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Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:49 pm
by jackmor
I have heal at 100+. I have melee, dont matter which, at 150+. I have casting at 40+.

Now you can see I know that casting can be hard to level. But, does that justify that while im at 150+ melee my caster friend can hit for double me at 110+. I dont think it does. It took me a long time to get to 150+. Longer than it did for the caster to level to 100+.

Whats the dealio? I thought SOMEONE was saposed to be in charge of game balance.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:00 pm
by bandwgn
I see what you are saying but look at it this way.

Casters can only wear light armor if they want to be effective at magic due to casting speed and costs. That makes them distance combatants since light armor won't due much to save you in melee combat

Also, casters can be interrupted while casting making it harder to cast in the first place.

One more thing is that casters can't dodge or parry while casting making hitting them that much easier with ranged or in melee combat.

Seems pretty balanced to me as I have yet to be interrupted while swining my mace or sword and rarely get stunned while wearing heavy armor against a kipee. When I'm casting and a kipee gets close not only does it tend to stun me, but that leads to a quick death while soloing offensive magic.

Siel

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:06 pm
by lariva
Here is a minor detail you forgot to mention - your caster friend wastes a lot more sap/hp when casting. He can not cast when he is out of HP or stamina whereas you can continue swinging for full damage without stamina.

I have my magery at 200+ guess what - 2 5 star yellow(!) mob (lvl ~130) will most likely kill me if they get to me before i kill them - why? because every hit i make I dump 308 HP + 308 SAP, with amount of HP mages are alloted I can make 5 shots with full gear on and harvesting up to 200 (second in HP after fighting) 5 shots, out of which probably 2 are resisted. The mob hits for 300+ ...

here is how it goes
hit - 2400 hp (mob is 1/2 down, I'm 2000 hp left - doing great)
try to hit, fail because I got interrupted by the mob (300hp failed cast + 300 hp mob hit) 1400 hp left
cast 1000 hp hit (mob resisted 1 spell from double missile mob is near dead and i have 1000 hp left and it just hit me for 300 hence 700 left)

I poke something small at malicious gingo and it drops dead (I have 600 hp left)

at this point I have nothing to cast on to the second mob. I use self heal/sap
restore myself to 1900 hp and around the same sap

the second gingo arives - it gets very dicy.

If second gingo shows up while the first one is alive - i'm dead (interrupted)
If I get blinded by the first gingo - i'm dead (interruptions)


with a figher

circular attack
when you run out of stamina, switch to something that doesnt do 2x damage











jackmor wrote:I have heal at 100+. I have melee, dont matter which, at 150+. I have casting at 40+.

Now you can see I know that casting can be hard to level. But, does that justify that while im at 150+ melee my caster friend can hit for double me at 110+. I dont think it does. It took me a long time to get to 150+. Longer than it did for the caster to level to 100+.

Whats the dealio? I thought SOMEONE was saposed to be in charge of game balance.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:31 pm
by predzz
its natural that an elemental mage does more damage than a melee, else, they would hardly have any advantage over melee ?
personally i am around lvl 200 elemental and around 150 melee, yet when i solo (for example in lvl 50-100 areas) i always use melee; a lot less downtime because you lose less HP/sap/stam than an elem when fighting, even though fights will generally take longer. Also, i think wearing an amp will decrease the chance of dodging mobs, so once they get close, they are helpless.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:53 pm
by varelse
jackmor wrote:I have heal at 100+. I have melee, dont matter which, at 150+. I have casting at 40+.

Now you can see I know that casting can be hard to level. But, does that justify that while im at 150+ melee my caster friend can hit for double me at 110+. I dont think it does. It took me a long time to get to 150+. Longer than it did for the caster to level to 100+.

Whats the dealio? I thought SOMEONE was saposed to be in charge of game balance.
Are you using all your options? Ignore armor if you have a piercing weapon, bleed if you have a slashing weapon, attack after feint, attack after dodge, accurate attack as well as inc damage, blind/stun enchant if having trouble hitting.

I have a friend who had the same complaint you do, but he's much happier with his melee damage rate since he finally bought accurate attack. It seems he hadn't had the sp to do that earlier, so he wasn't actually hitting the mobs very often.

Setting up mage spells that don't kill the mage before they kill the mob is a challenge... with my double regional spells I use the biggest time and range credits I have, for fighting in groups. If a mob happens to actually start hitting me, though, I am toast. The longer casting time means I can not get a spell off before I get wasted.

Things may be more balanced that you think =)

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:56 pm
by zumwalt
you can continue swinging for full damage without stamina.
Without stamina, I can't hit full damage, my full damage right now at 100 melee is only 508 with using the stanza's I choose.

Once I run out of stamina, kerplunk, I can't use those stanza's and my melee hit goes down to about 179 or there about, which is 1/3 my max damage.

Actually the balance is in the defenses of the game currently, sure a caster at my level can hit in the 1200 mark or so, maybe more, but you know what, I can stand there and take a licking while he casts, if the mob gets off me, caster is bye bye.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:29 am
by mrshad
The balance, if anything, is tilted towards the melee fighter.
Try and solo as an elemental mage, and you risk your life with every mob.
It is actually impossible to solo with the other lines. You can't heal or afflict a mob to death.
I agree the e.mages might do more damage than a melee fighter near thier level, but I think elemental spell damage needs to be even higher to make mages a viable combat class.
For as vulnerable as they are, the damage output doesn't seem porportional.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:39 am
by foreverb
lol, try and solo as a higher level fighter for exp... its a joke. Anything you can kill you dont get exp for.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:55 am
by josephm
That goes for magicians as well.

Re: Somthing thats starting to bother me.

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:49 am
by ombat
Well not really, when my elemental was at 205-210 I could kill certain mobs quite safely and get 2-3k. I don't recommend soloing at that level because of down time and the risk but it's still an option. Just make sure it's something you can kill before it gets too close to you ^^

As for increasing the damage, I don't think that would be as good as say..lowering the base casting time slightly. Not that I think anything needs to be changed, but I don't know if I like the fact that as a mage my dodge is out the window when I start casting.