#Mage Class Feedback Megathread

1 messages · Page 2 of 1

bleak cove
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Hotbar, Alt key and Right Click all do it.

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The staff is twitching slightly while the clicking is going on too.

smoky frigate
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its just not doing it for me

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weird

bleak cove
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Not really sure myself, but it's definitely annoying.

smoky frigate
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i got the clicking while switching terrain types in build mode once though

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only once and havent been able to repeat it

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yep couldnt get it to do it again

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super weird

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interesting note, i may have swapped some keybinds. lemme check

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yeah i swapped my cast button and ready weapon

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and evade

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im using an Azeron, so swapping binds is no big deal as i can make them all be at my fingertipes

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tips**

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lol

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maybe because i have done that i dont get the clicky?

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im not willing to reset to default as ive got it working for me atm xD

bleak cove
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Clicking goes away when I switch to a different tool, and doesn't seem to happen at all on a brand new character either.

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Which means specifically my only level 25 character is bugged. Yay.

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On the upside I was planning on remaking them with the new character customization options anyway, but still.

ruby meadow
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Oof. Not happy to hear there are more bugs. Glad they fixed at least a couple of the ones I submitted.

Didn't see this in the patch notes, did they fix the bug where using scroll wheel to switch spells would initially use the cast time of the previous spell?

How does mage feel now? I haven't played yet, doesn't look like the balance changes are that big and many of them sound pretty questionable. Martyr skill changes are where I started laughing, "Life Essences" was where I started laughing harder.

bleak cove
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  • Yeah, Martyr seems to be a "missed the point" kind of change. Having to die to trigger the effect of a skill just feels bad in general.
  • Life Essence would probably be more appealing if it either gave more health or cost less points. Because my dip into tank gives me over 2x the Health on top of a bunch of other survivability boosts.
  • Didn't see any changes for Water Aura, Radiant Aura or Begone either which was a bit disappointing with how underwhelming all three abilities are.

Also, I can still out jog my Heal Channel orbs. Not even sprinting, just jogging away from them...

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Haven't had much of a chance to test the other stuff because of the weird spell swapping bug that seems to have affected my only leveled character.

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Also, there's still a massive power gap between my two level 30 staffs.

ruby meadow
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When reading the patch notes it looked like they missed the mark pretty hard.

I really wish they'd do something like allow Martyr to block lethal damage once every few minutes, maybe triggering a Light Burst-like push back when it activates.

I still think the concept of making mages tankier is largely a flawed one in and of itself. Does it make the archetype stronger? Inarguably yes. Does it make them unique? Not at all, if I want to be tankier melee skills exist for that. No reason to give the mage archetype a "perk" that is just a worse version of what others have.

At least the Heal Channel orbs won't disappear when hitting the ceiling now I suppose. That was rather annoying, so nice QOL change I guess.

bleak cove
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Yeah, my idea of Mage "survivability" has always been either "nuke it first" or "magic barrier temporary health." Rather than just more hitpoints. Edit: though the change to Light Burst at least sounds like a step in the right direction.

Blocking lethal damage with Martyr would be neat, and would also make it useful to solo players. Though that might also turn it into a "must have" skill regardless of playstyle.

I'd still rather Heal Channel be changed to a pulsing spherical AoE, and Chain Heal be changed to a pulsing cone-shaped AoE. Would make both spells leagues more useful for team support.

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Especially since you can still out jog the orbs despite the speed increase.

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Might toss my gear at a new character and field test the changes in a semi-controlled manner while also solving my bugged main character problem.

smoky frigate
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wand projectiles still sucks

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mana im not sure about?

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havent been able to test healing spells yet to see if they perform as well as potions for the cost

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but judging from what ive seen so far my overwhelming feeling is this: "JFC did you even read half of what we gave you as feedback??!!"

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urgh

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read through patch notes and nothing for heals beyond increasing projectile speed and targeting, which doesnt seem to have made any difference to Auren. I am yet to test it as I started over with some friends. I'm extremely disappointed that our feedback about mana and healing strength seems to be ignored but the issues that affect the other classes, like blocking and weapon switching were fixed. dont slap that on and call it a mage fix.

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smh

gentle iris
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Unfortunately while my initial session was favorable it does seem that the mark was missed for mages. Though the blink might have invuln frames now as I seem to be getting hit less when I use it to dodge

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Also some staves are still glitched and have double the power of other staves

smoky frigate
gentle iris
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there are like two or three staves with 55 power, the entire rest of them have 27

copper grotto
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This 💯this

copper grotto
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Anyone else experiencing a glitch where wand projectiles, and healing projectiles are invisible? Revalidated and same behavior.

gentle iris
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yes i am

smoky frigate
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mana problems are still rife, with 4x mana pool the only way to play

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still getting 1 or 2 shot like im made of wet tissue paper, and spells hitting for smaller damage than expected

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i think most of our feedback fell on deaf ears, friends. do we need to be more assertive about it?
martyr SUCKS WE HATE IT
mana SUCKS WE HATE IT
damage is WEAKER than most others
blink is STILL NOT AN IFRAME although it does execute a lot faster (this is most noticeable when you blink straight into enemies like when you have blink attack skill)

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idk about you guys but im pretty ticked off about this

bleak cove
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There was certainly an attempt to improve things, but yeah so far I'm a bit underwhelmed by how little actually seems to have been addressed.

bleak cove
smoky frigate
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then they had the nerve, the cheek, to put on the patch notes "mage class updates" no. p** off. thats not okay to claim

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like ok they shuffled the skill tree around. admittedly, that probably took the board room some thinking, some arguments back and forth. i cant think of any other mage-only fix they did. I guess they tried to fix martyr? but that still needs to completely change. healers dont die. thats the point of healers. smh. change it do almost lethal damage, fine. not death thats just stupid

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why even bother asking our opinions if its all just going to get ignored? could have gained the insight needed to execute the few fixes they did do from statistics. i just find this whole thing to be a joke and insulting.

bleak cove
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Fireball, Ice Bolt and Light Burst were buffed of course. Though I haven't had a chance to see how much they've improved. But yeah:

  • Staffs were pretty much untouched
  • Wand projectiles still meander slowly
  • I can still out jog Heal Channel projectiles (they have no chance to keep up with someone sprinting)
  • Pretty much every special skill in the mage skill trees is still underwhelming in some way.
  • You're still probably better off dipping into the Warrior and Tank trees for close combat.
  • Mana regen still feels terrible.
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I'll probably have a more solid opinion once I've had more time to play with the changes, but initial impression is not great.

inner solstice
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yeah I'm not blown away, I respecced my tank/healer and the constraints were even tighter than before, I won't be playing him

past estuary
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Wow, wand durability is amazing now! I just shut it off in the custom menu lmao 😂

smoky frigate
ruby meadow
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Launching the game to check out the changes and the first thing I get hit with is an anti-virus warning for the game's executable lmao. The jokes write themselves.

I load into my character and I immediately notice the game is chugging. Walking around is fine and maintains a high framerate, but as soon as things start to move, such as opening a door, I get hit with stutters. This persisted after the shader compilation was finished, which in itself took several minutes.

It's pretty much a mess from this point on, so the cliff notes are:

  • My inventory has been completely scrambled.
  • Game freezes for about a second when I take out or put away my staff.
  • My staff and all visual effects associated with it and the wand are now permanently stuck in my hand.
  • My skill tree has had a seizure, but this one was at least expected and a quick respec put everything right.
  • "Fireball" and "Ice Bolt" changes have only been applied to their base versions, so the Level 17 Eternal versions are still very lackluster. I assumed this was the case, so I'm not surprised, though I am disappointed.
  • Wand durability increase is significant.
  • "Fireball" and "Ice Bolt" projectiles move faster on all versions.
  • "Life Essences" health gain is pretty much neglible, equivalent to about two points of Constitution under absolutely optimal circumstances.
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  • "Heal Channel" projectiles don't seem to actually travel through walls despite what the patch notes claim. Rather, if they encounter a wall, they disappear but the healing effect is immediately applied to your character. It's also worth noting it applies at a reduced rate (my Heal Channel ticks for 68 normally, but this goes down to 52 if it encounters a wall). Additionally, this system does not work on ceilings, so they still block the spell entirely.
  • I am not noticing any difference in the speed of Heal Channel's projectiles.
  • Heal Channel is still incapable of firing just once.
  • The spell charge time swap bug has been fixed.

Given the large volume of issues, I performed a Steam file verification just in case, but it verified everything without issue and the problems I encountered persisted afterwards.

I didn't test everything because at this point I gave up. I am labeling this update a "Complete Disaster" for magic. I have encountered immediate significant bugs, performance issues, and identified misinformation in the patch notes.

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Please enjoy this image of my character holding her staff and sword at the same time alongside fire, ice, and shroud particle effects.

smoky frigate
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yup, just gonna turn to mods for this game i think. the devs have really messed it up for me

median flax
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So not worth retrying

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got it

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I was going to say the patch notes for mages looked lack-lustre

copper grotto
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Hard to test with how broken and buggy it all is

ruby meadow
ruby meadow
# median flax I was going to say the patch notes for mages looked lack-lustre

They were, and while I touched on what could loosely be considered the "big points", as Archon said it's just too broken to really tell. Others may have a different performance experience than me and not everyone is getting hit with the same bugs (for instance, my wand projectiles were not invisible, as some others have reported), but on my end I'd consider it pretty much unplayable.

bleak cove
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My thoughts after running around on my mage for the last 2 hours:

The Great

  • Light Burst is amazing in close quarters. Especially with Bloodletting and Terror.

The Good

  • Fireball and Ice Bolt projectile speed is nice. You can still miss if you don't lead properly, but it's a lot more forgiving.
  • Physical Armor values on robes was slightly noticeable, but you're still better off wearing one or two pieces of heavy armor for the health boosts.

The "Meh"

  • Life Essences isn't as bad as it sounded at first. However, it is not worth 5 points. 3 maybe, but not 5.
  • The block timing change while using wands was alright, but Light Burst was still VIP for close quarters defense. Leave parrying to the warriors.
  • Moving Exalted out from behind Martyr was a welcome change as a mostly solo player. Though I would've preferred if it had been moved to the Wizard tree. Especially with wands still being pretty underwhelming compared to using a sword for close combat.
  • Water Aura is actually a little better now with Light Burst being useful for creating breathing room. Still could use a little bump to its healing, but it doesn't feel as awful as it did before the patch.
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The Bad

  • Wands still feel pretty weak. The durability increase was nice at least, but the lazily meandering projectile still feels awful, and frankly swinging a sword around in close quarters after casting Light Burst is still leagues better than trying to use a wand.
  • Martyr is still an underwhelming skill. No amount of adjustments will make having to die to trigger its effect feel good.
  • Begone is still just a skill tax to get to the back end of the Trickster tree. It needs a serious rethink to make it worth actually using. Edit: Especially with Light Burst now doing the same thing but better.

The Awful

  • Mana Regen still feels terrible. Unity doesn't help enough to feel worth the points, and having Mana Leech on a staff is still pretty much mandatory.
  • Using the still-nerfed staffs still feels terrible. Please return their power values back the way they were.
  • Radiant Aura is actually even less worth the skill points now with Light Burst's buff to being a great immediate crowd control tool. This ability seriously needs to affect all enemies and get a serious damage bump.
  • Chain Heal and Heal Channel need an overhaul. Full stop. No excuses. I can still out-jog the projectiles from Heal Channel so good luck trying to heal someone sprinting around. The healing spells need to be fast, bursty and reliably targetable if they are to even remotely compete with the other player simply chugging a Healing Potion.
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Some good steps in a positive direction, but there's still a lot of underwhelming aspects to the mage playstyle that could really use some more love.

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Light Burst -> Blink -> Pick up Bloodletting orbs -> Evasion Attack into sword strikes was surprisingly fun. Felt a lot more like a Battlemage than half-walking while slinging lazy wand projectiles did.

ruby meadow
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Appreciate you taking the L to provide us detailed feedback, Auren. Reading it makes me want to put the tip of my staff in my mouth and cast Fireball.

bleak cove
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Gonna refine my build a little now, but yeah the patch feels like "one step forward after having taken three steps back" for mages. There were a few good things (Light Burst in particular), but there's still a lot of lackluster features in the playstyle that need work.

ruby meadow
bleak cove
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In the case of staff power, wand damage/durability, and mana regen? Definitely?
In the case of the two auras? They would probably just be fine with a number bump (a big one in Radiant's case now).
Life Essences would be acceptable if it cost about half of what it does.

That said, Martyr, Begone, and the two healing spells need an overhaul. That much is obvious at this point with how great Light Burst feels after getting overhauled.

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Counterstrike could use an overhaul too come to think of it. It's so underwhelming I forgot about it completely.

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..... Addendum to what I said about staff power. Using any staff feels bad damage-wise. Root Staff and Shepherd's Lightning both got a sneaky nerf bat in the hotfix. So now all staffs get to feel terrible together.

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Was wondering why my spells didn't have the same oomph when I was testing with what I thought was the good staff.

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Guess that means I can switch back to the cooler-looking Blackened Staff, but I'm really starting to question their seriousness about bringing fun back to the mage playstyle.

smoky frigate
smoky frigate
smoky frigate
ruby meadow
# bleak cove ..... Addendum to what I said about staff power. Using ***any*** staff feels bad...

Of course they did.

Yep, logging in, I can see my staff power has gone from 57 to 26, less than half. And they don't even have the decency to put it in the patch notes.

I don't even know what to say at this point. Massive amounts of discussion have taken place in this thread, almost all of it has been ignored with the patch, and now this.

I'd say any faith in their intent or goodwill towards their development process I previously had has been completely dispelled. This thread seems more and more not built with the goal of amassing feedback but as a plan to shove all complaints in a place where they can be safely ignored.

@eager token, I apologize for putting you in this position, but I'm @ing you because I want to be sure this has at least an opportunity to get across to the development team: If they're so very concerned with the "feel" of magic, then it "feels" like magic is getting pissed on.

ruby meadow
smoky frigate
ruby meadow
# smoky frigate i honestly wouldnt being half as ticked off if they hadnt just blatantly ignored...

At this point I refuse to believe this thread was ever actually meant to generate feedback, it really does just seem they wanted to hide away the unhappy players. This is supported not only by them ignoring our feedback, but outright going the opposite direction by nerfing the last two remaining decent staffs rather than reverting the power change, one of the few things we all explicitly agreed on.

smoky frigate
copper grotto
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Follow recent trends; Leave a negative review. And put your time into a different game.

inner solstice
eager token
# ruby meadow At this point I refuse to believe this thread was ever actually meant to generat...

I mean, we're here and looking at it. Just because we aren't responding to every message doesn't mean they aren't being seen and tracked internally. The team is definitely aware that mage is not in the place everybody wants it to be, including a lot of the dev team themselves. The simple answer for why a lot of more fundamental changes to the class haven't happened yet is because those are very development-time consuming tasks, and right now there are things we are cooking that we feel are higher priority. So right now we are making smaller adjustments in the meantime while we work on bigger things internally

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Development takes a long time, just because the most recent patch doesn't include something doesn't mean that thing isn't being worked on, or that the team isn't aware of it.

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Part of me does wonder if it might be getting time to close this thread down though in favor of moving the discussion back to more "public" channels. This thread was specifically made after our big balance patch, and since then it has kinda fallen into obscurity for most of this server (there's only about 40 people in this thread).

Curious what your guys thoughts are on locking this (it would still be publicly visible, just no new messages) and moving the conversation back to places like #enshrouded-chat so that more of the community at large can see it and participate.

eager token
bleak cove
# eager token What were the "nerfs" to the staffs that you saw? I don't believe this was inten...

In the Melodies of the Mire patch (the previous major patch):

  • "The damage that staffs add to the "damage dealt" calculation is reduced by 50%. This slightly reduces spell damage overall."

This change saw the Power stat on nearly every staff getting cut in half, and the damage dealt by those staffs to drop significantly. At the time I remember this change being almost universally disliked, and is the source of a lot of the sentiment that staff damage feels terrible since then.

There were two exceptions to this though. The Root Staff and Shepherd's Lightning staff had managed do avoid the nerf to staff Power, and naturally became the only staffs anyone really wanted to use because they were the only two staffs that still felt good to use.

That changed in yesterday's hotfix patch (#15), however, where they apparently had their Power stat stealth nerfed to be equal to the other staffs. So now every staff feels like it takes forever to defeat anything, and by extension makes the slow mana regeneration feel even worse.

eager token
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Ohh I see, I guess a QA or something might have noticed that the proper change wasn't in the build and adjusted it? Wonder why the log got missed.

bleak cove
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All I know is all staffs have been at 27 Power at upgraded level 30 since Melodies of the Mire except for those two which remained at 55 Power until yesterday where they also dropped to 27 when fully upgraded, and the difference in damage just hasn't been fun.

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Final spell damage numbers effectively dropped by roughly a third. Which is far from a slight reduction imo.

past estuary
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I do want to emphasize the Light Burst radius change was definitely the best part of the update for me (aside from being able to toggle infinite wand durability lol)

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Feels like a good mage alternative to bee sting/jump attacks

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I do still wish that chain lighting and lightning channel had a longer chain radius, but maybe next update

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(an eternal chain lighting spell would also be very welcome lol)

bleak cove
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Yeah, the Light Burst buff was easily the VIP of the current patch for mages.

past estuary
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I'd love to see more fast cast/AoE options (or higher versions of light burst) in the future

eager token
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Yeah the team definitely doesn't think the recent changes were "enough", so I don't want people to think we're totally oblivious to the feedback or something. These kind of changes are fairly quick though compared to the bigger tweaks we want to eventually do, which would take a lot more time. Right now other things have taken priority in the recent update.

inner solstice
eager token
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It's mostly how few other players are seeing it, not many new members since the thread originally opened, so not many new opinions or ideas

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the thread feature is really bad for discoverability tbh, we only intended for this to be temporary for that one patch

copper grotto
# eager token Development takes a long time, just because the most recent patch doesn't includ...

Appreciate knowing it's still on the radar. Communication goes a long way.
Agree that threads are a pita for discoverability. For a long while I couldn't get back to this thread, even when I was looking for it.
If I'm trying to be objective, and not bash anyone. Enshrouded has a deeper class problem than just shuffling some skills around. In a lot of tabletop designs, I've hit this myself and have needed to go back and re-address things in a casual chat with my design guys. Take each titled build, in this case: trickster, barbarian, beast master, etc. All of them. And ask the table, what do we want this to do? And then, does it do that?
Classes being the lens a player sees the rest of the game through, it is very important that the lens is fun. On it's own. If it is, great. Everything else inherits that good, or bad feeling. People are naturally bias, and if they're upset because they see the warrior being immortal, or the ranger flying and being untouchable, that negative resentment is going to color every experience thereafter.
I'll say it again, because it needs repeating: **death, as a trigger for a skill, is bad. ** it's a never take while solo, and always a negative feeling in groups. Loseing your buffs also feels bad. Why even waste time trying to skirt how bad a player should feel to use their own skills? Just throw it out, start over.

copper grotto
ruby meadow
# eager token Part of me does wonder if it might be getting time to close this thread down tho...

I understand development takes time, but really please do consider the extent of individual changes, how long those should take, and what the mage changes in the last patch actually were.

I agree with others, the Light Burst change is what the spell always should have been, I'm glad to see it having been tweaked.

But then consider Martyr. Nobody likes this skill, and it has nothing to do with how weak it is. Even if it were a full, 100% heal for all team mates regardless of distance, it would still be bad, because it requires dying to activate. Losing a team member, and especially being that player, is always the worst option when there are tons of better healing options available and, of course, is completely purposeless outside co-op play. And this one taking time makes sense because it is a replacement to that skill. This is something we have spoken about at length in this thread, but then the patch goes and just...buffs it, it doesn't change the trigger conditions or anything. That shows to us that the Martyr feedback has been ignored, because why would you bother spending development time adjusting a skill if an overhaul were planned for it?

Or what about staff power? Over nearly two months the overwhelming consensus here has been to revert that change, and that is not something that should take a lot of development time. While I admittedly am not familiar with the development environment or the implementation, I struggle to imagine a world where it is not a matter of adjusting item definitions, or even if God forbid the scaling formula is being changed each time, you have the old one. This shouldn't take long, the only thing that could possibly slow it down would be hesitancy or dev discussion on it, none of which has been communicated to us, and the hotfix communicates the opposite.

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When even the feedback we have, in our many lengthy discussions, agreed upon appears to fall on deaf ears, it is perfectly natural and legitimate for us to feel betrayed.

Locking this thread has the consequence of the new discussion area being devoid of the discussion that has already taken place over the past two months, putting players in the uncomfortable position of having participants who have already spent many many hours discussing this, and those unaware of those discussions. At this point, there is no real good option, the new area can have a link to this thread and that's about the best you can do if you really want to start a new one.

A feedback category with its own channels dedicated to discussion on various topics would likely be the best way to go about it as it contains discussions to areas where they will not interrupt the server in other ways while having a persistent, visible presence. The magic feedback channel could then house a link to this thread in the channel description.

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Another thing, assuming the two staffs were changed as a consequence of testing as you say and this caused it to be skipped over in the patch notes, then the documentation of changes and flow of information to the patch note team needs to be revised. There's clearly room for changes and fixes to slip by them, meaning it has likely happened before now and will likely happen again, and stealth changes for players are never going to be perceived well.

ruby meadow
# eager token the thread feature is really bad for discoverability tbh, we only intended for t...

I just feel the need to point out a contrasting detail here. If development time on mage is that lengthy, which is honestly completely fair, nobody expects all the changes to happen immediately...why in the world was this thread only planned to be around for a single patch?

And of course, if the team is working on things that are considered higher priority, which is again completely fair as you have to keep delivering content updates, then why would you only plan this thread for a single patch, knowing the next patch would very likely not have a focus on mage changes?

eager token
# ruby meadow I just feel the need to point out a contrasting detail here. If development time...

I think you might be missing the point of the thread, it wasn't to say "all mage feedback must go here", it was because after that patch mage balance was one of the biggest topics happening in the discord. So we wanted to give people a place to give their thoughts in a more constructive manner that wasn't immediately drown out by the wave of other general discussion/complaints that were happening at the time.

Now though things aren't really like that, so I think it would be more productive if this discussion was more visible. Especially to newer members who might not even be aware that this thread exists anymore.