increase mana gains for players because that will mess up Pk badly. so we have to figure out how to fiddle with mobs so that player spells mess them up.

[Vevier]

I didn't read that jibe at Olyn as good humor. It was actually incredibly rude, especially considering the personal time he has put into cleaning up the game and working on the website.

And yes, a module does take that much time.


Now, considering the Mage Module...

I don't have any knowledge, so don't anyone assume that this is what its going to be.

Considering that the combat module affected the way skills worked with including what weapon you were using and what your opponent was wearing. I would expect a similar reworking of magic skills.