>What would make you want to use SLS?

First, stop this kind of nonsense. Sphere wasn't even a minute old...

>The rising sun slowly fights its way through a heavy blanket of clouds, bringing a wan light to chase the darkness.
>
>A translucent azure sphere suddenly flares with a cold light and vaporizes!

Cut its remaining life span in half, cut the damage it does in half, but geez just going poof immediately after its summoned just kills me.

Second. Fix its advancing on targets. I want to stress here that I haven't used the spell for hunting with in years, so if this was changed all ready I apologize. But memory of how it worked (and may still work) has kept me from even bothering to cast it except to look at the pretty colors. Basically, if I keep retreating from the target, the sphere will never get to the target. Critter hits pole to me, sphere hits pole to critter, I retreat, critter hits pole to me, sphere hits pole to critter, I retreat, ad nauseum. If I have to cast a second spell, such as mind blast or hypnotyze, well, I might as well just go ahead and use TKT or PD and forget about the sphere all together. Which is, in fact, what I do.

Third. Give me an enchantment of some sort that I can create to summon spheres during day time. Limit it to the creator of the enchantment if you must have some limits. Or maybe have it be at half the power the mage creating the enchantment can cast the spell at.

-Wildluck

>What would make you want to use SLS?

Downsides to SLS:
1. 50% of the time it can't even be cast.
2. Very slow.
3. Extreme environmental penalties that can trigger even in unexpected and nonsensical places.

For a Tier 4 spell with THREE penalties that would suggest a significant power boost as a trade off, we get...

Upsides to SLS:
1. Good Mana:Kill ratio.
2. Nice messaging.

For starters 2 is fluff so we're left with 1. Okay, while it's nice to be able to kill 5 enemies with 20 mana, doing it over the course of 3 minutes is not impressive. At high levels the benefits of being a Moon Mage kick in and I can unleash a barrage of Partial Displacements that kill twice as fast and barely move my attunement either.

I've suggested this before and I think it would it make the spell valuable enough to use in a "buff" fashion:

1) Point sphere at <self> - Put SLS in a defensive posture where it will stay by the mage's side and begin to attack targets as they reach melee with no spell approach time.

Other possible uptweaks:

2) Speed it way up. Make the "wind up" and attack pulse times more like CRS.

3) Power way up. One pulse of a 20 mana SLS does not appear to do any more damage than a 20 mana Tier 1 or 2 TM spell in small samples. They both take 1-3 on weak enemies and 2-4 at level, on average. The advantage goes to the "other" spell in that it can strike faster without significantly impacting the attunement of a careful mage with decent skills.

~ Sage Kougen Aensworth, Star Shaper of the Compact

Ruea says in Ilithic, "At least you're very handsome. That makes the fact that you're always right far easier to live with"

>Honestly, SLS gets huge points for style with me.

I'll echo this. In terms of pure "style" SLS is probably my favorite spell. At least top 3. It even inspired my custom title.

I forgot to mention the additional reduction of power with cloud cover, too. Is mana efficiency really THAT powerful for the guild that, quite frankly, outgrows the need to worry about mana efficiency?

I'd throw my cambrinth away if it wasn't the only way to learn MD.

~ Sage Kougen Aensworth, Star Shaper of the Compact

Ruea says in Ilithic, "At least you're very handsome. That makes the fact that you're always right far easier to live with"

>> As the slowest spell in the game,

Ball lightning.

---

Rev. Reene

"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- 'No, you move.'"
- Captain America

I haven't used it since 2.1 came out, but really... some way to cast it during the day. The sun is a constellation! Of... one, particullarly close, star.

I mean of your T4 combat spells you have:
PD - Requires no other TM spells. Fully functional, TM spell with no limitations on casting.
CrS - Requires no other TM spells. Non targettable TM spell with a delay to hit, but frequently double hits, with no limitations on casting.
SLS - Requires two other TM spells. Cannot be unlearned. Delay on hit. Only castable 50% of the time, and weakened by uncontrollable factors (clouds). Cannot be used with water. Non targettable. Hits a buncha times for the mana investment.

The perks of SLS boil down to "can attack something while you attack something else" and "Very mana efficent". As has been noted, at high levels, mana efficency when hunting is near meaningless. Mozzik isn't always there yet (Depends on the mana) but I'm not the most mana efficent guy and even in bad mana it's VERY rare that mana is my limiting factor for hunt duration. With just MB/Hypno and CrS I can take on 3-4 seperate critters at once just going down the line throwing off spikes, and MBing them if the spikes don't keep the stuns up themselves. I can do this at any time. Where would SLS fit into this? I mean... it's basically just be one more spike I'd have rolling around. If I'm hunting to kill most things die in 1-3 spikes. This means SLS won't even have time to do anything significant if I'm not vs 2+ things.

If we're assuming we're rebuilding the spell from the ground up...
Allow daylight casting, some way, somehow. Be it off the sun, or off the moons. I could deal with moons - fits with so many of our other hunting spells. Or make it weaker, and castable off out of season constellations (Since those are the ones that would be up during the day, no?). Also - Be gone cloud interaction. Far more annoying that it's worth for flavor.

Some sort of guarding mechanic would be neat, but I was also thinking like... if we could pour more mana into it over time, it could be more useful. A way to train devices in combat maybe? Not sure what pouring more mana into it would do persay... Extend a much shortened duration? Power boost it for awhile?

Like I could see if I'm frying my brain on PM/Harn and TM isn't locked up (A common event) using it to work TM more without working the other two by sending it after something.

Perhaps allow fine targetting? ie: point sphere at warrior left eye with a hefty RT but the next strike will go to that location?

SLS is a brilliant spell for flavor, and for crit messages. It's just... not very useful.

-- Mozzik, the Fateweaver

---

Caelumia says, "I love the tools even more."

make it usable during the day

the light from constellations is still THERE, we just can't see it

-Strk

I always run around with a sphere, when conditions allow it. It is superb for crowd control when backtraining weapons, or for stealth hunting critters with too good ranged attacks.

It would be nice to have the sphere buffed a bit though, it is not too accurate or quick to attack for sure and the explode near water bit is a pretty annoying limitation.

I do not think, it makes much sense to make sls work during the day though,; how would one tell, which constellations are in season?

The defensive function proposed sounds pretty neat, but it might be easier simply to make it auto target a random critter engaged with the caster, if the sphere does not have a target. It would require a way to stop the sphere from attacking though.

>I do not think, it makes much sense to make sls work during the day though

I don't think it makes sense to spend a whole spell slot on half a spell.

-Strk

I'm fine with the day night restriction as long as once the sun goes down i'm all "YES It's NIGHT TIME I can finaly Cast SLS!"


-Serc


"Moon Mages have already been given some of the most ridiculously powerful magic in the game, third only to Warrior Mages and Barbarians" -Armifer

>> My impression is (and correct me if this is wrong), that the spell creates a sphere roughly the size of a basketball

IIRC the LOOK of one says that it's about the width of two fingers.

---

Rev. Reene

"When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- 'No, you move.'"
- Captain America

>>IIRC the LOOK of one says that it's about the width of two fingers.

>l sph
The sphere is a nearly translucent globe of light only two fingers in width.

>Unleash intractable option would inspire me to pick this up.
>Cast Unleash on it to blow it up!

SLS + Unleash = One-shot freezing AoE attack, like the water room pop but directed against critters?

~ Sage Kougen Aensworth, Star Shaper of the Compact

Ruea says in Ilithic, "At least you're very handsome. That makes the fact that you're always right far easier to live with"

>I always run around with a sphere, when conditions allow it. It is superb for crowd control when backtraining weapons, or for stealth hunting critters with too good ranged attacks.

After discovering invisible streams a few times this way I stopped doing it. Dying in the ditch in xing gargoyles was the final straw.

>>I always run around with a sphere, when conditions allow it. It is >>superb for crowd control when backtraining weapons, or for stealth >>hunting critters with too good ranged attacks.

>After discovering invisible streams a few times this way I stopped >doing it. Dying in the ditch in xing gargoyles was the final straw.

Contingency ftw:p

Wa Wa WAAAAAA

-- Mozzik, the Fateweaver

---

Caelumia says, "I love the tools even more."

:::moon mage magic capstone idea bump:::

Never gonna happen.

SLS is a total waste.

---

Defender Farluk Zoulvaun of the Monks, an Elven Moon Mage

>>Why are you such a negative nancy?

Read his account name.


---
"Close your eyes -
For your eyes will only tell the truth..
And the truth isn't what you want to see.
In the dark, it is easy to pretend
That the truth is what it ought to be." - Erik Claudin

Despite the attention on the cloud-cover modifier, in practice it's really tiny. The way the spell is set up, it's also not just a penalty.

I'm willing to consider killing the modifier (in both directions), but it'd effectively be only a psychological fix. I am intensely skeptical that, as the numbers stand, you would ever notice there is a modifier if you hadn't been told.

-Armifer
"...everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
-Viktor Frankl

As someone that uses SLS if you say the cloud cover bonus is inconsequetial (I know I mangled that word) then the focus would best be somewhere else. So what would you say, as a staff member, is a realistic expectation for making SLS on par (or closer) to PD and CrS?

>>Without some feedback I think we've exhausted our ideas and opinions for now.

Oh, oh, oh, I got one.

Hamster ball. I want to be a rolling ball of starry, frigid death. Apparently requisite, self-deprecating humor should make references to Mysterio.


---
"Close your eyes -
For your eyes will only tell the truth..
And the truth isn't what you want to see.
In the dark, it is easy to pretend
That the truth is what it ought to be." - Erik Claudin