Sounds good to me.

My only question is, will NMUs (barbarians and thieves) be effected by these changes, negatively or positively?

I assume not, since it sounds like you have to manually edit all the spell properties, and neither guild uses mana or attunement.

Will the changing of mana to linear affect how spells that give Attunement pool regeneration work and if so how?

The initial plan isn't too change recovery spells, but it's on the table if it's needed.

I said we're removing skill set placement from the calculation that controls what percentage of your pool is recovered each pulse. It remains in place as far as how big the actual pool is (though the differences are fairly non existent at low levels and no more than 5%/10% even at 1000 ranks.)

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Can learning debilitation be based more on debilitation skill vs the critter's... whatever, as opposed to how closely you pass the SvS test?

My understanding is that because debilitative abilities are based entirely on stat vs stat checks, learning from using them depends on if the critter you're using them on is a challenge.

I get this, in theory, but in reality it penalizes people for training their stats in a way that has them benefit when using X to debilitate their opponent.

I'd gladly factor in debilitative skill into the SvS formula, for the offensive side, if it meant I could train debilitation the same way I train TM or any other offensive measure.

If this isn't the case, well, nevermind! I just recall some threads in the past that touched on this, and I have no idea if it ever came into being and/or wasn't changed already.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

This sounds like a very good chamge. Mana does not work intuitively at all right now. You mention sleep vs MB but don't bring it forward into the mana example... Is this a paradigm where mana costs reflect the number of effects you're attempting?


>Can learning debilitation be based more on debilitation skill vs the critter's... whatever, as opposed to how closely you pass the SvS test?

Since critters have stats (actually... Do they?) but don't have any whatever's I can see that being difficult. I imagine defense factor doesn't map at all to the devil contest, though that would be nice if it could.

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Re: Life mana Spell preps

You raise your hands in the air. You wave them like you just don't care. Somebody says, "Hey!" Somebody says, "Ho!" Somebody screams.

>>If they're a challenge is based on the same thing all other attacks are based on.

Just to make sure I'm reading this right, does that mean if your stats outmatch what you're fighting, you will or won't learn debilitation, even if your debilitation is at-level with what you're fighting?

Sorry for being so dense on this, I just remember a thread somewhere in the past where some couldn't get debilitation moving and the reason given was that the mobs were failing the SvS checks too badly, even though their debilitation skill was similar to their other weapons/TM/etc.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>Can learning debilitation be based more on debilitation skill vs the critter's... whatever, as opposed to how closely you pass the SvS test?

Reviewing this is on my to do list.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Seems pretty good, I like how the linear attunement recovery is working out so far. I was a bit worried about what it would mean for cyclics (you no longer get down to a point where your attunement recovery can keep up with the drain...it either keeps up or it doesn't), but I tried it out and it seemed to be pretty playable. It seems like it actually helped make running a high-mana cyclic for more than a few pulses a bit more viable. It's only loosely related, but do you think you could take this opportunity to fix the bug with the Dedicated Cambrinth Use feat in relation to cyclic spells? When you INVOKE <cambrinth> <#> CYCLIC, it stops honoring <#> as soon as you CHARGE the cambrinth item again and just dumps as much energy as it can each pulse. If this were fixed, it would be a bit easier to use cambrinth to help manage the now-linearly-recovering attunement when running a cyclic spell at a higher power level.

On a different subject, would you consider altering the mana cost of battle spells that aren't TM or Debilitation as well? It seems like it would make sense for them to be fast, lower-mana spells with short durations, in contrast to how rituals are slow, high-mana spells with long durations.

Thanks,
-Life Weaver Karthor

I'll make a note about the cambrinth bug.

>Is this a general tightening of the mana range, i.e. the caps being lowered dramatically as well?

That's exactly what this is. You'll see big movements at the max, smaller at the mins.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Played with the changes in test some.

RIP a benefit of being magic prime, of which I can't think of too many others. =(

Hunting in good mana rooms, say 17/34+, I could keep a nice attunement buffer for emergencies.
Hunting in bad mana rooms, say 13/34-, I couldn't maintain some casting habits I had used before.

Overall not too bad. Might be balanced out, resource-wise, by not having to dump as much mana into some spells.

Mazrian

Primaries will still recover faster since they scale their mana pool faster with skill.

And testing sustainability isn't going to be super useful until I adjust the mana costs to go with it.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

>>RIP a benefit of being magic prime, of which I can't think of too many others. =(

That's odd, because I am concerned there were too many. Spell slots in particular is a huge differential element that isn't going away anytime soon.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>That's odd, because I am concerned there were too many.

=( Maybe many are not that visible or (like High Sorceries) haven't been fully implemented, so they're easy to overlook.

>>Spell slots in particular is a huge differential element that isn't going away anytime soon.

Having more spell slots is certainly an advantage, but in some ways that advantage isn't realized.

For instance, asthings stand right now, secondary and tertiary guilds (all guilds except WMs, iirc) have more slots available than slots worth of spells to spend them on. So for a 150th circle character of a magic secondary or tertiary guild, having a lower total number of slots is not really constraining them. 100% of their packages are available at 150.

Mazrian

This is a nice change. I played around in test for a few minutes last night and noticed a significant difference in casting with the linear regen. I haven't tested with my warmage yet because I don't play him enough to notice a difference, but it feels great on my paladin. It makes mana management much easier (less of a guessing game), particularly with cyclics.

I'm really looking forward to the spell cost changes. It makes sense that spells that are difficult and have multiple effects should be more taxing to cap than intro/basic spells that do one thing.

There is one thing I'm not really clear on. The magic skill set benefit for regen is going away since it's a duplicative effect; ie, attunement pool size already boosts regen (sort of like how intel boosts exp pulses by virtue of it increasing pool size since pulses are a factor of pool size). I get that. What it sounds like is, and please correct me if I'm wrong...

• Attunement skill's effect on total attunement pool size isn't changing;
• The formula for mana regen is still going to be a percentage of total pool size (or something like that), but...
• The skill set based bonus or penalty to mana regen is going away, so...
• Casting might feel less efficient for primaries, but/until...
• Spell costs are being reduced drastically, in other words...
• The net effect for everyone should be easier mana management, but the effects will be felt mostly by secondaries and tertiaries.

• Attunement skill's effect on total attunement pool size isn't changing;

Correct

• The formula for mana regen is still going to be a percentage of total pool size (or something like that), but...

Correct

• The skill set based bonus or penalty to mana regen is going away, so...

Correct

• Casting might feel less efficient for primaries, but/until...

I wouldn't limit this observation to primaries but, yes, they'll feel the most changing assuming they're beyond 200 ranks or so of attunement.

• Spell costs are being reduced drastically, in other words...
• The net effect for everyone should be easier mana management, but the effects will be felt mostly by secondaries and tertiaries.

It should apply across the board but secondaries and terts may benefit slightly more.

-Raesh

"It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to BE itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true." ― The Slow Regard of Silent Things

The first thing I want to ask is a question that wasn't answered in the original post: Is this intended as a nerf to the magic skillset? Because I'm very concerned that this will be. I plan on waiting to test until the spell costs are updated in Test so that my tests are meaningful. But I would like to know going into the discussion whether we need to be talking about if the changes are enough/too much of a nerf, or whether they are a nerf/not a nerf.

> Having more spell slots is certainly an advantage, but in some ways that advantage isn't realized.

> For instance, asthings stand right now, secondary and tertiary guilds (all guilds except WMs, iirc) have more slots available than slots worth of spells to spend them on. So for a 150th circle character of a magic secondary or tertiary guild, having a lower total number of slots is not really constraining them. 100% of their packages are available at 150.

>Mazrian

>That's odd, because I am concerned there were too many. Spell slots in particular is a huge differential element that isn't going away anytime soon.

>-Armifer

I share Mazrian's concerns. I saw mana superiority as the main advantage of magic primes, especially in context with things said previously about development plans. IIRC it was stated magic primes will be 70/30 for spells/abilities, secondaries 50/50, and terts 30/70. If this is still the design philosophy going forward, this means that skillset will dictate the TYPE of abiltiies rather than the existence of them, and that slots will become less meaningful (or potentially not meaningful) as an advantage.

If this is still the intention, it actually seems that we're letting magic stand on its own – where the only thing you get from having it is getting the ranks faster. Has this design philosophy changed? I think a lot of the Magic Prime advantages that look good on paper end up not being as good as they could be. I don't want to derail this thread with that discussion, but if we think it's worth having another thread might be useful. It's a question, perhaps, of designing for the game we have now vs designing for the one being worked towards.

Other potential issues I see:

1) During the previous discussion on TM, it was stated (paraphrasing) that it's intended that TM is not as good as other attack modes because it can be used at the same time as other attack modes. TM Foci were proposed as an alternate remedy to this, to let TM ranks stand on their own for those who want to be more magic-focused. In light of these changes, perhaps this may become a higher priority?

2) Since ranks in Debilitation do nothing but let you cast with more mana, it may make sense to try to factor in Debilitation ranks in some way into the contests – otherwise, the letting the ranks stand on their own thing here doesn't work very well here. If I've already capped the spell or if I cannot sustain high-mana casts, my ranks aren't helping me.

3) Single-target learning should probably be looked at, as the best spells for learning are often AoE's. If we're going to be penalized on AoE's vs single target spells, difficulty filling the pools impacts magic primes a lot more than other skillsets.

4) This may be a de-facto nerf on WM's, who have a lot of AoE's. I don't know if this is intended, but it should be looked at closely.

5) AoE TM is already in a rough state in many people's minds, and I've seen it stated that only time they become useful is once you're skilled enough in Attunement to spam them. I agree with this. Penalizing them further in mana usage seems a bit extreme, when I'm already not sure if I would kil things faster using single-targets.

- Saragos

Totally diggin these changes on my lowbie Ranger. He has just over 100 in his magics, so he is at the far low end. Running a script to cast all his buff at discern cap left him with 21% mana on Prime and 49% mana on Test. Spells used were Wolf Scent, See the Wind, Instinct, Earth Meld, Athleticism, Manifest Force, and Skein of Shadows.

I will second that TM learning could use a look, especially where AoEs are concerned. I learn so badly when I use USOL. I don't know why it can't teach more like Fireball, especially if it's becoming more expensive.

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs

Thanks for the response and for allaying many of my concerns, Raesh.

>>I think a lot of the Magic Prime advantages that look good on paper end up not being as good as they could be.

> Free feats.
In practice, this works out to a couple of extra spell slots, less valuable because many of of them are spent towards the Mastery feats. My understanding of their current functionality makes them training wheels. Nice when you're starting, but worthless when you can hit cap without them. I'd trade any Mastery for an open slot if I could.

> Larger mana pools (Which, again, means faster mana regen. I just removed the double dipping.)
Well, sure. But if that's just a factor of the ranks, that's like saying a benefit of weapons prime is more weapon ranks. Of course it is, because that's what primary skillset do.

> Way more spell slots.
This is the kicker. Yes, the spell slots are nice, because we have spells to access. But hopefully the magic tert guilds have some sort of abilities coming. I have a Paladin, and my first love in DR was the Ranger, so I have a horse in that race. I'm not just a Magic Prime Partisan. I want them to get all kinds of abilities that make up for having magic as a tert skillset - otherwise magic prime is just better. I don't know exactly what direction you guys are going with those abilities, but I suggested some for Rangers, and I'm actually working on some ideas for Paladins. It's quite possible that you guys are better design wizards than I am, but the main effective way of giving them neat abilities would be to carve out a section that COULD have gone towards spells for each guild, and making it an ability suite. My suggestion for Rangers, for instance, was carving out buffs and making them part of a wild shape/animal affinity system.

Regardless of which route you guys go down, though, in the end we want a cool, awesome ability suite for Paladins and Rangers, (and Traders, but they're a bit different) right? That's certainly what I want! Once we're there, though, it means that spell slots are less of an advantage and more of a "this is the form that your guild abilities take" type of thing. At least I hope it works out that way - I want a good excuse to dust off my Ranger/Paladin. It just so happens that right now spell slots ARE a big advantage not by design, but by virtue of spells being easier to design than abilities. This is what I meant by designing for the game we have vs the game that's being worked towards.

Am I seeing spells vs abilities in the wrong light?

> Consideration when deciding what sort of spells a Guild can access.
This is the kicker. This is where there's a good case to be made about magic prime's advantages.

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>> I would like to see TM Foci. I have not (yet) been involved in their development. If anything this should reduce the need for them somewhat since TM spells will be more spammable.

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>>Single-target learning should probably be looked at, as the best spells for learning are often AoE's. If we're going to be penalized on AoE's vs single target spells, difficulty filling the pools impacts magic primes a lot more than other skillsets.

> This is a valid concern and is flagged for potential review.

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>>AoE TM is already in a rough state in many people's minds, and I've seen it stated that only time they become useful is once you're skilled enough in Attunement to spam them.

> This is both not a scenario we want to support AND not what you describe earlier in your post.

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I'd like to answer all of these points together and clarify how I view AoE TM. I like to train everything on one critter, so usually I don't want to use a cyclic like Rimefang – it kills them too fast, because TM is already my best combat skill. So I want something that won't kill them as fast, but will get lots of hits, because getting lots of hits seems very important to the current learning paradigm.

So, Fireball is perfect It gets lots of hits, and is more mana efficient than CL or Shockwave. But let's pretend that FB doesn't exist. In absence of that, I'd use CL, probably. Other than the mana cost, CL fits nicely in this category. Shockwave less so, due to the knockback. On a MM, TKS is definitely the best trainer.

Here's the problem – CL just doesn't look like it's doing as much damage as it should for its mana cost. If I'm going all-out in PvE, usually in invasions, I can't necessarily pick my room. I'll definitely have a cyclic going, using weapons, and I'm really camping out I may drop a MAB. Is it worth it to be spamming CL? 30 min prep is a lot. I've got over 700 Attunement and I'm only just starting to feel like it's worth it. But if I were to compare that to, say, single target using a basic TM (or fireball, if they're all engaged with me), I'm not entirely sure that CL would be a better use of that mana.

I haven't done any scientific studies to test. But honestly, I'd like the difference between single target and AoE spells vs groups to be obvious enough that I wouldn't have to run extensive tests to prove it. Also, that seems like a very high bar to set for an AoE TM spell to start to be useful in a real situation.

That's aside from the fact that harness-casting takes a bit of RT and distracts me a bit from using weapons. I might just be faster using cyclic+MAB+DB+weapons to clear a room and skipping standard TM entirely.

Other people's mileage my vary. I certainly WANT AoE to be a great room-clearing tool, but right now I just don't think that it is – at least not in context of my other options. Ironically, the thing that makes many AoE's bad at killing can sometimes make make them a good learning tool. Making single-target TM more spammable and AoE less just seems like it will exacerbate this problem.

Also, debilitation timers are the devil, and the chief reason why AoE is better for learning.

- Saragos

All I can do is quote from AIM.

(7:24:09 PM) Esmian: to WMs other people getting buffed means they're getting nerfed

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Thayet
@thayelf // http://thayette.tumblr.com

"But you must know that if corruption is powerful enough, it's not corruption at all — it's law. Unspoken, unwritten, but law." — Robert Jackson Bennett, City of Stairs