Mage Concept Ideas

Sigrain

A lot of people are asking for a mage rework, so a couple concepts popped into my head. This is just for fun, but you never know it could be inspirational. I encourage people that read this who also have an idea to jump in. I'm not going to get into the intricacies of class balance or anything like that, because to me that takes the fun out of it. Just letting the imagination roll here people.

1.) The Spellsword/Witchblade: With one hand, uses a spellsword made of the conjoined elements. Can imbue specific elements into the sword to unleash devastating 'wave' attacks that focus on  or even fuse elements like fire and earth to create magma waves, or air and water to form ice shards. Or even form a second sword made completely of one element to add to their repertoire or a claymore for massive spells. With the other hand, uses telekinesis to shift and bend the elements created from the waves to quickly add to his assault or form a defense around the mage or an ally. A master of this art can later increase his telekinetic ability by wielding a staff in the other hand instead of an elemental sword. Or instead of telekinesis, tarot cards. That would be pretty cool. Sword fighting while tarot card slinging. Or rework alchemy to create items that you can throw with one hand to create various effects. Think bombs, flasks with various effects (like when Tifa fought with those potions in Dead Fantasy), poison dust, or tiny gadgets powered by magic. 

2.) The Scythemaster: same basic concept but imbues elements into a scythe instead. Have one skillset focus on the physical aspects of using a scythe and the second into the magickal aspects.

3.) The spellslinger: think Avatar, element bending. Add some martial art flare to it. Equip them with a runic cestus or gauntlet. Lift a shard of earth with one hand, punch it to send it flying into enemies with the other. Tarot card slinging may also go good with it. 

Magic is limited only by one's imagination. The combinations are endless. Again, I encourage you to throw your ideas out there! You never know who could be reading, but be nice and courteous please. This is only for fun. I don't want someone to be afraid to express their concepts simply out of fear of being trolled by their peers.

If this gets a good reception, I'll throw out a concept I have for noctu's as well.

Sigrain

Expanding on the spellsword concept:

Dual Swords focuses on 1v1, stacking elemental 'motes' (think battlemage chasers from DFO, cept they stick to enemies) on the mage's foe that leads into powerful, single enemy spells or even an instant kill.

Claymores focus more on group combat, hitting multiple foes with elemental motes.

Example: Incinerate. Requires twelve motes of fire to be stacked on a foe. Deals more damage the more fire motes are stacked, but wipes all motes from the victim.

"Sigrain snaps his fingers, causing twelve motes of fire around Jeremy to glow brightly and explode, erupting in a pillar of flame."

Blaze. Requires two motes of fire on each target. Causes an explosion across the board against multiple people. SYNTAX: BLAZE <target> <target> <target>

"Sigrain swings a burning claymore in a wide circle, sending a wave of fire across the room."

"You are struck by a wave of elemental fire."

"An ember attaches to your skin, seemingly harmless."

"Sigrain makes a crescent motion with one arm, and you are horrified as two embers fuse right before your eyes and explode in your face."

Using dual swords or claymores however hinder the mage's ability to use alchemy/tarot/telekinesis as they require one hand to be free. Giving the mage the decision: Should I focus on stacking motes or combine swordplay with alchemy/tarot/ telekinesis.

Also I want people to know that you can build on my concepts or add to them, or heck steal them even. It'd be interesting to see what you come up with.

Delrayne

I'd be cool with a bender(avatar) type mage class. At the very least, it can't be any worse than the state they are in now.

Abigail

I would like to keep the Mage class simple to play and ideally focused on damage and team support as it currently is. However, most of my combat revolves around "embed focus;staffcastx1000" and I don't enjoy that at all.

It would definitely be awesome to do a sword+staff kind of thing. Imbue a sword with an element, turn it from cutting to elemental damage, combo a sword slash with a staffcast, that kind of thing. I'd also like to see attunement deleted forever and replaced by something more akin to essence or devotion because oyster-hunting is annoying as ****.

Alternatively: replace Crystalism with Tarot, turn Alchemy into a general skill and give Mages a utility skillset that incorporates the functions of necklace of purity/eldritch robe/toxic ring of pestilence into it. Maybe let mages sew their own eldritch robe a la Amazon cloaks, and customize it like a guild item. Tarot would fit the theme pretty well IMO (they're not necessarily demonic in nature, just used by demonic practicioners) and wouldn't make them any worse off. Throw in an elemancy trick that lets them teleport a tarot card to an enemy a la dopplethrow to make up for loss of ranged ability from no Cataclysm.

Juran

Tarot is incredible, it's one of the most powerful skillsets in the game - but it's like that way for Noctu. It would be an awful skillset for Mages.

You'd have deathtarot but no hinders, ranged lust and hangedman but no pinchaura, and without devilmark you'd only be throwing one card at a time. The synergy that makes tarot so amazing for noctu would be entirely lost on Mages.

Abigail

Juran said:

Tarot is incredible, it's one of the most powerful skillsets in the game - but it's like that way for Noctu. It would be an awful skillset for Mages.

You'd have deathtarot but no hinders, ranged lust and hangedman but no pinchaura, and without devilmark you'd only be throwing one card at a time. The synergy that makes tarot so amazing for noctu would be entirely lost on Mages.

Which is why you'd have Elemancy revamped or patched to provide synergy with Tarot. It wouldn't be that difficult to put in an ability replicate the function of Cataclysm to allow ranged staffcast (a la warp), erode (a la pinchaura) and transfix, for example. As for hinders, Mages have flood+icewall, which blocks most methods of escape.

Garryn

I am not interested in adding any more shared skills than what we already have - unless they are pure utility (such as Trailblazing/Pioneering), they are a nightmare to balance across the classes that have them.

Bathan

Could Templars drop smithing and get tarot?

Iluv

Let's take more demonic classes and give them magick and anti-magick.

Sarrius

Remake Elemancy to work a combo skillset. You may use two spells from Elemancy per combo. Certain spells leading before others cause unique effects.

Revamp Crystalism and rename it. The new system works off of a weight system - each vibe has X weight, you may maintain 100 weight in vibes. These vibes exude from you a la deathaura.

Recycle essentials in Alchemy as a general Arcane studies skillset, with a lot of new additions. This would be the skillset that contains utility and misc combat effects - it is a '1000 spells like a dnd wizard' concept. Mastery of time, space, etc. What we are looking at here is a sort of Mage Trailblazing/Pioneering/Shadowbinding.

Abigail

Sarrius said:

Revamp Crystalism and rename it. The new system works off of a weight system - each vibe has X weight, you may maintain 100 weight in vibes. These vibes exude from you a la deathaura.

As it stands, having all one's vibes up is no more debilitating than a full set of rites or entities, with the added drawback of having low damage output without a sash, collar and diadem, and no afflicting ability. Even if it meant being able to carry vibes with you, only being able to summon a limited number would gimp a Mage unless Elemancy was reworked to be less awful.

I wouldn't mind a combo system where two spells combined produced a unique effect, or even being able to stack counters on an enemy that increased staffcast damage or built up towards an instakill like Death tarot.

Ideally, the Mage should be a flexible, hybrid character -- able to switch roles to suit the task at hand. The elemental forms could be reworked to support this -- Air empowers your vibes and makes them more effective for group combat, Fire greatly increases your damage output for 1 on 1 fights, Earth makes you tankier for hunting and Water gives you travel utility like waterwalking, increased speed, phasing through icewalls, and such.

Sarrius

In my revamp, Crystalism's vibes would be seriously retooled so that their effects are stronger but less plentiful - all of them potentially having some synergy with the remade Elemancy. Current Crystalism is boring and encourages entrenched warfare - and retardation, above all other forms of aeon, needs to go.

EDIT: In my vision, Mage would ultimately be an entirely new class, like Druid and Hunter was, in my remake. There would be no staffcast. Mage would be a fast-paced spellflinging class with some control elements and a potential for devastating damage combos with the proper setup.

Abigail

Sarrius said:

 and retardation, above all other forms of aeon, needs to go.

Retardation is fine because it affects not only the target, but the mage as well, and while combo classes are at a disadvantage, others like knights will have no problem destroying a Mage in their own vibes. On top of that, since mages really don't have powerful afflicting ability, a competent fighter can easily heal inside it (and if you go into fights without pre-outrifting herbs, you kind of deserve to die in retardation.)

Currently, retardation is the only viable kill method for mages without spending thousands of dollars on artifacts. Removing it would make them useless outside of team fights.

Sarrius

Of course it has to stay - because Mage is a terribly designed class based entirely off of terrible ideas. Retardation merely props it up.

You are arguing a point with me that isn't really valid to the topic - in a remake, Mages would not NEED retardation.

You are arguing based on current mechanics, of which very few would survive today's standard of class design philosophy. Namely because a vast majority of Mage mechanics are awful and toxic to class and circle balance - if not also game balance in general.

Any desires to keep most of these mechanics as is are just shortsighted and inept.

Cadeyrn

Read most of this thread as Mages saying they want to keep all their toys and add new ones to the pile because team combat has moved past the Mage being the strip/pinch of magick and therefore a cornerstone of the circle.

Khizan

Well. You're wrong.

Mages are still a cornerstone of the circle. I'd kill somebody for a good Mage. The problems people have with Mages are:

• They're very very linear, and "overwhelm them with damage" isn't the winner it used to be.
• They're tied to intelligent, so without artifacts they're amazingly, amazingly squishy. We're talking about 336 health at aspect squishy, which is so impractical in the modern combat environment, and also means that they're bad at bashing.
• They're very reliant on retardation for their kills, and retardation is so powerful that it eats up their entire design space. Every skill they have has to be balanced against Retardation, as well as changes to other classes.
• Their role in a team combat is basically "drop vibes, staffcast, and hope they don't two-shot you."

It adds up to the fact that, while they are a cornerstone of combat still, they're just not that fun to play.

Abigail

I agree with Khizan. Vibes are indispensible in team battles and a good Mage paired up with a good Runeguard is a powerful duo. However, I am very reluctant to fight anyone one-on-one because doing so would necessitate the use of retardation, and I know how unfun retardation is to fight in, and I'm reluctant to bash because I don't have the health and resistances to handle any bashing area that actually grants experience at a decent rate. If I wanted to spend eight hours a day staring at a screen and pressing a button over and over again for minimal reward, I'd get a job. Unfortunately, switching professions would require I give up somewhere around 2600 lessons and a reincarnation and there's simply not many professions out there where you can play the game with one and a half trans skills.

Iluv

Buy credits like everyone else.

Abigail

Iluv said:

Buy credits like everyone else.

I don't have hundreds of dollars to blow on a free text game like everyone else does.

Iluv

It doesn't take hundreds of dollars to get an elite membership and work on getting a second class for your character.

Cadeyrn

Every circle has unpopular/ less-usable/used classes - Predator, Diabolist and Bard spring to mind. If the new professions make you think your profession sucks, thats okay.. but the solution isn't to demand in your loudest internet voice that you are so underpowered, so maligned, so ignored and need an entirely new range of skillsets to bring you up to par. I'm not entirely sure, but I think IRE has a few years experience of building and running MUDs, so I think they probably have some plans on what is happening next.

Abigail

Iluv said:

It doesn't take hundreds of dollars to get an elite membership and work on getting a second class for your character.

Still $25 more than I can afford.