Casting Level - Spell Slot Gear

[Hoss]

I am working up some design plans that would alter spell slot gear and likely remove casting level gear from the game. My main goal in looking into these are to remove poor design methods that lead to poorly attributed gear proliferating through the mud. It is a very difficult thing to balance and in an attempt to get down to the root cause I wanted to explore the following:

1. Possible removal of CL gear: I think we really missed the mark when we added casting level gear. I think the main reason the gear was added was because mages were overpowered and 'trash' mages became very prevalent. I think that casting level gear has the sole purpose to limit that 1 aspect of the game and brings next nothing 'fun' or 'dynamic' to the mage class itself.

2. Slot Gear: I think that slot gear has really proliferated out of control and I would like to simplify slot gear without making a huge impact to standard game play. For certain classes, +slot (especially for clerics) is a game changer, which makes gear much more meaningful than player skill. There are a few methods I have in mind for rebalancing this, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

[Attai]

1.  I think removing CL gear would be awesome, I think it would be better to replace with +slot gear though so that if you happen to have a naked mage you can still have use but not as much because you can't mem as many spells...kind of how like clerics are now

2.  Slot gear I look at like +dam for a warrior, a 10 dam warrior will be more useful than a naked warrior just like a 10 heal cleric would be more useful than a naked cleric.  The power of a heal of a naked cleric and a stacked legendary cleric is the same, what changes is how many times they can do it

Gear usually is more meaningful than player skill, no matter how much skill you have a naked basher isnt going to solo a 20dam legendary autohasted basher

[Kir]

I think we need to take a look back and remember why Casting level gear was implemented in the first place. Anybody and their mother could get a mage to level 30, so you'd see large groups of absolutely naked mages relocating it and tenting\stunning fully equipped zoning groups. People cry now because of Mumu, but if that stuff had happened to the current player base you'd see mass suicides. Implementing CL gear was a big step to curb the trash mage dilemma that had plagued arctic for a while. The sheaf thing was way too much, but I think CL seems to help curb the "riskless pk". Sure people might have backup sets, but only 1-2. Before CL it was infinite.

Even when we were having the nightmare wars two wipes ago, it was our clans biggest concern to keep people stocked with CL gear. If CL gear didn't exist, our enemies would have had to have dealt with 7-8 nightmaring mages with absolutely nothing to lose constantly harassing them. It would not have been fun.

[Gnua]

If CL gear didn't exist, our enemies would have had to have dealt with 7-8 nightmaring mages with absolutely nothing to lose constantly harassing them. It would not have been fun.

Perhaps CL could only apply to relo and area spells? I've always wondered if the staff and playerbase felt we had such a problem with naked trash mages casting locate object and enchant item that we needed to introduce a mechanic to stop that aspect of trash mages.

[Chisul]

Gnua, that is a great idea.

I'm not a big fan of casting level gear and I've been toying with the idea of the opposite gear effect...a save spell boost or more prevalent and available save spell ranks that can seriously reduce the damage and effect of spells. But I think it punishes the non Mage because gear slots and ranks have to be devoted to spell saves vs. damage or stats. Shrug.

The other thought I have is impose a huge damage reduction effect to relocate and teleport. You can poof and spam...but the spell damage would be laughable until the effect wore off. I'm thinking one tick after the poof the effect wears off. This effectively cripples the Mage bomb without having too big of a negative impact on the class or game mechanics.

[reed23]

I think CL is a good way to keep mages balanced and avoid riskless PK.

If I understand Hoss correctly, the alternative that is being considered is removing CL, but only allowing like 1 9th slot or 2 8th slots at lvl 30.  You would have to get gear to increase your slots which would make the character more playable.  One problem.  I know if that were the case, people would just riskless poof to people, throw the 1 nightmare (probably with 3 other buddies who were naked and could also throw 1 nightmare), hope that out of the 4 nightmares thrown a few people would get stun, then use other slots do dps them down at 100% lvl 30 casting power - being naked.

CL is very easy to obtain.  I do like the idea of adding more +slot gear to the game and reducing natural slots, but i do not think that CL should go because it does truely deter lazy, trash mages.

[Super Tacoman]

make it so relocate only works to group or clan members or flagged chars.  no more surprise mage bomb.

too much +slot gear is easy to fix.  put a cap on the number of spell slots you can have regardless of gear.  so if you have 10 heals and get another +6th slot it does nothing for you.  you are already at the max.

[Hoss]

make it so relocate only works to group or clan members or flagged chars

We are currently discussing changes like this and how they would impact the game.

My grip with CL gear is that it doesn't provide the mage anything fun or exciting, it only forces them to collect a CL set. After we implemented the gear, it quickly became very common place and easy to get, which made it more of an annoyance than a hindrance to be a 'trash mage'.

[reed23]

Hoss,

Yes it is a semi-annoying to collect CL gear, but that is not correlated to being a hindrance to a 'trash mage.'  Yes it isn't too exciting to collect CL gear, but its not very exciting collecting a +5 bash shield, + dam gloves, and a decent prime to make a warrior semi playable either, but both are necessary.

I think the CL system does reduce trashiness.  No question about it.  My recommendation is to implement some sort of change you are thinking to that will make mage gear more exciting, but keep the CL system.  Any 'decent' piece of "new" (implying your new change) gear will obviously be +CL as well which will make it easy to still reach 30 CL

[Aristox]

Disclaimer:  I haven't talked to Hoss about any of this yet, so do not consider this as a made decision, just me joining the discussion.

What if CL were removed and the bonuses it inferred were instead linked to common stats?

The New Intelligence:
-Continues to influence mem times and learning.
-All damage spells use intelligence of caster to determine damage done. The level-based calculations are removed in favor of INT based calcs.
-Affect power of buff spells tied to intelligence instead of level (number of mirror images, distance of locate object, enchant item, etc).
-Affect power of debuff spells tied to intelligence (weaken, jinx, etc).

The New Wisdom:
-Affect durations of offensive spells (stuns, holds, etc) are now tied to wisdom instead of level.
-Affect durations of buff spells are now tied to wisdom instead of level.
-Number of area targets hit is tied to wisdom. Each will hit a minimum of 2 targets and they get WIS/3 extra targets, so with 14 wis you would hit 14/3 + 2 = 5 targets.  With 27 wis you would hit 27/3 + 2 = 11 targets.
-Ability to relocate to non-grouped, non-clanned targets is tied to a specific wisdom level (25?, 24?).


What we end up with is a system that doesn't impose a stat with one huge purpose, we make mage's need gear to be effective and we create a bit more competition for wisdom/int gear (sorry clerics and druids!).  Honestly, the same concept could be applied to Clerics, Druids, Shaman (sub in CHA for WIS?), DKs and Paladins without much trouble, and that might be a great thing.

Just a thought.

[reed23]

Aristox - I like your idea, but you are essentially doubling the CL system with your proposal.  All you have done is transferred "CL" to be INT, and also added another Wisdom component that will be required to be operating at "full" capacity.  I like the idea of doing away with phony CL and tying it to intelligence, but it appears that your proposal and hosses are on polar opposites.  Will make for good discussions.  I do think that intelligence needs to affect mages a lot more than it currently does.

[Bryton]

I like the idea that if you relo to a NON group member you get effected by

> a lag ( like a summon lag)
> removes buffs like mirrors, Shields, and so on..
> makes them easier to bash/ save spells.

I'm sure there are more things you can add and obviously they don't need to be effected by all this stuff but this would eliminate trash poofing..

[gulca]

Here is one idea.

New stat: Focus/Max focus (max increases per char level)

Every time a mage cast a spell, it has to make a focus roll. The higher the focus point a mage has, the better chance of making the roll.

Failing focus roll will result in one or more of the following
1. spell disrupted
2. spell lost
3. focus point lost up to twice the amount
4. spell mal-function and be casted at a much lower power level (explained later)

Making the focus roll will result in one or more of the following
1. spell lost
2. focus point lost (0 to 100%)

Focus points get lost the following way depending on chance/roll:
1. Casting spell
2. Getting hit by spell
3. Getting hit by melee

Chance of losing focus point is dependent on:
1. Spell circle.
2. Current focus point.
3. Mage level.
4. Int.

Amount of focus point lost is dependent on:
1. Spell circle.
2. # of target. (explained later)
3. Spell power level (explained later)
 
Focus points regain in the following speed till it hit the max
battle < standing < resting < resting with deep concentration < sleep

Mage eq comes with one or more of the following affect on focus
1. Immune melee (resist %)
2. Immune casting (resist %)
3. Immune aggro spell (resist %)
4. + focus point
5. + focus roll chance
6. - spell circle
7. Focus regain
8. + int
9. Immune spell disrupt
10. + Spell power
11. moon affects focus point

All relevant spells now have target # and power level when you cast.
1. Target no: relevant to area spells and buff spells. Higher number you set, the more targets the spell gets to. Ex blur can be casted with 5 and 5 members of the group will be blurred.
2. Power lvl: Default power lvl is tied to mage's current level. You can over cast your power lvl (max 30) even if you haven't reach the level yet.  A level 10 mage can cast fireball like a lvl 30, but he will have 20 lvls of risk of failing the focus roll.

So in this system, we can make the mage class pretty colorful.

A normal mage casting high circle spells (spamming them) might drop focus points fast and the mage will be disabled if he don't switch to lower risk spells.

Elite mage eq will somewhat allow mages to cast more often at higher level power. 

Solo mage? Pop one of those immune melee focus eq.

Naked mages will be able to still cast spells but at a much slower rate and riskier and less effect.

We can probably even consider cross robe casting with higher chance of focus point lost. A white robe can cast nightmare with huge focus point penalty and vice versa. And there is no stopping in cross-class casting with even bigger penalty.

[Gnua]

Aristox - I like your idea, but you are essentially doubling the CL system with your proposal.  All you have done is transferred "CL" to be INT, and also added another Wisdom component that will be required to be operating at "full" capacity.  I like the idea of doing away with phony CL and tying it to intelligence, but it appears that your proposal and hosses are on polar opposites.  Will make for good discussions.  I do think that intelligence needs to affect mages a lot more than it currently does.

The new system allows the imms to have finer grained control over the spells than the coarser CL cap.
For example utility/zoning/cr spells might have a much lower int/wis requirement to use effectively but relo /area spells might have a much higher requirement to avoid sickness/failure. This sounds like a lot of work and I also agree this feels like more CL (under a better name) rather than less CL.

[Jarrad]

I would just like to chime in on the +slot gear side of things. My legend cleric had for most of the wipe between 18-20 heals, which translated to 2 short of the maximum (afaik) for good align cleric.

To be honest when u take rapture and amelioration into account more than about 12 total heals is almost pointless... in 99% of fights in the game you mem full before you run out of heals... In any zoning group there was almost never a pause for memming, people afking was usually what slowed things down.

Shaman's have nap, which enables them to remem quickly also. Druids are about the only caster for which memming can be an issue... Mind inversion/temporal vision? +slot eq is already irrelevant...