Mage Class Feedback Megathread

[eager token]

Hey everyone!

As we mentioned in our patch notes earlier today, we're aware that a lot of players aren't happy with the current state of the mage class. So we're making this thread to gather as much feedback as we can in one place to share with the team.

Mage has tricky class since the release of Enshrouded, both in terms of balance and the overall "feel" of playing the class. Our team already has quite a few ideas on how we can improve the class going forward, but we wanted to also open up this thread to try and get as much info as we can for how and why players aren't happy with the current state of the class.

**Feedback of all kinds is welcome, we only ask that you keep your feedback objection and actionable! ** It's much more helpful to say things like "I think mage feels underpowered because of X", rather than just telling us you think the class is "bad" or "weak", which doesn't give us a lot of info.

Thank you!

[heavy tinsel]

Megathanks for the megathread

[teal sequoia]

I just finished a full playthrough as a tank mage(pre patch), and so I was really worried that magic would be the undisputed king of the game.

In this new patch, I think the magic damage is in an overall better place generally. More spells(and better targetting for heal channel, please make it stop healing the full hp caster ;.;) would really improve the feel of mages now.

I think that's my big opinion piece. More spell variety, buff spells, defensive spells, rune mines, mind control spells, debuff spells, etc. That's where mage is lacking for me. I wanted to be a healer/tank, but couldn't really do that reliably so I just turned into a fireball 2/eternal fireball machine gun last patch.

My girlfriend adds - Wands feel incredibly weak in the early game now, and only seem to shine deep into the game with heavy investment. I'm not sure what the middle ground for wands could be, but perhaps tweeking trickster and battlemage to ve closer together to play with the synergies between the two trees?

I've never used wands, so I'm spitballing with them myself.

[gentle iris]

I would have to say that as far as magic in combat goes at the moment, it only feels somewhat manageable to play at the end game and only after you have acquired all of your eternal spells and endgame gear. The damage difference between mage and the other two classes is too big and their inherent squishiness feels like another penalty ontop of lower damage than the other classes which can and do deal more damage and are capable of surviving more punishment. While I do not think that they should have their damage nerf, entirely, undone I do think either the reduction to spell damage or the reduction to staff damage being reverted would be reasonable. Personally I would like to see spells have secondary affects added as in the case of Eternal Icebolt. Things like dots, buffs, debuffs and other effects.

[heavy tinsel]

At the end of the day, magic users are supposed to suffer from a limit to their number of effects a day. D&D lived off of this for longer than any of us have been alive (with their own balancing issues certainly but it never intrinsically changed how magic was supposed to be used in game) However, to make any character able to solo this game, they have to make magic as usable as melee. That being said, instead of basically making rangers and mages interchangeable classes bouncing back and forth between updates, why the heck doesn't Enshrouded flip the script and have mages a nerf buff class? a little complicated to play, but what if staves froze a group of enemies and you had to run up and bonk em on the head to kill em before they got free if you were looking to kill em instead of get by them? Or what if a mage caused mobs to attack each other instead of the players? This is all I got with 2 minutes of thought but I think it would make the game interesting.

[smoky frigate]

I feel like im a glass cannon firing wet tissue paper; i still take a lot of damage but the damage i actually deal feels like a bee sting compared to my friends with swords and bows.

Some of the staves look REALLY COOL wowo 😍 but they have almost half the damage of the shephard's lightning or a root staff. Please boost or add the ability to use them as cosmetic items ❤️

Targeting is and has always been chaotic af. I know the class kinda needs a bit of auto targeting but the lack of ability to attack barrels instead of a monster without switching to a staff and scrolling through six different spells to an eternal one is saddening. Not to mention doing stuff all damage to things like critter nests and the portal thingos for shroud zombies. The worst thing about targeting though, is the fact that if I have a swarm of small creatures like dogs, critters, rats, or spiders all up in my grill my wand and even my staff just want to hit the distant targets and let the ankle biters absolutely wreck me. The best example of this is a banshee closer to you than any other creature type.

The projectile speed of the wand is so slow that a shambling zombie can outrun it while chasing someone else. picture two friends; one melee and one mage. each friend has an enemy each but then the mage's one starts to go after the friend, who has back turned and is busy with other enemy. The mage tries desperately to shoot the enemy down but none of the projectiles can catch up to it and it manages to land a few hits before the melee turns and swats it like an errant fly.

I understand the auto heal nerf was needed, but now there is no point playing healer because I cannot control who my heal hits. It doesnt seem to care who im pointing my staff at lol. also the potions are way cheaper, easier, stronger and faster to make and use in battle than any of my heals.

OH YEAH one more thing, its not just limited to magic but it feels like something a wizard would care about: elemental damage and resistances is ambiguous and i wish i knew which element to utilize but it all seems to be different across enemy group types. For example, if i find that fire does well against one skeleton fighter, i would expect all or most skeletons in general to be weak to fire -- but that doesnt seem to be the case?

OH and spell switching takes too long to make staves worth it. its much more powerful for me to spam my wand and carry a spare wand in most circumstances.

ok last one: the mage oriented wards feel super weak compared to physical shields. I think either boost them or make Blink into an iframe because when i blink i still take damage mid-blink, regardless if im hosting or server or singleplayer world.

[teal sequoia]

Could a third hot bar be added for spells and ammunition? Or turn the current Q commend into a radial prompt that we could click, flick our mouse in one of 9 directions, and bam. We have new spell without cycling?

[smoky frigate]

i love the hotbar idea but maybe even just the ability to put spells on my bar as a shortcut to equip them would be excellent. i think the radial is neat, but not fast enough

[gentle iris]

You actually can already it's how I have my spells set up

[teal sequoia]

^

[smoky frigate]

i ran out of room because i have to carry a spare wand and a bow for the seemingly endless magic resistance on enemies xD

maybe just more hotbars then 😄

[teal sequoia]

I like the radial as a concept with how fast it could be. Q, mouse northeast, equipped new spell. No clicks beyond Q.

Like League's emote system. It's quite quick!

[heavy tinsel]

you can run back to your strategically placed flame altar and workbench just outside the combat area, or in hollow halls, the anvil is just behind you. You just can't brute force an area sometimes

[smoky frigate]

would something like this work for targeting enemies or allies do you think?

[heavy tinsel]

not like the area resets

at least not that fast

[smoky frigate]

curiosity; whats on your hotbar right now?

you main one not your alt one

i have this: wand, staff, felling axe, bow, mana pot, attack spell, heal spell, HP pot.

my alt is full of buffs xD

maybe we could make it so alt bar is a modifier shortcut bar. aka if i put ice bolt in alt 1 and press alt 1, my character fires an ice bolt instead of my whole bar switching?

[teal sequoia]

Dagger, axe, bow, torch, nothing, bandages and health pot.

2 is barely used for me. Maybe if I need extra storage.

[smoky frigate]

so you dont play mage?

[teal sequoia]

Not on this patch. I played the entire last patch as a mage tank, then a pure mage.

Currently, my friend is our party mage.

[heavy tinsel]

2h, wand, 1h, staff, water, mana, food wrap, pickaxe

bow is q equiped so i don't need it on the bar

[smoky frigate]

So you dont use any spells on your hotbar?

[heavy tinsel]

no? I queue up my staff and use em from there.

99% of the time I'm casting fireball anyway lol

[smoky frigate]

Yeah fire seems to be more often effective than others unless in specific biomes...

[heavy tinsel]

I also carry an array of arrows that I scroll through for what impact i need. no sense wasting a giant bone arrow on a boar 😄

or on a button

[smoky frigate]

What I meant by a way to put spells on hotbar is have it cast straight from there instead of equip then equip staff then cast

[heavy tinsel]

this game isn't that high of an impact to need an extra half second speed

[smoky frigate]

Try competing with healing potions as a healer and come back to me on that one.

[heavy tinsel]

I mean, healing potions are just better period because they randomly drop and the entire party needs em so our resident resource maker already has them to distribute

[smoky frigate]

Cheaper, easier, faster, stronger

[heavy tinsel]

I've never gotten anything mechanically usable out of a light burst either so I leave those at home hoping that at some point the game will make them useful

[smoky frigate]

If you offered me a healer companion or a magic damage companion id choose the latter every time. Its more efficient to spend mana on fireballs than it is on heals when you have potions.

[heavy tinsel]

bandages are stronger than most potions. unfortunately they tie you up with an animation which is balls but i get it

There's so few instances where it's not just better to have a flame altar nearby that healing isn't even a consideration most of the time unless i'm frustrated and just want that area full of corpses that aren't mine

[olive mulch]

I just wanted to come here to say that I started a game with my friends and partner and mage feels really bad to play. I love magic and would like to use this class but it's just not fun :/ it feels like I'm dragging everyone down with how sqishy I am and in exchange, I barely do any damage. I used the same character in a single play game and it's the same thing. I'm a fairly mediocre player and it's really frustrating to die in a few hits because the enemies are unfazed by the damage. The only strategy for surviving for me is on a high platform and spamming spells from above forever. it really is not a lot of fun

[smoky frigate]

Youre not alone. I played previous to the recent changes and i loved mages but i knew they were OP and was excited to hear about a rebalance but i think they went a little too far on the nerf. We have mana, stamina, HP/damage reduction AND damage problems lol

[heavy tinsel]

I didn't specialize enough in one tree to be horrible at anything. I just went for cool abilities and it seems to have worked out for me lol

so i'm not the heaviest hitter, but im not a squishy caster either

[smoky frigate]

IMO mages need to either be incredibly fast, utility, and made of glass OR slow, utility and a glass CANNON. Right now we are slow, weak and have no utility due to ambiguous elemental mechanics and no resource (hp stamina mana) management

[heavy tinsel]

in the case of eternal fireball, i'll take slower when I can reduce an entire crowd of mobs to half health in one hit every time. However, that's a very situational effect

can't always get everyone to stand together lol

would be a lot worse if they turned on friendly fire 😄

[smoky frigate]

Blocking with a ward needs to cost mana instead of stamina. Blink needs to cost mana instead of stamina and provide iframe/short invulnerable or short invisible. Mana needs to be more recoverable with a weaker wand attack or a weaker no cost staff attack.

[heavy tinsel]

blocking with a ward needs to cost mana? So you want mages to be able to cast even less spells without a topup?

[eager token]

Oh boy stuff to read

Glad my thread is getting attention I wasn't quite sure what the best way to get it to players was without pinging everyone and causing a fire in the chat

[smoky frigate]

Ok I'll say no more for a bit 😁 thank you for this opportunity
❤️❤️💜💜💜❤️❤️

[heavy tinsel]

unlike my server it seems this server pays more attention to new threads 😄

[strange nimbus]

I'm a long time archer player. I have a lot of hours into the game. I've dabbled a bit into everything but I've always shied away from staves. I played wands a fair bit on my first playthrough (before the HH update). I was a bit disappointed when at this point they got the durability nerf but that was about it, their damage was still good.
I think the Ring of Rapacity nerfs back there were totally justified as infinite mana was overpowered.
But between HH update and Blackmire update it felt like mages were in a good spot. They had to compromise between using the best damaging staff but having mana issues or using one that dealt less damage but with mana leech to keep spamming.

Now on the latest patch, I think the nerf were too harsh. Be those on the staves which lost around 20% damage (which I wouldn't call a 'slight' nerf like mentioned in the patch notes). The fireball nerf hits even harder, thankfully it's a very good element and lots of enemies are weak to it so it kinda evens out but still, even as a ranged main I feel like the nerfs are too heavy.

I think mages were initially too strong and needed nerfs to be more on the same level as other archetypes. But as of now mages have the worst damage. Archers have better range, mobility and damage than mages. Warriors have better tankiness, damage and I would even say better mobility because most have a fair amount of stamina.

Balancing is always difficult. I always advocate for buffing the underperforming classes, for example giving melees more mobility like a dash (locking it in the athlete three perhaps) instead of nerfing mage's damage to the ground.

[heavy tinsel]

So I'm curious about arrows having better "range". As far as one can normally see across the map, or as far as a threat range is concerned, I can toss a fireball as far as I can shoot an arrow as long as I account for drop. Sure I can pick off Vultures from 1000m with an arrow, but that's more like fun than utility.

devs should add the coreolis effect to long range shots 😄

[obtuse wasp]

I think there were a few things the Blackmire update justifiably hit. No cooldown blood magic, bunny hopping, and bloodletting orbs were all too good and trivializes survivability or mana. The damage nerf on top of that though was too much.

[strange nimbus]

You're probably right, that's on me for not playing staves enough ^^

[magic aurora]

I think the mage nerfs might not hurt so bad if they had something else to make up for them. Like @strange nimbus mentioned: Rangers have mobility and range, melee has damage and tank, mages should have crazy utility

Buff/Debuff spells, zone spells that do stuff, wall spells, there's a huge amount of possibility space for things that make sense for mages but not for the other classes.

[strange nimbus]

Yeah and as Tiny Big said they've been nerfed simultaneously in multiple places at the same time (even though some were probably for the best from what I understand). Which does increase the feel bad.

[magic aurora]

Yeah, it feels like a super nerf, which while objectively might be justified, it definitely hurts people who love mages.

[eager token]

Sniper Elite 6: Flameborn

[magic aurora]

There's also the challenge of balancing mages because of the "spells as ammo" concept. It's hard to want to use the ammo spells once you unlock the eternal version, just because you don't have to continually craft them.

If eternal versions were more common, but then the "limited ammo" spells were rarer and MUCH stronger than their eternal counterparts, it might feel very different.

[gentle iris]

as much as I love my eternal spells and dislike the idea of having to make spells constantly zerax has a point, any thing eternal shouldn't be stronger than something you had to spend mats on

a lot stronger

[heavy tinsel]

I mean it felt like end game awesomeness, but we have a ton of map to unlock so....now what?

[smoky frigate]

Honestly? If we had more crowd control, better resource management, manual targeting system, and quick slot cast spells from hotbar (especially with new CC spells) then the damage nerf was pefect (except for heal SPELLS they needed a boost not a nerf).

[magic aurora]

My thought is that eternals should be the "standard" power level, and then crafted/found spells should be very expensive and powerful. Kind of like the "Bombs" of magic.

[gentle iris]

Honestly again, i dont want to do it, but the logic is there, and it makes sense,

crafted spells should be stronger, than eternal spells

i agree with the bombs of magic idea

[magic aurora]

I mostly just want Eternal Lightning Channel 😝

[obtuse wasp]

Imo the entire ammo system is not fun. There shouldnt be a massive grind before you can play the game. It's really unfortunate all the ways to deal damage from range without ammo got nerfed so we either have to play melee or have our damage penalized for not needing ammo. Only way I'd feel differently is if this game had npcs to automate production

[gentle iris]

this would significantly lessen my dislike of crafting spells, being able to eventually automate resource gathering

[smoky frigate]

I didnt use staff until lvl 10 but i thought that was alright. The only adventure i needed to craft spells for so far has been HH lol other than that ive been swimming in spell ammo because the wand attack rate almost out damages staff spells and im staff spec not wand spec lolol

Then i looked at the cost of fireball 2 and died inside

[gentle iris]

yeah

hence my earlier comment about crafted spells needing to be strong

the cost gets pretty nutty

[smoky frigate]

Agree. Staff is already more glass cannon to use due to lack of block. Plus mana cost. Then you have to consider the skill tree because staves are unusable without the damage and speed skills and on top of that we gotta grind things like resin and amber. All of that to be out damaged by Professor Flitwick swishing and flicking the *** out of his wand, or Legolas sprinting and flying all over the field.

[magic aurora]

Yeah, that's why I think buff/utility spells could be a good addition to make mages feel strong in a unique way. Zone of Power spells that give you various buffs, timed buffs you can cast on yourself/others, spells that grow vines on walls or boost your jump height or destroy big chunks of terrain..

[gentle iris]

whil i appreciate the sentiment, wands are not particularly good damage I have found. I could be wrong perhaps there's a build that turns them absolutely nutty. Personally wands also feel very bad to use, what with their low range and... underwhelming projectile appearance and animations.

[smoky frigate]

Oh yeah wands absolutely do lack damage. I was using them to highlight how much staves suck even more looool

That being said im kind of okay with wands being low damage. Personally. Only because they dont feel like they require huge skill or planning. However, i think the targeting is a huge problem and the projectile speed a bit of a joke. If those got fixed the dmg would be almost acceptable

[gentle iris]

I can understand that

[smoky frigate]

Eh its personal feel. I main staff and wand is my close range secondary. I would NEVER play the other way around so im completely biased

[teal sequoia]

Personally, I just wish we had more magical options. My first mage turned into a burst/dps caster when I set out to be a healer.

My honest opinion is the nerfs, on conjunction with magic being almost entirely blaster caster, just feels bad. Even if I do agree that the class was above board last patch. Too much all at once. A Shotgun approach, but luckily things can further be tweaked for us magic lovers.

That's why I mentioned above for more spell options for us to play with.

And, for wand users like my partner, quicker projectiles would be a nice start, and(a longterm suggestion) moving trickster to be closer to battlemage. I think tank > battlemage > trickster flows well together, as those three have some fun synergy to play with.

[smoky frigate]

Wouldn't this move trickster away from wizard? How will i survive without my updraft 😭😭😭😜 what about Airborne for archers?

[magic aurora]

Yeah, more support options would be 🔥 Seen a lot of people excited to play support but options are limited right now.

[teal sequoia]

Flip healer and wizard. So wizard is on the right of trickster. Healer being by assassin is a fun trope idea, anyway! to know death is to know life!

You'll have to play a bit around to get your updraft from mages, you silly archers!

[strange nimbus]

We'll get blink instead? :D

[teal sequoia]

Oh shit that's actually cool

[smoky frigate]

What utility are you specifically chasing with tank/battlemage/trick?

I ask because my BF runs similar path while i watch scratching my head. I dont like it lol but he does better than me in the thick of it so i could learn something here

[magic aurora]

I know for me, the sort of Spellsword/battlemage that I like to do is a buffer + melee. So long duration buffs that give me super defensive or offensive capabilities, and then use melee to actually fight.

[smoky frigate]

This would put battlemage and wizard too far from eachother i think, if my tired brain is picturing that right. Anyway I'm sure the devs can figure that out better than me xD

[magic aurora]

Weapon buffs, stat buffs, etc. Then utility spells to eliminate other problems melee has, like a spell that grounds flying enemies, traversal spells, etc.

Also though, you get enough skill points that it doesn't really matter where on the tree the "classes" are. You can basically fill out 2-3 of them by the end.

[smoky frigate]

Yeah ive been clinging to my glass cannon because i know i can eventually pump it but honestly its so hard to keep that motivation when im lvl 15 out damaged by my lvl 5 friend using borrowed archer gear 😭😭😭

[magic aurora]

Yeah, mages already have some blaster utility in that they can easily swap elements to utilize weaknesses, but they could totally lean into that with things like a Circle of Power spell that drops a zone that gives you boosted mana regen and damage while you're in it, or a wind wall spell that will block enemy projectiles to give you a bit of extra safety while you charge your spells, etc.

Or an Ice zone that slows enemies while they're in it, or, or, or... there's just so many possibilities 😝

[teal sequoia]

Pardon the delay. I'm at work.

Anyway - the dream these 3 provide is a surprisingly strong crit build that offers a good chunk of survivability.

Trickster gives intelligence aplenty for cheap. A built in damage counter(reflects damage 20% of the time), the meme of the unarmed stun, but the 4 second stun on a magical crit. That's the holy grail for trickster in this build.

Battlemage to grant our wands more power, and importantly, extra shots. Pair that with naturally high magical crit chance, trickster, and we start to get some silly amounts of stuns.

And tank naturally works to provide raw health and extra damage reduction for our build as a wand and shield tank battlemage has rather low physical defense.

But tank covers that quite nicely .

[smoky frigate]

Okay now i don't want trickster too far from my wizard 😂

[teal sequoia]

And that definitely would put wizard and battlemage quite far apart! I don't think that's a bad problem, but that's my personal taste. I view a battlemage and a wizard as rather separate specializations.

A battlemage wields wand, one handed weapons, shields, and staves.

A wizard primarily wields their staff and magical arsenal(which should be bigger, but that's a hill I realize I am dying on.) as most of their combat abilities.

Trickster and healer would Pair nicely with wizard to provide additional magical features and support more than battle mage. But again, solely my opinion on these subjects.

[smoky frigate]

You're not dying on any hill. Most ppl here including me agree we need more spell utility and CC. The only thing stopping you is the amount of time and money required to make it happen i think

[teal sequoia]

Then I must buy the game for more people!

I've brought it 4 times so far. But I need MOAR.

[smoky frigate]

Unfortunate that i dont remember which skills from trickster i adore for my wizard as im on mobile procrastinating sleep atm. I just know there are two maybe three that i always strive for early as possible hehe

[teal sequoia]

I'd assume Terror? The stun on magical crits

Ahh. Quick charge.

Faster spells.

And updraft, the assassin/trickster perk?

[smoky frigate]

Actually i didnt know about this one but would it even work for wizard without battlemage to back wizard up with some crit?

Yeah staves are unusable without quickcharge and this is the way

I think airborne > updraft unless you like to be a mountain goat. I take updraft for pure convenience and although i joke about it i wouldnt die if i lost it xD

Double jump is better anyway

[teal sequoia]

Both are good.

Super jumps!

And yeah, terror is fantastic with fireball! My last mage ran it, and even though I had a 12%ish crit chance, I still proc'd terror a lot.

And besides, with my idea, youd still be able to grab quick charge through wizard. You'd just need to dabble in healer or assassin to grab updraft 😜

[heavy tinsel]

That's 2 people saying the targeting system needs improvement. With the exception of my wand randomly firing at the guy behind the guy I'm aiming at, I thought the sights we had were pretty great

except for the heal spells and they're just garbage period lol

[magic aurora]

Well, that could also be somewhat alleviated by moving some utility skills like Updraft and Double Jump into the center circle instead of being class abilities.

[heavy tinsel]

don't want em don't need em

[gentle iris]

I agree

[bleak cove]

In my opinion, the Hollow Halls patch should've been the point where a step was taken back from the mage playstyle and the thought process turned to how the other playstyles could be brought up to its level before any additional nerfs happened.

Wands
Right now wands feel extremely weak as the "close range" weapon option for spellcasters. I already wasn't a fan of the way the projectiles weave around because they would occasionally float around a charging enemy, but between the durability and damage nerfs and the buffs to melee weapons they just aren't worth using over a sword. I ended up pulling all my points from Battlemage save the two early INT nodes not long after the update and put them all in Warrior, and my ability to fight enemies in close quarters increased substantially.

Also, maybe adding some physical mid-range alternatives might be a good idea as well. A Hand crossbow for DEX builds and a light crossbow for STR builds, much like how the new daggers are an alternative stat melee weapon. Might cut down on the seeming overrepresentation in wand usage if there were alternative mid-range options for the other playstyles.

Staffs
The only staffs that feel good to use after the update are the two that somehow managed to avoid the nerf hammer. Trying to kill enemies with the Blackened Staff I was using prior to the patch felt like everything I was fighting had turned into damage sponges, and trying to fight a Fell Sicklescythe without cheesing the line of sight of their sickle throw attacks was an exercise in frustration.

Mana Regeneration
Mana regen is painfully slow right now. While I agree the Ring of Rapacity needed its regen bonus nerfed, the level of mana regen currently available feels absolutely terrible and makes having Mana Leech on wands and staffs pretty much mandatory for staff casting to feel good. Even with that weapon trait I'm still chugging mana potions in rough fights.

Without Mana Leech it becomes a choice of hooking mana pots up to an IV (ie. mana recovery becomes a tedious resource grind), or plinking away at enemies with a wand until the mana bar crawls up enough to actually deal notable damage.

Durability
Rangers have the endurance to continuously dodge, and warriors can outright facetank enemies, but mages have neither unless sacrificing much needed skill points or armor. Normally the glass aspect of magic users is counteracted with them being absolute cannons in the damage department, but related to my above comments mages feel like they're all glass with no cannon right now.

Skills
Blink
Much like Updraft and Double Jump, Blink feels like a mandatory skill for me to have even when I'm not playing a mage character. I mostly evade to get away from an enemy so the roll around of the default dodge roll feels pretty bad to me, especially since quite a few enemies have 360 AoE effects as part of their weapon attack combos. Being able to evade in a direct line away from such enemies is pretty much a must.

Emergency Blink upgrade is pretty much mandatory on a mage due to how easy it is to get stunned while immobilized by the staff casting animation.

Martyr
Never used this since I'm a solo player, but from a speculation point of view, an ability that requires one to be killed to trigger its effect has dubious utility imo. Personally I would retool this to provide healing to allies whenever you take damage, and move it to the Battlemage tree to be closer to the tank playstyle. Could even be useful to solo players if it was a reactive self-heal.

Water Aura
Gonna be blunt with this one. I only use it to passively heal my health whenever I take fall damage while building my bases. The healing effect just gets overwhelmed by pretty much everything in combat that it barely even feels useful for 1v1 fights or nuisance enemies.

I suppose it could scale better in groups, but as a solo player it just feels weak and barely worth the points. To highlight this I pulled my points from the Waters of Life upgrade to feed into Warrior/Tank skills, and didn't even notice the drop in healing.

Radiant Aura
More bluntness, but I mostly just use this ability to keep the Fell beetles off my back, and much like Water Aura I didn't even notice the difference when I took points out of Sun Aura. If it worked on more than just Fell enemies it might be worth the points, but as-is it's just a nuisance deterrent.

Begone!
Can't really comment on the ability itself since my hotbars are always full so I've never used it, but I mostly just use it as a stepping stone to get to Terror. Which itself probably says something about the ability's appeal.

Bloodletting
Is bugged. After defeating well over 100 enemies with a roughly 1 in 3 critical chance I saw maybe 7 pairs of orbs spawn. Which is obviously well below the intended 50% spawn chance.

Quick Charge
Is mandatory. Even with this skill staff casting feels unpleasantly slow, and leaves you extremely vulnerable to charging enemies with the way the animation immobilizes you. If you want to know why mages lean towards cheesing enemy pathing, this is why.

Counterstrike
I honestly don't even notice when this ability triggers as it's generally a good idea to avoid getting hit in the first place as a mage due to the squishy nature of the playstyle, and a 1 in 5 chance to trigger is a blip in damage dealt.

Other Skills
Most other skills either feel fine or are flat bonuses comparable to what other classes get so I don't really have comments for them. The above is pretty much the notable stand-out issues I have with the mage playstyle currently.

Sorry for the word dump. Wanted to outline all my issues with the mage playstyle, and the character limit for Discord was way too small for it. I did try to format it for ease of reading at least.

[teal sequoia]

Honestly? Fantastic post.

[bleak cove]

Really wanted to outline why I'm frustrated with the playstyle right now with the compounding issues the playstyle has been getting patch after patch. Some of the changes were warranted sure, but others just felt like treating symptoms without knowing the problems causing them.

[smoky frigate]

i have +0% crit chance 😂

[past shore]

https://tenor.com/view/please-liz-lemon-tina-fey-30rock-i-beg-you-gif-21977561

OMG YESSS COSMETICS ON WEAPONSSSSSSSSSS ALLLLL THE WEAPONNNNNSSSS

[past shore]

yes to wverything you say !!!!

[past shore]

Maybe images instad of words, it would be faster for the brain to target the right one 🤔

[smoky frigate]

everything @bleak cove said completely 100% agree

[past shore]

Also, for the ADHDERS and Dyslexics folks, the heal channel and chain heal are too similar words. When you are in a panic trying to help your teammates its difficult to choose the right one xD maybe call it Heal bubbles? xD Because like Eko said, my heals dont care who i'm trying to heal and often heal ppl with already full HP... if i ALSO choose the wrong heal.... its even harder to be relevant as a healer :x

Can I also add, Pre-Patch I would've loved to play mage-tank with the battlemage tree and play with Shield/wand + Staff. But I currently need to spend 7 points in the evasion atk + Battle heal that only triggers while using the melee weapon to access blood letting/life-burst/bloodmagic that uses magical weapons :/ I understand that late game it might not be so expensive, but if you want to play as battlemage when you are still a noob... it kinda sucks for the spell progression

[smoky frigate]

omfg yes this. i have adhd thank you for recognising us. also read that as ARCHERS instead of ADHDERS lol

[past shore]

(Sorry for my broken english my main language is french and my brain isn't working today )

[bleak cove]

I suppose I forgot about the spells in my writeup.

**Ice Bolt / Fireball **
Easily my most used spells. They feel great to use when they actually have some power behind them (ie. the unnerfed staffs). Fireball is naturally a great AoE spell option while Ice Bolt is a good single target lance with some nice crowd control utility as long as neither spell is up against resistances.

Light Burst
I honestly forget I even have this spell. Blinking away is generally the better choice when surrounded by enemies, especially with the stun break upgrade. Maybe if it had a knockdown and/or stun effect for some added utility it might have more appeal.

Acid Bite
Didn't get this spell until after it got nerfed, but when I did it was awkward to use and Fireball was frankly a better AoE option. Would be nice if it was comparable at least. Having an AoE in a different damage type would be great for resistance utility.

Bone Channel
Haven't used this spell too much because bones really aren't in the style theme I imagine for my mage. Related to what I said about Acid Bite, when I did give it a try it kind of felt like an alternative to Ice Bolt with maybe a more niche damage type.

Healing Spells
I have neither Dyslexia nor ADHD, and even I'll agree the naming of Heal Channel and Chain Heal is confusing. Also, related to mage durability and staff power in my previous posts: Heal Channel, Water Aura and Healing Potions combined could not keep up with getting stun locked by Fell Sicklescythes without sprinting away or abusing line of sight.

More Eternals
I have not tried Chain Lightning, Lightning Channel, or Shroud Meteor because I'm not a fan of grindy ammo economies (my heart goes out to bow users), and keeping up with Fireball mats prior to getting the eternal variant burned me out on the grind before I even started seeing these spells. Not to mention having enough of them without worrying about running out takes up so much inventory.

[smoky frigate]

what are the names of the unnerfed staves? asking for a friend >_>

[bleak cove]

Shepherd's Lightning and Root Staff. The latter arguably being the only truly good staff right now because of what I mentioned in my first post about Mana Leech being a mandatory weapon trait for staff casting to feel good.

[smoky frigate]

oh okay those are the ones im using and im still hitting like a wet tissue cannon xD

[bleak cove]

Use one of the other staffs and you'll notice the difference. I compared my Root Staff with the Blackened Staff I was using before the update, and the Root Staff was doing roughly 50% more damage.

[smoky frigate]

i dont need to use one because i can see the damage stat is nearly half at the same level anyway xD

[bleak cove]

I think the only nerfed staff that can keep up is the Mirage staff, and that's mostly because every non-Fell enemy is extremely weak to Shroud damage, but naturally that staff will feel borderline useless against anything in the Shroud.

[smoky frigate]

ty i will put this info to use

we discuss this as i got 3 shot by a piggy in revelwood because i was in mining mode (no meat HP buff) and not battle mode 😔

emergency blink my butt. it didnt break that stagger lock

[bleak cove]

Potential bug maybe? I did notice something off about the blink when fighting the Sicklescythes, but I was too focused on not dieing to really pay attention.

[smoky frigate]

blink has never been an iframe, but it needs to be imo. the description says its a teleport but i collide with enemies when i use it regardless of having the blink attack skill or not. thats not a teleport lol

[gentle iris]

Gotta say I think @bleak cove nailed it with their posts

[urban epoch]

I always play enshrouded with my friends. Before the update playing as mage was very easy. I understand the need to nerf. We would usually deal with creatures more easily than other classes in the same level. The problem with the nerf now is that seems like we are inferior to the classes in the same level. Feels like a overnerf. People will say "ah you can make builds and use mechanisms to be better" bla bla bla. We play enshrouded a lot, but we are not pro players, we are casual players trying to have fun exploring the game. We are not playing to fry our brains trying to find and study the best build for this for that. We learn the basic sense of what that game says is better, and thats it. So when we played this update felt veryyyyyy underwhelming. Again, not complaining about nerf itself, but comparing to our friends other classes it felt like we were overnerfed when playing the update.

[obtuse wasp]

on the mana issue, a big part of it is the damage nerf was also a mana efficiency nerf because the mana costs werent adjusted so it costs more mana per damage than before. i didnt have as much of an issue before when i could clear things with fewer casts, and if we were to get damage back up i dont think mana would be as much an issue as it is now. i also think the sweet spot for mana downtime is having it comparable to health downtime for melee, so its fine to have mana leech or potions reduce downtime if melee is using health leech or potions to heal.

last point on mana is, if there has to be a penalty for eternal spells to keep the ammo version relevant, i would much rather the eternal version had a higher mana cost than lower damage.

[gentle iris]

Ooo thats an idea

crafted spells being same damage as eternals but costing less to cast

[bleak cove]

I'd be cool with that. The cost already goes into crafting costs and potental extra inventory space taken up. So being cheaper mana-wise would be a good trade off.

[magic aurora]

Could definitely work, I'm in favor of higher damage for non-eternal spells though. I think you really feel that impact more than them having lower mana costs.

[chilly jetty]

I think this was mentioned earlier in here to some capacity but i can only agree about the fundamentals on how the mage is operating compared to the other ranged option the archer.
the DEX side of the tree gives you a lot of stats that are benefitial for your basic operations. double jump, updraft, stamina -> glimbing/running/gliding/mining etc while INT ONLY provides additional magic damage. its not even tied to mana pool/regen as you moved that into the spirit stat. even with the faster "spooling" passive you are able to shoot 2-3 times with a bow before that spell lands on the enemy. the spell projectiles are slow and those that are actually "honing" feel like that makes them just miss more often. same goes for the wand projectile. very low range, slow projectile, honing feels "off" when you get charged.
i do know that kiting is the way to go as a mage especially in a solo enviroment but most of the times i just feel pinned down by the animations. one left click too much and you are stuck in another cast animation that you cant cancel. even with +4/+5 hp food and up to date armor for my level i get 2 shot by pretty much everything. and dont get me started on the poison ticks you get from these big guys.

currently we are playing in a group of 3. one person for each "stat". i almost finished the whole "blue" tree and the damage feels similar to the archer player unless there is big groups of enemies when the shock passive will boost dps a lot. while she got 3x the stamina i have, poison resistance, double jump + updraft and more utility with different arrows. its dark? shoot that arrow. want to remove some rubble? shoot that arrow. why is there no spell instead of the wisp potion for light. or the fireball not removing the same amount of rubble etc as the explosive arrows. and why is there no panic button aka iceblock for the mage 🙂 also the water aura/healer side needs a serious scaling rework. it was broken as heck in the beginning but fell of REALLY fast and is almost useless now in the later stage of the game. last thing. why the heck is there -> 8 <- passives i have to get 2 for each dmg type. fire ice shock and shroud all split up but in the same region of the tree. feels excessive

[magic aurora]

Oh yeah, that's not necessarily mage-specific feedback, but man I want more terrain alteration due to abilities. They've got this awesome voxel system but so few things do stuff to it. Where's my dirt clod spell/bomb that creates a pile of dirt where it hits? Where's my laser beam spell that destroys ground as well as enemies? What about a spell that conjures a semi-permanent block platform? or a literal mining spell that mines a big chunk of ground in front of you at the cost of mana?

[bleak cove]

Earth Wall for redirecting enemy pathing, Magma Field turns an area in front of you into Magma blocks that do damage. Both already have existing blocks they could use. The big thing would just be programming the spawn/replace blocks effect.

[magic aurora]

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of work that goes into it.

[chrome bane]

I really don't like the update as a casual mage player. Wands are already so weak, both in durability but also limited range often hard to aim correctly, and projectiles are far too slow. (often can't even hit animals let alone moving enemies) I end up having to carry 3-5 of them to counter the durablity.

Stamina is really punishing and zaps the fun. Staves take lots of mana and huge amounts of time to cast. Their projectiles are faster, but the balistic drop on projectiles seems too much. Plus if you lock onto target with either a staff or wand, the game appears to aim at the feet of and misses the target instead of centre mass.

All in all, I really do not like the last update. 👎

[heady rover]

Mage:
Too weak and slow, i played Mage in earlier releases, and it worked great, i felt strong and powerful.
My friend and i started a new game with this release, and all he did was dying, i played archer and i did like 300 crit damage on mobs, and he did like 50 with wand, and he didn't like the slow staff, charge time was too long.
So he swapped it out to archer aswell.

After reading all these comments, i think its sad that this was done, i think you should have kept it as it was and buffed the other classes.

When we take a bigger step back, and look at the shallow gear and itemization you have to choose from, its clear there could be done MANY things to fix this. Today its hard to make a change without the change feels like a BIG nerf, because you either have 15% crit on your helmet or you don't.
Lets say you had up to 4 affixes on gear, affixes could be DEX, INT, STR, Crit, Attackspeed, Cooldown, Damage, area damage and so on, like other ARPG games.
Then you could say, i don't like that it takes 3 seconds to cast a spell, i will roll attack speed on 2 items, and then it was down to 1sec or find gear with attack speed on it and you could then roll something els.

Other games when you play as mage, you have Mana, but you can cast more than 3 spells, and you can also use your main weapon with basic attacks, not just a spell.
Eternal spells needs to be there, they should be level 1 and you should be able to upgrade your spells lets say spell gems that can be farmed from enemies, and bosses drop them more often.
You could choose to upgrade your fireball to level 10, 10 is max, and at 3-6-9 the spell evolves. fx. Firewall Bounce, Firewall burst and burns the ground for 5seconds and so on.
These upgrades can roll a random upgrade, and you can there for reset them, and try again to get the specific evolvement you wanted on all 3.

This could be added to all classes in many ways. Maybe im just overthinking things.

[heavy tinsel]

I was under the impression that durability was always a problem in this survival game so I always took 5 or more weapons with me on walkabout. not only to replace my main weapon but also to give me more options when the terrain changed or the resistances changed.

and my need to have multiple types of ammo as an archer also meant that my wife was carrying most of the loot lol

[gentle iris]

Just because weapon durability is a problem accross the board doesn't mean it shouldn't be touched on. Wand durability, and other items in general, needs adjustments. Wands in particular now, because they have such low damage compared to their durability. They're nearly useless outside of regaining mana, which itself is a symptom of the mana regeneration problem.

Wands need a lot of work imo at least. Damage, durability, projectile speed, range, attack speed and accuracy are all issuses they strugle with.

[obtuse wasp]

imo weapon durability needs a significant buff across the board (like 350 minimum for all weapon types). my bow almost broke fighting the 2 cyclops at the end of kindlewaste hh and i needed to fly back to the checkpoint to repair before i could do the sicklescythe. it's crazy a weapon can't last through a single boss fight. and wand durability is even lower than that...

[heavy tinsel]

I personally still use wands 70% of the time and don't really have a problem. I feel like a survival game thrives off of things not lasting. If you want them to last longer, fine, but I think the devs should make repairing way harder than merely placing a flame altar 50m away with a workbench like I've always done and remove all the extra anvils from the HHs

[gentle iris]

Valheim functions just fine with a free repair system and its weapons last longer than ours do. While this game is NOT valheim, that should be a given but i'll mention it anyway, that doesn't mean their successes shouldn't be looked at and either adopted or improved upon.

[heavy tinsel]

I feel like valheim is harder than enshrouded though. not that i finished it but Enshrouded was the easiest game to pick up I've seen in decades

and i don't remember but does Valheim give you the option of putting a save point almost anywhere you want so it really doesn't matter how many times you die?

[obtuse wasp]

if we assume weapons are intended to last between anvils in hhs then they absolutely need more durability. because mine will break unless i backtrack to repair

[heavy tinsel]

and you're not punished by walking back and repairing at all, so i don't see the problem. I honestly thought that was how the game was designed

[gentle iris]

I'd have to agree with this, my sister and I recently duo'd just the revelwood HH and we're both maxed level with max level gear. Her weapon broke between anvils. Durability accross the board needs a look at

[obtuse wasp]

i guess we'll disagree. i would consider having to go back in a dungeon a punishment

[heavy tinsel]

The more I'm in this server discussing what needs to change, the more it seems Enshrouded appears to have been made pretty much for my playstyle exactly because I don't find the same problems as most

[gentle iris]

Agreed, and it doesn't appear, at least to me, to be the intended design

It looks, like a game trying to find the sweet spot for its intended design and simply hasn't found said sweet spot yet

[heavy tinsel]

i would figure if the durability was supposed to be maintained without going backward, it wouldn't let you go backward quite so easily

[gentle iris]

I would not, I would see it merely as a checkpoint system that is simply forgiving, with the intent to be you should have enough to make it through without back tracking, but if you need to you can.

[heavy tinsel]

but i run in and out of towns several times to clear them out, especially when i can leash enemies to a better battleground. so running backwards is a goto strat for me

ack, green guy, green guy, retreat retreat! 😄

[strange nimbus]

Hollow Halls are a bit special durability wise because they're not like the open world. There's a big mob density there.
If you balance durability based on HH, then you'll never have to repair in open world content.
If you balance durability based on open world content, then you'll have to carry two of the same weapon into HH because one isn't always enough between anvils.

[heavy tinsel]

i just go in with 30 skully bois and make them do most of the work anyway 😄

[strange nimbus]

I don't think durability should be based on Hollow Halls, they're a type of content that requires preparation, meaning take at least two of the same weapon with you to not suffer from durability too much.

(That being said if you have to take 4 wands into HH then that's kind of a problem I think)

[gentle iris]

Was bout to say

[heavy tinsel]

sky is the limit with the amount of enemies you kill if you can't find the mob spawner anyway

[gentle iris]

there's deffinately a sweet spot to be found though, between open world and HH

[heavy tinsel]

i take 2 wands, a staff, my goto 1h weapon and then 1 2h weapon as my absolute emergency backup backup because I don't use them very often. I like shields.

[gentle iris]

as of right now enemy density in HH is different from the main game, but we'd need to know if the devs intend that kind of enemy density to be in more end game areas as the map opens up

[heavy tinsel]

good Lord I hope not. Accidentally gliding into literally 20 guys was a bit much the first time 😄

[gentle iris]

either way, to get back on topic, wand durability in either scenario is simply too low

[heavy tinsel]

I think that durability to damage output should be balanced. and in that, you can hammer smash way more enemies to death with a 1h than you can kill off with a wand 1 at a time. So yeah. You're right.

[gentle iris]

I can agree with this, if durability is low then damage should be high to compensate, and vice versa. A balance between the two needs to be found.

[heavy tinsel]

my first set of daggers was like...2 guys and broken. but daggers are also really new and the first set i found were kinda garbo. they still seem more like novelty to me than a main. magic should be more balanced just based upon it being a constant part of the game

it's just amusing to use daggers on a single enemy because you keep interrupting their attacks 😄

[strange moat]

the biggest problem for me with the mage nerfs: staves at the same level now seem to do an uneven amount of damage, why were they nerfed unevenely and honestly the damage should be somewhere in the middle. The bloodletting talent seems way less than 50% of critical hits, it only even spawns from using staves when it used to drop from wands and so it now feels like a pointless talent. The orbs were too frequent before but now it feels like 10% chance on a chance of a crit, and it only works with certain spells. It certainly doesn't work with wands and I've only seen it drop from the light burst spell

and just generally mages struggle with inventory management, we have to carry like 3-4 wands because of their low durability and for different elemental powers and loads of different spells, some kind of spell book or spell bag to hold them would be helpful

while mages were slightly too powerful before at least they were fun, now its just frustrating because they are so weak and talents arent as effective

[digital light]

they wernt too powerful, their damage was lower than ranged and melee they were just easier to play because you didnt need to see mobs or aim to kill them.
you can just shoot somewhere and see if you hit something with your big aoe

the main difference was that fireball explosion hits everything in its radius regardless of line of sight
mobs sit behind walls and doors and sometimes multiple and you can hit them while they cant get to you ro even see you.
with a few mages you can kill the bosses in Hollow Halls before the doors even open.

for the mana part i understand mana needs to be usefull in some way otherwise it can just be removed if we always have an infinite amount
but players do want to be able to cast spells
maybe make the mana pools larger and the mana recovery delay longer and also increase the mana regen.
in most games it takes about 5 seconds of not casting to start the recovery

we can also make wands more useful in this aspect by giving wands a huge mana recovery on hit for example so people can weave between staff and wand.
at the current state melee has a 5x higher damage output than magic and ranged is close to 10x higher damage output
both have no cost to their attacks

i know ranger has arrows but you can bring enough to last pretty much any fight, you cant bring more mana to a fight

mana should be about managing it and not about waiting 5 minutes for it to recover

also stamina when you are rested i go from 240 stamina and 16 stamina regeneration to 410 stamina and 41 stamina regeneration
maybe add something similar to mana since as a mage atm being rested doesnt do that much for you
when i play as a mage right now i take the rested buff to have more stamina while im gliding and thats pretty much it.
i dont need it in fights but i am always running out of mana

im sure some of the ideas i have were prob be mentioned allready but these are some ideas i think would work really great in balancing magic
not saying all ideas are perfect and using them all would make mage most likely overpowered and thats not my goal aswell
having the damage back that they had minus the damage hitting mobs trough walls etc and upping the mana/mana recovery should do the trick so its a small nerf and some buffs

[heavy tinsel]

i would like to see the mage get spells that are buff and nerf and less direct damage spells. make mages truly unique

[teal sequoia]

Something I've been thinking about while at work, and while playing the game over the weekend, was possibly adding another play style avenue for intelligence players.

Rough concept, but what if we re-purposed the bracelets(or add another weapon type like, say, magic gauntlets?) to be an offensive and defensive equipment. Gaining the ability to punch enemies with magic-based equipment sounds rather fun, and give the trickster unarmed skill a bit more of a home.

[smoky frigate]

i broke my tancendental ward halfway through fighting one of those green scavenger guys (are they the sicklescythe?) in the nomad highlands and it was the first fight i flew into, fresh from a full repair at home. yikes!

[bleak cove]

Fell Sicklescythes are boss enemies you run into in the shroud. The green Scavengers are just extra mean dudes.

[smoky frigate]

my wizard is now lvl 23+ or something and I have more thoughts to add.

With flame level 5 going on 6 and after taking the chain hit and mass destruction feats, as well as boosting my INT score as much as roughly 100 skill points will allow, my wizard finally feels like it did pre-nerf. I have to exclusively use fireball and have taken the fire damage increase feats. Oh and im using a root staff because it is one of the very few staves that still have a good damage stat. Why the flaming flippidy fook did ya decide to nerf only most of the staves? i can only cross my fingers and hold out hope they reverse that particular change or at least even out the damage stats a bit =/

ANYWAY after all these upgrades and completely reworking my skill tree, i fixed my character. HOWEVER, this is still a huge problem because the (pure) magic user survivability is heavily reliant on killing stuff before it reaches you, which is impossible until level 20+ aka 70+ skill points. inb4 subclass builders comment they do just fine; im talking about pure magic builds and not combos that incorporate non-broken skill trees such as archer (looking at you Gnome lol) or warrior to fix a broken class. AND even after "fixing" my character and making it a "powerful" wizard, my archer mate (who is new to the game while ive been playing for ages), still matches my damage and is way more hardy in a fight.

What this and my experience pre-100 skill points tells me is the only reason pure magic builds were EVER viable is because they had MASSIVE damage output and that made up for the lack of manoeuvrability, resource management, utility, survivability, and crowd control. Wizard was always broken, its just that with the nerf its way more noticeable. It relies way too heavily on a high INT stat to do damage, has mana problems unless you can get high INT for damage to mana return, and its still made of glass.

It would be easy to just revert the nerf and that would put wizard on par with archer imo, but at its core, wizard would still be missing a lot;

• Mana regen or lower damage spell that costs 0 mana for the staff. Not all of us want to use a wand for mana. I would prefer to keep the wand as short range only.
• A way to avoid getting crowded by enemies (blink/dodge currently doesnt work as you still take damage during the animation and it cant cancel spell cast animation PLUS emergency blink doesnt stop you getting staggered, which kills me in a fight way more often than other stuff)
• Wards that dont go from 100% to 0% durability in one fight (i still want to look cool dammit)
• Crowd control options
• Faster wand projectile speeds
• A way to manual aim with wands and a way to turn off the auto target from spells mid-fight like the archer can with the bow. I want to stop wasting my bone channels and time with my wand because the enemy ran off to hit someone else and accidentally out-ran my stuff >_<

Fix that and you can keep your nerf (except the staff nerf... what the heck...). As it is right now we can roll into a high INT wizard and do okay after lvl 20ish, but this jus railroads all of us pure magic lovers into one class, which, based on what I see in the skill trees, is not what you intended for us.

If you made it this far, thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the time of day and all of us this opportunity to provide feedback. It really means a lot to us that you would have open communication with us about Enshrouded's future. Looking forward to whatever comes out of this in good faith ❤️

side note on the mana regen point: wands need mana regen too! i meant to include that but it slipped me brain

oh and water aura nerf was needed and is fine as is now, but you need to make heal channel and heal chain way more effective to encourage healers to actively heal instead of using a broken passive heal. as it is right now, putting points into heal nodes is a waste and im probably going to drop water aura in favour of the evasion attack gated heals because that also offers some mana regen. even if that was also nerfed as i understand it? bandages and pots > any magical healing in the game and since the nerf the water aura is just convenience for when im too lazy to get a bandage out >_>

[crystal rover]

So I don't have the experience "pre-nerf" so cannot say how it was before.

I wasn't even aware that the mage got nerfed, tbh I enjoyed it.

However I got lucky and got a purple root staff which I'm still using, later I dropped a yellow staff which was higher level but was doing less damage, that felt wrong and unsatisfying.

I've been playing with the aura that does fire damage around you, however in late game it feels completely useless, also I would love to have a visual effect showing me where does it start/finish.

I find that the mage does enough. I had however to put some points on the tank tree to be a bit more tanky, as I was getting 2 shot by anything, now I can get 3 shots instead 😅

Teleport definitely feels bug right now: can't tp across an enemy, still getting damaged during tp

Healing also feel bugged: healing myself rather than someone who is lower in life.

Wands range and animation is awkward, can't really understand when this is going to hit.

[digital light]

Blink and roll are not iframes you can still get hit while in these animations. Its just a faster way of moving andnwith emergency blink you can break out of stuns

Magic is still usuable once you get to a higher lvl. On low lvl its just garbage as you run out of mana so fast
Altho its useable on higher lvls melee and ranged deal 5x to 10x more damage and have an easier time to survive

The aura is pretty useless as it only affects shroud monsters and nothing else

[tacit bridge]

Biggest thing for me is ease of use—I’m desperate to have a more intuitive way to swap through spells, especially on controller.

Some kind of radial menu would be optimal, eg;

While aiming via left trigger being able to use the right bumper and have the radial display be available spells rather than your current quick bar.

[abstract matrix]

Very exciting! I put a feedback item on the suggestions site. but here's basically the ideas for mage balance that I put over there:

1. Separate wand/shield and staff play style. Spells scale with Spirit, wands scale with Intelligence. It currently requires 4 weapons to play hybrid which will never balance with melee.

2. Split spells into initiation vs engagement
   a. Initiator spells -> Ranged, longer cast time intended to weaken or thin out groups
   Ex.) current ice bolt creates slow zone so you can get more spells before melee
   Ex.) current fireball could have a burning dot to thin out group before melee
   Ex.) remove shroud meteors terrain effect and add a 15 sec resistance removing effect and lower cast time
   b. engagement spells -> short range, low/instant cast intended to handle melee combat
   Ex.) remove chain lightning cast time and diminishing chain damage (mimic a sweeping melee swing)
   Ex.) the current acid spray spell could have instant cast time, lower the damage, and widen/shorten the cone effect
   Ex.) you could add ice or fire instant cast cone spells that also have their own effects in melee combat (like freezing enemies or applying stacking burning damage)
   Ex.) change light burst from knockback to stun and remove damage

3. Improve mobility
   Ex.) Blink talent could triple the distance and cost mana instead of stamina

4. Improve spell selection (switch from bar/hotkeys)

[eager token]

Thanks for such a detailed writeup of your experience, very helpful :)

[digital light]

blink doesnt have an iframe

[eager token]

And yeah in general power level is always something we can figure out internally, there's countless variables we can tweak to balance stuff. What we're more concerned about is the "feel" of the class, what things feel good and bad for the players. Those are much harder to figure out than just by calculating numbers, so more info about what you guys like about mage, and what you guys find frustrating/unfun about mage, goes a long way

[smoky frigate]

huge plus one to the faster spell switching options. its not too bad if you are pure damage build and just have 2 or 3 spells to choose from (i dump all the spell ammo i get on my unwilling friend LOL) but if you try to heal a friend they are either dead or have used a health pot by the time you get the right spell from the list xD

[tacit bridge]

I was wanting to have every eternal spell on me and that was just untenable lol—the vibe of Mage for this reads very wizard, so having a wide spell selection seemed part of the power fantasy for me.

Honestly my favorite part about mage is being able to exploit elemental weaknesses for anything my group runs into on the fly.

[chilly jetty]

assuming the heal projectiles dont miss him and actually target him instead of yourself with full hp 😄

[obtuse wasp]

spell switching would be fine if equipping ammo automatically equipped the appropriate weapon. i put spells on my action bar and i have to first select the spell and then the staff to cast. there's really no reason to need to select the staff every time i switch spells

[smoky frigate]

refraining from pinging you, Toast, but in response to your request for love and dislike i think i already outlined stuff i think i want to change so i thought about it and the thing i love the most about mage classes is the splash damage and looking really bloody awesome while doing it 😂 mage outfits are 10/10

[tacit bridge]

Absolutely agree with Eko, Mage has the strongest aesthetic sense by a wide margin. Your armor and spell effects designers are killing it.

[smoky frigate]

yeah the spells are really pretty. i think its the main reason im still playing wizard even if its not as good as any other class lolol

i get to constantly remind my friends that "LOOK GUYS! I'm a Wizard!"

[tacit bridge]

I would enjoy a sticky targeting system for chain heal. It’s fine that it’s a skill shot vs a hard lock on, but adding some slight tracking to the initial projectile would go a long way imo

Also a way to cleanse poison/other debuffs would be huge for the healer vibe

[graceful gazelle]

As a pure mage, I must say that, from playing before and after the latest update, Mages were definitely overnerfed. Many of the above comments sum up the current issues, between the wand durability, the painful staff nerfs and the horrendous mana usage of spells/ ungodly slow mana regen without some serious min-maxing, which doesn't feel as fun and versatile.

Now, for overall mage feedback unrelated to the update:

-Inventory

Right now, I feel the durability depletion rate of items is quite punishing, and forces me to carry 5 different weapons when going on a long journey (two staves for different bonuses, two different element wands and a melee weapon to break stuff with, because I need my wands to not break. My inventory suffers from lack of space really badly because I rely so heavily on 5 different spells, the 5 weapons, 5 different potions and buff scrolls, 3 types of food for buffs and bandages.

-Stamina in groups

While exploring with groups of friends, keeping up with others is a massive pain. Since I have to heavily spec my skills into magic stuff to be remotely viable in late game combat, I suffer from lack of stamina overall, so when we are all running around, I keep having to tell my friends to wait for me while I try to recover my stamina because I run out so quickly (non-combat). I just can't keep up with warriors and rangers unless I eat loads of stamina-related food, using up much needed magic-related buff slots. If my friends also eat stamina food, forget keeping up. They'll run around clearing up all the enemies before I can even catch up with them enough to be within range to cast a spell 😅

[digital light]

i believe it was said that most people were playing with magic and almost no1 used melee and ranged and thats why it was decided to nerf it
even tho it wasnt the strongest out of the 3 it was the most convenient.

im sure most people would have loved to go for a ranged build instead but the sheer amount of arrows people have to craft made them pick magic instead as it has eternal spells
if people had the option to for example make more arrows out of a certain craft or had more ways of making arrows people would be more willing to have more variaty in their class picking

for example being able to make arrow shafts from wood logs or having the option to make a bronze arrow it takes 2 bronze ingots 5 feathers and 10 twigs.
maybe give them the option to instead of using additional bronze bars instead of the twigs so 3 bronze ingots and 5 feathers instead.

i know this is a mage class feedback but i think if the ranged class would have been more user friendly it would be enough to have a bigger spread and it doesnt have to get buffed or nerfed at all

magic damage has to go back to how it was without a doubt and magic shouldnt hit things on the other side of walls

right now melee feels pretty balanced, it does good damage and you only have to worry about durability but you have to be in melee range. while if you go ranged you know you will have to put quite some time and effort into crafting arrows and magic is just extremely underwhelming right now
pre nerf magic would still be about half as strong as melee in terms of damage and ranged is almost twice as much damage as melee right now but atleast magic would be fun to use.
right now ranged is the most over powered out of all 3 styles and most people still most likely go for melee out of convenience

[smoky frigate]

i stand next to hurt friend, point mouse at him, point character face at him, execute. spell heals me. FML lol
one of our play sessions the spell would just refuse to heal one particular person but was fine for everyone else ahahah idk what is going on with it

[tacit bridge]

I wish I could say this wasn’t something I’ve experienced too x3

But..ya, a radial ammo selection while aiming would work for rangers as well for swapping between arrow types.. so that piece of development would be widely applicable

[graceful gazelle]

Forget your projectiles even hitting your friend if they have high latency/ live across the world from you. I've been playing with my UK friend, and everytime I try to cast Heal Channel, my projectiles just circle around him without touching him 🤣

[tacit bridge]

Rad light show tho, right?

[smoky frigate]

this is a really good point. pre-patch i got an archer to lvl 20. i still have nightmares about the stick farm i resorted to (jk but still). I had so many stick shrubs growing that i crashed my game with them on several occasions. I later learned to space them out better. Then theres the arrow tips to farm as well. NGL i spent most of my time using wooden arrows than any others because i didnt want to spend hours farming.

Because of that experience, ive stayed mostly clear of archer lol anyway, i think maybe mage wasnt actually THAT overpowered before. I still think it was more powerful than the other classes but it sure wasnt 50% more powerful.

Some of the same issues plague the wizard playability after the patch, too. As someone mentioned, inventory management has become a pain due to lack of damage leading to the need for elemental exploit whenever you can. I know I soent time trying to figure out weaknesses (and failing lol) before i got high enough to just spam points into INT, chain hit, mass destruction and fire damage feats. Now I almost exclusively use fireball and occasionally ice bolt. swapping spells is another huge playability issue. And last but not least, having to take half the tank tree up so i dont get 1 shot by some shroud bully 😂

[smoky frigate]

chain heal works way better but doesnt heal as much and honestly just tell your mate to use a potion xD

[graceful gazelle]

That's why I never use it. Uses too much mana + weak + the cast time just makes it not worth using

overall, healing spec mages are just not worth it. You're better off having your friend use potions while you fireball enemies

[abstract matrix]

thats a good point about inventory and mana. I think I just got used to running around with stacks of mana potions and accepted I only had 2 rows of inventory to actually use. the most fun was when we could have the double mana regen rings. I didn't even know what materials the mana potion used until the ring nerf

we probably don't need that much mana regen, but a halfway point would be nice

[tacit bridge]

I wonder if a protection based approach to healing mage would work? Spells to generate shields that absorb damage bring dealt to allies

And then skills that add buffs while shields are active on an ally or do something when they get removed?

[graceful gazelle]

the large mana pots only fill up enough mana to cast one fireball. I hate that. They cost so much to craft, and you don't really get enough mana from them

[abstract matrix]

100%. my inventory screen was mostly purple for a good while. that could also be something to tweak. either up the mana regen from gear or up the mana from potions. maybe halfsie on both would be a good start

[tacit bridge]

My experience has been just needing to swap to a want with double mana leech and using that exclusively to recharge mana

[abstract matrix]

for me I never wanted to mess with wands though. I know thats the kind of intended switch. but for me wands/sheild and staff are enough of a system on their own

[tacit bridge]

Basically burn phase being casting via staff when I have full mana, then rotating to wand to recharge—rinse repeat

[graceful gazelle]

One thing I would suggest for large mana potions specifically, would be to have a bit more mana per potion drank, and a mana regen after-effect for a few seconds, to make them more viable without having to chug them constantly

[abstract matrix]

yea exactly. I think that's the intended. which to me was always awkward because I had to carry so many things all the time to account for whatever I might run into

and that never seemed fun because I could just carry two melee and call it a day. but instead I have 2 rows of spells, wands, staffs, etc just to do the same thing

[tacit bridge]

If you have double leech the damage type doesn’t matter terribly much, at least not in a group

[tacit bridge]

I would -love- for ammo to have its own storage. For both bow and staff—even if that comes with a limitation, like five slots or something. You’d have to actively choose what loadout of ammo is best for what you’re out to do

[smoky frigate]

i honestly dont really understand what ive done but my mage doesnt have mana issues anymore

let me load up the game and check the build hang on

[abstract matrix]

yea I love group play as a mage for sure. I think the solo time was when I noticed how awkward it was (for me personally) to handle groups of high level enemies after the damage nerfs

[tacit bridge]

I exclusively play in a 3stack, so my mileage will vary in feedback for solo

[graceful gazelle]

please, I'd love a few screenshots of your build, because I am all out in staff skills, and I really suffer from the low mana regen/ having to chug potions

[smoky frigate]

sent a DM

[abstract matrix]

witchcraft

[tacit bridge]

But…ya—I think ammo going into equipment slots makes sense. A quiver for arrows and a component pouch for spells. Would free up a row or more of backpack space.

Hecc, have us craft them and increase storage based on tier

And only things in the quiver/component pouch show up on your options to swap between ammo types in combat

[abstract matrix]

I was actually trying to think of a way to do "loadouts" while making my initial post but couldn't think of anything. this would be an amazing way to have smaller list of spells to cycle

maybe hotswap from the bar even

[tacit bridge]

Still leaves the option to put back ups in the backpack to swap/restock from out of combat, but opens up more space overall and has people making meaningful player choices on what they want to use during fights

I think hotswapping from the bar makes it too strong—to gain more inventory space there should be an opportunity cost.

[graceful gazelle]

For staves, I'd love some kind of system like a spell "hotbar". Hold right click, then press the number the spell is assigned to, to quick swap spells.

[tacit bridge]

Easiest way to do it would be to have a radial menu when you’re aiming with the stuff rather than the list you have to scroll through that’s there currently

[abstract matrix]

oh so like, you only can equip one component pouch with the spells in it at a time (like a backpack) and you have to go to inventory to trade them out? or do you mean have another slot thats there from the start (no crafting) and that is where you manage spells

[tacit bridge]

So when aiming you press the existing radial menu button and it just cycles you through ammo in your quiver/pouch

[tacit bridge]

Like a new equipment piece similar to a backpack/glider

So it goes on the equipment screen

And then you can slot ammo types in while out of combat

Let everyone make a basic one at level 1 that has two slots

For both quiver and pouch

And then when you swap weapons it pulls from that given ammo type

So there would be two more equipment slots on the character pane

[abstract matrix]

that would be pretty cool. and improve the inventory/spell selection issues

[tacit bridge]

Mmhm

It’s like my background is in ux design or something Lolol

Also improves player experience if you wanna play an archer/mage combo because you would only have to hotbar your staff / bow to swap and pull from the given ammo container

Obviously I’m not familiar with the game engine so idk how viable this kind of conditional inventory is so that the given weapon types know to pull from the right spots, but if it’s doable I think it generates a higher ease of use as well as meaningful player choice by way of ammo selection

[abstract matrix]

so what does everyone think about point 2? having spells with long cast time/ranges vs having short range/cast time spells meant for melee combat. I think this would make the mage more viable in melee range. so solo isnt a death sentence if you mess up and in group you can choose if you want to focus ranged or melee

[tacit bridge]

Like Toast said; Number tweaks are simple, nailing what the feel good moments in gameplay is what they really need feedback on

[tacit bridge]

I really like it conceptually

[abstract matrix]

like ranged is meant for less damage and more debuff(ish) and melee is meant for more damage/survivability

[tacit bridge]

I’m also a big fan of removing the terrain part of meteor…you can just dig a hole and drop a field boss into it, trivializing the fight completely

[tacit bridge]

I think having it be reverse would be better, actually

[abstract matrix]

I love the fact its an option, but also hate it in practice lol

[tacit bridge]

Shorter ranges being focused on debuffs and facilitating disengagement, and longer ranges being better at overall damage

[digital light]

its a bit weird to have the class with most survivability to also have the most damage, that would make everything else obsolete

[graceful gazelle]

One more feedback I forgot is that I agree with a few people here. Mages (normally glass cannons) right now are all squish and no cannon. 🥲

Now I know how those shroud beetles feel 🤣

[tacit bridge]

I think actual melee range should be a death knell for mages

[abstract matrix]

ohh ok. I guess those are two different potential playstyles. I was playing around with daggers/blink the past week and could see a mage kind of playing the same way only with spells

[tacit bridge]

But I would enjoy more options for avoiding getting into melee

[abstract matrix]

yesss. you could go the other way too for sure. having short range/low cast time melee spells be debuffs or cc

[digital light]

atm daggers and mage kind of have the same playstyle, they both dont really do any significant damage xD

[tacit bridge]

I really dunno what game some of y’all are playing…like…I one shot most enemies with Mage so long as I’m exploiting elemental weaknesses

[abstract matrix]

I like the idea of a cone of cold sort of situation where you freeze the enemies in a cone in front of you and then blink backwards or something

[digital light]

hollow halls

[tacit bridge]

That’s not the whole game tho…?

[digital light]

no but its endgame content and its not about 1 shotting mobs, i can 1 shot mobs with ranged using ice arrows that are the weakest

[tacit bridge]

Like, if you micro focus balancing for one explicit environment you’re going to end up with something that isn’t fun everywhere else

[digital light]

the difference is that mages does 900 damage, melee does 3k damage and ranged with explosive arrow can do up to 6k and even more

[abstract matrix]

my thing is that seems to limit you to like 2 or 3 spells. the ice bolt does good damage but then it becomes kind of boring when thats the only spell that does any damage to the lvl 30 scavengers

thats why i mentioned maybe adding some way to remove or lower resistances

so you could use lightning spells or something

[digital light]

my builds dont just work in hh, they are strong in general. HH is just the best place to compare the 3 fighting styles

i use 3 different spells in HH depending on the situation, its more micromanagement while ranged and melee dont have to change anything at all

so you need to put in most effort, you have lease survivability and you do least amount of damage

[tacit bridge]

I mean..I think a bigger focus on exploiting elemental weaknesses in general is a good thing? Like ice is pointless into Rhuk since they resist it so heavily so you rotate to fireball

[abstract matrix]

like fireball and ice bolt still do good damage if youre using them against the right enemy, but then it becomes very static if you can only bring one spell to any fight. and the rest of the spells dont get used at all. the lightning spells are both garbo (from my experience) and its sad since those were my favorite before the nerfs

[digital light]

if you dont have bonechannel you will have a pretty hard time in HH on bosses as a mage as you simply dont have enough mana and you need to drink mana pots like they are m&ms xD

[abstract matrix]

oh yea for sure. I love the strategy aspect

I'm trying to think of ways to make other spells also useful in those scenarios

[tacit bridge]

I get what you mean tho

[abstract matrix]

so its not just "ok, we're going to bandits, bring ice bolt". and it can be more dynamic and fun

[tacit bridge]

They could look at some kind elemental combo system…

[abstract matrix]

like ok, I can use this to weaken, then this to do big damage

and then if they get close i can use this

[tacit bridge]

Like, hitting an enemy with frost damage makes them wet—changing their weakness to electric?

Electric makes them dry so now their weakness shifts to fire

[abstract matrix]

I think debuffs in general is a huge system they could flesh out

[digital light]

also the only reason why magic is still decent is cuzz you can basicly hit mobs with your eyes closed as it hits trough walls and doors etc. i think that should actually get nerfed and the damage buffed aswell as making the mana more manageable instead of going out of mana and either waiting for 5 minutes for it to come back or drink potions

[tacit bridge]

And just have those debuffs only last a few seconds

[abstract matrix]

even things like dot damage

[abstract matrix]

yea exactly

make it quick

[tacit bridge]

So quick swapping to the right type and chaninf those weaknesses lets to ramp up damage?

[abstract matrix]

and reactions are needed instead of just spamming one spell lol

[digital light]

i know potions arent hard to make but the mage allready has 5x more things to micro manage than anything else and we talking about how to make the class fun again and many people arent having fun
if they have this channel wouldnt exist

[tacit bridge]

Like…first hit does regular weakness, and then the next link in the chain deals double weakness, third link does triple, etc?

Potentially fixing mage’s overall damage complaints but still has a hard limit on the top end due to max mana

[digital light]

more damage means more mana leech, it may be enough

[tacit bridge]

There would need to be a max chain limit or something for that

Or you’d have infinite scaling damage and it’d be stupid

[abstract matrix]

I like the chain idea for sure. but it could even be simpler than that. like having 2 or 3 spells that play off each other. or having general debuff spells to choose from. like shroud spells lower resistance to elemental magic, etc. or slowed enemies take more damage from lightning (like you mentioned) and could stop there

[tacit bridge]

Maybe you can only go three steps because that cycles back to the original weakness again?

[abstract matrix]

just to make the system potentially easier to implement

[tacit bridge]

I like the idea of tying the weakness changes to existing debuffs

Makes it visually easier to read without clutter

[abstract matrix]

for sure. you'd just have to find what debuffs to pair with existing damage types. I like the idea of a burning debuff but idk what you could pair with it. unless maybe theres a second fire spell that does more damage if the enemy is burning

or even burning + acid

that way fire could be your traditional "go all out on damage" spell tree

pyromancer vibe

could do a short range fire stun then fireball could do more damage to stunned enemies. I think that goes with what you were saying earlier about short range vs long range

[tacit bridge]

Frost - Slow
Shock - Stun
Fire - Fear (short moment of enemy running to put our flame)
Toxic - Poison

[abstract matrix]

i think this is what might be missing from mage tbh

the play on debuffs

[tacit bridge]

Frost > Shock > Fire > Toxic > Frost

[abstract matrix]

which also you could apply to other classes. just to make sure mages arent the only ones who get to play with debuffs

[tacit bridge]

So when they’re dealing with those debuffs they take bonus damage from the next source type..only concern is how long poison usually lasts…

[abstract matrix]

"Debuff Update 2025"

[tacit bridge]

Maybe decrease poison’s duration and increase the amount of health loss per tic

[abstract matrix]

well the thing you kind of run into here is losing the current play around resistances

then the combo is always the same

[tacit bridge]

Other classes would get to benefit too—they have weapons with elemental damage built in

So mages generate the debuffs easiest and everyone’s damage goes up somewhat, but mages would get the biggest buff because they can control the rotation

[tacit bridge]

Leave existing resistances and weaknesses as they are—the debuffs wouldn’t land 100% of the time

[abstract matrix]

like here, so matter what enemy you face, its always Frost, Shock, Fire, Toxic, Frost spell. instead of more specialized/strategy how it is now

[tacit bridge]

Only if the debuff procs

Means ice bolt loses the default slow

And demon bite loses the default poison

[abstract matrix]

ah ok. that might help. might be a little clunky to get used to, but I could see it. but yea, play on debuffs for spells for sure

love ittt

[tacit bridge]

Mage would need to have an independent buff on themselves tho..attuned or something…so each time they hit an enemy for a different elemental weakness they get another stack of attuned, increasing overall magic damage

So..say attuned pasta for 30 seconds. You’re fighting a scav

You hit them with ice bolt—grants a stack of attuned.

You can keep hitting it with ice bolt and stay in the single stack, but if you get the slow on the scav and then hit it with chain lightning you get to go to attuned 2

And the timer resets to 30 seconds

Then you’re shooting chain lightning until you get a stun and then go to fireball for attuned 3

Increase damage per step, but you can only progress if you exploit a new weakness

[abstract matrix]

talent called "Vicious Magics" that unlocks the chaining system

[tacit bridge]

If the timer on the buff hits zero you lose all stacks

[abstract matrix]

see that could totally go on top of standard spell combos

make the mage super interesting

like if you talented into that system and got good at it, archmage status

[tacit bridge]

And the devs could tweak the numbers on the back end to fine tune how much damage they want mage to deal

[abstract matrix]

yess

[tacit bridge]

Just comes down to messing with attuned bonus damage

[abstract matrix]

someone write this down quick 🤣

[gentle iris]

If the question is more about how mage feels to play then I'd have to say it's current implementation feels clunky, clumsy, and frustrating. Spells cost a lot of mana, lock you in place while casting and take too long to cast for the effects they give. Additionally the spells themselves are not varied enough in their usage or again effectiveness to really want to bother using outside of icebolt and fireball. The casting animations which alleviate slower casting speed by showing your character engaging in casting their spell are too simple and amount to standing still. This coupled with the lack of visible effect or oomph from the casted spell leads mages to feel like they're throwers of colored balls instead of actual spell casters.

Long and the short, mages don't feel awful to play, if you excuse a little jank, but they don't feel great either so because of this people tend to focus on how much damage or how survivable a mage is to get the better feeling.

If you're looking for something to emulate a good feeling mage I'd suggest researching dragons dogma 1 and 2 as both games have gratifying and engaging mage playstyles.

[chilly jetty]

"Warlock" skill tree and spells. curses, spreading dots etc hhhhmmmm tasty

maybe more expansion on the summoner part

right now the mage tree is kinda divided anyway into damage and the healer so maybe expand on those paths/add some more and put more of the ideas here in different paths

atleast for the summoner there is a lot of stuff already in the game. the wisp potion, the wisp scroll, the skull summon bomb thingies etc

[smoky frigate]

uhhhh please disregard my mana comments there. turns out i managed to bug my character. confirmed on 3 different characters and replicated it too. i can DM you the method but wont post it here and spread exploits 😛

[graceful gazelle]

One thing I noticed since the update is that my Necromancer skill skulls will often just float around without attacking anything unless I attack a specific target first, making it practically useless against groups of enemies when I get swarmed

I would much rather have the skulls attack the nearest enemy to them without me having to hit it first

[median flax]

Once you're "online" as a mage there's very little other build archetypes can do to compare. Explosive arrows mash the ground up too badly (creating cover or bunkers enemies fall into) compared to a fireball which does nadda.

Spells and spell related AoE effects completely ignore terrain

I can't stress enough how much this affects game play balance.

Before balancing the mage further, please change this <3

Being able to stand outside a town or encampment and just huck fireballs in, aggro everything then kill it all while it fails to pathfind to me is how my experience ended up.

[bleak cove]

Hopefully the posts I made earlier in the discussion help a bit in regards to the "feel" of the class. It got a bit wordy in the end, but I really wanted to detail each area of the mage playstyle I thought either felt underwhelming or just plain bad and why they felt that way.

[remote tinsel]

I feel we should move to separating magic users that use wands vs staves since I find the utility of having both the reason that makes magic users overpowered have the magic player base choice between short range fast attacks or large but slow damage snipers will balance both sides and give a decrease if you like to spec into both. There is no issue for spec'ing into all magic tree as of now.

[remote tinsel]

It feel like there is one magic class when it really should be 4 that should have different play styles. I prefer staves but there doesn't seem to be an issue in damage or mana to spending points into battlemage oppose to sticking to the Wizard tree.

[digital light]

There is nothing about magic atm or before the patch that is overpowered compared to other styles 😅

[bleak cove]

Personally, penalizing a player for speccing into two different trees falls into the "feels bad" area for me. To me wands come across as the "melee" or "light" weapon option for magic users. Akin to comparing 1H melee weapons to 2H melee weapons for melee, or daggers to bows for ranged.

I do agree with the mage trees feeling a bit less distinct from each other compared to the melee and ranged trees though. Trickster is mostly point boosts, and 2/3 of its unique abilities are just kind of "meh." Wizard pretty much boils down to "pick your preferred damage type," and sucks up a lot of points even if you only pick one of the four (poison isn't even included). Healer is almost entirely group play focused with almost nothing appealing for solo players. Battlemage just feels bad after all the wand nerfs to the point where speccing into Warrior felt noticeably better in close combat.

So while there are some really good skill nodes in the magic trees, there are also a lot of underwhelming and outright bad nodes as well that just don't feel worth the points. Resulting in much less distinction between the "class" trees compared to melee and ranged playstyle trees. Which is why every magic build just ends up being some samey variation of all the worthwhile skills.

[digital light]

I feel like the wand should be used as a way to recover your mana while applying some single target damage.

I dont even bring a wand right now because the damage is laughable

[remote tinsel]

I agree. I find the scope or the utility of a class to be the proof if it could be overpowered or not and not some much the DPS of a class. If the goal is to still have functional use of all tools at your disposal I wonder if retooling the nodes like you said could solve most of the mages issues.

[bleak cove]

Trickster would be more interesting if there was some kind of skill that stealthed a player when dodging or blinking (and stealth in general), and it's proximity to ranged playstyle trees would give it some appeal for them as well. Also, skills for sowing crowd control effects like illusions to disorient and confuse enemies would be well in line with what I'd imagine from a magic Trickster. Also, why is the Spirit Flame perk here and not in Healer?

Wizard's damage nodes need to be condensed, and instead replaced with ride along debuff effects on respective elements like suggested earlier. Ice spells could make enemy armor more brittle and shield blocks easier to overpower. Fire spells could gain a burning effect. Lightning spells could be rolled together with Terror for short duration stuns. Shroud spells could carry a fear effect that forces enemies to run away from the mage. Poison spells could gain a plague effect that spreads their damage over time to other nearby enemies. Stuff like that.

Healer needs to be decoupled from group-play. As a solo player only around half of the Healer tree has any viable use for me, and even then those nodes are underwhelming at best. Resulting in having many leftover points to simply shuffle elsewhere instead Healer being a meaningful choice. Also similar to Trickster, why is the Intelligence Flame perk here and not in Wizard (aside from that tree already being pretty bloated)?

Battlemage should be the "survivability" tree for mages since it's primarily focused around boosting the "close range" weapon of mages. Putting points here should make a mage more capable of surviving in close combat, but at the cost of sucking up points that could go into boosting the long range blasting, self-healing or crowd control of the other trees. As it is though the wand nerfs have pretty much destroyed the appeal of this tree resulting in a similar situation as the Healer tree where those points can simply go elsewhere.

Basically each tree needs to be interesting enough where I actually agonize over whether I should go all-in on a couple mage trees, spread out my points among them for a less specialized setup, or dipping into melee or ranged trees to cover other weaknesses. Right now my points are just messily spread out all over the various mage trees to pick up a few must-haves while still having enough leftover points to fill up big chunks of two red trees to cover the weaknesses of the mage trees with just enough left to grab the must-have green skills of Updraft and Double Jump.

[digital light]

I went for double jump, updraft, tank tree and rest into magic. I use fire, ice and lightning a lot so i picked them all.
Ice often doing more dps than fire, also fire often gets interupted because of the longer casting time

[bleak cove]

My red trees are Tank and Warrior. The latter ate up all the points that used to be in Battlemage (close combat feels so much better after that change). I also only took the fire damage boosts because I use ice bolt more for the slow utility than damage, and I don't use lightning barring the crit effects because I'm frankly not fond of ammunition material grinds.

[smoky frigate]

maybe the healer + wizard (and wands?) should connect to the INT flame node right at the end of their trees? so you can complete one of the 2 (or 3) to get to the INT flame instead of having to spend points on healer when you dont care for healing. perhaps a similar connection to the trickster tree would work for the spirit flame one too?

as in have the last node on wizard join up with the last node on healer i mean. not have several of the same node 😛

anyway this thread was more about how we FEEL about the classes and not how to fix it.
After reading through all our chat, the major frustration is:

• **no mana recovery for staves and barely any for wands **
• casting animation cant be cancelled by anything, even blink
• **lack of CC or utility **
• **damage to squishy ratio is sad **
• projectiles either too slow or target strangely leading to missing shots
• spell manual aim button assignment changes make spell animations behave strangely
• heals are weak, slow, and expensive
• no working target system for heals and they miss most of the time
• **spell switching takes too long and takes up too much inventory **
• elemental damage weaknesses dont really work the way we expect so we more often just use fireball than anything else
• no decent defensive magic aka teleport isnt actually a teleport and is just a pretty roll with slightly better range and a stun break (which doesnt work on stagger). Light burst takes too long to cast and the range is too small to stop getting swarmed and stagger-locked or simply 1 shot
• Wands feel weak compared to 1H melee and break so easily we carry several in our bags
• Skill trees don't feel distinct, and many of their nodes are underwhelming leading to mage builds often being very samey
• wards have little, arguably zero, advantage over shields; they are just plain weaker in every way so why use one instead of a real shield
• lack of damage pre-lvl 20 points to issues in skill trees. Points and damage distribution is skewed.
• early-mid game spells have no AOE
• staff nerf sucks; my damage as a mana-glitched wizard lvl 25 (using a 40something damage legendary shepherd staff) is less than my archer friend at lvl 20 (using a lvl 15 fell commander bow i believe he had last time i saw him). so even if you disregard mana problems and chug potions, archer will still out damage you while being 5 lvls lower than you
• martyr is terrible; its useless in singleplayer; any decent mage, let alone healer, will try even harder than most other classes to not die; its a waste of points blocking the INT flame node; its as if the devs (or whatever team was in charge of it) were having a laugh at how easily murdered we are. martyr could be changed to "Stoic" or something, given a cooldown, and apply on heavy damage taken in one hit
• food buffs for INT feels way less rewarding than other stats. Not sure what's the actual damage gain per INT vs damage per STR, but it feels very uneven
• Necromancer skill spawn rate is too low

Did i miss anything? xD

What we like:

• we look amazing
• we blow stuff up with big pretty pew pew
• we get to wear a cool hat
• we feel like harry potter and/or gandalf
• sometimes we one-shot stuff and that feels good, man
• it feels like we have elemental weaknesses to exploit (personally i dont see much of this because i find it all very confusing and inconsistent with enemy faction, type, and general widespread fantasy lore BUT someone else mentioned it is fun so it gets a spot here)
• AOEs are fun
• Light Burst is a great idea for defensive spell but its too slow and doesnt seem to push enemies back if they had already started to execute an attack
• we like more active gameplay rather than automatic type stuff. Mages are clever and use their brains to overcome adversary.

[bleak cove]

I mean, pinpointing where the playstyle feels underwhelming and why kind of goes hand in hand with fixing the feel of the playstyle. Since it's a bit difficult to fix how something feels without knowing the why behind it feeling bad.

That's a pretty good summary though. The only things I'd add are:

• Wands feel weak compared to 1H melee.
• Skill trees don't feel distinct, and many of their nodes are underwhelming leading to mage builds often being very samey.

Also, I feel more like Gandalf than Harry Potter with my sword and staff setup. 🙂

[smoky frigate]

tell me where is gandalf... for i much desire to speak with him 🎶

added ❤️

[digital light]

right now hes in london, not sure if hes out of the hospital yet 😬

he fell off the stage during a performance, hes in good spirits they say

[obtuse wasp]

technically light burst is the defensive spell the problem is [1] spell switching is clunky and [2] the spell itself is underwhelming so youve already gotten hit by the time you pull it off. it would be better as an instant cast, 40 s cooldown, with a 6 s slow or something - if spell switching is improved

[smoky frigate]

agree. i have a macro for light burst and you just cant get it to go off before getting hit, and we all know that getting 1 shot as a pure mage isnt an odd occurrence.

added 🙂

[cinder oracle]

My personal experience of playing mage.
I played enshrouded on release, ~half year ago and it was really joyful. I play as warrior and archer. After many times my friend invited me to play again. I chose mage this time, because don't play it enough. My friend goes archer.
My opinion about game become much worse, almost negative.

• my character don't deal any reasonable dmg before i reach 20 lvl.
• mage class don't have any resources in early game, no mana, no hp, no stamina.
• 1 lvl fireball don't have aoe dmg, it was just useless and disappointing.
• before 20 lvl all what i do - is stay with shield up and w8 when my friend shoots enemies with bow. If u don't hold ur shield up - u just die from 1-2 attack. How u can understand it's not pleasant gameplay. U must be masochist, or reach max lvl warrior/archer and when rebuild in mage.
• wands has so slow projectile speed and low durability, i usually must have 5 of them in backpack.
• spells don't work at all like acid byte, or don't worth to use. So usually i use just fireball or frostball, 2 spells gameplay. In hh i use chain lightning spell, it work well on really large groups of monsters, not in other places.
  It was experience of gameplay like mage from 1 to 25 lvl. It was before last patch, before hard nerfs.
  Now, after patch, i wouldn't go this route even for money.
  I rebuild in 2-h warrior build and now have so much fun, i have all i need - massive aoe dmg from double jump, smooth atack animation, cool hp and stamina bar, dynamic gameplay and the most important - my friend now wants play with me more often.

[cinder oracle]

One more, if u don't mind, rework of 2-h weapon - was really, REALLY GOOD. i think this is best way to balance - buffs others play styles rather than nerf others.
Balance is rly hard thing, there will always be dissatisfied players, because all have own preferences in game difficulty, gameplay or opinion about classes.
The only way to make happy all - give players the ability to change server settings. Game V rising - is good example, before star, u can change almost all aspects of ur server/world. % of magic dmg, physical dmg, hp pool of enemies and players and many more. If every1 will have this possibility - every1 can made pleasant gameplay for themselves.

[past estuary]

I think one issue with mage is the consolidation of stat nodes to specific classes on the skill tree. For example, warriors and rangers both get additional survivability along with their damage stats as HP and Endurance (more double jumping, sprinting and bee sting float time) both equate directly to higher survivability with big DPS. Meanwhile, Mages only get additional MP with their damage stats which only serves to support spell casting.

Also, while mages may deal slightly more dps than warrior and rangers, the inherent utility that comes with warriors and rangers more than makes up for this. Warriors and Archers also get access to very good AoE damage options (jump attack, exploding arrows) which further limits what makes mages stand out. Trying to AoE with a mage is arguably far more difficult as warriors and archers are both encouraged to AoE while double jumping (jump attack and bee sting) which further improves their AoE survivability. In contrast, most mage AoE spells have too much cast time to be utilized while jump casting. Only light burst can be reliably jump casted and its effective range is so short, you get instantly mobbed when you land. Mage AoEs are also a lot harder to utilize because warriors and archers can jump up and shoot/land into the center of a group of enemies to spread out their damage, while mages can realistically only target the enemy front lines, limiting the number of enemies hit.

Mages also have to deal with far more animation locking, animation displacement (stepping forward when casting a spell is PAINFUL) and longer cast times which open them up to being pummeled by enemies who just run at you full stop and never get staggered.

Additionally, mage damage tends to be more burst damage while warriors and archers deal more sustained damage through multiple hits. In practice, this translates to more reliable use of life steal rings, which are the go-to best in slot option for most builds, further improving warrior and ranger survivability.

My suggestions would be:
• Add a “mana shield” skill to offset some HP damage and promote mages going deep into wanting a lot of mana
• Have foods that give + Spirit also give + MP recovery (e.g., sage leaves), either naturally or via a skill unlock. Otherwise, make the spirit stats also slightly boost MP recovery.
• Reduce the animation time and remove the “step forward” for spell casting
• Make spells stagger enemies more reliably
• Give mages spell options to AoE without cast times to mimic the archer ability to jump and shoot exploding arrows
• Give mages a levitate skill that spends mana to float in the air like bee sting (best skill in dragon’s dogma by far)
• Give light burst a bigger radius

[smoky frigate]

do you have chain hit and mass destruction feats? with those, AOE is so easy and widespread. its only a small extra damage amount, but if you combine with Terror from the trickster tree, and wear a mage gear helm/hat, you will often land stuns with that hugely widespread tickle AOE.

Granted, to achieve this you have to take very specific feats so i agree something there needs to be improved

updated #1250881773030604872 message to include the above stuffs

[past estuary]

Yes, but in my experience they are not enough to alleviate the issues with mage. You still have to deal with long cast times, animation locking and no reliable survivability. Even with the ability to stun, mage feels noticeably weaker than rangers and warriors as they are given way more options for mobility, survivability and damage.

[smoky frigate]

agree

[copper grotto]

I'd ask the devs back; what is the mage supposed to do. Because it feels like there isn't anything the mage is good at, that the other builds just aren't better at. So they're in a ditch of, excel at nothing; while retaining weak in everything.

[teal sequoia]

Honestly, as for mage survivability, I'd love for a shielding spell. Give temporary hp or extra armor for the duration. Or cast the spell, and while active, you reduce incoming damage at the cost of some mana.

But that rounds back to the "more spells, please." option

[past estuary]

I think a big helper would be a "focus" skill that let you keep casting spells even when being hit

otherwise when anything hits you, it forces you to restart your casting

[copper grotto]

I think part of the issues stem from not enough separation in "mage" from traditional casting mage, and the healer line. "Mage" keeps getting nailed every time anything in the blue talents is beneficial as if you're taking every single blue talent.
But that's patches ago; and 'mage' has been catching nerf after nerf after nerf since the demo. This current build just pushes it over the line; it is not fun. This is garbage. Lengthy animation locks on the class that gets 2 shot by swarms of charging enemies is not fun. It has to excel at something
Warriors get great damage, jump attack smash spam, frankly; stupid resource generation between orbs and I could write a page on Battle Heal alone being stupid. But no, ticking 12 hp every 2 seconds on water aura is the problem.
Rangers having a core part of their game play being mob avoidance between beesting and a whole talent line around enhancing their aoe - means the ranger can focus on avoiding the charge-spam enemies because that's part of their kit. Avoidance.
Mage has to find a stump, or a rock, or something unpathable out of necessity. You simply die if a charging mob is able to get to you And without damage or some type of utility to stop them. Guess what? Fel sword guy dive swings, 80% hp gone, or dead. Cyclops winding up to do a foot stomp? Well better not have used your wand; because you are rooted longer than his animation and are getting stepped on.
Mage has some major design issues in stacking buffs as well. It feels like that since flame scrolls and elixirs buff your damage - you are dependent on stacking everything to try and gain competitive damage back. If you gorge yourself on consumables you can be 'functional' for a while. Melee will have an easier time sprinting into things and spam clicking to victory while effectively invincible, and run off before the mage has finished a cast. But whatever.
-Mage is too slow. Being rooted every time I swing a wand just makes me hate the game a little more with each swing.
-Mage lacks stamina options to keep up with other players.
-Mage is too squishy. Significantly less total HP, and significantly less mitigation means you just die. A lot. Equally geared melee or rangers can take 3x the hits or more and shrug it off.
-Recovery spells suck. Between the lack of targeting ability, and the pathing of heal channel (not to mention chain heal can't even hit yourself) the limited "healing" we can do is so rediculously unreliable just download the resource realm and grab stacks of health potions. Farming the resources isn't hard, nor engaging. It's tedious. Tedium is the opposite of fun.
-The whole healing tree is garbage. Killing yourself for a benefit to the party is stupid.
-Mage doesn't react nearly as fast as the other two arch types - and doesn't have the tankyness to off set that
-Mage damage is trash. Jump attack spam is easier, more effective, less risky, and able to be maintained thanks to that 300+ weapon durability, obscene health generation (battle heal), and easy access to orb generation & ludicrous stamina food.
-I'm running out of words to describe how insufferably bad the mana regeneration is in this game. You have non-stamina focused builds that can have 40 stam / s generation, plus 20-27 from a single food item. And mana... gets 1. 1. from boiled eggs.
-Mage has no area they excel in for all these downsides.
The arch type is garbage, and needs a complete rework, and imo - significantly clearer separation from 'mage' and 'healer'.
-I'm also just mad necromancer sucks so much. Worthless 10% spawn rate.
If I didn't like the game so much and have friends still playing I would have dropped this garbage and uninstalled over this patch. End rant.

[smoky frigate]

savage, brutal, blunt, and absolutely 100000% correct, couldnt agree more. You just said it as assertively as we all want to but we try too hard to be nice. Now that I know i've somehow glitched my character and that is the only reason i can keep playing mage, i think we need to stomp our feet a bit and get this nerf fixed faster. I can't imagine how bloody awful you feel without said glitch (before you ask, i have NO IDEA why its happening and couldn't replicate it on other worlds and wouldnt have the heart to spread an exploit around like that anyway)

[smoky frigate]

added the above points and updated my summary for ease of reading. I'm doing this because I know this thread must be overwhelming for those who have to comb through it. Players: let me know if i have miss-represented your points or missed something you wanted heard. this way, hopefully we all get our points across

[copper grotto]

I'm being assertive for now; because lets be honest, time is valuable. I want the game to be good still; so for now they have my anger. But they're earning my apathy.

[ruby meadow]

Hey, new to the game, just started playing a few days ago with a friend. I’m only level 5, so I can’t speak to end-game magic, but I have developed some strong opinions on the early game that I’d like to contribute my two cents on.

I want to preface any statements by saying I have no intent or desire to be rude, but that my experience so far has been intensively negative and so I may be blunt at times.

For context on where I sit in the game, as I stated both my friend and I are level 5, and we’ve completed two elixir wells. All my skill points are currently invested towards intelligence gains, the two skills to enhance fire damage, and Quick Charge for cast speed. I am currently using a level 10 Sacrilegious Steelsword with 25 damage split between cutting, piercing, and blunt, a level 10 Snakespine Wand with 16 blunt damage, and a level 5 Shepherd’s Staff with 17 power. My two spells I primarily use are Fireball 1 and Ice Bolt. I currently have the Rising Fighter set equipped, with access to the alchemist, but the bone meal to make his first magic set is still processing. I am aware of eternal spells, but do not yet have any, though I have not struggled with spell charges at all because I end up barely using spells.

To put it frankly, you could double the damage on my magic implements and 99% of my fighting would still take place using my sword.

My issues with the wand are pretty much everything about it. Wands are slow, single-target, low range, low damage...even the fact that they're auto-targeting ends up being a disadvantage because they constantly miss. That said, it makes sense wands aren’t great, they aren’t supposed to be primary weapons, they provide standard attacks for when you can’t use spells, either due to mana deficiencies or cast times, but right now they have every single disadvantage that can possibly exist on a weapon. It’s too much. I do, however, like the concept of dynamically switching between staves and wands as the situation alters, it provides good variation that most magic gameplay severely lacks…it’s just that right now it isn’t possible due to how bad the wands are.

Spells feel simply underpowered, they lock you into animations, cast times even with Quick Charge make them completely unusable against groups, and the mana economy is abysmal. I can currently cast Fireball 1 three times in a row before the atrocious mana regen speeds make it improbable to do more for quite some time. Realistically, however, I can get off a single one prior to the engagement, because enemies are fast and spells are slow. Even then, I often don’t bother, because the damage is barely equivalent to a couple melee attacks with my sword.

While those are my general thoughts, I want to describe my experience clearing Springland’s Hollow Halls last night to give more detailed information. Keep in mind my friend is a tanky melee build:

We’re playing the game largely blind, so we weren’t quite sure what we had found when looking around the area. Our inventories were full, but it was far enough away from our starter base that it would’ve been too much of a pain to come back, so we decided to take a look at it anyway. At level 4, the level 10 enemies gave us quite a shock. We subsisted mostly off of respawns, and for the first time in the playthrough my fireballs felt like they were doing something to the significant fire weakness the enemies had, though I could very rarely use them due to the lengthy cast time. At this point in time, my friend was already showing far higher damage potential, survivability, and speed than me, but when we found the level 10 Snakespine Wand…very little changed, actually. I was excited, and I did notice a damage increase compared to the 9 fire damage my previous wand had, but it was minimal and didn’t really change my time to kill on enemies. Of course, we then found a level 10 Spinechill Axe, and my moment of coping was over as he gained a nearly 20 damage increase from his previous two-hander. At that point, I was basically on the sidelines. By no means was he not dying, they were still 6 to 5 levels above us (we hit 5 during this dungeon), but he was the only thing really making us any progress. We later found a level 10 Sinister Crescent Staff…which I didn’t use because it was 12 power, 5 less than my level 5 staff. When I found that level 10 Sacrilegious Steelsword, it became my primary weapon without hesitation.

Over the course of the dungeon we had found several level 10 Silvershot Bows and accompanying bone arrows, but these hadn’t been used much until the end of the dungeon, which features a monumental number of enemies. Here I thought my fireballs would be invaluable, given the tight grouping, but it turns out arrows can pierce, dealing damage to multiple enemies. On top of that, the Silvershot bow and bone arrows my friend has did more damage than my fireballs, without mana restrictions, to multiple enemies.

By the end of the dungeon, his power level had grown immensely, while I walked away with a new sword.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that my magic experience in Enshrouded so far is one of the worst I have ever seen. I simply cannot keep up, and no matter how many wands or staffs I find, my sword always ends up being my best option. It deals higher DPS, can hit multiple opponents for crowd control, and does not require the significant tradeoffs in speed and survivability that my wand and staff do. And that is all without any investment in either strength or constitution, while eating both intelligence and spirit foods.

I am left confused as to what magic is supposed to be used for. It’s slow, it isn’t much of an AOE, its damage is worse than either melee or bow options…you make a ton of tradeoffs for negative return.

I am new to the game, I have not experienced any previous iteration and I do not know the specifics of what the repeated nerfs to the archetype have consisted of. What I can say is that my experience with it so far has actively harmed my opinion of the game.

That’s pretty much it for my impressions, but I am going to provide additional feedback in the form of what would need to be done for me to think magic was in a good place. I want to reiterate that I am new to the game, and as such I understand my experience is not emblematic of the game as a whole, but unless the archetype faces a significant, and I do mean simply massive, change at some point in the game, I can only imagine it is valid up through end-game:

-- The wand idea is good, and I think the lengthy cast times for spells are actually a good thing. I do not think mages should be firing off massive spells endlessly, and putting pressure on them with fast enemies and the need for preparation is a good way of solving this. The issue is that the option they have to fill the gap, wands, have no reason to ever be used. Melee weapons are just so much better, wands don’t scale anywhere near enough to keep up. Because wands exist as a filler, and mages naturally die quickly, they need to be faster. Because they’re so bad, they need a damage increase. By feeling, I would expect 20% and 50% respectively. They need be viable, but not a primary weapon. Right now, they’re unviable, and their damage numbers are too low to even begin scaling with intelligence to any meaningful degree. This would quicken them, allowing mages slightly better survivability, while putting them almost on-par with one-handed melee weapons in terms of damage. When using them, mages still retain the single-target issues along with the wand’s short range and the archetype’s lack of survivability, so they still have significant downsides, but they end up being better for the class than melee weapons. Likewise, melee weapons offer better survivability and crowd-managing abilities. Neither wands nor one-handed melee would be distinctly better than the other, but would be better for their specific archetypes, which is exactly what they should be. Right now, melee weapons are always better.

-- Spells are more difficult, because their effects can be wild and varied. Some spells may offer utility, some damage, some crowd control. They cannot be “balanced” equally, because their intent is not equal. Speaking specifically of Fireball 1 at my point in the game, I would need to see a damage increase of 4 times to be impressed by it. Just being straight with you, it took 3 of them to kill an enemy from my 17 power Shepard’s Staff in Hollow Halls, and I could only get off one. And these were enemies weak to fire. If it’s going to be slow and make me immobile, it needs to kill whatever it’s pointing at, otherwise it results in my death.

-- Most of the skills in the magic skill trees…kind of suck. They offer extremely minimal side bonuses that gatekeep more intelligence gains…which themselves aren’t all that impactful but they add up and at least do the primary thing you’re looking for. There isn’t a single skill I look at and want to try, I am instead looking to find the shortest route to as much intelligence as possible. Part of that is that the skills seem so underwhelming, part of that is because the damage is so bad and I need everything I can get. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing itself, because while the other archetypes are looking at skills to enhance their gameplay, the skill tree takes the background for magic users. What matters is spells, because that is what shapes magic gameplay. Reorganize the magic skill tree with this in mind.

Lastly, I want to make a note about the differences between classes and design. I have played a lot of games, I have played a lot of games with magic in it, I have seen a lot of people complain about magic in those games. Perhaps because of that my fear is unjustified, but this is a pattern that continues to repeat itself. Let me make my belief clear: Just because magic is good, does not mean it is OP. If a spell can delete a boss, that does not make the spell or the archetype OP. Because that’s what the archetype is good at. Different archetypes have different strengths and weaknesses: Warrior-esque players can tank a ton of damage, they can charge into a room of enemies swinging their swords or axes or maces with abandon and live. That is what they’re good at. It’s impressive, it’s strong, it’s not OP. Rogue-esque players can dance around rooms, avoiding enemies and thinning hordes without a sweat. That’s good, that’s strong , it’s not OP. Archers can remove an enemy from the field leagues before they’re even in aggro range. That’s awesome, fantastic, not OP. If mages can kill an enemy, or even a small group of enemies, with a spell or two, it is not OP. Do not be afraid of that. Because they’re also slow and put up the resistance of wet tissue paper if the enemy gets to them. That is their role, that is what they’re good it, or what they should be at least. There is strength, there is weakness. Do not look simply at damage and call it strong, because while it could possibly be, there could also be huge tradeoffs to achieve that which are being ignored. That is the behaviour I have seen time and time again, and it has led to underwhelming, disappointing magic gameplay time and time again. Let mages be good, let them be strong, let people yell “OP!” as they refuse to look at anything but big damage numbers…and lastly, let mages die when they make a mistake. It’s the Faustian bargain they make when they decide they want to make things explode.

I suppose I should apologize for the massive wall of text I just dropped, I didn't realize how long it was while I was typing it, but I don't feel there's anything there I want to leave behind, so I've decided to just post it.

[past estuary]

I think a lot of your insights are spot on and I enjoyed reading your wall of text.

[smoky frigate]

wow O_O i will get to this when i have the chance and do my best to add dot points if i can summarise without losing information

[smoky frigate]

i dont think i can make dot points out of this without condensing the pain this comment gets across. excellent point about the "OP" status of a class/skill. imo its not OP unless it completely stomps on a vast majority of other classes/builds. Mage used to be only a little better than the other classes; i dont think it completely stomped the others. it was just better enough to cause a majority of players to roll mage for the conveniences of having an easier time playing the game. At the moment, Archer is the strongest class in the game. That still doesnt make it OP because warrior is still perfectly viable as a class even without matching the archer damage - sustained or no.

[digital light]

Made a quick video for a comparison how each class feels against last boss in lvl 25 Hollow Halls. It's not the most clean run i had with magic but you need to put in so much more effort than the other 2 classes for no benefit at all.
Magic takes up about as much time as melee and ranged together to do same content
https://youtu.be/_ItNRMs9Dho?si=AoDaKv_6MdA4gnle

[ruby meadow]

That statement, while lengthy and descriptive, was largely a definition of my experience in the game so far.

Last night, I finally donned my Alchemist Apprentice set, and it immediately became so very much worse. A large chunk of the deaths were simple one-shots, even from those below my level. If I survived the hit, I was often brought down to 10% - 20% HP, wherein I would immediately have to down a potion. The sets’ +1 Mana Regeneration was effectively meaningless, and the amount of flat mana gained from the set in comparison to the amount of health and protection lost from the Rising Armor set was horrifyingly bad to the point of being silly. Of course, the damage hardly improved at all, the additional mana had effectively no results given that cast times were the largest barrier to spellcasting. Naturally, if a spell was cast, it was nowhere near killing the target, so that resulted in my near-instant fleeing if not death.

If you want actual takeaways from my statements:

• Magic gameplay, at its core, has good concepts. Dynamically switching between staff and wand, trying to etch out opportunities to unleash combat-altering spells, is interesting and not the problem. The issue is that wands are too slow and too low in damage to produce those opportunities, and the spells far too weak to make it worth it.

• There are three primary contributors to a player’s combat ability: Survivability, the measure of one’s ability to persist through damage taken, Mobility, the measure of one’s ability to move, and Damage Potential, the measure of one’s ability to deal damage to others. The archetypes are, conceptually, split between these three ideas, something greatly reinforced by just three categories of armor. You have armor from the Blacksmith, which primarily enhances Survivability, armor from the Hunter, which primarily enhances Mobility, and armor from the Alchemist, which should then be aimed at Damage Potential. The issue is that magic, that third option, doesn’t have that damage. At the moment it has the worst Survivability, Mobility, and Damage Potential. To maintain a concept of “balance”, magic would need to out damage both the other two. However, it becomes more complicated when you begin to consider where the three archetypes all lie in regards to those contributors. Melee currently has excellent Survivability, decent Mobility, and good Damage Potential. Ranged currently has decent Survivability, excellent Mobility, and good Damage Potential. Magic currently has awful Survivability, awful Mobility, and middling Damage Potential. Given the level of the other two archetypes, which range from decent to excellent in all categories, the Damage Potential of magic needs to not just be higher, but massively higher in order to maintain that sense of “Balance”. And it isn’t, it’s lower.

• Having looked at the patch notes, I can see that magic has continuously had all three of the mentioned categories lowered. That in itself is obviously unacceptable, but there lies a further issue in how these three archetypes have been distinguished in the game design. You could theoretically buff magic not by increasing the effectiveness of spells, but adding additional Mobility or Survivability options. The issue that creates is that a high Survivability Mage becomes a weaker Warrior and a high Mobility Mage becomes a weaker Archer. Because these archetypes and their equipment have been designed for a very specific goal, it is not possible to distinguish magic any other form than its Damage Potential. I understand the goal with the circular skill tree was to allow for hybrid classes, that is great and is something that can be done to mixed effectiveness, but the rest of the game’s design doesn’t really support it. If you want to have a Red/Green rogue with daggers, as an example, do you prioritize Strength or Endurance? What about armor, it’s one or the other? Your rings? In the end, you will always be left with less Survivability than a dedicated Warrior and with less Mobility than a dedicated Archer…which sounds awful considering a rogue of all people would really need to be mobile. Because the stat and gear design exists at such extreme ends, without huge Damage Potential representing an extreme end, magic cannot have a unique identity.

• If a mage deletes a boss, that’s a good thing, because it means they are succeeding in their role. They likely died a cruel death the last time they were set upon by a horde of enemies, that’s where the Warrior really shines. And if the Warrior shrugs that horde off, that’s a good thing, because it means they’re succeeding in their role. They likely died the last time they tried to face tank a boss. And if an Archer snipes the ranged enemies firing down at the Mage and Warrior while evading the boss and horde, that’s a good thing, because it means they’re succeeding in their role. They likely died the last time they ran out of stamina. Balance in not achieved by equalizing classes, it is achieved by diversifying them and ensuring that all archetypes encounter situations both where they shine and where they suffer.

Whether you would want to include anything else is up to you, but I do feel the following is constructive, if subjective:

• There exists an issue with the perception of class strength in games. Largely, DPS or just raw damage is what the vast majority of players are interested in, but it is so far from the whole story. There is a bias that exists here, and I feel it is one the developers have succumbed to. Having a role that deals insane levels of damage is not an inherently bad or unbalanced thing, provided it comes with its own set of weaknesses. Currently, the complete inability to live through at times even a single hit and the cast times and animation locks mean that magic is fraught with weaknesses. It just doesn’t have that strength to offset it, leaving it unbalanced to a dangerous degree.

[smoky frigate]

you know what? maybe the single most broken thing about Enshrouded's classes is the 114 skill point limit. none of this would matter a whit if there was stat increase scaling on nodes and we had unlimited points.

maybe if they tied the flame strength upgrade in with the stat increase nodes? flame lvl 2 = 2 stat increases per node. Retroactively. flame lvl 4 = 3 stat inceases and so on

it would be powerful but the devs can figure out some fair numbers

actually i do have that a little backwards. some 3 increase stat nodes locked behind 2 others at the start of each tree, plus a 5 stat node at the mid-game level

then you could multiclass without suffering

[ruby meadow]

I would actually say I'm in favor of the point limit.

Primarily, providing specific directions towards a handful of character development options means you can tailor experiences more directly to those options. It becomes nearly impossible to provide challenging content at a high level if a player is capable of fulfilling every role. If you have an end-game dungeon, you can be reasonably confident a player will struggle at some point if you have three rooms, one dedicated against melee fighters, one against ranged fighters, and one against magic users. However, if there's the potential for a player to simply have all of that, then there's no real effective design approach that maintains a sense of fairness. This can become an issue especially in co-op games, where players may be able to fulfill those roles for each other, but the dynamics of communication and cooperation are typically then focused on to supplement it.

It depends largely on the type of game, but I feel a game like Enshrouded which places an emphasis on a tragic world and survival elements benefits greatly from restricting the player.

The food system, stat buffs received from the flame, and very cheap respec all do a decent job at allowing some crossover between archetypes.

[ruby meadow]

I don't want to be rude to anyone, but I think the existence of a "Mage Class Feedback Megathread" goes a long way to casting some doubt on their ability to establish fair numbers lol

[smoky frigate]

TBF i think my comment stems from the fact that all INT is in wizard and all SPR is in healer 😂

[smoky frigate]

maybe, but they did have magic just fine when i first started playing. maybe they fired the wrong person 😛 but also the rest of the game scales quite nicely with your character capabilites (for every other class anyway)

[ruby meadow]

Reorganizing the blue skills would be a good call, as I mentioned in my original wall of text the spells are what define magic gameplay, so stats are what you aim for with the skill tree.

[smoky frigate]

could move the final stat nodes to the middle of the skill trees or as i have suggested in the past, connect the final stat nodes together so that when you complete the wizard tree you dont have to take a bunch of useless healing nodes to get the INT per 2 flame lvl node

[ruby meadow]

Maybe, I didn't experience that time, though hearing about the magic was one of the big reasons I was interested in the game. It...hasn't quite worked out for me, if you can believe it.

It's a personal assertion, but I imagine the primary motivator behind a lot of the negative decisions regarding magic came from player feedback. As I stated, my experience in other games has led me to believe players tend to prioritize damage over other aspects of gameplay, so I think many likely saw magic do good damage from range and thought "Why doesn't my sword do that? I have to get right next to them!" without fully appreciating their ability to take a hit. That feels somewhat presumptuous to say, as someone primarily campaigning after seeing a sword do good damage and thinking "Why don't my spells do that? Can you revive me?", but it's an opinion I'm willing to stick to.

[ruby meadow]

I think the issue is that different trees in magic don't really offer anything additional to the class. There's no strict reason to take healing nodes when you can down a potion, it's not like the healing spells are impressive. In the end, stats are always your goal, so anything that isn't a stat or offers buffs to stats is largely an annoyance.

I think the single best thing they have is the division between fire, shock, and ice damage bonuses. This offers a direct benefit the player cannot otherwise achieve, while promoting further specialization that provides an opportunity for effective skills. Sadly, this is the only place they do it.

Replacing skills may instead be nice. For instance, an "Inferno" skill that buffs a fire spell if it follows an ice spell, promoting spell diversity while providing a benefit.

[digital light]

i played as a tank when i just started while my friend was playing mage, we both died in 2 or 3 hits there was no benefit of playing a tank.
also in early game i didnt know and didnt have life leech rings yet making me use bow and wands a lot while dodging mobs while im a tank. also running into those poison cleaver guys and matrons as melee before this patch was more anoying as they will 1 shot you pretty much even in a tanky build.
since speccing into tank at this point was pointless as you cant take hits either way i was like you know what ill go play full ranged.
i was shooting so many arrows and i was spending almost as much time on crafting arrows as trying to explore.
with having to spend this much time on crafting arrows i decided to respec again to magic which i used till i reached endgame.
it didnt do more damage than the other 2 it was just more convenient.

when you reached endgame magic was outperformed by both range and melee

on the topic of stats and skills i think they should get separated, and we get stat points and skill points so we dont have to waste our skill points on skills that are totally useless or dont even work.
for example to get terror i need to get counterstrike which doesnt work, begone which i dont use, 2 points for int... atleast something usefull and terror.
even if you dont want terror u still need to spend points on counterstrike and begone to get those 2 int points

[ruby meadow]

As I said, I wasn't around at that time. I can say that right now with both of us level 8, I will die to one hit while my friend speccing into tank can take roughly 4-6, depending on enemy, before dying. I'm also more inclined to think tanking is very viable with my experience moving from Rising Fighter to Alchemist Apprentice.

[smoky frigate]

the fire, ice, thunder nodes are not separate enough to make me prioritise one over the other too much and if they separated them any more everyone would just pick fire because its aoe is decent

ignore the fact that this build has nemesis. i was messing around with a tank healer. deffo not viable btw

[digital light]

i would pick ice tbh atm, i use ice a lot more than fire right now due to the shorter cast time makes it much easier to cast and not get interuputed.
it is lower damage but you can shoot 2 icebolts in 1 fireball which makes the dps on par or even better than the fireball

and you get a slow on them on top of all that

[smoky frigate]

interesting. im a fire lover because i use terror, and chain hit and mass destruction are just INSANE with terror

[ruby meadow]

They immediately wrap back on to themselves, which is unfortunate because I think they have the essence of what they could do with magic, rather than making most nodes largely pointless.

I think the elements have their roles, ice and fire at least, I'm yet to use a shock spell. Enemy weaknesses also come into play with it.

[digital light]

i use those aswell, terror and chain hit and mass destruction also proc from ice

[smoky frigate]

enemy weaknesses are so confusing in this game though. another thing that desperately needs looking at

[digital light]

atm i use both ofc, fire is much better if you also need to destroy a spawner for example or if something is weak to fire it is 100% better to use fireball.
but when you get swarmed by enemies i always switch to ice

[smoky frigate]

its the aoe i enjoy

i also found that more enemies are weak to fire than ice? or maybe its imagination idk

[copper grotto]

A lot more stuff is weak to fire. A lot

[smoky frigate]

the text that pops up to say effective/ineffective isnt easy to read at a glance and if i pay too much attention to that im gonna get 1 shot from behind tbh

[digital light]

ice also has aoe, prob bit less big

vukah, animals and fell are weak to fire
fell archers are weak to ice, many things arent resistant vs ice
scavangers are resistant to fire and weak to ice

everything except fell and hollow mobs are weak to shroud
fell are imuune and hollow are resistant
hollow mobs are only weak to blunt

nothing is resistant to lightning making it the best allround element

hollow mages are resistant to ice btw

[smoky frigate]

btw if you still want to play a caster, the best way to go for now is to spec into the tank tree, taking everything in a direct line all the way to earth aura and the CON booster. then for armor you can wear magic caster hat, boot, glove and tank chest and legs.

i have a sort of ok time with that but im also bugged currently so i have no mana issues but yea

[smoky frigate]

this inconsistency across mob groups is why its so confusing. having only some of a group fire and the others all ice?

im sorry but thats garbage when you dont have a guide

[ruby meadow]

Right now I'm planning a Faith build and praying for a mage patch, thank you lol

[smoky frigate]

no problem. im just glad i can finally take a hit or two without dying immediately lololol

hold off taking that final CON until your flame is lvl 6 btw

you have heaps of other nodes to spec into in the mean time

[digital light]

still tho i do lets say 1k damage with fireball on a mob weak to fire and if i use icebolt i prob do like 600-700 damage
but you can do 2x icebolt in 1 fireball so dps wise its still as strong as fireball.

i switch spells a lot tho while im playing and swap between them all the time depending on the mob or environment

[copper grotto]

Healer is going to need a big look as well. Being absolutely stacked on int, with all the sage gear. 98%+ healing on chest, 24% on gloves. And chain heal is still only a little more than 100hp. A potion is 800.

[digital light]

i use something like this atm, i dont use a wand i only went there for int

[smoky frigate]

nah the numbers are wrong in the game its not double the time:

[digital light]

well almost double

[smoky frigate]

maybe its quick charge

[digital light]

are those the eternal versions? i noticed they are not the same as other spells

[smoky frigate]

actually i do need to increase the time on the fireball. my char sometimes does weird things instead of casting 😛

yeah both eternal

the damage numbers on ice eternal is displayed as higher iirc lol

which is just plain misleading

[digital light]

ingame tooltip says 1s for icebolt and 2s for fireball, with quickcharge thats 0,5s for icebolt and 1s for fireball.
fireball used to have 114 power on the spell and icebolt 80 so it made sense it has higher cast time
fireball been nerfed to 76 power and icebolt still has 80 so idk why fireball cast time is still twice as long in the tooltip
the tooltip has been wrong before tho but there is a noticeable difference between both cast times

[smoky frigate]

yeah eternal fireball 76 dmg and eternal icebolt 80 dmg lololol

[smoky frigate]

quick charge fireball realistically takes 1.06s to cast

eternal**

sorry xD

[digital light]

the biggest difference between the 2 is that fireball often gets interupted while being surrounded by enemies while icebolt hardly ever gets interupted because its faster.
so depending on the situation if you want to be 100% realistic fireball can take you anywhere from 1.06 seconds to 5 seconds to cast it cuzz u need to jump away etc get some distance while icebolt takes 0,6 to 1.5 seconds to cast it
dont think i seen icebolt getting interupted twice in a row

and tbh i dont think casting a spell should get interupted from a simple hit in the first place

like a bug hit you for 1 dmg haha no fireball for you

[smoky frigate]

i use fire as my opener because its the biggest burst we got and its aoe can help me see enemies hiding round corners. icebolt is my midrange spell for when they are uncomfortably close. light burst is uh oh im surrounded. the macro for light burst also holds my block button for me

[smoky frigate]

i waste points on radiant aura because i hate those bugs so much

[digital light]

i dont use the light burst, i use fireball, icebolt and bone channel

[smoky frigate]

im considering lightning channel as an extra midrange spell tbh

[digital light]

i tried the light burst once but it felt so weak

[smoky frigate]

its weak and it only works if they are INSIDE YOUR BUTTTTTTTT

however, it does clear a small space around you to give you a half second to jump away

its emergency only for me

honestly though you could probably do the same job with the Be Gone punch...

[digital light]

id use it if they turned it into a buff or something and lets you cast without being interupted for 10 seconds or so

[smoky frigate]

its funny how acid isnt even used any more but says it has 130 damage. idk what grass they smokin but i dont see 130 damage when i cast it 😂

[digital light]

yeah its like 50 poison ticks

[smoky frigate]

i remember it used to be strong but now it feels like it doesnt land or something

[magic aurora]

It used to feel strong because it deleted everything in the game with 1-2 casts 😝

[copper grotto]

Reddit is at it again. Room temperature iq melee eats matron poison to the face repeatedly. Dies. Goes back and kills it by breaking several wands, shooting from an unpathable piece of terrain. "Is mage just OP?"

[digital light]

😂

fire wand aswell or did he atleast use ice?

[smoky frigate]

@ruby meadow

[strange nimbus]

Everyone being dishonest anyway. Someone on that thread saying melee is OP because he hits for 2.5k. Doesn't specify under which conditions. The thread was about a Scav Matron, I'd like to see melee hit for that much on a Matron.
While the recent mage nerfs hit pretty hard (too hard in my opinion) in the damage department, mages aren't dead either, they're underperforming, just like melee was before Hollow Halls.

And for what it's worth, Scav Matrons are infinitely easier on mages or archers than melees, so the question isn't that dumb to begin with.

[digital light]

most likely he hit that in Hollow Halls

was able to do about 1700 crits on matrons with melee no back attacks

[strange nimbus]

You can even go higher than 2.5k with breach perk and all the buffs that exist. It's absolutely overkill for trash mobs though.
But you can't replicate these number on Bosses.

[strange nimbus]

Now try Shroud Meteor with Mirage staff and full buffs

[digital light]

i did 3k+ on the cyclops tho with melee, im not saying its overpowered its pretty similar to ranged damage

shroud meteor does have a long cast time tho but let me respec 🙂

[strange nimbus]

Yeah but you were probably using Ignited Hammer (hardest hitting melee weapon) and she's weak to blunt. The hardest hitting spell is Shroud Meteor and she's weak to Shroud. Mirage is best staff damage wise (sucks for mana regen though).

Now I'll guess Shroud Meteor damage is lower before you even test it out. But not by a 1k margin.
And that's why I think the damage nerfs were too hard.

[digital light]

oh btw i forgot to use vukah buff for that 1.7k on the matron

[strange nimbus]

But like, saying on Reddit 'I can't hit more than 1k on Mage and I hit 2.5k on melee so it's OP" is dishonest.

[digital light]

true

i wouldnt say melee or range is op

magic atm is just under powered

[eager token]

but how else will they get more updoots

[digital light]

flying back to the matron after a quick reset

[eager token]

Regardless wouldn't worry about it too much :P Like I said before we're more worried about the feeling of the class, balance numbers are much easier to figure out internally

[digital light]

im testing on the 1 at the sun temple south of kw shrine btw

[strange nimbus]

I wish I had the motivation to test it out, thanks for not being lazy like me 🤣

[digital light]

1124 damage

[strange nimbus]

I havn't played melee in a while but I also guess the new overhead swings are pretty good for single target damage

[digital light]

1500 crit

ill try with root staff

[strange nimbus]

Root staff has less damage than mirage even post nerf 🤣

[digital light]

1317 crit

[strange nimbus]

Is that a big chunk of her HP? No idea actually

Because it takes a while to cast for sure

[digital light]

it took 8 spells to kill it doing between 1100-1500 damage each

want me to try fireball or icebolt?

[strange nimbus]

Icebolt would be better as she's weak to ice.

[digital light]

1267 damage

[bleak cove]

I imagine the shroud damage weapon traits might affect those numbers too. Doubt it would do quite as well vs Fell enemies.

[digital light]

true but some1 was saying something is op vs the mob that is weak against that dmg type

[strange nimbus]

Just like those on ignited hammer, and it has 5 of those.

[digital light]

so then its fair to test other things vs the mob weakness aswell

[strange nimbus]

If we're talking about best damage in best conditions then we're talking best damage in best conditions

[bleak cove]

yeah

[digital light]

1267 damage with icebolt crits

and cast time of 0,5 or 0,6 seconds

[strange nimbus]

Icebolt looks decent at least

[digital light]

fireball does 681 dmg

[strange nimbus]

🤣

[digital light]

tbh i use icebolt a lot lately because of the shorter casting time

when you get surrounded fireball takes too long

[bleak cove]

yeah, long cast + borderline immobilized + spell failure when taking any kind of damage makes it less than ideal for anything outside of bombardment range.

At that point I just pull out a sword. Much better than any spell or wand at close range currently.

[digital light]

but still tho the damage gap is big i did 1700 with melee without vukah buff so +20% so that should come to a 2k crit but they arent weak to blunt
magic with 1200 from icebolt while its their weakness and even have shroud damage on the staff which also is their weakness

1500 crit with shroud meteor with a long cast

cant even 1 hit a normal scav with shroud meteor atm

now i did with a crit 1554 dmg

altho we should also consider... should we 1 shot lvl 30 mobs?

[strange nimbus]

Don't think the +20% buff is for final damage, it should add up to other sources of % melee damage before multiplication

(hopefully)

[strange nimbus]

With enough investment, yes. Being fully buffed all the time can be a hassle. It has to have downsides, like explosive arrows have farming.

[digital light]

i dont think explosive arrows are worth it for general use indeed

only for limited use like in HH or something

most likely the lower versions are enough aswell you dont need that much fire power

[magic aurora]

I mean this is the whole concept of balance and nerfs vs buffs. They have to get to where they want our damage to be. If they don't want people one-shotting enemies then anything that does is going to get rebalanced.

[strange nimbus]

The lower version is great.
Maybe spells could follow along and have tiers that are craftables. With the stronger ones having the most damage/cast time. (nevermind that's already the case, it all comes back around to the damage nerf)
Though I always shy away from mage and especially staves because of casting time.

[digital light]

like 1 shot can shoot up to 3 arrows which did 1650 damage on HH boss each
they can also proc the chain hit that does another 50% damage

im unsure how this1 works like it says its a 20% chanse per enemy hit, not sure if it proc multiple times from the same arrow or it will only proc 1 additional explosion

anyway with a minimum of 1650 dmg and a max minumum with 3 arrows of 4950 dmg per shot its pretty insane

[strange nimbus]

It does say 'every enemy hit' so you have chance to proc multiple explosion with a single arrow hitting several enemies

[digital light]

so on single target your maximum hit would be 7425 damage but you would have to be very lucky to get a 3 arrow proc and all 3 arrows have chain explosion and all 6 hits crit

[strange nimbus]

Wait. 1650 on the cyclops or the sicklescythes? 👀

[digital light]

cyclops

[strange nimbus]

Seems a lot, don't remember how much I used to hit em for

I was remembering around 1k or 1.2k I think

[digital light]

https://youtu.be/_ItNRMs9Dho?t=52

1642*

oh and a 1656

[strange nimbus]

I need to test Cyclops more. I don't remember them being weak to fire so why is it showing effective 🤔

[digital light]

maybe weak to ice?

idk im using silvershot bow

so it does have sacred ice and fire

[strange nimbus]

Nah they were supposed to be neutral to everything, maybe it's the sacred perk yes, you're hitting less (1447, crit effective) on the Sicklescythes even tho they are weak to fire 🤣

[digital light]

yeah

[strange nimbus]

Also that bow is bugged, we have to remember that, our damage shouldn't be this high

[digital light]

guess thats the sacred im missing on the sickle

true

[strange nimbus]

(the next best shortbow is like 25-30% less damage :D)

[copper grotto]

Jesus didn't realize ranger damage was that out of control.
Need to get me to explosive arrow spamming

[strange nimbus]

Yeah it's too much right now. Mostly because of Silvershot, we need it fixed before we can see where we sitting at.

[copper grotto]

That's after watching Rik's video. I'm playing the wrong archtype.

[digital light]

tbh atm with the perks you are most likely going to 1 shot every trash pack with 1 shot of the explosive arrow even with a non bugged bow
the chanse of getting 2 arrow proc is pretty high and you hit many mobs so the chanses of getting another hit that deals another 50% is also very high

if ur unlucky u may need 2 shots and thats it xD

[strange nimbus]

Yeah that's the perk of explosive arrows

[digital light]

yh and multishot trigger

[strange nimbus]

You just have to keep in mind the amount of time you lost before hand to craft those

[copper grotto]

10 minutes. Resource world 3.4, pickup 9k of them. Log out. Kek

[digital light]

xD

that is the reason tho why most people dont play ranged

you are crafting ammo more than playing the game

[strange nimbus]

I hope we're not gonna balance the game based on what you can find on resource servers.

[copper grotto]

Oh I remember. I was the shrub planter for our ranged.

[digital light]

yeah xD

[copper grotto]

Be less disingenuous. Skipping the tedium does not equal running around with bugged gear.

[digital light]

you get stuff like this, thats on fell mobs not even hollow

[strange nimbus]

You are very dishonest, it's the exact same thing.
Having to spend time crafting your explosive arrows is the reason they have to be strong.
If you cheat your way out of this farming process, it's the exact same thing as taking this dreadbane in the next chest on the resource server.

[strange nimbus]

The lower level ones are weak to blunt so it'd be similar damage

[digital light]

ah thats why there is such a wide range in damage

imagine if the 4191 crits were back attacks aswell

[strange nimbus]

Yeah, the sword & shield and the lancer are weak to all physical types

The archer and the two handed fell are neutral

[digital light]

weird that the 1 with shield is weak to physical attacks xD

we should maybe get runescape triangle here 😛

[strange nimbus]

Only the ones with the little shields, curiously the armored ones with the big shields are just neutral (not resistant, though they will block)

[digital light]

yh i mean with this dmg it doesnt really matter, they drop their block aswell often to attack so if you do a hit its a 1 shot anyway

even with ignited hammer

or with explosive shot or with fireball

just 1 has more overkill than the other atm xD

[copper grotto]

Agree to disagree. Time does not equal difficulty to me.

[strange nimbus]

For sure if you're farming your arrows from resource servers.

Hopefully the devs won't balance the game around resource servers.

[digital light]

it does take quite a bit to craft them tho 5 black powder is 35 nitrate 5 sulfur and 10 coal powder, you also need 25 flint arrows and 5 feathers to only craft 25 explosive arrows rank 2

[strange nimbus]

I wouldn't mind seeing a spell just as strong that takes just as much farming (:

[digital light]

if you have a bunch of laboratories i guess you can craft them fairly quickly if you do a big resource run

i wouldnt mind if the damage was a bit less but its much easier to get our hands on ammo

like instead of making 25 we make 100

[strange nimbus]

I feel the Lvl I do this job already

[digital light]

and for the other arrows aswell instead of making 50 we make 200 at a time with the current mats

[copper grotto]

I ran out of patience for tedium with the twig farming. How many thousands of twigs I grew to try and keep our archer players interested in the game.

[strange nimbus]

200 feels too much, 100 would be better but maybe too easy

[digital light]

i mean you shoot them up so fast tho

or even better

make it so that arrows dont just dissapear

but you can retrieve some

like that have x chanse to break

[strange nimbus]

And I didn't have the patience and used resource servers to get building blocks, should we lower the stacks the base game give us to balance that because people get their blocks there?

I don't want the base game nerfed because of resource servers.

[copper grotto]

Again false equivalencies. No one is saying let people carry less.

[strange nimbus]

If people (myelf included) want to cheat their way out of some tedious aspect of the game, that's on us, not on the game and not on the people who play it normally.

[digital light]

ofc this doesnt apply to explosive arrows or flares etc xD

[strange nimbus]

that'd be nice tbh

[copper grotto]

Ooh, I like this idea. It was really cool when 7days implimented that with their arrows. They even made them stick out of the mobs when you hit them. Great visual feedback.

[digital light]

also maybe make the ice arrow slow mobs and have a "default" arrow with 0 dmg multiplier so you dont need ammo to shoot a bow if you really dont want to farm for arrows

[strange nimbus]

It's the exact same thought process. If explosive arrows should be nerfed because you can cheat the farming process by going on resource servers, then you might aswell nerf everything that you can get on resource servers.

[digital light]

or even a negative effect like default arrow takes 5 extra stamina to shoot

[copper grotto]

Agree to disagree.

I'm not saying nerf anything. I'm saying, hey Rik's video looks like fun. I want to have fun. This is how I get to a point where I can have fun.

[digital light]

ur not harming any1 if you cheat anyway tbh but i think we need to totally ignore resource servers as its peoples own choise to use it or not

balancing should never take cheats, buggs or glitches into account

[strange nimbus]

So what's the point of saying that you can find explosive arrows on resource servers when I say that their power in on par with the immense amount of farm you have to do to craft them?

[copper grotto]

At that point you're arguing time investment as a balance metric. That's what MMOs do; personally I don't think it fits in smaller scale games.

[strange nimbus]

Exactly

[copper grotto]

It's a good discussion point. If time investment is the balance post - if an arrow costs 48 hrs to craft. Should it blow up the whole room? What if a player queue's up 25 crafting stations of them and goes to bed, leaving the timers going over night, or unattended on a server?

[strange nimbus]

Because during those 48 hours, a melee player has the time to destroy that whole room like a 1000 times?

[copper grotto]

Maybe? Maybe he's mining resources to craft his 14 day [Blessed blade of the windseeker] to chain shock everything in his path.

Time as a balance metric is very slippery.

[digital light]

thats kinda true, since the 48h arrow dude took more time to prepare the difficulty is lower
you see that also in the witcher games
you can dive in without preperations and u might have a tough time or u can check what potions / coatings you need and what spells you need and other elixers to have the upper hand

[copper grotto]

Seriously, no cap. It's an interesting discussion.

[strange nimbus]

It is. And I feel like explosive arrows as of now are quite balanced for what they ask of you versus the power they give you.

[copper grotto]

If time as a metric is the balance; shouldn't melee be significantly lower? Their time is nearly zero.

[strange nimbus]

Like I said, I wouldn't mind seeing the same thing with spells, make them even harder to farm and even stronger.

[strange nimbus]

It shouldn't be the only metric tho.

[copper grotto]

So then the question becomes; how much of your power should be time?

[digital light]

it is very hard to balance that out yes, its like how difficult is the content you want to do. do you need to have these preperations?
even if you dont need it is it still worth the time to do it?

if u need something that takes long to craft but without it you may die and you lose 1 or 2 hours of progress you will get it and take it with you

if you can wing it and if u die you lose 1-2 mins ur like wth ill yolo it

[copper grotto]

Should we shift something to the batman arch type and say prep time is more valuable to some builds than others?

[strange nimbus]

Prep time is definitely more valuable as an archer right now. Melee has it easy (though melee has the drawback of.. being melee). Balancing is always complex. Mages are in a not so good spots right now.

[copper grotto]

Yea that's a trickey one. Especially when the mass player base will shift to yolo wing it because it's 'easiest'.

I don't see melee being melee as the drawback everyone says it is.

[digital light]

then either the content is too easy or the preparations take too much time

[copper grotto]

You have fantasic mitigation; mass self healing, amazing damage. And bloop. Single stun arrow and things are on the floor for you to smash, without speccing anything arrows.

[digital light]

btw you can still do crazy dmg without explosive arrows rank 2 tho

if you bring explosive arrows rank 1 for the trash mobs they are so much easier to make

and bone arrows for the boss

[copper grotto]

Oh I'm sure. It was just a fun talk.

[strange nimbus]

Use poisoned iron arrows 👀

[digital light]

they better than bone arrows rank 2?

[strange nimbus]

I don't know why but poison variants of arrows have more damage than non poison

[strange nimbus]

since cyclops aren't weak to blunt, yes

[copper grotto]

Would like to see your setup using the bone-arrows in the halls leading up to the boss and see how that compares to jump-smash, or... whatever the mage equivilent is.

[digital light]

but hollow are resistant to poison tho

[strange nimbus]

yeah it might even overcome that tbh

wait no, since they're weak to blunt

[digital light]

crap i forgot my bow build

nvm found it xD

[strange nimbus]

Now imagine if explosive arrows could hit headshots

:D

[past estuary]

Yo guys, this is the Mage Discussion Thread

[copper grotto]

Right right, full circle it. Ranger has most prep time, obliterates everything. That's fair. Mage has medium prep time. Feels like he wears concrete shoes and hits for half the no preptime melee does. Mage sucks.

[strange nimbus]

I do believe mage should have the highest damage of the bunch.

But then you get melees complaining that everything is dead before they can land a hit.

It's never easy to balance and even less to make everyone happy.

[digital light]

cyclops no crits
iron arrow on cyclops 670
poisoned iron arrow 773
bone arrow rank 2 681
explosive arrow rank 1 943

[strange nimbus]

Oh i didn't think the rank 1 would be that high

Might aswell use them for everything

You double down on the chain hit perks

[copper grotto]

Still mass deleting everything with those numbers.

[strange nimbus]

@digital light Also regarding your video, in HH you should definitely be using Sinister Crescent Staff, it'll top root staff damage wise and still have mana leech

Or well, it should

[digital light]

i believe i tried both and root staff did seem to do more dmg but ill try it again

[strange nimbus]

I might be wholy wrong regarding cyclops, I got lazy during testing

I need mages players to correct me if i'm wrong

[digital light]

if they had same base dmg tho ur right 100%

[strange nimbus]

My arguement is that Mirage has +3 damage lines and 27 power and outdamages Root staff who has +1 damage line and 55 power.
Sinister crescent has +2 damage line and 27 power but two sacred = 20% damage so it basically has +3 damage lines (against hollows).

[digital light]

most of the time the 1 with more flat dmg increases is the better 1

[strange nimbus]

Yeah it's the best stats on weapon. Also explains why Ignited hammer is so strong, there's no weapon like that for ranged or magic users.

One damage line is a 20% damage increase.

[digital light]

why does flour take 5 minutes? xD

[strange nimbus]

It has to be really small grains

[digital light]

ill just go without buff as its just comparing same weapon type

[strange nimbus]

yeah, just try it on the first skeleton you find probably

[digital light]

fireball?

[strange nimbus]

spells doesn't matter as you're just testing staves

Just use the same with both

Cyclops are weird to test damage wise because they might have a weakpoint or a fight mechanic based around their ankles

When I'm not lazy I'll need to figure this out

[digital light]

378 no crit with root staff
467 with hh staff

441*

[strange nimbus]

So Sinister Crescent is BiS for HH at least.
Outside though it's probably gonna be root staff for overall purposes. Which isn't great.

[digital light]

i prob compared a root staff crit to a crescent staff non crit before

numbers are a bit buggy after the patch and hard to read sometimes sorry xD

[strange nimbus]

Yeah don't worry.

[digital light]

sux so much when ur trying to test something and mob dies and u see no damage at all 😅

just says crit and ur like but whats the damage?

[strange nimbus]

Yeah the text might fade under the crit or effective/resistant

Anyway, I'll be going for now. TLDR of this whole conv : mages are a bit weak right now, please buff.

[digital light]

also for root staff its + poison dmg and they are resistant to poison

[strange nimbus]

Yeah root staff is terrible, it's only saving grace is escaping the staves nerf

[digital light]

yeah

blackaned staff used to be the allround bis

not for hh ofc

on cyclops the dmg of root staff and crescent is pretty much the same for some reason

this needs to be fixed tho xD killed the boss without opening the door

on both sides

if u go straight to the doors and avoid the middle the doors wont open and u can kill them by shooting fireballs at the door 🤷‍♂️

[ruby meadow]

Going to hop back in this:

Melee being melee isn't an inherent disadvantage, it's a trade. You're melee, and as such you need to accept the potential danger, but you also have the most consistent sweeping attacks to manage multiple opponents. This can often result in melee being beneficial, not a detriment. This balance shifts more towards beneficial the more durable you are, and as the melee options present in the game lend quite a bit of durability, the advantage begins to consistently outweigh the danger.

This can be further altered based on enemy and encounter design. The more trash mobs you add to an encounter, the more melee will shine over the other archetypes.

If we want to bring the concept of combat time into the equation, magic ends up with the short end of the stick due to mana burst and regeneration. You have more down time in combat with spells than you do with bows, on top of bows currently resulting in more damage-per-hit. Actually, due to having the highest stamina pool and regeneration, it could be argued archers have a higher uptime than even melee.

I don't think the concept of prep time lends itself well to a balance discussion, because that becomes a resource issue that exists outside of combat. If the crafting or stockpiling of arrows creates a large amount of tedium, the issue lies in player enjoyment of the class, not its strength, and it should be addressed by altering crafting time/amounts. If an encounter takes 10 arrows, it doesn't strictly matter whether you made 10 or 20, you use 10. What matters is you don't need to spend enough time crafting those 10 arrows for it to become a consistent annoyance. It sounds that at this time that ratio isn't in a good place, so adjusting it would smooth out the class experience without directly affecting its combat power.

Resource constraints exist for all archetypes in the form of durability and consumable items. Melee users may consume a large number of bandages or healing potions, archers may go through a lot of arrows, mages use a lot of mana potions and may craft spell charges for those they don't yet have an eternal version for or those spells that don't have eternal versions.

Resource crafting for combat is something that weighs down all players, and is an indicator of the player experience, not archetype power.

[ruby meadow]

Thank you Eko, the pain I felt reading this was truly heartbreaking.

[smoky frigate]

dreadbane on my normal server obtainable via quest 95 damage no upgrades

[smoky frigate]

this is a very good point. its part of the reason wizards struggle early and mid game. spells are expensive to craft and most people feel dirty if they grab stuff from resource

[smoky frigate]

this thread is asking for the player experience, not just power tho

[ruby meadow]

Yes, I'm noting that in my opinion they're slightly different things. Earlier they were discussing power balance between classes, and how resource consumption related to that. I was clarifying my own thoughts on it. All playstyles will continuously consume resources in some fashion, and I think the inability or severe inconvenience of replacing those resources is more of a player experience issue than an archetype balancing issue.

[smoky frigate]

mostly agree. however, its still an issue here because without the old damage we used to have, the crafting requirements of wizard/mages sucks compared to the other classes

for me its like a cost vs benefit ratio. cost of materials = how tedious it is to gather them

[ruby meadow]

Yes, but even if you could exchange 1 dirt for 100 fireballs, it wouldn't have any direct improvement on combat. It would lead to less farming, which improves the overall experience.

[smoky frigate]

but yeah if damage was like the old days the cost would be fine

[ruby meadow]

Again, I agree, and I think that's because the damage being lowered harmed the balancing. That is a direct effect on archetype balance, and as a consequence the player experience was lowered. I absolutely agree that more difficult items to craft should come with additional bonuses, however, adjusting the experience does not directly effect the balance. Making fireballs extremely cheap would not solve the issue, despite making the cost:benefit ratio radically different, because at the end of the day it results in combat "feeling" the same.

My opinion on fixing the "feel" of mage would be:

• Massive damage increases
• Speed up wands
• Address movement issues, for instance there exists a movement bug if you are sprinting a direction not forward, you will suddenly be forced forward when the animation of the wand attack changes your direction. This bug also exists in blocking with shields and melee weapons, and I've already submitted a detailed report on it through the in-game bug report option. There's also an issue with staff casting, wherein your character takes a step forward during the animation, if the terrain is uneven, this will cause the spell to be instantly canceled, similar to taking a hit.
• Remove the forward movement when casting a spell

[smoky frigate]

OHHH so that's why it feels like my Flameborn is clumsy sometimes

lolololol

side note since we all magic casters here: anyone had any luck remapping the cast a spell button different from the block button? there's a delay after casting a spell that prevents me from instantly blocking to avoid damage from a sprinting enemy. its doing my head in... when i remap it doesnt seem to function correctly

[ruby meadow]

I personally have my staff equipped as my ranged weapon, then use "Q" to bring it out and cast.

[smoky frigate]

whats your short range setup?

[ruby meadow]

Shield and sword for most enemies, wand and hiding on top of a rock for enemies I can't survive in a melee lol

[smoky frigate]

me too sort of. so what im talking about is when youre done casting with Q and you want to block, it cant understand switch back to shield and wand/sword combo so when you right click it doesnt block it just starts casting with the staff again

[ruby meadow]

I get that if I right-click before letting go of "Q", but if I right-click at about the same time or immediately after I release "Q" then it transitions without a problem for me.

Also worth noting it only maintains the casting stance if the spell is charged, otherwise it immediately transitions to block stance

[smoky frigate]

hmmm i wodner if there is some sort of lag happening for me. to be clear this is happening in singleplayer and also on my server (usually about 30ms in esc menu probably jumps to max 60ms)

it happens when i use a macro and when i do it manually

this is default control scheme with human input not macros

i try press 2 to switch to wand first and ended up casting with r click instead of blocking. the next i try scroll but it just tried to change spell lol

this is using Q to cast

[ruby meadow]

Ah, I see what you mean, I wasn't trying it with the spell fully cast, yes that does happen to me. I had never noticed it before lol. I don't see a way of separating it in the controls, no.

[smoky frigate]

then i remap to ctrl to block

ctrl block after first cast leads to a second cast even though i have cast mapped to right click and not ctrl at all

look what happens when i hold my block key (ctrl) while casting lol

its like the keybind for casting is hard coded in to prevent us from using shields as wiz? idk why else it would be so hard coded in =/

maybe its to make the archer function correctly with manual aim?

needs to change

another thing is if i map cancel to anything, it casts blink/executes dodge roll when i press that cancel key lol

i think the keymaps are wierd =/

[ruby meadow]

Certain controls are very weird, such as hitting the number keys making the item perform the left-click action rather than just...deselecting the item.

[smoky frigate]

ahhaaha yeah i got used to that one eventually tho

this block one is a bit more serious because it makes me die

the other one just makes me occasionally destroy the furniture at base with a bomb O_O

[ruby meadow]

Yea that's how I feel about the movement bug with wands/blocking, it has gotten me killed multiple times when my character starts walking forward just completely unable to control it.

[teal sequoia]

After some serious testing with wands, I'm ready to add some thoughts.

The damage needs an early game touch up. Doesn't need to be much if considered in conjunction with the following additional thoughts.

Wand attack animation lock is genuinely the worst thing I think I've seen in the game's current combat state. There is no reason a wand user needs to be locked from dodging after the projectile is well away from the character. This needs to be changed ASAP for game feel.

Wand projectile speed needs to be increased, or diversified. Fire wands could be slow, but deal AOE. Ice wands could be medium speed, but shorter ranged and in a cone shaped AOE(think ice shards being flung from the wand). Lightning wands could produce incredibly quick, near instant zaps of lightning that are single target. But something needs to be changed here.

Wand strafe speed is unacceptable(This may be a side effect of the inability to dodge in a timely manner after firing a projectile). There is no reason for how sluggish using a wand makes your character with the current game feel of wand users.

In generally, I think solving these issues in the future would bring a lot of love and enjoyment to the game for mage players choosing to focus on wand-play instead of wizard-type mages.

P.S. Consider giving some constitution to battle mage, or other survival trait. Maybe a passive that transfer Mana -> HP in reverse of blood mage.

[bleak cove]

Yeah, the slow movement while using a wand is a net negative to survivability for a weapon that's only usable within a mage's most vulnerable combat range. If mages are going to be made of glass when it comes to survivability then we need to be able to get out of close range reliably. Not have our close range weapon trap us there when we try to use it.

A shield that drains mana instead of health when taking damage would be a neat trait to have in battlemage (the mana regen issues would definitely need to be fixed by then though). Would not only be a unique survival tool for the mage playstyle, but also significantly increase the value of Spirit skill nodes. Making them our survival stat when investing in such a skill akin to Constitution and Endurance from the red and green trees.

[bleak cove]

Random thought about the skill tree setup, but if the Exalted - Intelligence per Flame level - skill is going to continue to be locked behind the Martyr skill then Martyr absolutely needs some solo player benefit. Otherwise it's just a skill point tax for solo players that effectively makes them pay twice as many points to get Exalted by including a skill that is functionally useless for them.

[strange nimbus]

That's an issue with flame level nodes as a whole. The Dex one is stuck behind explosive arrow perks, the Str one locked behind 2handed attack perks. It's like being forced to play those builds or waste skill points to get +10% damage.
It'd be much better if any build using said attribute could have those nodes. They could be linked to the end of each of their respective archetype's trees for example.

[bleak cove]

Yeah, I could see something like Beastmaster + Survivor being linked to Endurance Flame, Ranger + Assassin being linked to Dexterity Flame, Athlete + Tank being linked to Constitution Flame, Barbarian + Warrior being linked to Strength Flame, Battlemage + Wizard being linked to Intelligence Flame, and Healer + Trickster being linked to Spirit Flame. Though without reorganizing some of the trees it would look a bit messy tying some of the trees to a single Flame perk node.

[ruby meadow]

Martyr in general is a bit of a silly skill, it serves as a gatekeep but its effect isn't that significant for allies. If they aren't dead yet and need that healing they have time to pop a potion, which will provide more anyhow. It's not a solo-exclusive problem, the skill kind of just sucks, the healer tree as a whole is pretty bad (you won't catch anyone going for Water Aura, it does nothing a berry or two couldn't).

A benefit for Martyr to the player with the skill could be something like: prevents lethal damage, leaving the player at 1 health with 1.5 seconds of invulnerability, 5 minute cooldown. Gives mages just an ounce of breathing room to recover from a mistake once in an instance of combat, rather than dying immediately.

[past estuary]

I also think the jump distance for chain lightning and lightning channel should be greatly improved. Considering the crafting cost for these spells, they are often lack luster due to low damage output, which is largely due to poor AoE performance. I also feel like channel lightning's targeting should be reworked to lock onto the next closest enemy when the primary target is destroyed. Right now it feels like I continue to cast channel lightning into a group of monsters after the first target dies and nothing happens until I re-cast the spell. Letting these spells also hit enemies from a farther distance (at least applied to chain lightning if long-range channel lighting would be deemed OP by the balance team) would also help improve their useability as right now they only really work if you are face-to-face with an enemy....which isnt ideal for mages given all the feedback above.

Additionally, when these spells do jump to nearby enemies, the rate at which the jumping occurs feels very slow. It would be great if the target trace between all enemies could be activated on cast. A game I used to play growing up that handled this was Mabinogi. See the video below for example on a chain lighting spell targeting nearby enemies simultaneously on cast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ikRy9c5TKc

I was just using chain lightning in KW HH for example, and would on average only see my spell jump 1 - 2 times, even when cast into a dense group of mobs. I also have noticed that the jump seemingly don't hit two targets that are more than 2-3 "player widths" away, which I would think is still plenty close for the spell to jump

[graceful gazelle]

Oh my... You just reminded me of the one thing I always hated about playing mage: The step forward each time you cast a spell with the staff. It got me to fall off places and into groups of enemies, which got me killed more times than I can count.

Trying to attack enemies repeatedly and having to take a tiny step backwards each time so you don't fall from whatever you're standing on is irritating

[ruby meadow]

Oh yea it's awful, right up there with the way the staff is swung causing the projectile to originate from your side rather than your front, so even if you have a clear view of what you're trying to hit the spell can get caught on stuff to your character's side.

[rough willow]

I feel like the damage just isn’t hitting anywhere near as hard as other classes

[lilac juniper]

Apologies if this has already been brought up. Would it be possible to introduce ward type spells? It's triggered when an enemy steps into it. This could help with building up some strategy for dealing with the enemies, it could be elemental susceptibility, or stuns, or raw damage?

[rapid ingot]

The damage, even late game, doesnt feel as if its hitting as hard as other classes, early game, and even late game melee weapons heavily outlcass. I've had many moments where my unspecced sword does more per hit than my fully specced wand. spells can hit hard, however a properly specced ranger does just as much damage without sacrificing as much mobility. all in all, the mage feels relatively weak with many of our options feeling samey, given this is a problem for many things, such as axes, swords, and maces being functionally identical in all except damage values and appearance.

Not to mention with the wand changes they are a very slow weapon that does only single target damage for the majority of the playthrough. eventually their crits can be AOE, but when you can miss several attacks only due to how the spells leave the wand, this becomes an issue.

There is no reason for wands to self stun you as long as they do. and when casting spells from a stave we shouldnt step forward mid animation, it places us in a worse position.

as for some QoL features I would like to see, maybe a spellbook system, you can introduce it to the ranger as well with a quiver. wherein you store the ammo you keep in your inventory to condense it down to 1 slot, or maybe even take no slots, depending on if its an equipable, allowing you more freedom in your inventory, and not having to feel like you can only carry around 1 or 2 types of spells. especially considering how many wands and staves we already carry around.

[magic aurora]

Yeah there have been a bunch of suggestions for how to fix mages being "more spell variety". Traps, buffs, zones, etc etc would all definitely make them feel more tactical and better.

[lilac juniper]

Targeting with spells is very unforgiving. Its difficult to determine the range of some spells. (Shroud Meteor)

[inner solstice]

I think the weapons and spells need to be balanced first of all, if there is no choice in weapon then there is a root cause of imbalance that drives this necessity of choice. This is currently mana leech, and with the nerf to staff damage, only one 57 staff has mana leech. I've never had a problem alternating between staff and wand, I liked that playstyle and felt it was intended considering the wand mana leech. Mana doesn't seem to regen while channeling (lightning/heal channel). There should likely be a staff with high regen and + healing %. So take a look at mana regen, the mana pool, and the cost of spells.

As far as spells there are imo 3 categories: meteor, bolts, mid range (bite, channels). No one uses meteor, which is a shame imo, I would make it reticle based and make elemental variants, This should be a long cast, very powerful aoe bomb, likely an engager or once per fight, so probably nothing to change here other than range and damage type. Bolts: why do we need mana leech for such a staple? Maybe the mana cost is too high. Acid bite: its a ground aoe, it should last longer and increase its aoe. Who uses ground spells? Either a kiter or a melee battlemage. Lightning channel Is what I currently use, as a tanky support, I don't think it does enough damage for the risk of being disabled while channeling.

The spell "list": I need to use spells instantly, not scroll through a list while my head is getting bashed in. I've suggested a seperate Q bar with the traditional number keys associated to it. I at least need to be able to reflexively cast light burst.

Utility: my suggestion was mirror image: on blink you leave a clone that holds agro for a second or two. The root issue imo is that enemies can still track (and hit, lolwut) you during a blink, so blinking only buys you a couple meters while the enemy is still running at you full speed, or worse hitting you. There is also plenty of room for melee playstyle improvements, the "battlemage".

[strange nimbus]

So I finally gave wands a proper try after not playing them since my early days back in March.
The couple pics and the link show off my entire build.
https://www.enshrouded-skill-tree.com/?code=WyI1OCIsIjU5IiwiNjkiLCI3MCIsIjcyIiwiNzEiLCIxODAiLCI3MyIsIjc0IiwiNTUiLCI0MiIsIjIzIiwiMjIiLCIxMSIsIjEyIiwiMjQiLCIyNiIsIjMyIiwiMzUiLCIzNiIsIjM4IiwiNDAiLCI0MSIsIjc1IiwiNzYiLCI3NyIsIjc4IiwiODYiLCIxMjciLCIxMjgiLCIxMTciLCIxMzAiLCIxMzEiLCIxMzIiLCIxMzQiLCI1NiIsIjEzIiwiNDMiLCI0NCIsIjQ1IiwiNzkiLCI4MyIsIjgwIiwiNDciLCI1MSIsIjQ4IiwiMzciLCIzOSIsIjQ2IiwiNDkiLCIxNjUiXQ==

I ran over Scatterbone (lvl 30) a few times and some Overworld mobs, using only my wands as weapon. Tried with both Ritual Tempest and Helix wands.

Their damage feels okay, it's nothing to be really excited about but it's decent (maybe a bit low). It takes 2/3 hits to kill normal scavengers, and a few more to kill the dual wielding berserkers which is fine. Being at range definitely is an advantage though. Even with the slight delay after attacking you can usually block or even parry (if you're lucky on timing). You can attack while strafing backwards which is nice too.
They definitely felt better to use than what I was expecting from reading the Discord.

First flaw I see is definitely the durability, even with the associated perk I ended up with less then half after one big camp. This must be actual hell in Hollow Halls.
Second is the lack of AoE. It might not be a flaw if we consider them as a bossing weapon for example, but it was quickly something I've been made aware of, the Shock spread on crit is nice but kinda irrelevant even at 22 intelligence.
I don't think I missed a lot of projectiles so I don't really see a flaw here.

I wouldn't think they're enough for a high density place like the Hollow Halls as they lack AoE. But if I think of wands as a kiting or bossing weapon they're nice. You're mobile and at range. They just need more durability and maybe a slight damage buff.

Tankiness was absolutely no issue with that build obviously.

[inner solstice]

yeah that durability nerf was a bizarre decision

[rapid ingot]

I dont see wands as the bossing weapon of mages though, they are your backup weapon that is for closer range engagements where you are constantly ran at. Its the staff that does high burst thats better at bossing, especially because its not quite so good at mobbing, between the high cost of spells before getting eternal versions, and the high mana costs that leave you waiting for quite some time between casts earlier on, and even later on if you arent using the root staff. With BIS wands. Especially with how easily wizards are interrupted from casting this leaves them way too weak at dealing with the dangers that provoke them IE the small bugs, or the hollow halls in general. Yes staves can assist, but what happens once you lose your range?

Is it an option to carry a sword to easily deal with the bugs that die in just a couple swipes even uninvested? Yes. Should it be the only way to feel viable? No.

[strange nimbus]

They do feel like a bossing or single target weapon to me because of the chance to double projectile and mostly the repeated damage increase if you keep attacking the same target.
It's a mid-range weapon that lacks AoE so you probably shouldn't be using it for swarms of bugs, I havn't played full mage yet so I can't testify what are the best options for that. I've read Radiant Aura makes them insignificant as well.

[rapid ingot]

It only makes them insignificant much later into a mage play through, and only if you happen to have the spell selected on your staff at the moment you need it. If you do a full mage play through fireball is your only form of adclear, but with how expensive each fireball is, it doesnt feel worth it to waste in the bugs. Your gameplay feels far smoother if you carry a sword around

[lilac juniper]

I believe Vaeren was referring to the skill Radiant Aura, not the Spell.

[rapid ingot]

Ah, the 5 skill points of waste that can make them somewhat insignificant but overall not worth 5 points

Its not even worth the 3 points to buy it at first.

Had to kite those small bugs for like 30 seconds while fighting the warlock or whatever its called and trying to get time to swap to the correct spell on my staff

Wasnt fun

[strange nimbus]

That's not a waste if it makes bugs insignificant to me.
A waste of points is the Bounty thingy from Assasssin tree, that forces you to take a useless perk (gain xp if you headshot fell enemies) even once you're max level just to access good nodes for explosive arrows.

[rapid ingot]

It doesnt make them insignificant though, even with good amounts of intelligence you have to pay them mind, to avoid them, you just dont have yo use attacks on them, because once every like 3 seconds you’ll pulse like a sun and do like 20 damage to them

(Did I mention they have like 300 health)

At higher levels atleast I mean

(Takes 3 swipes of my sword each doing like 90 damage, just a rough calculation)

[lilac juniper]

I would give up my shield with a wand if the Wards healed you on RMB. Make it a craftable that uses the Eternal Heal Channel and now your "parry" is a heal that uses mana instead of stamina for block.

That could make weapon swapping easier. Then you could heal the party with your staff or yourself with your new health ward.

[strange nimbus]

It the perk bugged? It's supposed to go for twice your int as damage, and with 30% fire power you should tick for like 50+ per second

[rapid ingot]

I dont know if its bugged or not, thats just my experience with it, it didnt help me at all

[lilac juniper]

This is similar to my experience, I don't know if it's 50 a second, but they aren't a problem.

My only problem is if they die to radiant it's fewer chances for a skull to proc.

[strange nimbus]

Oh, that's sad

[inner solstice]

thats interesting, heal on parry, feels like a paladin mechanic

[ruby meadow]

@digital light I'm asking you since you've done some numbers testing already, would you be willing to do something more in-depth? I've been working on a lengthy document that discusses design elements of the game, roles of the three archetypes, etc. The issue is I'm missing data to back up my arguments. Magic having lower survivability and mobility is pretty objective, so what I mostly need are damage numbers. It would consist of optimized builds for melee, ranged, and magic, including optimal gear, and seeing the highest single damage numbers you can reach against different enemies. I would require screenshots of the skill trees and equipment used as well as the numbers for each archetype and name of the enemy/its level. Videos could potentially be nice, but just the values are fine.

Anyone else who might be interested can do so as well, theoretically the more info I have the better. I don't have the top-level gear for Ranged or Melee yet so I can't produce reliable numbers myself.

[past estuary]

Honestly, I’m sure the developers have access to DPS testing tools in the dev builds

I would be surprised if they are entirely unaware of the impacts of their balancing changes

[inner solstice]

I mean they made a target dummy, so it exists. But often there are unseen consequences of turning a knob when it comes to programming.

[ruby meadow]

I'm sure they have their own information on all of it and are actively discussing how they're going to address mage gameplay.

However, I feel that if we've ended up at the point where we have this Megathread they could really use some very detailed feedback, and I'd like to give that feedback alongside data rather than just basing it all on strictly opinionated information.

Additionally, considering the nerfs that led us here, they seem unwilling to supply magic with too much damage and are looking to patch up the class with alternative benefits. At the same time, however, while you could make magic more survivable or mobile, it will always perform those roles worse than melee or ranged builds. Considering magic is heavily restricted in continuous damage output by mana, I don't see a strictly balanced reason for it to not be capable of issuing immense burst damage.

But making that argument without actively showing magic damage underperformance would be difficult.

I believe the devs are putting forth every effort to correct their course, but I also believe we've been supplied ample concern as to what the results of their decisions could be.

[strange nimbus]

So after giving wands a try yesterday. I decided to give staves a try too.
The pics at the end show off my build along with the following link.
https://enshrouded-skill-tree.com/?code=WyI1OCIsIjU5IiwiNjkiLCI1NSIsIjQyIiwiMjMiLCIyMiIsIjEyIiwiMjQiLCIyNiIsIjMyIiwiMzUiLCIzNiIsIjM4IiwiNDAiLCI0MSIsIjEyNyIsIjEyOCIsIjExNyIsIjEzMCIsIjEzMSIsIjEzMiIsIjEzNCIsIjU2IiwiMTMiLCI0MyIsIjQ0IiwiNDUiLCI0NyIsIjUxIiwiNDgiLCI0NiIsIjQ5IiwiMTUiLCIxNiIsIjE4IiwiMjAiLCIyNSIsIjI4IiwiMjciLCIzMyIsIjI5IiwiMzAiLCI3MCIsIjczIiwiNzQiLCI3NSIsIjc2IiwiNzciLCI3OCIsIjc5IiwiODgiLCIyMSJd

I ran over Scatterbone and Low Tide a few times, killing most enemies and bosses on sight while only using staves.

My first problem was the severe lack of options while using a staff. Spells are too costly for mana regen to even be effective so I ended up having only 8 mana regen and focused on mana leech instead. This was enough to kill all enemies on sight without ever running out of mana.
That makes the only staves viable for prolonged spell casting the ones with mana leech. We got a few right now, but since their power has been halved recently (which from testing is about a 20-25% damage loss) the only good option at the current time is un-nerfed Root Staff (and Sinister Crescent for Hollow Halls).

Having to use a mana leech staff isn't only a disadvantage though, it opens up your ring slots for Ring of the Ancient and Gemini Ring. It also allows you to ignore some gear pieces giving mana regen and taking health/stamina instead. All of that makes damage and survivability better.

The second thing that instantly annoyed me is my character taking a small step forward after each spell cast. As a spell caster I immediately looked for high grounds to be able to cast in peace and few times my character moved forwards and jumped down on its own. This is not good. If you want to do some stationary casting, you should be able to.

Third problem is casting time.
Icebolt charges quick and hits decently hard (you can OS most trash mobs on crit), it's great.
Fireballs takes twice as long to cast and hits for less but it has a very good AoE.
I think its damage should be either higher, or keep the damage the same but bring its cast time down to match Icebolt.
I didn't play too much with other spells. The channelling ones seem fine. Shroud Meteor has a short range, weird targeting and a way too long cast time but it has massive damage. Acid Bite has a good AoE but it doesn't always follow terrain properly and can absolutely miss which makes its long cast time not worth at all.

Lastly I think Radiant Aura should have a wider range. It deals perfectly with the beetles (around 80+ damage per tic since they're weak to fire) BUT the range is so short that you have to be in melee range for it to be in effect.

Damage overall wasn't that bad, or let's say not as bad as I was expecting it to be. I still think the staff nerf was a bit too much. Reversing it is probably the best option to me.

Survivability was quite fine, exactly what I'm expecting from a mage. It's decent, nothing great, nothing awful.
You got some nice constant HP regen with water aura, investing a few points in the tank tree and most importantly Rebound (for stamina regen) makes survivability and mobility way better.

I did not try anything in the Hollow Halls yet. Since this is a very high density place I don't think you can run out of mana with mana leech. Your AoE options are good. But survivability must be quite harder than in the overworld.

Also a bit unrelated but :
Please be aware that ranger damage is not a good comparison because we're using a bugged short bow that deals 36% more damage than it should based on its stats. Fixing this bow has to come first before having any discussion regarding ranger balance.

[rapid ingot]

at full end game gear mage starts to feel like a real class. I dont think anyone is actually complaining about "end game" setups. though several things do feel a little underperforming. such as cast times, and I personally think wands dont need to lock you in place so long. however, that is besides the point

While leveling mage feels the absolute worst of the classes, without skilltree investment into riadiant aura and high int you have no choice but use a sword to deal with bugs. yours wands take way longer than any other weapon class to kill enemies of the same tier. even when you are invested into wands and use your non-invested sword. its only about level 11, and even at this, I got lucky and got a level 20 legendary root staff around this point, level 15 zone. that wizard started feeling fun to play. not to mention how overall inneffective your damage is until you get fireball 2 and the superior eternal frost bolt.

Overall, I would like to recommend you to do as I am doing, and make a new toon and use exclusively mage gear to level. that is how you will fully understand why we say it feels terrible. skill points should help, and end game gear should be better. but you shouldnt thoroughly need to have the 52 points it took me (i am killing a lot of roots) to finally feel stable. if you level a ranger toon, you feel stable very early on, albeit arrows are a pain. if you level are warrior toon, your main strugle as a new player is only learning the parry timings. etc etc.

[strange nimbus]

I'm just giving feedback on what I think are the worst points about playing a mage at high level. After all the fuss around it, it was due time that I give it a go and offer my humble thoughts.
I don't think I mentioned levelling nor I'm here to argue about it, I'm way past that point. Others are welcome to give their feedback on that topic to make it better.

[rapid ingot]

Oh, I am not trying to argue with you and say your are incorrect, I fully agree with everything you have said that I have read you say on either side, wand or staff. I just think endgame is a very different picture from anything before.

[strange nimbus]

I don't think it's that different. If you improve both wands (especially durability) and staves that'll naturally make the levelling process easier.

[rapid ingot]

warrior needs 14 points. that gets you jump attack, battle heal, and evasion attack. the wand tree for wizard dont do you very well, and from testing due to how low wand durability is, the wand durability node doesnt do a lot for you. you need bare minimum wand node and water aura to start feeling decent. but it took me a lot more points than that to feel my damage was comparable to other classes.

warrior feels mechanically stable with just 14 points. wizard feels a little useful at 52 points, but due to quest locks your spells still dont do all you need them to do. ice bolt doesnt do much for you unless you get the crafted endless variant. fireballs wont do you much either until you get the quick cast node.

[strange nimbus]

Also nothing forces you to play only mage, especially while leveling. Having an hybrid build is totally viable and fun to play with. Might not be the best DPS sure.
You absolutely need to invest in either wand or bow as a melee while levelling or you can't deal with flying enemies. It's not really that different than a mage having to invest in melee options to deal with swarms of bugs.

[rapid ingot]

except you dont need to invest in melee to deal with bug swarms, you just need a sword on you. thats aside from my point though. the point needs of a class shouldnt be so drastically different.

and yes, multiclassing is fun, and very viable, especially early on. I'm not arguing that, but there are players who want to stick to their arhcetype and their archetype alone. therefore the archetype should feel viable with as little assistance from the others as possible. warriors need bows usually for flying enemies, but that makes sense. rangers dont need outside assistance with daggers now, but they used to need a sword. and mages carry a sword for bug defense. but often that sword outdoes their wand DPS.

[strange nimbus]

That's why I said improving both wands and staves will naturally make the levelling easier, or feel better. If wands deals more damage and have more durability without regards to points investment then you don't need as much points to feel good.

[rapid ingot]

ah, yes, I agree, improving the clunkyness of both and improving both.

I would like to add, that due to how hard it is to get early spells, I would like to request bringing a little of the function of superior ice bolt to normal endless ice bolt, make it a smaller zone and all that, but please make the ice bolt have the after zone that superior has.

superior already has better damage, and would have a bigger zone, and do AOE damage on top of it. normal eternal ice bolt is your main stay spell for all of the early game. and it just doesnt help enough.

[ruby meadow]

Some spells are quite expensive to craft, and spell charges are quite rare to find as loot. Because you're left with an Eternal Ice Bolt level 6 as your only Eternal spell until you get the level 17 version, followed by Eternal Fireball as the second important one and the others which are less critical, players are strongly encouraged to continue using it throughout both the early and mid-sections of the game. It's workable for the early game, but sub-par by a lot for the mid-game.

Basically, there's a gap in the spell distribution throughout the game. Fireball 2 is the best spell that exists within this gap, giving you a fire option. It could be smoothed out by increasing the number of these given by crafting, but the other issue is the lack of an Ice Bolt 2 to serve as its counterpart for ice-weak enemies, basically just scavengers who are fairly common.

[strange nimbus]

More spell variety would definitely be a good thing

[lilac juniper]

Having Mana leech in the skill line and increased based on light armor would provide an incentive to wear it.

Base leech percentage = ((Spirit + Int)/5) * light armor modifier

Modifier:
1 or fewer pieces of light = 0
2 pieces of light armor worn = .5
3 pieces of light armor worn = 1
4 pieces of light armor worn = 1.5
5 pieces of light armor worn = 2

[ruby meadow]

That's an interesting idea, I'd say I overall support it.

That said, the proposed equation makes the returns quite high, a passive 10% can be obtained just allocating skills normally.

0.5% per piece of "magic" armor would be clearer and max out at 2.5%, which I feel is reasonable.

Honestly, Mana Leech is problematic in its own way. Currently, it's quite strong, though somewhat situational. Consistent crits and AOE on multiple enemies allows Mana Leech to 1:1 refund your mana on spells, though the returns drop off rapidly if you fail crit rolls or against single targets.

I personally consider mana as a limiter, making spells burst damage rather than sustained like ranged damage is. If both are sustained damage, then we have a few possibilities:

• Magic damage is higher, bows lose efficacy
• Magic and ranged damage are similar, magic is mostly pointless due to the archetype's other downsides
• Magic damage is worse, magic is entirely pointless

Thus, it makes more sense to classify them as burst and sustained ranged damage options where they perform different roles. As such, I don't personally believe mana should have 100% uptimes.

Currently, Mana Leech is used not strictly because of how good it is, because its effectiveness is highly situational, but because Mana Regeneration's returns are just so bad. Magic damage also isn't high enough to merit the spell downtime the Mana Regeneration route currently causes. This then leads to players not using Mana Regeneration gear and instead slotting survivability options. Funny enough, optimal magic gameplay at the moment more closely resembles a battlemage than "true" mage.

So the concept of Mana Leech being a skill which is objectively useful and tied to using magic armor sounds like a good idea, but I do feel the returns should be limited so its a bonus rather than the very core of the archetype, which is kind of the case with it at the moment.

It could also be put on armor itself, if not a skill.

[bleak cove]

Personally I see Mana Leech as just being a symptom of the problem, much like the Ring of Rapacity was before, rather than being the source of the problem. That problem being finding a good balance point between the extremes of mana regeneration that feels fun to play (ie. being able to consistently cast spells during a fight) without trivializing gameplay.

Before we had the Ring of Rapacity's massive mana regen bonus which made it so mages didn't even have to pay attention to their mana recovery. Now we're sitting at a similar (if less potent) extreme where a bursty mana return weapon trait is a must-have pick just to make magic feel remotely fun.

In both cases the constant variable has been that the baseline mana regeneration rate just feels awful. Consider what Stamina regen feels like without the Rested benefit for the ranged and melee playstyles, and that's what I'd compare staff casting without Mana Leech to.

[ruby meadow]

I fully agree with that statement.

We'd need to see numbers, but the cleanest fix to that in my opinion would be increasing the amount of mana regen on gear by 1 or 2 additional points. The Spirit stat could potentially be modified to give some small regeneration bonuses as well, depending on how it's all balanced, but I think Spirit's increasing mana capacity is fine for promoting damage bursts.

We don't necessarily want to increase base mana regen speeds, because that can potentially affect all players rather than magic balance itself.

Of course, I also believe there are scenarios where mages should have to turn to their wands. Cast times and enemy pressure are the primary cause of this, but the occasional mana deficiency wouldn't be bad either to drive more dynamic gameplay than always casting spells.

The issue there is...um...wands are awful.

I also think Mages should be punished for casting spells poorly, either through outright missing or poor positioning of the effects. Mana deficiencies go a long way towards promoting that and are a necessary aspect of magic gameplay, but it is often to the point where casting just isn't an option...but you really do need more spells flying.

I agree mana regeneration "feels" bad, but I personally believe that's more due to your alternative, wands, being terrible while the spells your limited amount of mana can produce leaving you feeling like you need more of them.

[bleak cove]

Honestly, I don't really see adding 1 or 2 points to gear making that much of a difference. At early levels a +2 might help staff casting feel like less of a waiting game perhaps, but at later levels 2 points would be negligible imo. Like equipping the Elder trousers on my character instead of the Paladin trousers. Sure my regen would go up a little, but it wouldn't be enough to really notice. If anything increasing the regen by x2 or x2.5 would be better for level scaling than a flat increase. Which at most at level 25 would be a return of roughly a third of what Ring of Rapacity lost.

Of course giving mana regen the Rested treatment affecting total regen would be an alternative too. Personally I don't see it affecting other playstyles being that much of a problem because by investing enough into it to be worthwhile they would be sacrificing a lot from their main build.

Wands definitely come across as a "fallback" weapon much like the new daggers for bows. The staff/bow being the primary source of offense with the wand/dagger being the backup in situations where you can't reliably use your primary weapon. Of course between the short range, awkward and slow projectiles, low damage and low durability they are indeed pretty awful right now.

I do believe mana regen and wands are two separate issues that simply compound into one bigger problem though. Wands certainly feel bad sure, but even if they were better having to rely on them for the majority of fights because there's not enough mana to put into spells would still kill the staff wizard playstyle fantasy. So we just circle back around to the problem of how to make mana regen feel better.

For wands specifically though an overhaul of the Battlemage skill tree might be what's needed. Even with the bonuses it provides specifically to wands it's not enough to overcome their shortcomings, and that's before accounting for the part of the tree shared with melee that includes nodes that are useless for a pure mage.

[ruby meadow]

I think flat bonuses work so long as they keep increasing along with the gear levels. So if right now level 5 magic boots give +1 magic regen, we can make that +3. If at level 10 they were to give +2, we can make that +5, etc.

What we need is just higher mana regen that continues scaling over the course of the game.

A level 5 spell at level 5 should perform roughly the same as a level 17 spell at level 17 against a level 17 enemy, so long as you're choosing the right spells for that enemy and situation.

Since lower level spells consume less mana, and higher levels consume more, we should see some equalization in mana regen vs. spell performance.

We can't really do percentage since that would directly scale with max mana, potentially resulting in vastly more spells. You'd normally consider this a trade for damage, but the game provides enough skill points to do both Spirit and Intelligence.

I would be opposed to the Rested buff affecting mana regen speeds. Typically the Rested buff isn't necessary, it just speeds things up remarkably. You can argue it has a significant impact on ranged gameplay since it promotes their strength, but then you're not generally struggling on stamina to begin with. The stamina regen rate helps for the other two, but if you need stamina for magic you're already being run down, and if you need it for melee you need to start carrying more healing items. In this case, not having it would actively manipulate your combat abilities to an extreme degree.

Wands are and should be a fallback weapon. They're just too bad to do so, they need to be faster and have a bit more damage. The fact they often miss without any ability of the player to correct it needs to be changed as well.

Honestly, if I can launch 4 Fireballs that perform like ballistic missiles, then have to wait 10-15 seconds to do another, I'd be pretty happy with it. I think large numbers of enemies are and should be a weakness for mage, it's the place where melee shines.

I don't believe wands and mana are entirely separate, because part of the use case for wands is a lack of mana. It comes down to using your available mana effectively, and knowing your wand is the stop-gap between failing that and death.

The Battlemage skill tree could use some adjustment. I'd like to see reworks for wards and for wards to be fit into the magic knight/battlemage archetypes.

Wards are pretty much pointless right now, having adjustments made to them to offer a bit less than shield but putting bonuses to them in that part of the skill tree could be interesting. Perhaps a skill that splits their stamina use between stamina and mana.

My intent for not having to rely on wands is for magic damage to be increased. If it can kill an enemy in one spell, needing more is my own fault.

Wand usage should come down to:

• Enemies are too close for cast times
• The enemy count is too large for my mana to handle, but I cast some good spells while I could

Wand gameplay should then be about trying to create opportunities to cast spells. Killing the enemies that are close or getting yourself into a better position.

Magic gameplay should always revolve around spells, the rest should create complexity in casting those spells. Mana constraints, cast times, and wands can all contribute to adding that complexity,

[bleak cove]

That's pretty much what I was suggesting by multiplying the existing armor bonuses by x2. The +1 and +2 on early gear would become +2 and +4, the +3 on mid gear would become +6, and the +6 (between two pieces) on current endgame gear would become a combined +12. Alternatively having Rested double total regen would have a similar effect, if perhaps slightly higher. The way you worded the other comment just sounded like adding +2 across the board the way I read it which naturally wouldn't scale well at later levels.

Rested stamina is also very useful for the other playstyles though. For melee, stamina is relevant to blocking with a shield. If you run out you get stunned (and likely die). For mage it's very much tied to survivability via dodge/blink, especially in cramped spaces where you're pretty much guaranteed to get caught in close quarters. So while the Rested buff may not necessarily be necessary for the two playstyles, not having it is still very noticeable when you don't have a naturally large stamina pool like the ranged playstyle does (arguably Rested with high endurance borderline trivializes stamina with the right setup).

Also, waiting 10-15 seconds to cast another spell when out of mana is frankly pretty excessive tbh. Right now with my current regen I'm waiting around 6-7 seconds between fireballs when completely empty, and even that feels a bit too long for the damage those fireballs do. 10-15 seconds would be an eternity in comparison where I'd be better off just drawing a sword to finish things off and already be on my way by the time my mana recharged enough to cast another spell.

Wards having additional functionality would indeed be welcome. I mostly wear one simply because it looks better for the mage aesthetic than a proper shield would, but it's not too useful for blocking anything that would actually help survivability. Splitting their block cost between stamina and mana would certainly help by leaving more stamina to dodge/evade to actually get away. Though wards might still need something extra for actual defense to set them apart from a proper shield.

Wand usage being for situations where it's unfeasible to cast a proper spell, whether because the enemy is too tough or there are too many enemies to burn through, is pretty much how I see their role as well. The issue currently is that it's just outright better to simply use a melee weapon in those situations (even untrained) than it is to use a wand.

[ruby meadow]

I agree the Rested buff is beneficial, I do not believe it is critical at the moment, while I do believe it would be for mages if mana regen were tied to it.

6-7 seconds would be more than reasonable if spell damage is increased, which is primarily what I'm after. I don't think 10-15 is bad if spell damage is hugely increased,the alternative is firing spells more often for DPS rather than burst, at which point roles conflict. Honestly, we just need regen to compete with leech.

The issue there is that leech directly scales with damage, increasing damage would lead to leech being even more beneficial. This is part of the reason I mentioned the 0.5% per piece, 2.5% max, leech would need to be toned down for regen to ever be a valid option without it just getting out of hand. Leech's current potential to maintain 1:1 returns also places magic in direct competition with ranged damage, which isn't a good thing no matter how you slice it.

Swords are often a better option for a situation even when you do have mana. I consider this an issue with spell and wand power. Spells need higher damage to make them consistently worth casting, and wands need adjustments to make intelligence investment allow them surpass one-handers without strength investment. Strength should make one-handers better, intelligence should make wands better.

Wards would need an overhaul before anything is done with them...and just need an overhaul in general. They have no real upsides aside from looking cool, the parry power isn't important and the 10% elemental resistances are too niche. Their block is just way too low, I'd place them about 10% below their equivalent shield level/tier. This would leave shields stronger by default, but give wards a valid place if they can receive advantages from the battlemage tree. Battlemages should theoretically be using wands and have less of a need for their mana pools, so directing half the block cost there makes sense.

Yep, it comes back to wands sucking.

If an enemy that takes three spells were to instead take one, that alters the mana economy massively and big changes to regen would no longer be necessary, because you'd retain the mana for more spells.

I think this is the direction magic should be taken, because it allows magic to burst down enemies very effectively, but does not allow magic to sustain that burst. Sustained damage is filled by the other two archetypes, ranged from, well, range, and melee from, well, melee.

If you want or need spells more often, you're then forced to consume mana potions in addition to whatever spell charges you may be using.

I think magic underperforms by quite a bit right now, but I think the bigger issue is that it's worse at everything than the other two archetypes, it needs its own place. Since we have both melee and ranged damage options, unsustainable damage is that place.

[rapid ingot]

as I do agree wizards should be the best at burst, the problem becomes the game also just isnt setup for that in any of its challenges. wizard needs to be a viable solo build, so not only do wands need to be good, but spells need to come out with some consistency due to how often we are mobbed in the dungeons.

and no, I dont think it should be as good at consistent damage as ranger, that is, in essence, rangers draw. however given, even after rangers shortbow thats doing 30% more damage than every other bow gets nerfed. rangers are still the going to be the kings of AOE due to explosive arrow. and they can do that while consistenly staying out of harms way due to bee sting.

[ruby meadow]

I think being mobbed in dungeons is part of the weakness of the Magic archetype. I also think adjustments to spells such as Chain Lightning and Lightning Channel, both of which are currently pretty bad, would increase Magic's ability to counter groups quite a bit.

The game could use a stronger focus on encounter design.

As I see it, Melee is the best at countering large numbers of enemies, which are usually of a lower-tier. Ranged is the best at handling several problematic enemies, such as archers or bomb-throwers (magic can theoretically hit these guys as well, but the burst nature and mana constraints means they're far worse at it). Magic would then be the best at handling a few high-tier enemies.

Encounters can be further altered based on the layouts of terrain or dungeon rooms. Close quarter tunnels would benefit Melee the most, moving platforms Ranged, Magic would be best suited with choke points, etc.

I think potent AOE spells would lend a lot of ability to Magic to take out groups of enemies, but they should also struggle with getting mobbed. Dungeons should have challenges and triumphs for all archetypes.

[ruby meadow]

Explosive arrows are wild, but it's honestly more an issue with Ranged balance than Magical. In my own opinion, Ranged should be capable of repeatedly targeting key enemies over the duration of the fight, but should deal with groups of mobs primarily through hit and run tactics, which suit their Mobility bonuses and large stamina reservoirs.

Explosive arrows kind of throw that out of the water, and there's nothing that can really be done about that without modifying those.

[rapid ingot]

that is in essence the point though, we cannot take mage in view of what we believe the balance of the game to be, we have to think of what the balance actually is, and that balance includes explosive arrows. even after we nerf the shortbow, explosive arrows still exist, and to be entirely honest, given its not a pvp game, I dont think explosive arrows are inherently bad. its a game meant to be fun to just play, part of it can be a power fantasy.

do I think hitting an entire room with 1000 damage burst in just 2 arrows is over the top, yes, but that can be tuned as well.

[ruby meadow]

I understand what you're saying, but we cannot counter unbalanced elements of the game with anything but further imbalance, so we must look at it through a lens of "What would be balanced?"

I don't think the concept of explosive arrows is bad until it begins to overwrite other options in the game. Regardless of it being a PvE game, elements of it need to be brought into balance if you want all options to have merit. If explosive arrows solve AOE encounters, why play Melee? The Survivability and sweeping melee weapons are basically their merit, but if you can just keep firing explosive arrows for every group of enemies, why bother? That's both immense burst and sustained damage, capable of killing enemies every time before they're anywhere near you. It covers every situation. It is inherently not balanced. If you want something that directly competes with that, it can only be something even more unbalanced.

So we cannot factor that in when considering what to do with Magic, we have to consider that separately.

Frankly, I feel explosive arrows should be moved from AOE damage to AOE stun, further promoting the Mobility and positioning aspects that the Ranged archetype excels in.

[rapid ingot]

They are already AOE stun, with a node, and stun arrows already cover that basis.

[ruby meadow]

I was under the belief stun Arrows are single target, Exploding Arrows could be based around stunning groups of enemies. They're less stun and more "remove that general direction" at the moment.

[rapid ingot]

you would play melee because you find it fun, same reason I finally got my friends to get the game, and what am I playing? I am playing mage again on a new toon. its not about whether or not its the strongest or not, its about what you personally find fun in gaming. not to mention I would argue melee is the second strongest only because of the current shortbow, after that is fixed, I think melee will be the strongest archetype, it has AOE, it has survivability, it can pull out a bow or a wand for flying enemies if it has to. but overall melee is the archetype, especially with things where it can chainstun enemies via guardbreaks.

[rapid ingot]

explosive arrows do stun though, its on the skill tree

assassin path, shellshock

[ruby meadow]

We can't abstract something to playing it simply "because it's fun". You can play what you want because that's what you enjoy, but there needs to be some basis upon which playstyles can be compared, otherwise you're left without a basis to develop them. This becomes especially true if you're talking about playing in co-op, because you don't want any one friend to vastly outperform or underperform when compared to others since you're there to experience the game together. Focusing archetypes on different roles rather than in direct competition is how I believe that should be done.

Yes, Melee is very strong. Melee also has its weaknesses, it struggles reaching targets or dealing with direct hits from enemies that are strong enough to bypass its Survivability.

Awesome, I'm glad that's an option. So what do you think should be done regarding explosive arrows, then? At what point are firing explosive arrows and firing Fireballs not comparable?

[rapid ingot]

well, their damage will be lowered quite considerably once the shortbow is fixed. that will be a rather large daamge nerf, taking stave nerf into considereation, it will be roughly a 15% damage nerf, which wont be enough IIRC, they should firstly nerf their AOE, their AOE is massive currently, and secondly lower their damage values. it should be worse than a fireballs damage, but still have an AOE, and all that. as it stands, the moment you get explosive arrows 1, you win the game.

heck, it may take more than the 25% damage loss magic got from its staves being gutted, given that spells tend to contribute more to damage than the arrows damage values do

[ruby meadow]

So you want to lower them to a point where they aren't in direct competition with Magic burst? What about Melee AOE? That's one of the things they're really good at, it's not too conflicting with Magic AOE due to spell uptimes, but since arrows can be fired continuously, would you lower them to a point where they do not directly compete with Melee's damage?

[rapid ingot]

No. melees got AOE, but just because 1 class is good at AOE, doesnt mean the others should lack it. Melee specializes in dealing really high amounts of damage but they have to be in the danger zone of being in the middle of enemies. thats their specialty. they are only considered to be the aoe specialists because of how much later the other classes get their AOE options.

[ruby meadow]

I personally consider them the AOE specialists not because Melee has it early, but because Melee has it consistently. Melee alone has the Survivability to repeatedly engage in direct multi-opponent encounters and come out on top.

While Magic has AOE options, they cannot do so consistently due to mana constraints and wand design.

Ranged can only do so as a result of explosive arrows.

And that's fine, gameplay options are good, but what else does Melee have going for it? Its Survivability is strong, but the greatest strength that gives is that ability to engage multiple opponents. That simply is Melee's value.

I'm not opposed to Ranged having an AOE option, but I want that option to be more utility so it does not interfere so strongly with Melee's strengths.

But we have gone far off track of the original discussion. We agree that Magic should have largely stronger burst damage to be uniquely identified. This places them in a separate role from either Melee or Ranged, who would have lesser immediate but more consistent damage output.

[rapid ingot]

having melee cleave =/ aoe specialist. considering level cap is supposed to be 60 we have about 1/3rd of the game if things go as they are supposed to, and thats assuming a lot of the new zones dont fall like this last new zone did, within our current level ranges. Melee gets it consistently, but melees virtue is the fact is has high damage in a cleaving aoe that it gets consistently, while being extremely tanky. without having to spend extra resources to get it done. until eternal spells. both mage and ranger have to spend a lot on their damage and their AOE.

but I would argue, the true aoe specialist is in fact, mage. once you get your endgame spells, eternal versions and all of that. they have the most AOE, discounting explosive arrows.

[ruby meadow]

I think we're agreeing a lot here. I'm not considering Melee an exclusive AOE specialist, I'm saying that their consistent, potent AOE ability is one of their great strengths, and that others should not have that ability to the same degree.

The Eternal versions, namely Eternal Ice Bolt (Level 17) and Eternal Fireball, add great AOE potential that they largely lack up to that point (the lightning spells serve as some earlier options but...these spells are kind of...I wouldn't want to get caught by a group of skeletons with nothing but Chain Lightning to my name, I'll put it that way). However, against a large number of enemies, mana constraints serve to prevent that AOE from completely dominating the field, as well as cast times and the danger that comes with them preventing spell casting at all if the enemies get too close. Taking that into account, it does not overwrite Melee's abilities.

[rapid ingot]

eternal ice bolt with a proper build definitely overwrites melees abilities. not eternal fireball because the cast time takes 30 years. but ice bolt definitely does.

[ruby meadow]

I'll have to disagree with that. My playthrough of the game was co-op with a friend playing a melee build. Eternal Ice Bolt was a great addition to the fight because of the AOE slow it provided, but he was certainly the one dealing the vast majority of the damage in those encounters as well as crowd control. The slow only enhanced his ability to do so.

This only became more and more true as we encountered high volumes of enemies, with the Hollow Halls being the most remarkable.

Eternal Fireball is in a weird spot. The damage value on the spell is lower than Eternal Ice Bolt's, it has a longer cast time, and it doesn't have an additional utility like the slow. I usually choose spells based on weaknesses, and unless it's a fire-weak enemy, Eternal Ice Bolt would always be what I'd reach for.

[inner solstice]

I was ice until the nerf, I always go ice for a wizard, people don't realize that slowing enemies lets you fire off more bolts, contributing to both dps and survivability

[median flax]

I'd like to see it made clearer what does or doesn't work with spells - e.g. eagle's bane should be +30% damage to flying enemies, but it doesn't seem to work.

[strange nimbus]

Except for daggers you can safely assume that anything in the ranger tree only works on ranger, anything on the mage tree only works on mage, and same for melee.

(Also Eagle's Bane was bugged before Blackmire and didn't even give damage against flying enemies)

[real magnet]

Hello everyone, I hope this threat is still relevant after the survey.

The survey focused a lot on how the solo mage feels and I'll make it short and sweet:

I'm a huge fan of Warlock/summoner/necromancer type mages in games and allthough we have a skill called necromancy the fact it's only a %chance to trigger and triggers on kill means it usually happens after the fight and is only ever usefull if a couple of stragglers show up before the skulls dissapear. Sure, we can craft them now but in the same vein craftable spell ammo feels pretty bad for a couple of reasons the craftable skulls are only a taste of what could be.

I think giving us an ability or spell that let's us summon a familiar or two at will would offset most if not all the problems a solo mage has by:

• Giving the mage breathing room to regenerate mana and switch spells less hastily by drawing attention away
• Creating a second source of damage next to the mage so the current damage the mage does wouldn't be as bad
• allowing solo players to have something watch their back as they mine, build and explore

I realize this will add another layer of things to balance especially in multiplayer but it's a solution that isn't just reverting nerfs and tweaking numbers, instead it's completly new content and another piece to complete the puzzle that is the fantasy of being a wizard.

Thank you for reading

[dense berry]

It took me some time to read over a decent amount of what was posted here so I knew what I could relate to and what I could bring to the table. Before I get into anything, I would perceive my vision for endgame solo mage being the badass who can mow down mobs in a hit or two while maybe struggling to keep up with bosses using hit and run tactics. I will list what issues I can relate to, what other issues I encountered, and potential ideas for the class.

Relatable Issues:

• Staff casting time is too long
• Staff casting without permission
• Staff inching forward on cast
• Close range usage of wand combined with awkward dodge roll/blink feeling clunky
  = Still hard to shake enemies with blink
• Mana feels difficult to regen
  = Ring of Disparity nerfed a bit too hard?
  = and Mana Leech can really only be obtained from Root Staff? I haven't really seen mana leech much
• Many spells are clunky and/or don't adhere well to terrain
  = Shroud Meteor will only land in front of you if no lock on
  = Acid Bite is literal floating cone of acid if you do it from a height
  = Light Burst feels more like a horizontal plate pushing enemies away. Can miss enemies with height differences like stairs

[dense berry]

Other Issues:

• Personally, I've had issues where the first cast on a staff will fail to cast and redo it's windup animation
• Radiant Aura doesn't work on most enemies (I still use it because it's amazing when it does work)
• Exalted (1 int for every 2 levels of Flame) and Arcane Concentration (1 spirit for every 2 levels of the Flame) only give up to 2 points instead of 3
• Bloodletting (50% chance to spawn 2 orbs health/mana/stamina) does not work with fireball
• Blood Magic cooldown is too long for the fact it only gives me one fireball's worth back on my mana regen build
  = this one might be a personal gripe, but Life Burst (magic weapon kill heals all players within 15m of target equal to 3 times int score) doesn't feel all that useful either
• Shroud Meteor. Honestly. Everything.
  = Charge-up time is unnecessarily long
  = How close you have to be to lock on makes it very likely that you will get hit during the cast animation
  = It's supposed to hit up to 3 or 5 enemies, but you're lucky if it hits two with enemies chasing you
  = The lock on window for such a massive spell is super tiny

Potential Ideas That Could Be Trash Or Gold:

• Staff clunkiness fixes
  = Offer another Quick Charge (Reduced Staff charge-up time by 50%) or boost it a lot
  = Only slow down caster for the casting of the spell itself. but increase the duration of the cast animation
  = Allow casting while double jumping
• Spell clunkiness fixes. For AOE spells, give it some character
  = Acid Bite --> Larger AOE cone | Falls to the ground if casted over ledge | Poison enemies after leaving cone OR Poison slows while stepping inside
  = Shroud Meteor --> Give a visual of where it could land and have it be one larger meteor | Reduce CD to 2.5-3 seconds and have fall time animation
  = Light Burst --> Longer CD | Heavier Pushback | More bubbley
  = Heal Channel --> Healing orbs should zoom to their target after it floats for a bit, easy to not get healed in the crazy situation you need it most

[topaz anvil]

I was confused about a lot of what was said, but I didnt realize the last patch changed mages so much I didnt notice much difference at endgame. Ive never had any issues keeping up with (and usually outdamaging) my sword/bow using friends, especially with all the AOE mage perks and fireball crits turning enemies into pudding after the lighting jumps between them

My build has no issues at level 25 and I dont remember struggling much leveling up either, but ive been 25 since before the last major update

[dense berry]

and maybe moving Exalted to Battlemage? seems more fitting since even healers will probably leech into it afterwards

[bleak cove]

Int per 2 flame levels sounds more like a wizard thing to me, but any placement that doesn't put Exalted behind a coop only skill would be appreciated as a solo player.

[topaz anvil]

as someone who is a healer and who already has a very tight skill point allocation I kinda hate that

it would depend where they put it cause I dont have the points to go all the way down that tree and its the only way to make the healing aura even remotely useful post nerf

though, I guess looking at the skill tree martyr isnt that useful in the first place

[dense berry]

Healers ideally shouldn't be dying in group play so it feels very useless

[bleak cove]

Honestly, any skill that requires a player dying to gain some kind of benefit has dubious usefulness.

[topaz anvil]

that would free up more points for something more overall valuable, I can see the benefits

[dense berry]

I say replace it with shroud filter. not a bad idea for a node and just remove martyr as a whole

[bleak cove]

Being a coop only skill also means I'll probalby never grab Exalted unless we see something like level 20 flame altars because paying double the skill points because of a useless skill for a solo player just isn't worth it.

Now if it did something like heal self and party members within a radius when taking damage it might be worth the points.

[dense berry]

I've been messing around with various one-shot-attempted mage builds, and I actually take it anyways because Int score is everything to damage wizard

[bleak cove]

Like a defensive version of Life Burst.

2 Int isn't worth 10 skill points to me tbh.

even if it wasn't bugged and gave 3 I still probably wouldn't consider it worth it.

[topaz anvil]

oh its bugged? I was wondering what was up and why my int wasnt the same after I respec-ed

[dense berry]

if you have max flame (level 6) it should give 3 int. only gives two

[bleak cove]

yeah, my guess is it's only counting upgrade levels and ignoring the initial flame altar level.

[topaz anvil]

hmm that means my point spread is definitely sub optimal and even still Ive never had any issues getthing through the game, even playing solo as a mainly healer focused build

Mostly with fireball and wand spam, occasionally a double jump light burst if I get surrounded

[bleak cove]

I'm doing a more "Gandalf" style build right now. Fire-focused crit Wizard/Trickster with only enough points in Helaer/Battlemage to reach the mid-point Int nodes. Then everything else is loaded into Warrior/Tank because swords just feel so much better than wands in close combat right now.

[dense berry]

More than anything I think I would like Radiant Aura to work on all the enemies

[bleak cove]

Radiant Aura working on everything would definitely be nice. It's damage is still a bit underwhelming vs anything with any decent amount of health, but simply doing damage to everything would make it a much more valuable use of points.

[topaz anvil]

as a mainly support mage Ive never gotten to play with that, I should do a full aggro wizard build

[dense berry]

tbh I hear a lot of complaints about radiant aura and water aura damage/healing over time but I have no issues with that part

could be because I got every int node available, but they work as I expect them to be

[topaz anvil]

I think the water aura nerf wouldnt matter as much if A) targeting of the heal spells wasnt awful and B) selecting spells was easier

[bleak cove]

Probably depends on playstyle. In my case I dropped the two double damage upgrades to shift my points elsewhere and I barely noticed a difference in either aura.

[topaz anvil]

also it would be nice if you could respec single points instead of all at once

[dense berry]

I switched spell selection to caps lock

since im either running or using spells not both

no issues since

[topaz anvil]

its just going through the whole list of spells is so tedious

I wish it were a radial like item select

[dense berry]

Yeah early game when I used any spell available it was kind of awkward sifting through them that is true

[topaz anvil]

I guess its also easier on mouse and keyboard cause I just saw you can just scroll lmao but I play on controller

and you have to literally go one item at a time and if you miss one you have to go around again

[dense berry]

oh that changes things definitely 😂

[bleak cove]

It helps, but it's also easy to "overshoot" which spell you actually want to select too.

[topaz anvil]

im sure, but overshooting on controller is a lot longer of a process haha

I forget people play games like this on keyboard so my experience is slightly different

I cant do mouse and keyboard for action games, ive seen people do it for like dark souls and its just foreign to me 😂

[bleak cove]

<- is one of those people I tried Darksouls and Elden Ring with controllers, but hated how sluggish the camera movement was in comparison to a mouse.

[dense berry]

I'm the flat opposite of you in this sense haha

[bleak cove]

Getting off topic though. A radial menu for spells would be nice as long as it has a different keybind to charging the spell.

[topaz anvil]

yea see my fingers just dont do right when not on a controller, I cant get the muscle memory down for keyboard keys in the speed I need to press them in action games

[bleak cove]

I move too much while charging spells to have my camera movement overrided by a radial menu.

[topaz anvil]

lmao fair! maybe it could be a solution just for controller players

like have you hold down the button you press for selection spells on there

[bleak cove]

Well, for a given value of move anyway with the way staff casting immobilizes you.

[topaz anvil]

I barely ever move my camera when spell charging until im about to fire the spell, so having a radial used by the right stick would work wonderfully for me (since im only ever moving around when charging)

[bleak cove]

I'm often "leading" my targets while charging because the auto-target often doesn't account for the mob of scavengers charging at me full sprint.

[dense berry]

Nor the wyverns who know how to dodge sideways

[bleak cove]

That too. Though I have gotten pretty decent at timing a point-blank fireball cast + blink when fighting them.

[dense berry]

I switched to wand hit and run/parry after they get close

[bleak cove]

Pretty much the only reason I carry a wand besides exploding bugs. Hard to charge a spell when they're close, and difficult to hit with a sword. So I just zap them slowly with a wand.

[dense berry]

wands hit great for most things, just enemies are really fast and have lunging attacks so you gotta be real careful

[inner solstice]

I don't like the animation lock in, I would rather there be a node to increase wand attack speed and/or dual wield wands than a chance to procc an additional missile. If I am in wand range I need to react and attack fast.

[bleak cove]

Projectile speed increase and removing that weird weaving they do would make wands so much nicer to use, and the immobilization when using both wands and staffs is honestly the last thing you want as a mage.

[daring monolith]

Mage, with shield+wand, or staff+eternal ice. Only have 40~ hours in the game so far, some time played with others but largely solo.

The wands having such low durability feels really bad, scanning over other weapons it seems to be lower than any other playstyle, with double handed melee weapons having over double the durability. It would be nice if this was increased. I would even go as far as a server option where you could just remove durability.

I like going out to adventure, explore, and look around. After 15 minutes having to teleport home or frantically hunt for a repair anvil just feels bad. (I do have the perks to reduce wand usage, get double attacks, etc. They don't seem to help that much)

The wand having a "heat seeking" effect on enemies is really cool to watch. It seems to kind of sputter out at the end of the range, and an attack may not hit an enemy I thought it would sometimes.

The staff is king of the game for me right now. I try to enter every fight by shooting it at far away enemies to draw them in. The endless spell, and the fact it doesn't have durability, the only limit being my mana/mana regen just feels super solid. I can't tell you how happy I was when I found out there was an endless spell. It would be nice to have a different reticule, for helping with distance judgement. I really like the one the bow has, as I used them in the early game. Maybe an option for which reticule to use for which weapon, and give us a selection of choices?

I hope some of that is helpful, if any members of the team have any questions, feel free to ask/DM me.

[daring monolith]

I would like to note one addition with the wand durability discussion. It has been brought up to me to carry a base stone around. Plop it down, teleport to base for repairs, and then teleport back.

It just feels like a cheesy workaround to me.

[rough willow]

@lament wigeon

[bleak cove]

Filed a bug report on this as well, but figured I'd copy it in here too as a heads up for other mage players:

Bugged interaction with mage spell swapping and additional issue with Channel spells.

When swapping spells as a mage character the new spell is taking on the cast time of the previous spell (ie. switching from Frost Bolt to Fireball makes Fireball's cast time 1s instead of 2s, or 0.5s instead of 1s with the Quick Charge skill).

While this isn't much of a cheese for faster spells like these, since swapping back and forth for each spell would make up the time difference, it can potentially be used to cut longer cast time spells like Shroud Meteor down to a 0.5s cast from 2.5s (with Quick Charge).

Additionally, when switching from the Heal Channel and Lightning Channel spells to a new spell, the new spell is able to go through the shorter cast time like above. However, the spell then "resets" when the mage actually attempts to cast it, causing them to have to go through the intended cast time afterward as a result. Overall making the newly swapped spell take longer than intended to cast.

[compact burrow]

The healing spells in the game are the most frustrating part of this game, especially your first spell healing channel, my squadmates run jump and smash and are already to the next group by the time those tiny slow healing bulbs stop trying to reach them and then just go back to me. Healing needs to feel like it's being directed instead of random, like having a heal that targets an area you can concentrate would be much better instead of praying to the RNG gods to make sure they reach. I've given up on healing and i'm just drinking potions because it's faster and more importantly consistent.

[copper grotto]

Not to mention significantly more powerful, and doesn't cost you gear slots to dedicate to healing multipliers.

[bleak cove]

Healing spells would be so much better if Chain Heal was a bursty frontal cone with decent range, and Heal Channel was a pulsing AoE centered on the caster. Giving the option of weaker but steady healing or immediate but costly healing.

[bleak cove]

Man, I outrun my own healing spells all the time. I imagine trying to heal party members is akin to herding cats.

[hexed moth]

adding to the chorus on mobility/utility issues... trying wizard for the first time, prev character was just a sword guy, and hollow halls were not a good time.

was playing with my melee hammer friend and he would be one or two hitting everything with some jump attack ground slam thing while one or two of the sprinty skeleton guys would be numerous and fast enough that i pretty much could get one or two ice bolts off before having to run away or get killed in 3 hits, only to run out of stamina from constantly running away but it "worked out" because my friend would just kill everything instantly

if there was some larger AoE slow or way to put up a temporary physical barrier or something it wouldn't be so bad, but it seems like for massed fast enemies the options are either kill them all in the first couple of hits as they're running at you, or you die

i can see why mage seems OP to pretty much require that initial burst damage to be at all solo-able or else you're dead, which, another thing it seems (and already mentioned but w/e) the power spike is real. unlocked eternal fireball last night and many of my problems have disappeared due to aforementioned option of being able to kill things in the first couple hits now also "unlocked"

so anyway, more cc + utility type stuff IMO would alleviate what seems to me what's happening right now of needing to be "OP" to be at all viable

[gentle iris]

So, I figure even positive feedback should likely be allowed here and with that being said. As of last patch, mage feels waaaay more responsive, the light burst spell is easily becoming my favorite close range spell.

[gentle iris]

Dodging feels better too

[smoky frigate]

absolutely, the positive is half of the feedback request!! its just that there wasnt alot to be positive about before xD

I came here after reading about the patch just to see if anyone said something like this!!!

im logging on right now to test the blocking thing!

let me just dust off my Azeron!

[gentle iris]

Still more to go, but the feel of combat deffinitely feels improved

[smoky frigate]

squeeee

[smoky frigate]

hmmmm..... blocking and weapon switching are so much better

healer tree is still lacking

martyr needs to be deleted >_>

[bleak cove]

yeah, a skill with an on-death activation condition just isn't all that appealing, but at least they moved Exalted out from behind it so it's no longer a skill point tax for solo players.

Also, a really bad/annoying bug with switching spells. After switching from one spell to another in the scroll menu, the cast time UI spinner no longer functions and the switch spell clicking sound effect goes on repeat until exiting to menu.

[smoky frigate]

can you please describe how to make this happen? i dont think i understand coz its not doing it to me

[past estuary]

Yeah I also got the clicking sound. I'm not sure if its tied to swapping to specific spells or not. I also got the glitch by switching to the pickaxe on my hotbar somehow as well

[bleak cove]

All I'm doing is switching spells.

[smoky frigate]

are you holding the ready button then scrolling? are you using them on hotbar? are you scrolling through another way i cant remember xD?