Below are some details regarding some of the more significant changes that we're planning with the Elemental Lore Review. This should give wizards a bigger picture of updates to help in their personal assessments. We do welcome your feedback, but I want to remind everyone about the forum policy, which will be strictly enforced.

502: The spell will be redesigned to be a low level warding spell. The primary forte of wizards will always be bolts, but for wizards who like to diversify, this will be a new option to sustain their hunts instead of just relying on a 19 mana warding spell (Immolation).

Haste (506): When the haste effect fades, it leaves the target exhausted and unable to benefit from the spell again for a short period. When self-cast, this exhaustion can be overcome by infusing extra mana into the spell, to the point of the spell doubling in mana cost each time it is recast without letting the cooldown expire (so the first cast would be 6 mana, then 12, 24, 48, etc). Training in Elemental Lore, Earth reduces the 2 minute cooldown by (EL:E skill / 3) seconds. So at 24 ranks (102 skill), it's -34 seconds, at 100 ranks (200 skill), it's -66 seconds, and at 202 ranks (302 skill), it's -100 seconds. When cast on others or through magical items, the cooldown cannot be reduced and cannot be applied to the target until it has expired.

Elemental Focus (513): The spell will no longer lower physical AS.

Rapid Fire (515): While active, Rapid Fire will reduce the castRT of all subsequent spells cast to 1 second and it will no longer automatically re-prepare the same spell. Once the effect ends, there is a short recovery period before the spell can be used again. Training in Elemental Mana Control reduces the 3 minute recovery period by (skill / 2) seconds. So at 102 skill, the recovery duration is 129 seconds, at 202 skill it is 79 seconds, and at 302 skill it is 29 seconds. If the spell is recast during the recovery period, all subsequent spells cast while it's active will cost an additional 5 mana. Training in Elemental Lore, Air has a seed 1 summation (based upon ranks) % chance to reduce the castRT to 0 seconds for any spell cast while Rapid Fire is active. Training in Elemental Lore, Water, has a seed 1 summation (based upon ranks) % chance to not cause the spell to go on cooldown when the effect ends. e.g. the chance for each of these to trigger is 10% at 55 lore ranks, 20% at 210 lore ranks, etc.

Cone of Elements (518): The spell has been renamed, is group friendly only, and now only affects (3 + 1 per 50 Elemental Mana Control skill) targets. It will use the caster's attunement to determine the base element to use when cast, but at 20 ranks of each lore, the wizard can optionally force a certain element to be used. e.g. a Fire attuned Wizard could cast the spell with cold crits if they have 20 ranks of Elemental Lore, Water. Syntax would be "cast water/fire/air/earth/lightning". Water will use Minor Cold (1709), Fire will use Minor Fire (906), Earth will use Hurl Boulder (510), Lightning will use Major Shock (510), and Air will use a new high damage factor bolt with vacuum criticals. The appropriate lore will increase the damage factor of each bolt and any extra effects implemented from the ELR can also potentially trigger for spells like Minor Fire (906).

Immolate (519): The chance to incinerate (instant kill) a target is now calculated as a seed 1 summation of ((lore ranks - 10) / 2), but with a reduced chance for any warding result that is less than 150. The penalty is calculated at 2% per 1 WM. So if had a base 10% chance to incinerate the target, but the warding result was 125, the chance would be reduced to 5%. With 192 lore ranks, the base chance is 13%. Training in Elemental Lore, Fire will now only provide a % chance for one additional crit cycle (in addition to the base 2), determined by (lore ranks / 1.5), so at 100 ranks, you have a 66% chance, at 150 ranks a 100% chance. Both of these revisions match the same setup as Wither (1115). The spell will no longer cause roundtime to a target, except for when players roll around to try to extinguish the immolate effect early. The base critical damage of the spell has been increased across the board, resulting in a spell that matches the lethality of other spells such as Divine Fury (317). Overall, we increased the base effectiveness of the spell and decreases the significant degree of the lore benefit, which should result in the spell being usable by more than just exceptionally trained fire mages. The lore benefit still scales very well to increase the lethality of the spell.

Tremors (909): If a target is knocked down by the spell, they will be subject to a 5% + (Elemental Lore, Earth seed 4 summation) / 2 penalty to their Evade, Block, and Parry chances. In addition, there is now a self cast version, which will allow you POUND your weapon or STOMP on the ground, which will instantly attempt to knock down all non-friendly targets in the room. It will also apply the same EBP penalty to affected targets. This ability has 5 charges and is increasable with additional EL:E ranks (+1 at 20, 50, 90, 140, and 200 lore ranks). It cost 5 mana to use this ability, but that can be reduced by training in Elemental Mana Control (-1 at 75 and -2 at 150 ranks), and has a 10 second cooldown. There is no roundtime or castRT for invoking this ability.

Enchant Item (925): The spell will be updated to provide much more information to the caster, such as their chance of success when CASTing the spell, while CHANNEL would actually attempt the enchant, which would also provide more feedback regarding their luck for the attempt. In addition, tempered items will no longer shatter, but still cannot be used during combat. At 100 ranks of each lore type, a wizard is able to enchant an item with those flaring properties (e.g. a wizard has 100 ranks of Elemental Lore, Water so they can enchant cold flaring weapons). Enchanting such weapons apply a penalty, which can be further mitigated by additional lore training. This requires a alchemy created pre-temper potion. Lastly, training in Elemental Lore, Water will allow a wizard to store trace amounts of mana from each pulse, which can then be infused into their tempering potions to reduce the temper time. (Exact details to be released later, but this bonus will only apply to water mages who actively gain experience each week. For example (these numbers are completely made up), if you had 100 EL:W ranks and were online and gaining experience (through hunting or any other means) for 10 hours during a week, you would be able to reduce your next temper by 20%. The high end (actual numbers) for this benefit cap at around 243 lore ranks with 10 hours online, to receive a 30% reduction.

Time Stop (950): When invoked, all targets (that are not more than 10 levels above the caster) in the room are immediately incapacitated for up to 20 seconds. Any creature that enters the room in the following 20 seconds is also subject to immediate RT, equal to the remaining amount of time left for the effect. While time is stopped, the wizard can prepare an onslaught of spells to be instantly released on targets in the area when the effect ends. Specifically, the wizard can queue up to a set number of spells per target (including themself for open cast spells on themselves, like 912, 410, etc). To do so, the wizard simply prepares and casts the spells at the targets like normal and the spells do not actually fire until the 950 effect ends. Usable while incapacitated (except unconscious) with the STOP TIME command. Limited uses per day, starting at 1 with an additional use unlocked at 50, 125, and 200 ranks of Elemental Lore, Air. * This is the intent; it has some complicated interactions with game mechanics that may change the details some.

As a note, these are not the only changes, or even a majority of them, as we still have a lot of other updates coming out with the Elemental Lore Review.

GameMaster Estild

Richard/Fjalar

Is that a typo on the haste lore requirement? Earth lore, not air lore?!?

Elemental Lore, Air will increase the magnitude of the haste effect while Elemental Lore, Earth will decrease the cooldown.

GameMaster Estild

Hope that Wizards get more TP's for all these lores they are going to need....as it is it's tough to train a wizard to cap....or are these lores perceived as all post cap goals which makes uncapped wizards less viable......
You also see the Shilarra disk etched with the image of a Vathor

<Overall, my character is taking a huge offensive and defensive nerf with little given back. Time stop is the only addition on the list that adds something I could possibly use without taking something away. The rest are, unfortunately, not appealing to my particular style of hunting. That's discouraging. And I suspect Timestop will be problematic where I hunt due to immunities, so even that could be a complete bust for me. Lucky me, huh?>

Taverkin....I whole heartedly agree with you...right now as things stand I am less than impressed but I will reserve my ire till I hear more...so far what I see and hear I don't like...

You also see the Shilarra disk etched with the image of a Vathor

Estid it looks good to me, as I'm an air lore mage and only use haste for herb eating and other situational uses seems pretty fair that it will cost more mana each cast while on cooldown. I can see why hasting your entire party might be a problem, and the workaround to still do it is to imbed the spell for your buddies.

Rapid Fire with an added cost to use per spells while on cooldown seems pretty fair as well as it encourages not to use the minor shock bolt (I always found this kinda ludicrous, like tickling something to death.) For a fully trained mage the cooldown reduced to 30 seconds seems fair enough, the lore perks kind of meh, but seem to help with the boredom of cast cast cast. IE when the lore benefits proc you cast faster or can use right away. Reminds me of MMO type procs. I'm not fond of the 1 sec rt, but will certainly make me a bit more cautious.

Immolation I haven't used much since 10 years ago so I dunno how much of a nerf to fully trained fire lore mages, but it seems that the goal is to stop the use of one spell constantly, the 415,new 902 spell, along with 906 908 should give more variety to casting. Tremors looks good for war mages.

Enchant looks to have a nice info update.

Cone of Elements YES! looks good to me....

Along with the already released stuff and whats coming besides this I give the dev. team a big thumbs up!

Just an elf about town...

I forgot Time Stop!

Wow!, this has been asked for and looks great! 20 seconds to mess a crowd up and anything that walks in affected until the 20 seconds is up? YEA BABY!

Just an elf about town...

Is it going to take 100 ranks of air and 100 ranks of water to enchant lightning gear, or just 50 of each?

---

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein

Disregarding 919 why are war mages short on mana?

Just an elf about town...

Yea Tav, we will wait and see how this plays out. I suspect they will have it where you have to use a special command to target critters under Time Stop, but critters that break free or are unaffected will target as normal. So you load up enough spells to kill whatever is stopped and deal with anything else as normal.

Maybe they use some of sanctuary code to put the monsters in or something.

Just an elf about town...

I think that the idea that a class is viable only if it can be trained sufficiently post cap is absurd and probably why we got into this whole mess. My warmage at level 22 and has 66 mana. He also has 6 air lore ranks (and can afford no more)! That gives me, what, 3 casts of haste? Realistically now, I have to stop hunting every 2 minutes for 2 minutes. This isn't going to change significantly for the next 50 levels, except that maybe I can get a couple of 6 minute hunting periods in between 2 minute rest periods. And this assumes I don't want to cast any 909/410 (let alone other spells).

So this slows down my hunts by a factor of 4 (again not assuming I even want to cast an ewave to be able to hit something). And guess what that does to my buff spell timers? I now run out of my buff spells (assuming a single cast of them before i go hunt) before i can fill my mind. Sure, i could sit there any cast them over and over again until i had 4 hours of each, before going out to hunt once or twice, but it takes my entire mana pool to spell me up once for 30 min of each spell...you do the math about how long it takes to regen the mana and recast to get 4 hours (including the diminishing returns of the spell timer ticking down while waiting for the mana to come back).

There will be no new warmages in GS4. Some may persist post-cap, because they have the training points and the sheer stubbornness to do so, but for us new players (or return players), it's no longer viable or fun.

>>Seems like warmages would be more likely to pay the extra cost a couple times before each cooldown. <<

You miss the point. Older warmages can do this. I have 320 mana, 24 airlore and a potload of earth lore; I will be able to keep haste up for a long time. Younger mages (anyone under level 40 at least) will not be able to do so. Remember, warmages are reliant on other spells, like e-wave, to set their targets up to be hittable; they aren't just casting haste and nothing else. The mana drain for a younger mage would be excessive.

Oh, and the change to cone of lightning sucks also. Mind you, I have almost never used this spell myself, but the drastic reduction in target number is excessive. I agree, the former ability to hit unlimited targets was quite OP, but my cleric, for example, can paralyze 8 targets with a cast of 316. Might want to push the target limit upward a bit. And not friendly to ungrouped players? Did anyone stop to realize the implications of this? We're going to hear a lot of moaning when this is implemented.

Yes, Cone of Elements not being friendly is NOT good. That's why meteor swarm, stun cloud, fire cloud, death cloud sucked. Please don't give us a spell that we won't be using...

Just an elf about town...

I can understand why rapid fire and immolate are being toned down as too OP. But haste? Seriously, when was the last time that you heard someone say "those weapon swinging mages are just too powerful!" Are M-striking warriors really envious of us? Are ambushing rogues jealous of our ability to kill something with 14 swings of a lance? Do paladins feel inferior when they see our whopping weapon AS?


Still not worthy of a tag line

Good points Throgg, maybe they should tie earthlore in such that haste continues as is. I can see that hasting whole groups of people constantly was out of whack, but really not war mages. Quite a bit of the changes to earth lore will be benefits, but not enough to compensate the loss of haste unless there's a few more tricks we aren't aware of yet.

Just an elf about town...

<Agreed - having it active for 1 minute, then on cooldown for 1 minute wouldn't work well.

<GameMaster Estild


How did we get from this to 1 minute up, 2 down!?

I would like to make an argument for keeping cone of elements player friendly. There has always been a sort of continuum of mass and multi-attack spells. A sort of balance between effectiveness and ease of use with the total combination of the two favoring pures. On the pure side the spells tend to be mass effect, player friendly, and also effective killers. Individual spells sacrifice on one or two of these but tend to keep the others. As you move over to Semi spells they tend to be multi-target, player unfriendly or they are less effective at killing (like mass calm).

I think switching COE to be both multi-target and player unfriendly while only somewhat increasing the damage puts it too much on par with what a magical semi should be casting and not a pure. COE should be in some way more useable than Menos' 1630 just to keep things in the proper proportion. I also think being player friendly makes sense in conjunction with the spell aiming "aimed" bolts aspect of it as opposed to a wave moving out maneuver attack.


AIM: GS4Menos

>Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
>Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

>>On the pure side the spells tend to be mass effect, player friendly, and also effective killers.<<

Well, just to play Devil's Avocate for a minute, there are some AOE spells that pures cast that are not player friendly. Major e-wave, open implosion, censure, meteor swarm, and the open version of 325 all hit other non-grouped players. However, cone is a flurry of bolts, and as such presumably can be aimed by the casting wizard. OK, maybe if cast by a wizard who had totally not trained in spell aiming it might hit anything in the room, but I doubt such an abortion exists.

Throgg somewhere in the comments above a warmage mentioned he was trained 0 in spell aim...
Just an elf about town...

>Time Stop (950): When invoked, all targets (that are not more than 10 levels above the caster) in the room are immediately incapacitated for up to 20 seconds. Any creature that enters the room in the following 20 seconds is also subject to immediate RT, equal to the remaining amount of time left for the effect. While time is stopped, the wizard can prepare an onslaught of spells to be instantly released on targets in the area when the effect ends. Specifically, the wizard can queue up to a set number of spells per target (including themself for open cast spells on themselves, like 912, 410, etc). To do so, the wizard simply prepares and casts the spells at the targets like normal and the spells do not actually fire until the 950 effect ends. Usable while incapacitated (except unconscious) with the STOP TIME command. Limited uses per day, starting at 1 with an additional use unlocked at 50, 125, and 200 ranks of Elemental Lore, Air. * This is the intent; it has some complicated interactions with game mechanics that may change the details some.

That sounds like a great 50th level spell. 350, 1150 and now this, are very well designed. But I don't envy the person who has to code this with all those little automated things that are going to need their own custom exceptions. Ithzir fading is the first one I can think of.

If I could put time in a bottle....

Disclaimer - My only wizard is an enchanting pocket wizard, so I don't really have a horse in this race.

Estild - You should really reconsider the Haste changes. I'm sure I'm not alone in my love of abusing Haste imbeds. However, I recognize that if there's one thing that's broken about Haste it's letting non-wizards have it up 100% of the time, whether that's by use of imbeds or by having a wizard cast it on other characters in the field. With that in mind, the modifications you suggest seem acceptable for Haste when cast on another character and when cast from a magic item. The modifications make cooldown reduction a distant post-cap goal for anyone using imbeds and would make the training requirements and mana usage for wizards casting Haste on others comparable to, if not more onerous than, the current requirements for group cast Bravery and Heroism. If you're serious about warmages remaining viable, I think self cast Haste by characters with knowledge of the spell needs to remain unchanged. Even with hundreds of millions of silver worth of equipment warmages are a novelty/niche build at cap. If there's a game-breaking warmage build out there, I'm sure I don't know what it is.

Beyond that, it seems like the direction you're going in is to encourage wizards to cast higher mana cost bolts which makes sense to me. It always seemed odd to me that Rapid Fire Minor Shock was regarded as the most efficient bolting build. But you need to make the buffs to bolting more obvious. You mention a new higher DF air bolt. You allude to new lore bonuses for Minor Fire and other bolts. But you're painfully short on specifics. I think wizards would be less put off by the changes to Rapid Fire if they knew what was happening on the flip side to make the higher mana cost bolts more attractive.

That's about all my limited knowledge of wizardry allows me to comment on intelligently except to say that 950 seems cool. Also, if you want to troll everyone you should make the new 502 like the old 702.