New Statpack

Khizan

I've been thinking about this while trying to solve the "Where did all my Mages go?" question, and I've come to the conclusion that the game needs an additional statpack. I'll call it Wise.

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Wise:
Stats: 11/16/11/14 or 11/15/12/14, or thereabouts
Balance/Eq: No penalties/bonuses
Sipping: No penalties/bonuses
Resists: No resistances to major damage types

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The intention here is to address what I see as a major issue in the game right now, which is that the intelligence-primary professions are relegated to a rather small subset of statpacks. There's only three available statpacks with a 13 or higher int score, and two of those three(fast, intelligent) have a sipping penalty on top of their already low health. The remaining one, clever, carries a balance bonus that's useful for monks and templars and such, but entirely useless for Mages and the like.  

So if you want to be an effective Mage you have to make a huge tradeoff of tankiness for it. There's no way to get reasonably tanky without dropping your damage entirely into the gutter, and this means that bashing as a Mage really, really, really sucks. Mages are regularly advised to bash below their level, and I know several ex-Mages who are ex-Mages solely because they got frustrated with their inability to bash alone, due to having to hunt way underneath their level to survive it.

Wise trades out Intelligent's eq bonus for some badly needed tankiness while maintaining a level of damage that allows them to bash and doesn't relegate them to the role of retardationbot. While I had Mages in mind when I made it, it would also be of benefit to Bards, Summoners, Wytchen, and any other profession that relies on an int-based skill to bash, and which doesn't mind trading some offense for some defense.

Sapp

I can see this idea working solely because it isn't just going to help one class. The fact that it is beneficial for Bards, Summoners and Wytchen (at least) is pretty excellent. I have tried leveling a Mage, it was horrendous. If I would have had my artifacts that Sapp has it would have been doable, however you are forcing people to spend a decent amount of money or gold to just be able to get up to where they should be statpack wise.

Excellent Idea

Sarrius

Can we also use this thread to analyze other statpacks or suggest other statpacks? I'm sure a few people have 'gripes' or feedback about current ones. I'd like to talk about Fast, Intelligent, and maybe a few others. Namely, I think Fast might need some tweaks in the bonus department.

Iluv

Sarrius said:

Can we also use this thread to analyze other statpacks or suggest other statpacks? I'm sure a few people have 'gripes' or feedback about current ones. I'd like to talk about Fast, Intelligent, and maybe a few others. Namely, I think Fast might need some tweaks in the bonus department.

I, for one, would really like to hear them.

Sarrius

I think Fast just needs to be looked at all around. I think the stat distribution is fine, but is L2 Balance+ fine in this game? I'd assume if we toned it down, we could nix the Sip Penalty. I'm just not sure. I feel like something is very off with the statpack.

Iluv

I just went fast myself and like to see the sip penalty be gone and I wouldn't mind the speed being toned down a bit.

Khizan

Could we actually not sidetrack this thread immediately and amazingly off base with discussion about the Fast statpack? 

It's not like there's a worldwide thread shortage making it impossible to create another one to discuss an issue that's completely unrelated to the proposed new statpack.

Sarrius

I guess the era of "if you want to do tons of 'difficult to mitigate' damage, you should be squishy as all get-out" should probably have been ended years ago. There's nothing that really justifies why a person can't be hardy and intelligent. Wise is a good statpack that I'm sure would see some play. In essence, it is just 'Mage Strong' - Strong comes with a negligible weakness to an element.

Katarsh

I never use the Mage profession for anything other than alchemy. It is absolutely horrendous trying to bash with it, and with how fragile I have to be as a Mage, I won't even attempt combat.

This same fragility in bashing is why my other character dropped Mage and went Deathknight, so I could actually have some fun with bashing again.

Ahkan

We need to revisit stat-packs across the board.