@garryn Would you mind describing your vision of what role you feel a mage should fill in combat? Perhaps I'm not understand that part of the equation, and thus approaching the situation from the wrong angle.
Right now, I don't understand why anyone would be anything other than a knight. Risca can push 200 damage a dsl. Khizan is doing reliably 180 to me. Dsl has no mana cost, and out-damages my class with no effort. It can target limbs, so breaks are a threat. And it applies TWO afflictions.
Mage attacks have a mana cost, suggesting that they innately should do more damage as they have a drawback. In order to reach similar levels of damage per attack, I have to give up all ability to progress through mage combat chains (Ie fire or water), and simply spam 'penetration bloodboil batter' which if the target has decent fire resist, won't reach the same level of damage. While costing crystal charges, which means quickly costs a HUGE amount of mana.
I understand mages are viewed as 'glass cannons' by most. My problem is they're just glass, period. They don't have the damage output of knights. They don't have the durability. They don't have very much utility. Basically -all- of their passive abilities were removed. Everyone and their mother can get rid of flood. Frozen ground is utterly ignored by a simple engineering item. You could argue that mages could focus on transfixing or sludge. But both come with their own issues, and you can simply ink a web tattoo on someone to perform the same task. So unless the target has an artifact, a novice does the same job a mage does. You could even argue a novice in a tanky class does it better.
Fighting against a dozen templars just honestly makes me want to avoid combat. If you finally manage to kill one through all the defense, the lay on hands, the passive rites healing and afflicting, your reward is...redemption. Meanwhile, every time they get the option to attack, they get to do more damage, double afflict, work towards broken limbs, and not threaten their mana pool for druids to take advantage of.
So yes, one answer could be, just go runekeeper noob! But I don't think that should be THE answer. I can't afford it myself, and I don't want to tell every new mage who comes asking what to expect in combat, that they should just change young.
If Mages are expected to be glass cannons, can we focus on making them do more damage than tank classes? If not, can we beef up the mage's ability to take damage? Or increase it's utility and over-all group usefulness in some other way? I would love to define a role for the class, and then progress towards making it effective at that role.
okay, so ignore everything else. Can we focus on what mage should be doing, and make that happen rather then just accept that the class is pointless and move on.
@Aakrin - the way I would approach it is ask for Mage to be able to mitigate Fire resistance, in a (nearly) passive manner. Those who were gonna get squashed will get squashed anyway, and those who weren't will have resists up to their eyeballs. Kick em in the 'nads I say
As the person who likely had the largest hand in Fire design apart from Garryn (I was the initial suggester of the way Fire currently plays out), I can say that Fire was designed with spike and steady DPS in mind. The style was balanced against both artifacted and non-artifacted users and victims. The class does damage that is innately harder to resist by virtue of being mental. Mage is definitely not pointless, and the way you talk about it gives me the distinct impression that you don't actually understand the way the class was designed or what you are meant to do with it.
The class has tremendous burst potential and high synergy with other users of the class. You can churn out a lot of damage in team fights. Water style is definitely a possible victory route in duels - nothing changed between my last check in beta and now, and we had actual real testing in interactive duels that demonstrated Water's viability. In teams, Fire can churn out DPS that is possibly only rivaled by Druids, and combined with the rest of Magick, can quickly overwhelm a target. The Fire style was designed specifically to be easy to play and understand, so any failures on the part of a player are entirely user error (sorry, @Bellentine) and nothing to do with how it was designed.
If Mage needed upgrades to Fire, I would suggest something that is timed - like Axetoss currently is. It would be a comet that streaks down on the target X seconds after casting, where X is defined by the user. The spell could (and should, to add skill differentiation) scale off of present Fire attunement, doing increasingly powerful, non-damage effects (maybe we put Curse here). It would add 1 Fire attunement upon landing. It's use would be gated to duels or small engagements because you don't have the time for this level of play or function in big brawls (which I'd say is fine, as Mages need no help or favors done in team PK).
The way you suggest or go about asking for things on the topic of Mage is amateurish and speaks of a lack of exploration of options or experience
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Apologies for the double post: the way I originally envisioned the way Lavablast working was that the firecircle empowerment added special effects to it at certain thresholds. Ask @Garryn, I bombarded him with piles and piles of ideas for what it does.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
I'd just like to take a moment to point out that, in their current incarnation, mages are not necessarily a "glass cannon" profession. A class being deprived of armor does not make that class inherently squishy.In fact, between a knight and a mage of equal artifacted might, played intelligently, I would probably say that the mage equals or surpasses the knight in survivability, and here are a few of the reasons why:
1) Stoneskin. Stoneskin is a large boost to cutting and blunt resistance. Resistance is more important than armor, due to the fact that it applies to the full damage amount, rather than the armor reducible amount, which tends to be about half of the actual damage.
2) Windveil. See above, but for elemental damage! That's right, in addition to that resistance infused robe, you get a nifty boost to the "elemental" resists (fire, cold; flare, soulstorm).
3) Statpack. The common mage statpack (intelligent) has higher constitution and intelligence than the common knight statpack (fast). Also skipping the sip penalty, intelligent is vastly more resistant to both health and mana kills.
4) Dat crystal! I know that it seems like mo' penetration is mo' betta. I get it. However, when left at full charge, the crystal regenerates 5% health and mana every eight seconds. That's faster than a level two regen ring. Woah buddy!
5) Crystal again. Contrary to popular belief, there happens to be more than one skill in crystalbinding.
Crystalbinding - Infuse
Syntax: CAST INFUSE <spell> ...
This effect enhances the spell to heal the caster for 1/3 of the raw damage that it inflicted. Only targeted spells can be enhanced with this effect.
Aakrin raises his hand and you scream in pain as blood boils in your veins, causing your entire body to redden and hurt all over.
Damage Taken: 163 fire, mental (raw damage: 127)
Aakrin flicks his wrist and a rock materializes in mid-air, flying rapidly towards you and battering you painfully.
Now, that raw damage should be relatively static across the mage spectrum, even if the damage taken is not due to artifacts. With that in mind, casting this combination with infuse stands to gain the mage roughly 57 health while dealing damage at the same time. Yowzah!
It is closer to 40-50 range, which is still worth: around as much as a toadstool; worth more than 0.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
In fact, between a knight and a mage of equal artifacted might, played intelligently, I would probably say that the mage equals or surpasses the knight in survivability, and here are a few of the reasons
Normally I ignore class balance discussions. Class balance is a complicated thing, even when it comes to two similar classes - nevermind when comparing completely disparate classes like Mage and the various Knight flavours. However, this one statement that I have highlighted is far too misleading for me to ignore, so I would like to address each of the supporting points. Because Ozreas belongs to AM, I think it fairest to use Templar as the specific knight to compare to, but most of the things that I will say will apply to both Deathknight and Runeguard as well.
Point 1) Stoneskin. Stoneskin is 30% reduction in physical damage. Right off the bat this is undone by one of the things that every Knight has in common: fullplate. As Ozreas himself mentioned, armour values are worth less than resistance values, so this 85/85 fullplate will usually resist something around 40% damage - still greater than Stoneskin.
That isn't it, though. As far as class-specific resistances to physical damage go, the Mage starts and ends at Stoneskin. Every single Knight variety has additional protection against physical damage in the form of class-specific abilities. Templars get Earthshield (I believe 10%) and Toughness which is an additional 10% against cutting damage only.
As far as class-specific physical defences go, Knights win out. The only way a Mage can hope to come close is with a level 3 artifact shield, and only then if the Templar chooses to forego a shield in favour of a claymore.
Point 2) Elemental resistance. Mages have Windveil, which is a 10% resistance to fire, cold, electrical and magickal damage types. They also have the ability to put a single defensive etching on their robes, which is another 10% resistance to (one of) fire, cold, or electrical damage.
What is misleading about this point is that pretty much every single class in the game has access to some form of elemental resistance, and Knights are no exception. Every knight has access to Resistance (10% magick damage resist.) Templars in particular have access to Thermalshield and Frostshield (10% fire and cold resistance) as well as the Antimagick purification that every single AM class can benefit from, which gives 15% magick and electrical resistance.
In other words, Templars (and Runeguards) both surpass Mages in terms of elemental resistance.
Point 3) Statpacks. Horribly misleading by comparing Fast to Intelligent.
Wise - Fast: Wise has +1 con, Fast has +1 DEX, both are extremely fragile. Hard to give Mage the advantage here.
Intelligent - Athletic: Athletic has +1 CON -and- an additional 10% resistance to physical damage, but suffers from a sip malus. Intelligent has an extra 3 points in DEX (which gives 7.5% physical resistance - almost catching up to Athletic's physical resistance boost.) Again, very similar levels of survivability.
The only major discrepancy that bears mentioning is that Mage is shoehorned into those two statpacks, but physical classes have more options. Strong and Sturdy are both perfectly fine for damage dealing, but are considerably better at resisting damage than either Mage option.
Point 4) Passive regeneration. Mages rely heavily on their crystal in order to mount an efficient offence, so not relying on it in order to benefit from some regeneration is hardly an option. Ozreas even contradicts himself when he suggests the use of Infuse, which would take a charge and consume the healing for an additional 8 seconds. Passive Mage regeneration is entirely reliant on the ability called Overtune, which allows for the regeneration to happen regardless of charges and ups the healing to a very considerable 15%. This ability lasts for 1 minute, and is then on cooldown for 5 minutes.
Templar regeneration comes in the form of the revitilization rite, which heals a percentage of both health and mana (I do not know exactly what percentage.) Templars have an additional advantage over Mages in the form of better resistances and (usually) higher health, which together serve to improve how much %-based healing will heal and to make each point of health last longer.
This part is not as cut-and-dry as the rest. Mages certainly have better regeneration while Overtune is active, but significantly worse (read: none) when it is not. Templars, while they may regenerate less total health due to Revitilization, are able to rely on their regeneration constantly and benefit more from each point of health due to higher resistances.
Point 5) Active healing. Mages can spend charges to 'infuse' a spell, healing them for 1/3rd of the raw damage. This is a great tool. They also have access to Drain, which is a primary spell that steals 6% (+ 4% per air attunement) health from the target, with successive casts within 10s draining only half that amount. Mages have great options here, but these options all come with difficult-to-quantify costs. Drain clears away the air attunement, so if you want to benefit from it, you have to spend resources to build it back up each time. Infuse costs a crystal charge, which the Mage has a finite amount of - in order to replenish charges mid-combat, they have to spend an exponentially increasing amount of health to do so. This cost is something that only really begins to apply in longer fights.
Templars and Deathknights both have access to active heals which restore 20% of their health. Unlike the Mage, doing this will completely halt their offence for a few seconds. Also unlike Mage, they can chain many of these healing attempts back-to-back, though the new Essence/Devotion changes should hopefully tone this down somewhat.
Similar to passive regeneration, active regeneration is not a simple 'X is better than Y' comparison. Mages can heal more than Templars and Deathknights can in bursts, and they don't sacrifice as much in the way of damage when they do it, but they are much more limited in how much they can spam (crystal charges) and have to do a non-trivial amount of prep work (air attunement) to make use of them.
Finally, two thing that didn't fit into any of those neat categories: Knights have access to Weathering to increase their max health (and how much they benefit from healing) Knights Templars have access to Vitality Redemption to offer a one-time resistance to a large burst of damage (Sorry Ozreas, I corrected it)
To summarize, I just want to say that if you're going to make a claim on the level of that Ozreas did earlier or that I did here, try to be fair in your assessment. Don't attempt to mislead people, and try to fairly present -both- sides of the argument.
(PS: Sorry Ozreas, I didn't mean to pick on you. You just happened to give a convenient example of something that I see a lot of people doing) (Also, this wasn't meant to be a full comparison of the two classes. With their entire kits considered, I have absolutely no idea where to begin comparing the two)
You caught me, misdirecting the uninformed masses.
Knights don't have vitality.
E: More meaningfully, I compared the mage to the knight only because it was already being done. You are correct, they do end up on relatively equal ground, which was the point I was attempting to illustrate. The point of my post was to clear up this "glass cannon" nonsense. As professions in Imperian go, the mage is not fragile. To be fair, though, I guess few are, these days!
@Ellen, well done. That was a more accurate comparison than most can do. Perhaps this is why persons unused to this level of thinking find Mage hard - there are loads of options, but if you do what @Khizan and @Mathiaus have suggested, you can really pare it down to very few aliases. @Aakrin, not being able to beat every class sucks, but it is not a problem inherent with just Mage.
So, one of the questions asked has been how mage is "supposed" to be played, and while the fire support mage (nyuck nyuck, fire support) that deals high damage in teams seems effective for group fights, there has been some static regarding the performance in solo engagements.
Much like claymore knights aren't going to make much progress 1v1 against anyone with significant tank, perhaps the mage will be better served switching to their "sabre". Due to this, I might recommend a mixed water/earth-based offence.
Making use of the kit's access to impatience, numbness, sunallergy (+flamepillar), healthleech, nausea, icicles, and calcify to push a DoT-centric affliction offense that leads the target into decompose range (NOT trying to drop a full health target with a single decompose) sounds like the best option. I can't guarantee this will be 100% effective, but it should be worth more than a cursory look.
Affliction stacking as mage is really difficult without pounding calcify on first, and even then harder to upkeep on afflictions before calcify runs out. Before, when attunement trumped herb healing, it was much easier to stick the afflictions wanted.
The only thing that will count really for mage is utilizing immerse and suffuse along with crystalbinding to stack afflictions, and then maybe stack more afflictions as they're trying to cure out of those.
Without fire, this is what you have access to for physical afflictions:
Water (Immerse) Poor elixers, asthma (Suffuse) Nausea (Icicles) Weariness
Air (Howl) Healthleech Earth (Sidesmash) Clumsiness
Crystal Binding Numbness Weariness
Who knows, maybe someone could figure out a way to afflict quick enough with these to accumulate for decompose. Maybe someone will figure out a way to properly keep icicles on the target. Sticking addiction would help greatly, but you'd have to utilize on Hasten for impatience to help it stick, and doing so drops water attunement.
I'd really like to see someone figure this out, because I feel I'm not adequate at all with afflictions to compile something for affliction mage.
Without fire, this is what you have access to for physical afflictions:
Fire primaries will not affect the water attunement that you need to build to use this style.
Sunallergy (scorch), impatience (hasten), and the double-afflict slow-salves/dizziness (dehydrate) give several powerful and/or high-priority afflictions without impeding water progress.
Icicles being based primarily on mental affs in the middle of physical aff focused offense seems a little wonky but I haven't played with it enough to make up my mind on it.
Much like claymore knights aren't going to make much progress 1v1 against anyone with significant tank, perhaps the mage will be better served switching to their "sabre". Due to this, I might recommend a mixed water/earth-based offence.
Claymore Knights were given Cleave a couple of patches ago to give them a chance in 1v1. It's not a perfect fix, but it works like 110% of the time.
‘Least I won’t have to carry it no more. You see how bloody heavy it is?’
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Now, that raw damage should be relatively static across the mage spectrum, even if the damage taken is not due to artifacts. With that in mind, casting this combination with infuse stands to gain the mage roughly 57 health while dealing damage at the same time. Yowzah!
Edit: 6) Blink.
That damage, is a max INT, max artifact combo WITH penetration. Its less without. I can't do that much damage while infusing. I also can't build attunement in any way if I use infuse on damage spell combos. That being said, it is in fact an option.
Blink - I think Blink should bypass piety. That, or have an increased chance to bypass it. I don't know what the % ratio is for piety to stop movement, but I didn't realize it also stops special movement and it feels like 14/15 times, I don't move. I wish blink was an option, but against gravehands/piety it just isn't.
What do you guys think of changing wreathe spells to do either:
A) For the next ten seconds all primary spells will apply attunement.
or
The next 4/6 primary will apply attunement.
This would allow the crystal to return to what it's designed to do. Which is apply burst or defense instead of being forced into almost every combo, as the rework has done.
The crystal was always designed for burst potential, not sustained throughput. The rework did not change that. Using the crystal as much as possible instead of using it for burst was the case during the re-rework too, your opponent just melted to the careless/Autobot attunement before it was an issue. Just because you CAN use a mechanic a certain way does not mean that way is the way the mechanic is balanced/designed toward using. As it stands, what you propose goes against the design philosophy. The reason the Crystalbinding system works the way it does is in direct opposition to your desire for a reason: it would be overpowered as hell if it went your way. Your crystal charge rate and charge costs are the key to your offense being gated properly so it is not absurd and you have to apply some forethought on how to increase it and spend it. You are meant to only get so many Magic Mushrooms to shoot your Mage Mario Kart forward. You are asking for a strict upgrade to Attunement gain, the thing this remake sought to fix (and it did that well), under the guise of giving the skill a 'burst niche'. It already has that, you guys just hammer it like it isn't one. What you would be getting is a straight attunement speed upgrade, alongside being allowed to smash more affliction thoroughput (or damage thoroughput) in to your combos. No, thanks.
Getting your point across about Mage would be a much more successful process if you weren't disingenuous about everything to do with it. You either do not want to acknowledge the actual design intent, or you want to misrepresent it. What your posts have done is give most people here a good look at your ability to identified balanced mechanics - or more, your lack thereof.
<div>Message #2062 Sent By: (imperian) Received On: 1/20/2018/2:59</div><div>"Antioch has filed a bounty against you. Reason: Raiding Antioch and stealing Bina, being a right</div><div>****, and not belonging anywhere near Antioch till he grows up."</div>
Risca and I figured out a way to utilize icicles and upkeep on kelp afflictions while cutting down on crystal use. It has made icicles and decompose viable.
I still hate how much mana it costs to do spells however.
Risca and I figured out a way to utilize icicles and upkeep on kelp afflictions while cutting down on crystal use. It has made icicles and decompose viable.
142 Darrinic Robes 1000 Credits
Edit: I guess, what's blowing through your mana? Super spam combos or just your basic schtik?
Once Risca informed me that icicles actually did not stop on cure but on the flare check for the affliction, it was much easier to code it in and prioritize my kelp stack.
Risca definitely deserves much of the credit for figuring it out, and I'm sorry it bothered you to think I implied equal share of it when I meant both of us found ways to code with the information given.
I would love to have the robes, but I do not possess enough credits to purchase it at this time. Even a mana sip ring would be nice, but I haven't made good money lately to buy extra credits.
Also, as far as I can tell, trying to use mirroring didn't work like I thought it would. It read:
This enhancement causes the spell to increase your mana by its cost, instead of costing mana. It can be targetted against mobs.
But when I use it, my mana still drops instead of filling up. Could it be clarified if it's a bug or its intended use?
I ragequit one time about oh, 4 irl years ago or so. It wasn't long after the creation of Mael. I made Mael because I moved Laethus to Antioch for RP reasons, but I still wanted a magicker, and Kinsarmar and the Lorekeepers were all but a ghost town and guild. I understand the griefer thing. I designed Mael to be a "by the book" "lead by example" kind of character. So therefore he's going to be straight and narrow, to a "t". So that includes sticking to his oath and the Lorekeeper code, part of which stated that he would always defend Kinsarmar. In his mind, this is his duty. There is no reason ever why he should never attempt to defend. So when Kinsarmar would be raided with tier 1 combatants (Song, Ozreas, Kayden, Ahkan, Mikhael, to name a few that I could think of) it doesn't matter than I only know up to deliver in chivalry and am bashing with a shortsword at level 53, I still have to go into combat because it's something he's made the vow to do. Yay RP.... Anyway, Because I would defend in a raid, I was then tracked down later and killed by every single person that was involved in the raid. So if 10 people raided, I would be killed 10 times, once by each raider (which at the time xp loss was still a thing. I lost whole levels defending a raid and the following consequences) . To put this into perspective. You're sitting in your house, watching tv. A man bursts into your home and attempts to kill you. You are able to throw a knife at him, and he runs away. Two days later you see the same guy at the grocery store while you're there getting food for your family (irl equivalent of bashing). He then pulls a gun on you, kills you, and when the case goes to court, it is completely fine, because you attacked him first! He didn't wound you at all when he burst into your home. How does he know you're not going to kill him on the spot? This is the injustice I felt defending raids. I admittedly let it get me way too worked up. The end result though, is there has been IRL years that I have quit playing because I was tired of everything. Any more, I personally don't care about pk. If I'm involved with any kind of combat, and I'm chased down later for it, and I'm attacked, I turn off autocuring, I sit or lie down, and just take it. Because I simply don't care. I don't have this huge ego that I need bragging rights that I'm the number 1 pker in the game. It's not about titles or achievements or any of that to me. I want to have a good time, and if I know I won't win a fight, the good time for me is taking my beating, returning to Kinsarmar, and then continuing on with what I was doing. I've learned to deal with the aggravations of pk a lot better now that I did then. But there have been plenty of times that I didn't log in for over a year (or if I did, it was for 3 minutes, and realized I still hated it.). inb4 "the tears are delicious". I'm sure they were. You asked what makes people quit. This is what made me quit. Then I would finally come back after I feel like all the "pk" that everyone had on me had plenty of time to dissolve.
That's pretty awful. Now though, Imperian just might be the easiest game to be involved with combat without losing your **** though. It's certainly easier to be involved here without being hunted down than it is in Achaea (and of course they do have XP loss). And I could be wrong, but being hunted down for defending your city seems almost unimaginable. I'd be genuinely shocked if it happened. As AM, I've been reminded that I have excellent top cover (and that's true), but I hope it's not *just* that. I hope that people just realize it's not really worth their while to aggressively hunt someone who's not roughly as good at combat as they are (and it's also just kind of mean). The bounty system also helps with that, I think. Instead of 6 guys coming after me (certainly not for defending my city, obviously), I might have *one* guy fulfill a bounty, and that's usually fun.
Comments
The class has tremendous burst potential and high synergy with other users of the class. You can churn out a lot of damage in team fights. Water style is definitely a possible victory route in duels - nothing changed between my last check in beta and now, and we had actual real testing in interactive duels that demonstrated Water's viability. In teams, Fire can churn out DPS that is possibly only rivaled by Druids, and combined with the rest of Magick, can quickly overwhelm a target. The Fire style was designed specifically to be easy to play and understand, so any failures on the part of a player are entirely user error (sorry, @Bellentine) and nothing to do with how it was designed.
If Mage needed upgrades to Fire, I would suggest something that is timed - like Axetoss currently is. It would be a comet that streaks down on the target X seconds after casting, where X is defined by the user. The spell could (and should, to add skill differentiation) scale off of present Fire attunement, doing increasingly powerful, non-damage effects (maybe we put Curse here). It would add 1 Fire attunement upon landing. It's use would be gated to duels or small engagements because you don't have the time for this level of play or function in big brawls (which I'd say is fine, as Mages need no help or favors done in team PK).
The way you suggest or go about asking for things on the topic of Mage is amateurish and speaks of a lack of exploration of options or experience
I'd just like to take a moment to point out that, in their current incarnation, mages are not necessarily a "glass cannon" profession. A class being deprived of armor does not make that class inherently squishy.In fact, between a knight and a mage of equal artifacted might, played intelligently, I would probably say that the mage equals or surpasses the knight in survivability, and here are a few of the reasons why:
1) Stoneskin. Stoneskin is a large boost to cutting and blunt resistance. Resistance is more important than armor, due to the fact that it applies to the full damage amount, rather than the armor reducible amount, which tends to be about half of the actual damage.
2) Windveil. See above, but for elemental damage! That's right, in addition to that resistance infused robe, you get a nifty boost to the "elemental" resists (fire, cold; flare, soulstorm).
3) Statpack. The common mage statpack (intelligent) has higher constitution and intelligence than the common knight statpack (fast). Also skipping the sip penalty, intelligent is vastly more resistant to both health and mana kills.
4) Dat crystal! I know that it seems like mo' penetration is mo' betta. I get it. However, when left at full charge, the crystal regenerates 5% health and mana every eight seconds. That's faster than a level two regen ring. Woah buddy!
5) Crystal again. Contrary to popular belief, there happens to be more than one skill in crystalbinding.
Now, that raw damage should be relatively static across the mage spectrum, even if the damage taken is not due to artifacts. With that in mind, casting this combination with infuse stands to gain the mage roughly 57 health while dealing damage at the same time. Yowzah!
Edit: 6) Blink.
Also, 1/3 of 127 is not 57
Point 1) Stoneskin. Stoneskin is 30% reduction in physical damage. Right off the bat this is undone by one of the things that every Knight has in common: fullplate. As Ozreas himself mentioned, armour values are worth less than resistance values, so this 85/85 fullplate will usually resist something around 40% damage - still greater than Stoneskin.
That isn't it, though. As far as class-specific resistances to physical damage go, the Mage starts and ends at Stoneskin. Every single Knight variety has additional protection against physical damage in the form of class-specific abilities. Templars get Earthshield (I believe 10%) and Toughness which is an additional 10% against cutting damage only.
As far as class-specific physical defences go, Knights win out. The only way a Mage can hope to come close is with a level 3 artifact shield, and only then if the Templar chooses to forego a shield in favour of a claymore.
Point 2) Elemental resistance. Mages have Windveil, which is a 10% resistance to fire, cold, electrical and magickal damage types. They also have the ability to put a single defensive etching on their robes, which is another 10% resistance to (one of) fire, cold, or electrical damage.
What is misleading about this point is that pretty much every single class in the game has access to some form of elemental resistance, and Knights are no exception. Every knight has access to Resistance (10% magick damage resist.) Templars in particular have access to Thermalshield and Frostshield (10% fire and cold resistance) as well as the Antimagick purification that every single AM class can benefit from, which gives 15% magick and electrical resistance.
In other words, Templars (and Runeguards) both surpass Mages in terms of elemental resistance.
Point 3) Statpacks. Horribly misleading by comparing Fast to Intelligent.
Wise - Fast: Wise has +1 con, Fast has +1 DEX, both are extremely fragile. Hard to give Mage the advantage here.
Intelligent - Athletic: Athletic has +1 CON -and- an additional 10% resistance to physical damage, but suffers from a sip malus. Intelligent has an extra 3 points in DEX (which gives 7.5% physical resistance - almost catching up to Athletic's physical resistance boost.) Again, very similar levels of survivability.
The only major discrepancy that bears mentioning is that Mage is shoehorned into those two statpacks, but physical classes have more options. Strong and Sturdy are both perfectly fine for damage dealing, but are considerably better at resisting damage than either Mage option.
Point 4) Passive regeneration. Mages rely heavily on their crystal in order to mount an efficient offence, so not relying on it in order to benefit from some regeneration is hardly an option. Ozreas even contradicts himself when he suggests the use of Infuse, which would take a charge and consume the healing for an additional 8 seconds. Passive Mage regeneration is entirely reliant on the ability called Overtune, which allows for the regeneration to happen regardless of charges and ups the healing to a very considerable 15%. This ability lasts for 1 minute, and is then on cooldown for 5 minutes.
Templar regeneration comes in the form of the revitilization rite, which heals a percentage of both health and mana (I do not know exactly what percentage.) Templars have an additional advantage over Mages in the form of better resistances and (usually) higher health, which together serve to improve how much %-based healing will heal and to make each point of health last longer.
This part is not as cut-and-dry as the rest. Mages certainly have better regeneration while Overtune is active, but significantly worse (read: none) when it is not. Templars, while they may regenerate less total health due to Revitilization, are able to rely on their regeneration constantly and benefit more from each point of health due to higher resistances.
Point 5) Active healing. Mages can spend charges to 'infuse' a spell, healing them for 1/3rd of the raw damage. This is a great tool. They also have access to Drain, which is a primary spell that steals 6% (+ 4% per air attunement) health from the target, with successive casts within 10s draining only half that amount. Mages have great options here, but these options all come with difficult-to-quantify costs. Drain clears away the air attunement, so if you want to benefit from it, you have to spend resources to build it back up each time. Infuse costs a crystal charge, which the Mage has a finite amount of - in order to replenish charges mid-combat, they have to spend an exponentially increasing amount of health to do so. This cost is something that only really begins to apply in longer fights.
Templars and Deathknights both have access to active heals which restore 20% of their health. Unlike the Mage, doing this will completely halt their offence for a few seconds. Also unlike Mage, they can chain many of these healing attempts back-to-back, though the new Essence/Devotion changes should hopefully tone this down somewhat.
Similar to passive regeneration, active regeneration is not a simple 'X is better than Y' comparison. Mages can heal more than Templars and Deathknights can in bursts, and they don't sacrifice as much in the way of damage when they do it, but they are much more limited in how much they can spam (crystal charges) and have to do a non-trivial amount of prep work (air attunement) to make use of them.
Finally, two thing that didn't fit into any of those neat categories:
Knights have access to Weathering to increase their max health (and how much they benefit from healing)
Knights Templars have access to Vitality Redemption to offer a one-time resistance to a large burst of damage (Sorry Ozreas, I corrected it)
To summarize, I just want to say that if you're going to make a claim on the level of that Ozreas did earlier or that I did here, try to be fair in your assessment. Don't attempt to mislead people, and try to fairly present -both- sides of the argument.
(PS: Sorry Ozreas, I didn't mean to pick on you. You just happened to give a convenient example of something that I see a lot of people doing)
(Also, this wasn't meant to be a full comparison of the two classes. With their entire kits considered, I have absolutely no idea where to begin comparing the two)
You caught me, misdirecting the uninformed masses.
Knights don't have vitality.
E: More meaningfully, I compared the mage to the knight only because it was already being done. You are correct, they do end up on relatively equal ground, which was the point I was attempting to illustrate. The point of my post was to clear up this "glass cannon" nonsense. As professions in Imperian go, the mage is not fragile. To be fair, though, I guess few are, these days!
So, one of the questions asked has been how mage is "supposed" to be played, and while the fire support mage (nyuck nyuck, fire support) that deals high damage in teams seems effective for group fights, there has been some static regarding the performance in solo engagements.
Much like claymore knights aren't going to make much progress 1v1 against anyone with significant tank, perhaps the mage will be better served switching to their "sabre". Due to this, I might recommend a mixed water/earth-based offence.
Making use of the kit's access to impatience, numbness, sunallergy (+flamepillar), healthleech, nausea, icicles, and calcify to push a DoT-centric affliction offense that leads the target into decompose range (NOT trying to drop a full health target with a single decompose) sounds like the best option. I can't guarantee this will be 100% effective, but it should be worth more than a cursory look.
The only thing that will count really for mage is utilizing immerse and suffuse along with crystalbinding to stack afflictions, and then maybe stack more afflictions as they're trying to cure out of those.
Without fire, this is what you have access to for physical afflictions:
Water
(Immerse) Poor elixers, asthma
(Suffuse) Nausea
(Icicles) Weariness
Air
(Howl) Healthleech
Earth
(Sidesmash) Clumsiness
Crystal Binding
Numbness
Weariness
Who knows, maybe someone could figure out a way to afflict quick enough with these to accumulate for decompose. Maybe someone will figure out a way to properly keep icicles on the target. Sticking addiction would help greatly, but you'd have to utilize on Hasten for impatience to help it stick, and doing so drops water attunement.
I'd really like to see someone figure this out, because I feel I'm not adequate at all with afflictions to compile something for affliction mage.
Fire primaries will not affect the water attunement that you need to build to use this style.
Sunallergy (scorch), impatience (hasten), and the double-afflict slow-salves/dizziness (dehydrate) give several powerful and/or high-priority afflictions without impeding water progress.
‘Every sword’s a weight to carry. Men don’t see that when they pick ’em up. But they get heavier with time.”
Getting your point across about Mage would be a much more successful process if you weren't disingenuous about everything to do with it. You either do not want to acknowledge the actual design intent, or you want to misrepresent it. What your posts have done is give most people here a good look at your ability to identified balanced mechanics - or more, your lack thereof.
I still hate how much mana it costs to do spells however.
Risca definitely deserves much of the credit for figuring it out, and I'm sorry it bothered you to think I implied equal share of it when I meant both of us found ways to code with the information given.
I would love to have the robes, but I do not possess enough credits to purchase it at this time. Even a mana sip ring would be nice, but I haven't made good money lately to buy extra credits.
Also, as far as I can tell, trying to use mirroring didn't work like I thought it would. It read:
This enhancement causes the spell to increase your mana by its cost, instead of costing mana. It can be targetted against mobs.
But when I use it, my mana still drops instead of filling up. Could it be clarified if it's a bug or its intended use?