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So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able to

Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 7:24 pm
by HoenheimOfLight
Cast it again? Seriously you patch time on all those other moves but skip over ES. The mage has been greatly overlooked. ES is basically useless now with year long cool down time as well as the 500 mp it cost to even use it. As in the words of AVGN, does anyone even test these sh*tty games?

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 7:27 am
by mdimarco
personally i think it is pretty well balanced, would you even have the mana to cast it again? heh I dont after casting my damage spells.

Funny topic though nice job :)

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 9:12 am
by HellFighter
Mdimarco, i have enough mp to cast it again and it's useful to kill 3 stars high lvl mobs

Admin, our energy shield already needs a lot of energy ok but
Why did you slow the cooldown again !!!!????!!!!

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 9:28 am
by WhySoKsed
Mage is unbalanced, barrier was set so after casted your could recast right after it expired in PvP. which means you get 2 seconds in between to start doing damage on a mage which is rigged and unblanced aswell unfair. Mages also have a lot of HP so they are well unbalanced.

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 11:18 am
by HellFighter
WhySoKsed
Maybe you don't do enough dmg, it's quite easy for a rogue to break our energy shield, btw no we don't have a lot of hp or we would hit too low (we can't hit more than 1300 btw though you can hit up to 2000 dmg) and if we have a lot of hp we wouldn't have enough mp to cast energy shield twice and ice shards and other spells.
I'm not talking about pvp but we need to cast our energy shield faster in pve to kill high lvl mobs
Btw the last patch (that was supposed only to fix quests, items and bank) made the cooldown times longer so it's now a real pain for us to lvl.

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 2:02 pm
by mdimarco
hellfire you convinced me. Im not high level so I could see how a shorter cooldown is required for high lvl mobs. I would suggest the cooldown decreases with skill points but a faster cooldown really wouldn't help us low to mid levels anyway so I would suggest just shorter cooldown on ES in general.

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 2:06 pm
by mdimarco
I would suggest dont make cooldown too fast because people wouldn't have incentive to max it since they could just keep recasting their shield. Or you could make shield block a higher ratio of damage to mana cost as you level it up thereby giving incentive to max it. (the ratio doesn't seem to go up much that I can tell now as you level it)

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 3:21 pm
by frostine
I brought this issue up numerous times in other threads but received no feedback from any admin. The fact of the matter is that they are either clueless on how to balance this class or don't care. I sat down and tested the shield myself. Rather than repeat myself I'll just copy and paste what I wrote in another thread:

"I appreciate everyone's input on this convo. Learning that very few mages played beta kind of explains why some of us are feeling quite frustrated. I'm taking a break indefinitely from the game until some bugs are fixed and perhaps further tweaks to the mage class are made. I've invested a lot of time and effort into playing mage and I'm sure a few others have done the same. If we need to put the majority of our points into focus in order for our offensive spells to do dmg that leaves little to be left for vitality. I think this is normal for the class of mage provided that we have an adequately balanced shield skill and strong offensive efforts. As of now, an unmaxed shield cast (18/25) costs over 700 energy (I can't imagine what 25/25 would be), which costs more than a druid rez'ing a lvl 115 player from the dead (somewhere around 600 energy). The shield cool down is too long to recast a second time when caught up with a mob. If the cool down time were dropped from 60 to 45 seconds I could live with that even with the unbalanced energy cost comparative to other classes spells. I assume sacrifice will balance this cost when people can procure that spell.

Also something else to keep in mind is the range of fireball. I actually took the time to play as ranger as well as play alongside a ranger of close lvl to my mage to compare arrow distance vs. fireball distance. Given that mages are a ranged class we should be able to cast a fireball from a similar distance as that of ranger, this is typical of mage classes in other mmos. When I am spotted by a mob and that mob casts ranged spells on me and hits, I have to first run up closer to that mob before my fireball will take off, causing me to take more dmg before I can deliver any. Such is not the case when I play as ranger. I understand that ice shards needs to be a shorter distance than fireball because it is much more damaging than fireball. The cast time for ice shards seems more adequately balanced in this update, which is a good thing.

Anyway, I can't grind on blind faith believing that things will improve as we acquire more skills. I firmly believe that mages could benefit from further beta testing and honest and insightful review. By this I mean playing the game in its current state, not as a mage who already has their skills and is simply playing around testing them out on others in the pvp arena and making videos about it...This class is obviously still a work in progress and could use a serious working over. I'm afraid that with so many new things introduced and the current bugs that must be ironed out, the time for considering a patch for mage may not come for quite a while. This is just some food for thought for the admins. I was really excited the new content looks fantastic. I'll keep my eye out for potential changes in the future and hope to one day return to the game. Thanks for the fun!"

So in a nutshell, Energy Shield is the most expensive spell out of any class to cast. It protects you for either 90 seconds or until enough damaged is received that it falls off. It falls off long before the spell cools down so you can't recast it when battling a mob. You have low hp because you most of your points are in focus so that your spells match the damage output that you had in the previous update. Your dps still blows compared to other dps classes so you die not killing mobs fast enough anyway.

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 3:39 pm
by frostine
You know something is wrong when admins address every other issue in a thread on the forum but can't speak on the issues with mage. One of the beta testers I talked to in game actually plays his mage and is frustrated that no one took his comments and suggestions in beta seriously. Another beta tester admitted that not many people played as mage in beta and stated that they didn't seem to know what they are doing when it came to designing the class of mage. I asked a third beta tester in game why he doesn't play his mage and I essentially got a non answer as he walked away playing his rogue.

Devs and admins...step up and acknowledge the problems with this class and recruit some capable bodies to help fix the situation. Other people are stepping up and speaking out now, finally.

Re: So if I cast ES now after it cools in 2013, I'll be able

Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 4:25 pm
by StarLight
I have no idea what went on in the Beta testing..

But it looks like either their comments wern't taken into effect.. Or they didn't actually test much if anything and joined beta as a "Get free before hand access to look at Otherworld".

So many things were messed up that should have easily been caught if somone had just used the skill once in beta.

I suppose the case is the latter, and the developement team didn't take the feedback from testing.