Shattered Kingdoms

Alright, this was originally a post of mine under another thread, which I realized had nothing to do with the original topic, so I removed it and reposted it here for further discussion.

Basically, while I like the prone changes and think they had the intended effect of lengthening combat slighty for melee vs melee brawls, it did little in the way of giving casters the perks recieved by melee classes with the change. If anything it forced casters to rely even more heavily on their already underpowered spells to make up the damage that their charms/controls/elementals/whatever lost do to the lack of a resting bonus to damage.

I will also state that in no way do I think casters should be -buffed- or their spell damage increased. I would much rather just see melee damage brought into line with caster damage, which would work towards the overall goal of making combat longer, and thus, more tactically viable. Increasing spell damage while it possibly might balance casters, would have the opposite effect of the intention of the prone change.

Now, the post from this thread.



Having played two sorcerors, one before the art change and one after the art change, I can tell you even a caster spamming their highest damage spell will not even come close to comparing to the damage a melee class can output over the same amount of time.

I've dug up a few logs, and could pull examples from practically any log out there of your situation with a sorceror spamming acid blast on a PC.

I hope Strai and Theioak do not mind me using them in my examples.

First example: GM sprite swashbuckler vs GM acid(14 art).









Example two: GM griffon shaman vs GM acid(14 art).











Now, in the first example, Strai is a GM sprite swashy, with what I would call an average suit, maybe even below average. If I had to guess he just had mostly stock enchants on the items, owing to the fact that he was hit by several full on acid blasts despite having 25 dex to begin with. Now full hits did roughly 16% a pop to Strai, who is also a magically resistant race, partials did about 7%.

Now assuming every hit was a full hit it would still take ~7 rounds of spamming acid to kill him. The fact of it is, even with a subpar suit of enchantments, Strai saved against almost half of the acids, so we're looking at more like 10 rounds of spamming acid to kill a sprite with barely enchanted gear, without taking into account heal vials or anything of that nature.

Now in example two, Theioak is a griffon he's wearing basically five pieces of gear, and at least one of those is a stat mod as shown by the items melted. He's as enchantless as it gets, and not a magically resistant race, full acids are still only doing ~16% to him, and partial hits ~7%. We'll assume he has sanctuary up since he is a shaman. You're still looking at about the same numbers as the situation involving Strai. Seven plus rounds of full acid hits to kill a griffon, reasonably ten or eleven counting partial hits.

These examples are once again against characters with below average enchantments at the time these skirmishes happened. I can honestly say any sorceror out there would run him/herself out of mana before they'd kill me with acid spam. In contrast, I'd be lucky to go 5 hits against any warrior class using a two handed weapon.

I could pull examples like this from most any log out there. Spells are only powerful when used on the -completely- enchantless, or against races with natural weaknesses to your spell. I would argue that melee currently does at least double the damage round per round that spamming spells on a character would do with the potential to be triple or even quadruple the amount of damage, if those spells are being cast on characters with any sort of decent resistances.

I'd like to hear a bit of discussion on the topic, I know Dulrik was looking for more feedback as to whether or not the prone change brought melee in line with the other classes. I for one do not think that is the case, I think melee needs to further be looked at until an appropriate solution is found to bring them back in line with the non melee classes.

I'm also aware that there shall most likely be a slew of melee characters posting as to reasons why they do not need to be changed further, and a slew of casters posting as to why they do indeed need to be looked at further. Please try to be as unbiased in your discussion as you can be.

The only combat spell I ever really use with my sorc is color spray,
for the blindness or the group attack. Acid destroys too much
and magic missile just isn't worth it for anything but leveling.

Sorcs were never suppose to be damage dealing machines. They have a charm in front of them to protect them while they petrify/acid blast/etc. their target.

How is warlock damage after the recent changes?

I know this may seem like a harsh decision, but what about removing certain enchantments or perhaps limiting them further? As it stands now, one of the major flaws to the melee system is the Subtype system. Some of the subtypes are incredibly overpowered as is, and the fact that you can enchant their damage further, or their accuracy (correct me if i'm wrong on that) to such extents is insane.

Basically, removing enchant weapon period wouldn't be worth it. But the fact that you can take weapons such as say a khopesh, and give them huge boosts to weapon damage and accuracy, on an arguably already overpowered weapon, well, that doesn't make much sense. Would this idea be fesiable? Putting limits on weapons. Like for example, say I don't know, a great axe. It has the most damage, but the least speed and such. Make it to where you can't put any damage mods on it, lbut yet accuracy. Things like that. Granted it would be a lot of work, but is it possible and what do you guys think about it?

I think frankly, the only real solution would be to flat out scrap the subtype system and just start over, but that is a TON of work to do.

Another interesting point: Spell damage doesn't always display "correctly" if you're taking damage from melee as well. But that's a long story as to why and I don't feel like trying to explain it because I don't 100% understand it.

Yeah, acid blast doesn't hurt a lot, I guess I should have mentioned that. But you can also factor in that in addition to the acid blast damage, a sorc would also have a charmed person attacking your target, so there's no way that sorcs should do as much spell damage as a fighter does physical damage.

You are right in the fact that spamming acid blast doesn't do as much damage as a well kit out warrior. But I think there's a delicate balance in SK between risk and power. Warriors have to be on the front row in order to deal the most damage, and that's a dangerous place to be. Casters, however, have no change in damage whether they're on first row or third row. For sorcs, even though acid blast doesn't hurt -as much- as a warrior, they're also supposed to have a charm beating you down.

And besides, there's always dispel buffs, and of course, faerie fire.

Sorcs are supposed to be heavy damage dealers. That's the
tradeoff they get for being able to die to an animated paperclip.
That's the theory at least.
On top of fighters being able to deal the most damage they can
also take the most damage, presently.
If you want to even things out, give all spellcasters heavy armor

Just lower 1 notch the damage output of all melee weapons. That should do the trick.

The prone change was a good step to less powerful melee, but it still remains a little unbalanced imo.

Warlocks are THE damage dealers. Sorcerers are more widely useful, I never considered them the magical damage dealer. They would be last in line in that respect. Priests, necromancers, and probably even paladins can dish out greater amounts of spell damage than a sorcerer.

let me rephrase then.
Spellcasters in general.

+2.

Casters are not allowed to comment here. Sypher and DA shushhh.

Warriors usually stand on the front and get damage from NPCs, spells, melee. A sorcerer who's standing third row and deals an extra 20% dmg is close to overkill. Have you seen what acid does to casters or barbarians or even faerie fired mercs? Not everyone should be dealing extreme amounts of dmg. If the sorceror's opponent has so much mp to negate most the acid's dmg, it is highly possible that he doesn't have enough fort to resist his petrification spell or the will for a sleep spell.

Also think about the age effects. The warriors are wimped automatically after the first age tick and for every age tick. The opposite happens with the sorcs and all kind of casters.

I know that some will say that if the melee will be wimped more (the prone change rocked btw), it will be easier for the warriors to survive on first row. However, a warrior most of the time has to kill NPCs and fast in order to reach a necromancer, warlock, tribunal member, scout, etc etc. Typing c word is already too easy for the third row casters .