#8
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.
Arawn
