CASTERS, DMG, HP: Serious problems.

[Estidn]

As of now it seems PK skills play a lesser role in a fight now-a-days because fights are over so quickly. Damage has gotten to the point where a encircle can do 500-2000k damage and a spell can do over 5k. We either need to significantly lower damage for PK or significantly increase hp.

On the subject of casters being overpowered. From what I can tell yes, they are extremely overpowered. Mana shield doesn't even have a working trainer atm. (Not sure what's up with that one) But the main issue is isn't enough protection against casters. Mirror shield = Thornshield/Fireshield,  Mana shield (not working?)=sanc. Then you have armor/shield/ice shield/stoneskin/steelskin/ect.

    Now looking at the fact that caster equipment is way to easy to get. A caster who is a t4 lvl50, without a single piece of QEQ can easily kill a melee t4 lvl50. For casters a major focus is the be all and end all. They're aren't disarmable and their is no defense against it.

    From what I remember Mord had created the classes so that they were interdependent with each other. Fighter were supposed to be high HP with decent damage, rogue was supposed to be a skill based class with medium hp but dodge/phase type skills to make up for the lack of hp. Casters were the damage class with low hp. Now in my mind with the damage the way it currently set up is about right. Casters are doing insane damage. Fighters are doing shitty damage and rogues are doing decent. The only problem lies in the hp gains. All three of the types of classes hp are VERY similar. I've seen casters with 3000hp rogues with 3500 and fighters with 4000. Now the only problem with that is the damage doesn't match up.  At the rate of current damage. Casters should have 3500 Rogues 6000 and fighter over 10k. Now obviously increasing the hp to those high of levels would throw off the balance of the game. So I'm guessing the best solution would be adjusting both the balance of hp and damage to make it meet the how it was originally intended.

Now on class interdependency. I.E. getting rid of woodsing. Why in gods name would you want to get rid of the only class interdependency we have. For an obvious example of why interaction between players is a great thing look at our pbase. I wish I had a chart to show it but ever since we put grouping back to normal, the pbase has skyrocketed from what it was before.

 Now for my rant- Skill trees suck. Fix the basics first.
That's all for the rant

[Xeriuth]

I play a caster mostly, and I think they are very easy to gear. There is a handful of caster gear that is questable for, but most of that isn't even flagged, so anyone is capable of wearing it. I could give a list if need be, to have flags given to such equipment. With the way caster gear is, max stats are very easily attainable, being charisma 100 and all other stats at 22.  I always said I would like to see the cap on charisma lifted, and it can be still. Just decrease the bonus gained from charisma slightly. Less eq would have to be altered and maxing stats wouldnt be as possible if you were shooting only for charisma, like melee shoots for damroll.  This would be the easiest fix in my mind but not sure what everyone else thinks?

As for how powerful we are in relation to melee. Not very, unless using a major focus. This can be looked at in two fashions. PvP and PvE. I think it'd be very difficult for a mage or esper to ever take down Gojira the said toughest mob in the game. To defeat Gojira you tend to need to be melee, or a priest whom can just heal themselves to make the fight go quicker and easier. I'm not sure how it'd be with a major focus as I haven't really played around with one so can't say for sure. For levelling purposes, casters are easier to start with than melee, just for the fact you can gear them up from the getgo, a melee you have to quest with and some quests require you to be higher level to even do so you arent at your full capacity to level quickly. Once you get geared melee levels pretty quick, just as casters do..... so again a fix is to simply make more questable caster gear? 

Now in a PvP sense casters can be powerful, but don't last very long. This is really hard to say atm anyways and with skills/spells being overhauled making an argument on who's overpowered is irrelevant to me. The balancing should be looked at once the new skills/spells are in, or are available for testing on test port. As for casters with major focuses yes they do deal a lot of damage, and it should deal a lot, but with new equipment with spell defense maybe it wont be as powerful? Impossible to say at this point in time.

[Xeriuth]

Overall focuses don't need much work right now because with new skills/spells and new equipment with spell defense, we don't know how that'll help defending against spell damage.  So until all that happens the quickest fix is to just lower the multi's of majors to be 150 percent of minor staves multi as opposed to 200 percent.

Also eliminating the charisma cap, and making charisma have less of an affect on damage boost.

But using the ungeared melee person, casters just because gear is easily attainble, casters are better, but an equally geared melee they are about equal. That's just my point of view.

[Estidn]

So X your suggestion is instead of lowering their power. To just shrug it off and make them stronger? Just lower the multi until the new skilltree's come in?

[Tocharaeh]

On the subject fo spell defence the problem that I see with the flags that are never used is that they aren't used due to the fact that they take points away from other stats. So basically, if you were to run around adding spell defence, you'll be forced to nerf other melee gear.  See, unlike us the majority of muds out there (when i say majority I mean 90% of them) outright have you build your stats from the start. You roll stats, then move on to train them up as you level until you hit your natural maximum in racial stats. This is to simulate growth of a character, not "hey, I'm Superman". If we do one thing, we have to compensate for the loss of the other. i.e.;
 I add spell defence to all melee gear that is qeq
 I remove stats (str, hr, dr, ac) to keep items "balanced"
 now casters have maxed stats, and melee has LOST dmg for defence against magic.

The Spell defence/breath/magic whatever molly listed, created by Morde though was a good idea was horribly thought out. WHAT uses breath anyway?

Ultimately what needs to be done is that those halfassed aspects that morde never finished need to be done away with, completely scrapped, and instead have it all factored into AC. There is a huge different between someone like me who has all of the best eq in the game save a couple pieces, and no real AC to speak of. Whereas a caster who also has no AC to speak of, with a spell multi can now outdo my ac and go right into the negatives...whereas I who have cast everything I know onto myself and I get to a +17 rather than a +23. So, my +17 vs.  casters -20, or -40 with major focus....is now procted from me, and meanwhile all I have done is slowed myself down...not taht it matters because I can't dodge magic so far as I can tell.

here is a quick question to everyone who MIGHT know. I don't think I've ever dodged fireball with drunken master, phase, or dodge. Can anyone well me if they can? I know a GM casters have everything, and espers get phase.. So melee can be dodged. Anyone know if this is the fact for melee vs. caster? CAN magic be dodged (not the 'base attack, laser spraying magic either, but FIREBALL)?

We also need to possibly come up with a system for defence points that would not take away from ther overall 15 points we get for making lvl 50 zone gear. Maybe set aside their own points to deduct from? Might do us some good, because otherwise the people who will hurt the most in any kind of reform will be the melee.

Finally, as for interdependancy that supposedly exists> gypsy's tinker, manipulate, AND woodsing. Why on earth are they the ONLY inbetween class? Thieves get poison...which doesn't work. All skills are detrimental to the items. The only other beneficial things I see here is embue armor, enchant, and remove alignment...which are all highly dangerous spells to even cast....with no way to repair any items. What were we thinking when we created these things? Item broke, and can't be fixed! Great idea... No, we need to put in a subskill here and there that actually can fix what has been broken. Seems so silly to be to mess somehting up, and then cry about losing a one timer because you didn't want the !evil on it anymore.

I think gypsy skills need to be spread out across the classes a bit. Maybe throw manipulate to the warriors, have them keep their staff making, andf then give tinker to ranger or something?

[Xeriuth]

Well no, not shrug it off. Just do a quick fix, until the skilltree's come in. Why balance now, just to balance later? Redundant?

Toch does have a good point in just combining spell def to AC, but in turn it should be different I feel. Just make the points out of the 15 it takes less per. Some items can be more protection against melee less against spells, vice versa, or equal then. Could end up making it so there isnt always just one set of eq, might have to change it depending on who you fight. Just a thought.
Dodging fireballs does make sense, even phasing past the spelll and striking the opponent. Would be a good addition but would have to be dependent on the spells itself, seperate flags. Like as you said you can dodge a fireball, but dodge a spray?
The whole dividing gypsy skills.. there is always Britnoth's idea of seperating them into races. Or another idea, is to just put them part of the different professions when they come in?

[Britnoth]

Well, spell resistances have been completed. I decided against fixing the other things for now.

Hurray!  Ok back to the issues.

In the addaffect list we have the following affects to put on equipment:
20) Paralize Defence     
21) Rod Defence       
22) Petrify Defence     
23) Breath Defence       
24) Spell Defence

They exist in OLC, and they also have been set on quite a lot of pieces of equipment in the game.

Yeah, well so far whenever I see an item give one of these, I take a step back, because:
1. They are pretty uncommon to see.
2. They are on items that otherwise suck monkey nuts.
3. They are pretty vague, -5 spell defence?

Is -5 meaning I take less, or more? Does it even work? Is it 5% less damage or 5% chance to avoid? Just 5 points of damage less??

And even if it does work, and I crawl  dozens of zones to find such uncommon items, because they are on such sucky equip otherwise my damroll will now be through the floor anyway, making the whole exercise pointless for anything other than PK. There instead Ill just take slightly longer to die anyway.

Putting more items with these bonuses in, will not help a mobs lack of spell defence either.

Which brings me to the second point: Caster equipment being too easy to get, no questing needed.
This is probably true, since int, wiz and cha were never cherished by the players at the time when we made most of the quests. Hit- and damroll was all they cared for, and so the player preferences have partly decided the stats of the high profile quest equipment.

Now I'd be perfectly willing to make some caster equipment as Quest prices, even if it means creating new quests in existing zones. That's what we are doing all the time in the old zones that we update, and a fact is that we often have trouble thinking of good quest rewards that would not spiral the stats on everything.
So that's not the main problem here, instead the problem is that the existing caster equip would have to be nerfed, before we could put the quests into action.

Which means balancing, plus a mass change - which is coder work, not builder.
And which would affect all casters in the game.

Scarily, I think youre seeing the point I'm trying to make.
Right now, you could remove int, dex, con, wis, and maybe even strength, and you would lose nothing in terms of gameplay.
Everyone maxes these stats as a matter of course, leaving interest in just damroll, and charisma. They cap far too easily to leave anyone a decision on what equip to use, or what kind of strengths and weaknesses their char might have. Character growth in this respect is entirely one dimensional.

And for spellcasters it is much worse. As Toch already said, all the good quest stuff is melee centric. Why? this kinda thing is why:

(2 steps from Yorke square, is a newbie jewellery shop, with)

an emerald ring is a type of treasure made from base-material
It can be taken and worn on TAKE FINGER
Its weight is 1 and its valued at 4000 coins.
If worn it will give you --
     5 to your Charisma

Plus five. And there are lots of other such high char items around the mud, easily available even to the bad explorers like me, which give +5 or greater. When you have over 20 item slots to wear things, it is pretty straightforward for everyone to easily reach 100 charisma.

Now, If I'm a builder. I want people to do my quests. If spellcasters already have 100 cha easily already, then im not going to put in items that give even more charisma than existing equip am I? Even if I am allowed to break the item stat rules, its not worth bothering: a +6 or +7 charisma ring isnt any use if you are maxed already.

So everyone keeps giving melee items as rewards. Or items that give permament spells and so on.

The problem here was having charisma, a stat that was considered weak and so given easily available + items without concern,  an irrational increase to your spells power without then rebalancing all the items that increase it.

As of now it seems PK skills play a lesser role in a fight now-a-days because fights are over so quickly. Damage has gotten to the point where a encircle can do 500-2000k damage and a spell can do over 5k. We either need to significantly lower damage for PK or significantly increase hp.

...

Now on class interdependency. I.E. getting rid of woodsing. Why in gods name would you want to get rid of the only class interdependency we have. For an obvious example of why interaction between players is a great thing look at our pbase. I wish I had a chart to show it but ever since we put grouping back to normal, the pbase has skyrocketed from what it was before.

 Now for my rant- Skill trees suck. Fix the basics first.
That's all for the rant

Well, if you reduce damage much you will need to adjust the HP of mobs, so I would guess that changing the players HP is going to be a bit easiler from that viewpoint.

Id get rid of gypsys having woodsing and tinker exactly because they are not promoting class interdependency. An ability that is utilised by logging on, tinkering a few items or singing to a few trees for half an hour, then giving your produce to another char and logging off is the worst kind of way to do it. If i want to be useful, I want to be online, in a group interacting with others; not a pet I log on once a month to give you a staff. 

Cannot say whether skill trees suck or not yet, but yes, the very basic things at the core of the game: char stats, damage, unique strengths of each class are the reason people want to xp, quest and so on, to improve their chars and make them feel valued/effective. See my previous post.

Overall focuses don't need much work right now because with new skills/spells and new equipment with spell defense, we don't know how that'll help defending against spell damage.  So until all that happens the quickest fix is to just lower the multi's of majors to be 150 percent of minor staves multi as opposed to 200 percent.

Also eliminating the charisma cap, and making charisma have less of an affect on damage boost.

But using the ungeared melee person, casters just because gear is easily attainble, casters are better, but an equally geared melee they are about equal. That's just my point of view.

Well, +50% is still a huge boost, I was thinking more +20% at most...

An even better solution to increasing the charisma cap: Just stop it affecting spellpower at all. Why does being a good conversationalist, or pretty, or empathetic, make you better at casting a magic fireball again? 

Equal on paper maybe, but as has been said before spells are alot less resisted than melee... though with the latest change that may be less so.


I suppose this all comes down to how brave the imms are willing to be in making changes. I've not been back long, but I see alot of familiar faces around. Are you making changes to please old codgers like us, or that will interest and draw in new people?

Is tinkering (hoho) with such things really going to have the effect you want, or are you willing to risk losing some people with changes they dislike to really make the improvements needed?

I'm always willing to give suggestions, if asked.

Brit.