Methais

Which is why the 8-way split argument is irrelevant, especially considering that we're talking about the far post cap game. A sorcerer can max out their elemental lore for DC any way they want while not sacrificing anything from their sorcerous lores since they're treated separately.

Sure, just the same way you can argue that wizards only need to train Elemental Lore, Fire to account for most of their offensive benefits from lores.

GameMaster Estild

< But that doesn't invalidate that casting 3 high level spells in 3 seconds of castRT achieves the same end result (a dead creature in 3 seconds of castRT), and Rapid Fire (515) allows for that.>

These are not the same. One kills instantly with zero chance once the spell is cast for something to hit back. The other the creature effectively has 2 seconds to still cast. It is close but not the same.


http://i.imgur.com/lsWPzG9.gif

<Sure, just the same way you can argue that wizards only need to train Elemental Lore, Fire to account for most of their offensive benefits from lores.

I had a capped sorcerer, which I got rid of for personal reason. My sorcerer is now 72. At no point leveling up was there even a question in my mind what I needed to train in to be successful. It was necromancy. It had my utility and my offensive spells in one neat lore. Demonology is the red headed step child or sorcerer lore. Do some max it out sure, but I feel confident in saying that most go for necromancy mostly while hitting certain thresholds for demonology.

Sorcerer's are a bad example for your case. I believe more than 20 ranks of elemental lores give you huge diminishing returns if I remember correctly. I would stick to empaths and clerics with your lore examples. Sorcerers have it very easy with lores, it is a 2 way split and there is one clear winner.

http://i.imgur.com/lsWPzG9.gif

MEKK1

These are not the same. One kills instantly with zero chance once the spell is cast for something to hit back. The other the creature effectively has 2 seconds to still cast. It is close but not the same.

Yep, and I'm fine with that. I have absolute faith in a wizard being able to defend themselves if they happen to get attacked in that 2 second window.

MEKK1

Also your 3s per kill assumes that someone has absolutely zero latency and is smashing their macro key like it owed them money. So in reality it is more like 3s vs 3.2-3.5. Could even go to 4s.

Technically, if we're using the "0 second" argument with 240, 515 is killing in 2 seconds by the same logic. Past that, our average player is not playing on AOL dial-up and many, if not most, do repeatedly hit a macro or use a script to hunt.

MEKK1

I had a capped sorcerer, which I got rid of for personal reason. My sorcerer is now 72. At no point leveling up was there even a question in my mind what I needed to train in to be successful. It was necromancy. It had my utility and my offensive spells in one neat lore. Demonology is the red headed step child or sorcerer lore. Do some max it out sure, but I feel confident in saying that most go for necromancy mostly while hitting certain thresholds for demonology.

I'll buy that Sorcerous Lore, Necromancy has most of the offensive benefits, but that's certainly not true for utility. Many sorcerers specifically train Demonology for 704, 712, and 740. In fact, checking all sorcerers online right now, Necromancy is trained more overall, but there are also more sorcerers who don't train it at all vs. those that don't train Demonology. You can make the case that your personal character may have focused on just one lore, but actual data seems to indicate there is strong incentive to train both lores. This is all without delving into the other lores, which they also do train in. Sorcerers seem to be a perfect example, as backed up by non-anecdotal data.

GameMaster Estild

To clarify a bit about my stance for a limited duration booster vs. better defense:

In my view, attaining a higher actual power ceiling and quality of life in daily hunting is the holy grail for a magical pure. It's exciting to be able to reach a level of magical proficiency at some point post-cap that is significantly better than what one could achieve pre-cap. To me, that gives goals to continue to strive towards.

In large part, this is because I consider magical spell slots to be a poor use of skills for excessive amounts of defense. With the game balanced for mostly being self-cast, it is much easier for a character to acquire gear that aids vastly in defense and survival, whether it's enchanted/padding/resistant armor or shields, more and more commonly available for cash via Duskruin or spell tanking in non-self cast areas (which only excludes the Rift/Scatter, since Dev already said they don't balance for solo'ing anyway) via imbeds, magical items, scrolls, or other characters. I consider these things relatively achievable for cash or silvers.

I'm looking to spend my magical spell power on the things that money can't buy. It's next to unachievable to attain more spell knowledge items, and beyond the basic enhancives and commonly available spell/scroll spell boosters available, such as Bravery or Mystic Focus, it's extremely difficult to reliably or sustainable increase one's AS or CS. This is why a power boost is far more exciting to me. If I die once less a month, I really couldn't care less, and it's not going to get my heart racing. If I'm able to become more and more magically proficient such that one day I can mow things down, at high mana cost, instead of plinking away, this is worth a lot to me and my enjoyment of the game.

This is part of the reason that Enchant Item is pretty underwhelming to many post-cap pure wizards, because the things it can enhance are things that affect our defense (armor/runestaves/shields) and not offense that affects magic.

I will give more specifics once I have the full number set crunched. It's taking some time, but it will be worth it. It will help me better frame the things I've been trying to tell Estild all along about 515 vs. 240, etc.

>Add an ability to enchant a runestaff in such a way that it flares EBP reduction on bolts. It can take the same slot as ensorcell and provide an alternative.

I don't like the idea of tying wizard offensive abilities to specific gear. Using gear to overcome an offensive issue contributes much more to power creep because it's attainable as long as you can buy it, for silvers or other means. Limiting it to an innate spell ability requires much more investment in TPs, experience, and the choices that Estild keeps trying to tell us to make and is an actual long-term goal rather than instantly achieved at some early level pre-cap.

Sorcerers are in a unique position among the pures where the runestaff is always the best defense, in offensive or guarded, due to the fact that they can achieve higher magical ranks per level than any other pure.

I don't have any problems with having additional boosts tied to the Runestaff, because it's what Magicians use for defense. Okay, so they have one.

NOW they get to use it for offense, too.

<shrug>

That's what "multiple different things" are good for. Tie 'em together like that.

Which is why they're using a runestaff for magical defense, not using it as a 2Hand weapon.
I know that I always like seeing that incoming bolt spell get parried by my magical weapon.

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Alternate response #1:

You're absolutely right!

So, "no magical armor" for Wizards....

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Alternate response #2:

You're absolutely right!

So, "no picking up Feint or Disarm CMan ranks" for Wizards....

It's not a binary choice. Obviously, everyone uses armor. Not everyone uses a runestaff however, from war mages to many pure wizards for the magical ranks reason I gave above.

>I would like to see some gear requirement parity between classes.

It already exists among professions within a class. I'm not looking for parity with semis or squares in any fashion.

>>I never got why a wizard doesn't receive some sort of phantom bonus when using a weapon they enchanted themselves.

That makes a lot of sense.

>>I'm not looking for parity with semis or squares in any fashion.

Wizards aren't squares, so they shouldn't be compared to them. Wizard's aren't Clerics/Empaths, but they should be compared to them because they both cast spells.

If you're searching for parity between classes, I don't see why that should be limited to classes with similar play styles.

>> As Veythorne pointed out, squares are basically comparable to other squares, semis to semis, and pures to pures.

Does this mean my empath should be getting better crowd control options?

Yeah, you need some sleep and some tremors and some ewave and greater ewave. Except, we need parity, but not parity, so they would be Spirtual Siesta, Ritualistic Rumbling, Ecclesiastic Emulation, and Even-better Ecclesiastic Emulation.

>>This makes sense as far as lore goes. I'm still not a huge fan of Elemental Overload. There are so many other cool things that Wizards do in fantasy that could go here.

Summon Dragonling. *mic drop*

>This makes sense as far as lore goes. I'm still not a huge fan of Elemental Overload. There are so many other cool things that Wizards do in fantasy that could go here.

I'm not sure if it's worth the 940 slot either, but if nothing else is being planned for it then I see no harm in it either.

I think it would be better suited as an addition to Rapid Fire. Increase the mana cost or whatever if needed for this version.

Or you could give Rapid Fire the Stone Skin lore treatment for different effects, preferably with reasonable thresholds to attain them. You can still use them without lore, but it'll cost more mana to do so.

~ Methais

Why? The wizard forums are so much more fun!

I support the 210 water lore for 940. Water lore is the best lore, fire lore is for noobs that can't play wizard.

While I am a big fan of having Water Lore for something like this, I am still in favor of letting adequate Water Lore let you evoke Minor Cold.

_ _ _
Wyrom gestures at you, causing you to explode.

>>Using a level 100 human wizard killing 10,000 triton radicals (level 100) takes 30,247 casts of Hurl Boulder (510). Normal EBP mechanics apply, and as such the wizard activates the self-cast version of Tremors (909) once per opponent (whether it worked or not). He has has 50 ranks of Elemental Lore, Earth and Elemental Lore, Fire, and a DEX bonus of 25. Base bolt AS is 440. Calculated casts per kill? 3.0 For many post-cap wizards, they'll have more lore and enhancives (and as such, much higher bolt AS), which will lower that number even more.

>>GameMaster Estild


Damn you and your math, common sense, and level head!

Love you Estild.

>>Using a level 100 human wizard killing 10,000 triton radicals (level 100) takes 30,247 casts of Hurl Boulder (510). Normal EBP mechanics apply, and as such the wizard activates the self-cast version of Tremors (909) once per opponent (whether it worked or not). He has has 50 ranks of Elemental Lore, Earth and Elemental Lore, Fire, and a DEX bonus of 25. Base bolt AS is 440. Calculated casts per kill? 3.0 For many post-cap wizards, they'll have more lore and enhancives (and as such, much higher bolt AS), which will lower that number even more.
>>GameMaster Estild

I appreciate it when you post numbers like these, but I feel as if they're tailored to prove your point and not 100% true to reality.

What if there were a second creature in the room to pull up any creature hit by the tremor? That could increase the number of casts.

I would also point out that spiritualists don't require a knock-down be used prior to every single cast. In the example you posted, every 8 uses you would need to recast 909, so the calculated casts per kill would increase. That's an additional 1250 casts.