DEFENSIVE MAGIC

[linkzero]

Well even though I wish I could disagree with jackmore I'm afraid I can not.
My affliction spells are hardly ever needed. TBH I can only think of a couple of times they've really come in handy.

But I have some great friends in this game and have been able to raise off affliction to lvl 206.
I never gave up as I was hoping Nevrax one day would read the countless of tickets I have submitted on this topic,
and correct and improve my spells. So far they have not and I have given up.

These days I just run around healing my "über" elemental friends and my "melee" wife
I could do elemental like everyone else - but I don't see
the fun in that even if they can solo a great jugula hehe

Many affliction spells could be of great support to melee players but
there are not that many of them around anymore after the
elementals were given godlike powers.

Sorry if I sound bitter and angry - I really thought I was over this now

[iphdrunk]

Many affliction spells could be of great support to melee players but there are not that many of them around anymore after the
elementals were given godlike powers.

Sorry if I sound bitter and angry - I really thought I was over this now

I can see your point, and to some extent, I agree. Yes I use afflictions and yes, we are all stating more or less the same things. I have also submitted enhancements/requests/etc. to overcome the limitations, which mainly (there is a long post about this, can't even remember in which community tho):

* lack of variety (3 spells in deffensive afflictions)

* lack of interest (sleep would be great solo, as a sneaking skill. I could understand getting aggro if the spell fail.. but if it lands???? just now you better run far out of range, I wish we could sleep mobs and walk by them). So sleep uses in groups: pulling and def affl xp leeching when mob is stun-resistant.

* inconsistency. Why is root offensive, blind offensive and stun deffensive?

* lack of buffs/debuffs, heal over time

* PvP: either too uber due to missing resists (fixed imo) or completely not worth the risk/bet....

etc, etc....


but I stand on my previous posts, afflictions are cool not striclty needed, but cool and I don't think they are not useful at all

Ani (Master of Torment and Summoner)

[roninpvp]

Afflictions are not needed yes but they are far from useless.

If your in the game to just level mage and not care about your friends that might be tanks then yes to you and your selfish way of playing its useless. In many groups it is quite possible that the tank will miss a lot and potentially can not land a hit on a mob before the nukers take out the mob. This chance obviously increases as the number of nukers go up.

When I play as a tank I am relieved when there are multiple nukers in the team and someone offers to do a blind nuke missle or just afflict instead of nuking. This usually slows down the speed of killing just a little so the tank doesnt miss out on much xp and often lands blind that increases the chances the tank will hit and get xp.

Granted tanks are not needed but they do give a team an added margin of safety with their ability to take more damage then a mage in light armour incase of a bad pop or additional agro. Even a couple critical hits in a row can take down the nuker of a nuker/heal duo so the that the healer may die and both are now working of death penalty.

Someone said there are not many tanks around anymore....ever wonder to think that they might not be having fun when all they do is get yoyo healed (die up die up die up) and miss out on xp...whats the point for them? Afflictions are not needed but are extremely usefull in certain team situations.

[linkzero]

The fact they are not needed should give someone an indication that something
is wrong. Almost all agree that they look cool but that is simply not enough.

Some balancing to make groups more diverse would be great.
I'm somewhat tired of running into the elemental mages
with a couple of healers in the background.

Ani made some good points !! I wish for the old days
when we used to have a lot of fun and where our
skills combined led to victory !!

PS ... no tank gets yoyo heal from me They have my
utmost attention.

[jackmor]

Oh! Tankes are needed. Im a tank err wall between the mob and the nukers and healers. And someday Im gonna be a bigger wall. lol

Ive said this before in a post about game balance. Its not that the casters are over powered its that the other skills are tweeked way down.

If casters of 150+ can hit for 2000+ then tanks should hit for 1500+ at the same level and def affiction should land without a failing most of the time.

Pre patch one it was pretty evenly balanced.

[iphdrunk]

same level and def affiction should land without a failing most of the time.

Pre patch one it was pretty evenly balanced.

One of the issues imho regarding afflictions, is that they are basically yes/no effects: either they land, or they don't, and if they land the effect is always the same. The only remaining factor is the link duration. In this sense, the equivalent of a "small attack" is a short-lived link, forcing affliction spamming. I can understand that increasing the chance of landing may be hard to balance. If stun lands too much, we'll be back to good-old-blind-1. One of the ways to improve afflictions without stressing too much the "stun" shortcut, would be to be able to tweak your afflictions as well as you tweak your melee or magic attacks. For example, I'd like new bricks that even expensive, they increase the chance of landing and/or the duration, and to "credit" this, I could reduce the affliction effect, so I can play/tweak the probability of landing, the duration of the link and the effect.

As an example, in my bar I can have "a long-lasting, lands-almost-surely stun that reduces in 5% the chances of the mob dodging" and a second one "hard to cast, slow to cast, harder to land but that blocks the mobn completely and that it is more strict with the level delta between the caster and the mob". A simple way would be to leave concetration as is (only affects interrupts) and add a similar brick, e.g. "affliction focus" that acts similar to the accurate attack.


just a thought tho
Ani

[linkzero]

If they are so afraid of the "stun effect" I suggest they remove that/those spell(s) all together and replace it with another cool spell.
This makes the door wide open for them to tweak and improve the affliction spells.

Although I've got that eery feeling that this topic is not very high up on their list

[dakhound]

another downside to affliction magic is the lack of uber incentive

with heal/nuke you get the double spell @ lvl 101
with nuke you get the racial spells

with affliction am I right insaying you get nothing

maybe a cool addition like multi-spell would go down fine e.g being able to combine damage over time with stun/root, that way you could stop the mob and hurt it at the same time

[mboeing]

maybe a cool addition like multi-spell would go down fine e.g being able to combine damage over time with stun/root, that way you could stop the mob and hurt it at the same time

There have been spell combinations in the past , where you were able to mix an elemental spell with an affliction spell. Why they removed those is beyond me, never saw a resoning for that.

I think if you bring those back and allow affliction spells to be used as AoE, many more people would start leveling those as we get closer to the PvP / GvG actions that will develop around outposts.

[iphdrunk]

There have been spell combinations in the past , where you were able to mix an elemental spell with an affliction spell. .

They are still there, I use them daily, Atysian Affliction Missile (IIRC at lvl 100), you can mix an offensive affliction + direct damage spell, the visual effects are interesting, and depend on the highest spell level. Several typical cobinations are poison + blind or root against GoC cuttlers, or madness + whatever

The main issue is that XP seems to be randomly distributed Using poison + madness I tend to get elemental xp and off affl xp, but with blind I only get elemental xp (pending for formal numbers) even if the affliction lands