<Looks like I'll become a pocket enchanter. Exactly what I didn't want. Exactly what you said you force us into.>
We will probably have to have a 100 water lore to enchant...or some other ridiculous lore that makes zero sense, so even a pocket enchanter will need to be capped with a crap-ton of lore or you will blow up enchants

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

>>Is the duration going to be increased beyond 1 minute?

This is already in place to 2 minutes - sadly it is implemented in such a fashion that one cannot increase the Haste duration to maximum and reduce the cooldown to minimum at the same time - as the lores are presently designed and positioned.

Doug

Actually, no - the cooldown period doesn't start until the spell drops. So no intersection possible.

I actually can't think of any other spell or power in game in which the cooldown period starts at any time other than when the spell or power takes effect. Anyone? Or is Haste unique in this regard? If it's unique, I wouldn't suggest that's a strong design principle.

Doug

"My warmage at level 22 and has 66 mana. He also has 6 air lore ranks (and can afford no more)!" -- EMac1

No.

Hasting Mages Have 24 Ranks of EL:Air At 22nd Level.

This is the fundamental premise of the sub-class.

.

.

"I've have been playing a strange, completely against the recommended builds, TWC warmage" -- also EMac1, different post

To paraphrase something someone threw in my teeth a couple of weeks ago, "So what I'm hearing is that you gimped your character on purpose." Not just a weapon skill, not just CM, but Two-Weapon on top of it.

Well, yeah. D'uh! I have these three reasons why you're no damn good as a spellcasting profession.

<I think some folks need to bust out the Creating Thinking Caps and see where some sweet spots lie with just exactly how much Lore of any given type and how can we make certain things work <together for benefit.

Yeah, maybe. Or maybe they just need to give us some really BIG changes to offset these really BIG nerfs? Is that too much to ask?

I love how the folks who admit to not utilizing these spells are so blase about the concerns of others. No big deal for you, since you didn't use the spell to begin with. Just a waste of mana, right? Most war mages are rather of the opinion that haste is what defines the spec, Krakii - the only thing that made playing a war mage enjoyable. The fact that you can still swing a weapon without haste is completely irrelevant. For all intents and purposes, Estild has destroyed war mages because the lore requirements are too strict, the cooldown too long, and by the time you can mitigate these factors the poor ROI for weapon AS has come fully to bear.

It's ridiculous that they thought this was a good idea. Why target war mages? They were fun to play at low-mid range and now will be pure frustration. They were very weak at high levels and now will be even weaker. What is going on over there in GMville? This just doesn't make sense!

We've got a similar situation with bolts. At least bolts were okay throughout the level range. It's mostly at the high end where they really start to drag. Unfortunately, our best tool for mitigating that problem is receiving a massive nerf and, as I suspected, Estild doesn't seem to recognize any sort of problem with bolt spells. I suppose there's a chance that something in the remaining ELR will be a game-changer, but I don't see what else is going to save bolting wizards from being second-rate to warding wizards at cap at this point. It was already that way - how many fire mages existed at cap compared to non-fire mages? Again, it just doesn't make sense.

Very disappointed.

~Taverkin

Yeah, I normally try to stay positive about these changes, but the fact that it's mostly a bunch of huge nerfs is just kind of wow... The new lore enchanting is nice, but completely incompatible with the other lore changes, and the amount of TP's that are needed are insane. Generally, Wizards can't even train lore until after cap, so having to wait until cap to get to do anything neat with the class is silly. My wizards per-hunt time is already higher than my other classes, who can hunt safer and easier. It looks like the fact that Bolt wizards need to be in stance offensive to balance things was taken out of the equation entirely, and now we have to expose ourselves FAR more than any other casting class (which have warding options) but then also just sit around and wait for essential spells to cool down.

In the last several years, this is the most disappointed I've been with anything in this game. I know it's probably very disheartening for a GM to read something like that, but it's absolutely true.

">><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!?<<

It's perfectly clear to me. He meant that 1 up and 1 down wouldn't work well because the downtime wasn't long enough." -- Throgg, quoting & replying without attribution

.

Note that you are perfectly welcome to immediately re-cast it.

You will simply pay +6 mana for the privilege (the first time).

This is fundamentally no different from a Fighter with Surge of Strength, nor a Thief with ShadowMastery.

We seldom hear them bitching about either one.

At all.

<Note that you are perfectly welcome to immediately re-cast it.

<You will simply pay +6 mana for the privilege (the first time).

<This is fundamentally no different from a Fighter with Surge of Strength, nor a Thief with ShadowMastery.

<We seldom hear them bitching about either one.

<At all.


What a completely clueless thing to say!

Yes, haste is to war mages as...surge of strength is to warriors. ::sigh:: I won't even waste my time explaining it to you.

~Taverkin

>Bolt wizards need to be in stance offensive to balance things was taken out of the equation entirely,

Not a wizard (main anyways), but I am one of the preeminent bolters in the entire flipping game (and any who doubts can challenge me to a...er.. bolt off), so trust me when I tell you, having to stance up for bolting is not a major balance issue.

>> Actually, PLEASE DO explain what the difference is purported to be. (Other than not being able to Surge someone else in your party.)

Surge doesn't double open-endedly?

Estild, thank you for putting out what the changes are going to be advance. It is appreciated.

Tal.

<Not a wizard (main anyways), but I am one of the preeminent bolters in the entire flipping game (and any who doubts can challenge me to a...er.. bolt off), so trust me when I tell you, having <to stance up for bolting is not a major balance issue.

Yeah, the problem with bolts has more to do with the fact that they suffer from all of the disadvantages of physical weapons with the exception of RT, which is more than compensated for by the vastly higher practical crit rate of physical weapons due to the aiming component. Bolts have a painfully low crit kill rate and cost mana for every cast, making them rather slow and inefficient.

Of course, all anyone ever sees is their high DF and the best case scenario where you land a massive kill in one shot. We tend not to notice that it takes more casts on average to kill than a sorcerer using a 100% attrition based spell (pain), for instance. And that's for our most powerful bolts! Use a more efficient bolt and it takes even more casts, with a commensurate increase in time and risk.

And please, don't take this as a "We want what they have!" argument. I am merely pointing out that bolts are an attrition-based system, even while they appear to be based upon dealing large criticals. They need to be faster and more efficient, and unfortunately where we need it most (cap), this nerf to rapid fire really drags us down. We require significantly more time and mana to utilize our crutch and it provides us with far more limited utility. Nothing has yet been offered to offset any of this.

~Taverkin

Taverkin

Rapid fire. Again, ouch. That is a huge nerf. I do like the removal of the re-prep mechanics. But I wish we had been able to retain full up-time at least, given that we can no longer stack the spell. The cost for this spell is quite high now and the effect drastically reduced in power.

You can have full up-time, if you want to pay the additional mana cost. Outside of that, allowing the spell to always be active was never on the table. While the effect is reduced, being able to cast 3 spells in 3 seconds is still a very strong spell. No other caster has that ability. Wizards should be at least 1x in Elemental Mana Control, so by level 23, the soft cooldown is already reduced to a little over 2 minutes, at level 100, it's just 79 seconds, and at postcap if you really want to make use of the spell, you can reduce the cooldown to 29 seconds. The idea that bolting is only effective with 100% uptime of the current Rapid Fire is factually untrue. I can log in at any given time and observe more wizards not using it during a hunt than the number that could claim it's an absolute requirement on this forum.

Taverkin

Time Stop. Very cool spell! But how does this work if a monster is immune either due to level or other factors? It's pretty expensive and limited in use to have things spoil it with immunity. Depending on your answer, it could really spoil a cool concept.

Outside of storyline bosses, very few, if any, creatures will be immune to the spell. It's going to be an extremely powerful spell, offensively and defensively.

DECK

Playing as a pure War-mage (0 spellaim) to over 9 mil exp so far this is going to severely gimp the play style. Being able to infuse extra mana to avoid the cool down period sounds like a good idea until you take into account the mana issues war-mages have presently. Within the last mil exp or so I have finally been able to hunt self-cast if I can keep 919 up, which is very mana expensive, keep in mind our AS still isn't good, (low 400's self-cast) which means I rely on disabling ewave/immolate/sleep and plinking the mob to death with fast swings. Every hunt I rely on 516 currently to keep myself going, which still only gives me maybe a 10-15 minute hunt max duration. with these changes my average hunt time will probably double, if I can even fill my head before I run out of mana/stamina.

Depending on what level range we're talking about, high level warmages are impacted the least amount (vs. low level). You can pretty easily recast Haste up to 4 times before it gets too prohibitive to recast again during the cooldown. At that point, you have at maximum a 2 minute cooldown, but realistically a cooldown that is only around 1 minute long. The expectation is that warmages will train up to 24 ranks of Elemental Lore, Air, then focus on Elemental Lore, Earth up to 1x ( - the 24 ranks for EL:A). During that 1 minute cooldown, you can easily fall back on bolting, stance dance and selectively engage certain creatures, or just hang back for a bit. As Krakii posted, the new Tremors (909) will also be a huge boon to all wizards, but warmages have a lot of options with it too vs. having to spend 10-12 (Elemental Wave or Call Wind) mana on every creature. Lastly, I will note that Elemental Lore, Earth has a lot of defensive benefits in the Elemental Lore Review that we still haven't released yet, so you may find that you don't need to keep Wizard's Shield (919) active at all times. Overall, the Haste uptime for a high level mage will be about 4 minutes active, 1 minute cooldown.

KEITHOBAD

909 - The new tremors sounds pretty cool. I like the self-cast edition, sounds very warmagey. The EMC part of that sounds rather pointless but it doesn't hurt anything. The EBP part could be good but I think you have it set way too low. Seed 4 / 2? so checking my chart that is a whopping 4% at 60 ranks. This setup is worse than a straight seed 10, hmmph.

Also, most importantly, I hope there was a plan to add at least a small amount of RT to this spell? Right now monsters instantly stand back up when knocked down by tremors, making it rather useless much of the time.

Well, the base is 5%, so at 60 EL:E ranks, it's -9% to Evade, Block, and Parry chances. The spell will not add roundtime, as wizards have plenty of other options to handle that, but had no ability to reduce the chance of their attacks being completely negated by EBP. If you wait for a creature to attack, then POUND/STOMP, chances are the creature is in offensive stance, will be knocked down, and since they just performed an action, they're already in roundtime.

KEITHOBAD

519 - I like the part about it's base increasing but removing the RT element seems like a huge nerf to the general usefulness. I was hoping it would keep that part so you could use 519 to slow them down and then use 515 to finish them. The % stuff I don't know enough about to comment intelligently.

The option was to either have the spell be a disabler or have it be lethal. It was typically only cast by wizards who specifically trained for the lethality, so we decided to go with that approach. However, now instead of it just being lethal for fire mages, it's lethal for all wizards, yet fire mages can make it even stronger.

VANKRASN39

So wizards wanting the full benefit will have to always have their enhancives active and fill up much of their slots with water lore items. It doesn't quite sit right. Perhaps the example should be something realistic, what is the reduction at 101 and 202 ranks?

This is true for pretty much 95% of lores in the game. Most don't have a cap, so if you want "full benefit", it would require 250 lore ranks. We don't actually expect anyone to do that, but the option is definitely there if you want to take advantage of it. In most cases, for a capped water mage who is 1x in EL:W, you should probably expect a 20% reduction for being online and gaining experience for 10 hours during a week.

ASPEN

What if it could absorb or deflect elemental damage? Based on lore, the concept being when a fireball is cast at a wizard his wizard shield could deflect the fireball to another target in the room (jedi like). With enough lore a portion of the energy of the spell could be absorbed as a mana return to the wizard. I would make it percentage based on lore, two different seeds, one for absorption (less often) one for deflection (more often). Then of course each lore mattering for its specific element.

See Elemental Deflection (507) once it's updated.

KRAKII

Did you miss the part about loading Tremors up on yourself, and banging the ground (like a Giant!) to knock stuff over when you need it?

That way you pay the full mana once, then use the charges at only five mana (or less) when you need them.

Oh, look, you get more charges with all that EL:Earth you were getting for Strength, too.

And oh look: no CastRT nor hard RT, either, when you do. BANG! the ground and start swinging or slinging bolts.

Yep, it's going to be a pretty awesome spell.

BALEKIA

Generally, Wizards can't even train lore until after cap, so having to wait until cap to get to do anything neat with the class is silly.

The expectation is that all Pures are 1x trained in lores. You absolutely don't have to, but that's the measurement we use when we assess lore benefits.

GameMaster Estild

Any chance a change to the current haste mana cost formula could be considered?

Something like "If half the duration of your cooldown has elapsed, you pay the cost of your last cast of haste". Neither increasing or decreasing the mana cost?

This would have almost no effect on the post cap people, but would offer significantly more flexibility to the younger folks in their spell use. Falling into a blind pattern of 'cast twice in a row, wait 2 minutes, cast twice in a row, wait 2 minutes' isn't exactly riddled with depth.

Tal.

As a small, mostly inconsequential addendum to the notes on 909 - you'll also be able to TAP if you have a runestaff in your hand to activate it. Those wizards who maintain a certain air of primness may find that preferable to uncouth stomping and pounding.

Ixix

<Outside of storyline bosses, very few, if any, creatures will be immune to the spell. It's going to be an extremely powerful spell, offensively and defensively.

But...you said it won't work on monsters more than 10 levels over. Of particular interest to me, Vvrael and liches. The former are 100% magic immune and the latter are base level 110. Is timestop going to be more harm than help to me?

~Taverkin

<<
Depending on what level range we're talking about, high level warmages are impacted the least amount (vs. low level). You can pretty easily recast Haste up to 4 times before it gets too prohibitive to recast again during the cooldown. At that point, you have at maximum a 2 minute cooldown, but realistically a cooldown that is only around 1 minute long. The expectation is that warmages will train up to 24 ranks of Elemental Lore, Air, then focus on Elemental Lore, Earth up to 1x ( - the 24 ranks for EL:A). During that 1 minute cooldown, you can easily fall back on bolting, stance dance and selectively engage certain creatures, or just hang back for a bit. As Krakii posted, the new Tremors (909) will also be a huge boon to all wizards, but warmages have a lot of options with it too vs. having to spend 10-12 (Elemental Wave or Call Wind) mana on every creature. Lastly, I will note that Elemental Lore, Earth has a lot of defensive benefits in the Elemental Lore Review that we still haven't released yet, so you may find that you don't need to keep Wizard's Shield (919) active at all times. Overall, the Haste uptime for a high level mage will be about 4 minutes active, 1 minute cooldown.
>>

How are we expected to fall back on bolting? You just made us use all of our mana for that 4 minutes of haste.

How are we expected to have training points to bolt, when we now have to spend all of our points trying to reduce the ridiculous cooldown?

Why are these designs focused on/around post-cap training?


<<The expectation is that warmages will train up to 24 ranks of Elemental Lore, Air, then focus on Elemental Lore, Earth up to 1x ( - the 24 ranks for EL:A).>>

This is not what will happen with the current plans. Warmages will focus on getting as much EL: A training as possible to extend the haste duration, and as much HP as possible to overcome the insane mana costs.


<<Well, the base is 5%, so at 60 EL:E ranks, it's -9% to Evade, Block, and Parry chances. The spell will not add roundtime, as wizards have plenty of other options to handle that, but had no ability to reduce the chance of their attacks being completely negated by EBP. If you wait for a creature to attack, then POUND/STOMP, chances are the creature is in offensive stance, will be knocked down, and since they just performed an action, they're already in roundtime.>>

So no fix to the biggest problem with 909, which is, creatures can immediately stand back up after being knocked down.

<<So no fix to the biggest problem with 909, which is, creatures can immediately stand back up after being knocked down.>>

No it won't add RT... so you'll be forced to pay attention and STOMP, TAP, or POUND at the right time and you'll get a debuff applied to creatures. Honestly I don't see a problem with that personally but you're welcome to the opinion.

BTW Thank you for the TAP option! The others seemed uncouth to me. ;)

>Cone of Elements (518): The spell has been renamed, is group friendly only...

What the hell is wrong with you people? Group friendly? Just disable it in invasions if that's the problem. Because if people walk into my room at the wrong time and get blasted, oh well. I'm not gonna start treating this spell like Meteor Swarm.

I'd also like to know why zero consideration was given to Haste being used as a defensive tool. Your (Simu's) Haste nerf seems to have been focused only on the total obliteration of any non-post cap war mage without regard to the defensive benefits of Haste, particularly at cap.

You flat out admitted that you took a 19 mana spell and made it "equal" to a 17th level spell from another sphere when you said "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).", but I'm unsure if that's supposed to be with or without lore, so I'll reserve judgment on this until it goes live, though pulling 2 hits off of the spell is really lame regardless.

Everything else on the list except for 502 (depending on how good or bad it ends up being) is meh at best.

And lol @ "war mages will still be viable", that's funnier than "If you like your health plan you can keep it."

I hope the rest of the ELR isn't so disappointing. I'd love to be wrong about how I predicted wizards to end up after the ELR.

~ Methais

Who are you calling 'you people'? (joke from a syndicated morning radio program)

I think we're in the midst of learning the adventurers that group together stay alive together. And solo hunters as Meth points out, are a bit more constrained.

Doug