So 520 is signature defensive spell, but its okay to allow 712 to be given out in black ora hearts?

The light crit padding for non-native casters seemed to be included as part of the spell for imbedding purposes. Non-native casters weren't getting anything close to what the full power of the spell is, just like non-native casters of Cloak of Shadows cannot chant retribution. This seems to be more of an appeasement gesture than a well thought-out change.

Oookay.

Don't attack other posters, don't counter-attack, etc, etc.

Discuss the issues, not the posters.

Move on.

SGM Sleken

>> So when can we get a reduction of non-self cast power and/or availability to mobility, dauntless, heroism, prayer, and champions might?

What about 503, 509, and 911 while we are at it as well?

I'm a bit surprised at the (over) reaction to 520 not being imbeddedible given how horrible the spell was before. I don't see it as taking anything away from anyone from what they had before and the new spell does address some actual issues within the wizard class.

If you feel there are similar issues within other professions that the new 520 addresses then you'd be better off having them addressed through your profession based spells vs. through 520 imbeds anyway.

-- Robert

A powerful whirlpool is suddenly overtaken by a windy vortex!

>I'm trying to understand the upset about 520 going self-cast.

for me, it was a 20th level spell that used to be imbeddable, and now it's not. It takes away from imbedding and leads to all of the highly annoying "our spell" claims. As I said, the non-native caster light padding benefit looks like it was made specifically for imbedding, and I thought it was well designed for that intent.

>I missed the memo on it being 'self-cast'

the first paragraph:

"Mage Armor manipulates the elemental forces within a wizard's body, forming a layer of elemental energy that shifts with their movements. This self-cast spell provides additional protection from physical attacks in the form of critical padding."

501, 503, 507, 508, 509, 511, 512, 905, 911, and 916. That's a total of 10 wizard spells,

Seriously? Sleep and Cold Snap are offensive spells. Floating Disk is regularly available, as is invisibility. That's like clerics complaining about bravery being at EG. Beyond that you're complaining about Mass Blurs, a spell that is obviously intended to be shared. So really we're talking about 503, 507, 508, 509 and 905, 5 spells out of two spell circles and only one out of your profession circle. Meanwhile rangers had 601, 602, 603, 604 available at EG. Normally 606 is fairly readily available as well. That's all off a profession circle. Wizards aren't some abused puppies that have all their treats handed out to everyone. Stop acting like the 500s is your closed profession circle.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Keith is correct

Wyrom, APM

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Help%20for%20Players/Policy%20Discussions/view/246

>It would be helpful if whoever's editing the Wiki doesn't overwrite the accurate GM information with inaccurate data. The earth lore table, in particular, is completely incorrect.

Anyone can update the wiki to fix it! If that's too much work, giving details about how it's wrong is a good first step to helping someone to fix it!

>I have to say that after spending a good chunk of my day Friday struggling to put together a basic wiki page that I have a new appreciation for the work the authors do on it. It seems like a labor of love to keep it visually appealing, accurate, and consistent with the rest of the site.

Thanks! It does take a lot of work. I'm amazed VANKRASN39 does what she does.

>I'll plan to review it once the work in progress is removed, so no need to panic over it changing.

Good news: the WIP is gone!

If my fire lore estimates are wrong, can you say so? Especially if they're very wrong?

If you cannot give the actual values, that's fine. Just want to know if we're right or at least in the ballpark, because I imagine it's the weirdest part for people who are not mechanics junkies like me, and I'd like it to be as straightforward as possible.

GS really just needs a full spell review aimed at balancing what should be signature and what shouldn't. DR did the same thing when they moved to Magic 3.0 (and continues to do so, based on profession confounds and new spells), and it's probably something that really needs to be done in GS, too. It's a time consuming process, but it's probably more important for game and profession balance than many seem to want to admit.

This full spell review and balancing was done in the move to GS4, which is when each profession was intended to only share a handful of spells but otherwise be fine self-spelled.

We need less reviewing and more fun, so I highly suggest if someone feels their own profession is lacking, to go advocate for positive development there.

I'm all for balanced spell sharing, as in group requirement the way 307/310 and Major Spiritual spells are handled, rather than bot ability "cast and run" that promotes nothing but the use of utility spell-up characters. Preventing unbalanced spell sharing has no relevance to the game's interactive premise.

Unbalanced spell sharing via other-cast 515 is why wizards are the ones to pay an excessively punitive nerf penalty for 515. The only ones who can afford to use 515 on cooldown without feeling any penalties are those sorcerer and cleric CS spell users who have very cheap, but lethal if used for rapid attrition, methods of killing.

Now we've moved to the expectation that everyone has every imbed on all the time, which is why combat quests and pay events have become ridiculous to the point where you can't survive the boss creature or finish at all if you aren't min-max enhanced and spell buffed. This shouldn't be the case, and in fact, event developers are doing everyone a disservice by treating outside buffs and enhancives as necessary and making combat quests and events excessively tedious or impossible for the pre-cap.

The very last thing I want as both a player of a wizard main and a player of non-wizard characters is to have my other characters be even more cripplingly dependent on wizard spell band-aids that are universally available to all, while wizards themselves are denied any further development because everyone can have all these things with no restriction as well. This is why Haste (506) was removed because NIR stated that other characters were forced to rely on wizard imbeds like candy. And yet, quickstrike abilities were granted to everyone.

The reality is every other profession has access to most of what a wizard has, while a wizard can access very little of what others have on a unique basis.

We need less reviewing and more fun

But DO NOT imbed our spells!

so I highly suggest if someone feels their own profession is lacking, to go advocate for positive development there.

This isn't a matter of someone else's profession lacking. It's other wizards who enjoyed having the ability to imbed something new for others. That said as a ranger I can say I don't feel there's any point in discussing anything in the ranger folder. No one in dev seems to read there and even if they do they've made it pretty clear rangers are never going to get any work.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Keith is correct

Wyrom, APM

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Help%20for%20Players/Policy%20Discussions/view/246

I am convinced you have no idea what you're talking about or are being deliberately obtuse. If I didn't think these responses also helped other players, I'd have stopped making them by now.

>I don't consider a 40 point offensive hit minor at all. That's half of a maximum enhancive boost negated right there just for defense.

The only way you're going to see "a 40 point offensive hit" from 98% AS vs 100% AS is if you have 2000 AS. If you have 2000 AS, you can spare 40.

>I'm confused where in the fire lore setup, you have room for combat mastery?

The numbers are there. They all add up to 101. You replied within 9 minutes of a post that I spent quite some time writing and working out the numbers for; take a little longer to read them over more closely. If I made a math mistake, please point it out and I'll fix it.

>You can't get more offensive than offensive, so if you're in offensive and have +3 CML defense, you'd still be better off than being in a non-offensive stance, trying to get offensive abilities, and sacrificing those extra +3 CML defense points for Combat Mastery. In other words, those Rank 5 Cunning Defense points come from Cunning Defense or nothing at all. The only reason you'd be in a less than offensive stance and use Combat Mastery to achieve offensive stance benefits is because you want the DS.

Fire Aspect is not an offensive ability. Fire Aspect is a defensive ability, just like every other Aspect of Mage Armor. It lets you increase your stance with fewer offensive penalties. If that's not what you want, then don't use it. If you're running Fire Aspect, you shouldn't be in offensive stance. Fire Aspect has literally no benefit in offensive stance.

In offensive stance, you will never have more CML defense than what 5 ranks of cdef will give you. But you will have more CML defense in a lower stance. Plus the DS. Plus the evade/block/parry. Plus general maneuver defense.

I'm not an expert on the CML formula; I haven't kept up with the PC thread researching it. There's a very good chance that using Combat Mastery to go from 0% stance to 10% stance (no lore full offense) or 20% to 30% (120+ fire lore full offense) will give more than 3 CML defense. If it's exactly 3 defense, then dropping rank 5 of cdef for 1 rank of cmastery will give you the exact same defense with 8 points to spare.

>The only way you're going to see "a 40 point offensive hit" from 98% AS vs 100% AS is if you have 2000 AS. If you have 2000 AS, you can spare 40.

I'm talking about 90% AS vs. 98% AS, since my entire discussion point began about little to no difference between 15 ranks of fire lore and 231 ranks. You might try reading your own quote before insulting people:

No one insulted you. They pointed out a potential inaccuracy in your math. Disagreeing with you is not an insult. Telling you what we think about you is.

Keith/Brinret/Shiun

Keith is correct

Wyrom, APM

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Help%20for%20Players/Policy%20Discussions/view/246

There was a post elsewhere about Illoke dispel ignoring 1701, so I imagine it probably needs to be looked at in general.

At first:

Wizards: "520 shouldn't be imbeddable!"
People: "lol y not it's only light padding!"

Now:

People: "omg 520 should be imbeddible!"
Wizards: "lol y it's only light padding!"


Striking resemblance to this year's election cycle.


~ Methais

Had a strange bug (I think) occur with water focused mage armor. Here is the messaging. The seer phased in, dispelled and phased back out instantaneously as I was obviously not casting at it due to the phasing (I was actually targeting a war griffin). Apparently the mage armor did at least attempt to block the dispel. Can we get some sort of information regarding the formula whether a dispel is blocked?

An Ithzir seer fades into view!
An Ithzir seer suddenly opens his eyes and stares directly at you!

A pale, flickering nimbus coalesces around you, then vanishes in a brilliant flash!

Just as you , the Ithzir seer shimmers and fades away, leaving you gesturing at nothingness!
The raw elemental energy surrounding you takes on a watery look as it attempts to absorb the magic.
The powerful look leaves you.
The deep blue glow leaves you.
The light blue glow leaves you.

It seems the Emperor broke my mage armor, and it shattered like it was still the useless StoneSkin. After the fight, I noticed my mage armor was gone from my spell active list. However, I also noticed that when I cast 520 again, it did not say that this was the first time I'm activating this aspect.

>The Royal Emperor slings an embossed hoarbeam shield off from over his shoulder.
The Royal Emperor thrusts with a sleek glaes estoc at you!
AS: +588 vs DS: +585 with AvD: +37 + d100 roll: +81 = +121
A layer of shifting stone absorbs 1 points of damage, then shatters!
... and hits for 21 points of damage!
Minor puncture to the back.

>spell active
You currently have the following active spells:
Elemental Defense I ................ 3:27:26
Elemental Defense II ............... 3:27:26
Elemental Defense III .............. 3:27:26
Elemental Targeting ................ 3:27:26
Elemental Barrier .................. 1:16:57
Thurfel's Ward ..................... 3:27:26
Elemental Deflection ............... 3:27:26
Elemental Bias ..................... 3:27:26
Strength ........................... 3:27:26
Elemental Focus .................... 3:27:26
Haste .............................. 3:27:26
Temporal Reversion ................. 3:27:26

>pre 520
You recite a series of mystical phrases while raising your hands, invoking Mage Armor...
Your spell is ready.
J>cast earth
You gesture.
A layer of raw elemental energy forms around you.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

There's some kind of typo in the first messaging:

>inc 904
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Minor Acid...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at an ethereal squire.
You hurl a hissing stream of acid at an ethereal squire!
Minor Acid
AS: +550 vs DS: +489 with AvD: +36 + d100 roll: +77 = +174
A hit!
--you blink as you realize that what you thought you saw didn't actually happen.
You hurl a hissing stream of acid at an ethereal squire!
The ethereal squire deflects your bolt with his staff!
You sense a sudden, sharp fluctuation in the temporal field surrounding an ethereal squire.
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

The earth aspect seems to be activating on creatures:

>inc 904
Your hands glow with power as you invoke the phrase for Minor Acid...
Your spell is ready.
You gesture at an ethereal squire.
You hurl a hissing stream of acid at an ethereal squire!
an ethereal squire's exterior hardens for a moment and softens the attack!
AS: +552 vs DS: +365 with AvD: +36 + d100 roll: +28 = +251
... and hit for 83 points of damage!
Attack whistles right through the chest!
It's like fighting fog!
Some of the acid sticks to an ethereal squire and continues to bubble away!
Cast Roundtime 3 Seconds.

The earth aspect still isn't working at all like before:

>search box
You tentatively open the blackened box.
You search around the inside of the blackened box, but end up triggering a pressure plate!
... 30 points of damage!
Strong slash to your right leg!
Muscles exposed!
Not a pretty sight.
You are knocked to the ground!
You are stunned for 6 rounds!
The blackened box vanishes in a cloud of ethereal light.

I know this bug/feature was brought up before but I do not recall seeing any official word on it...

The Fire Lore benefit is currently working for spells using CAST and EVOKE (not CHANNEL only like was originally stated) is this intended?