MAGIC AND ENCHANTING UPDATE - 7/25/22
Good Evening!
As promised, we’ve begun implementing our Enchanting and Magic balance with tonight’s update. This was originally supposed to be a quick balancing pass but evolved into a much larger rework of the systems. We’re hoping that with the changes we can finally put a nail in mage balance and continue forward into Season One with a healthier environment for players in both PvE and PvP.
DISCLAIMER: Originally we had hoped to complete all the changes, test them, and refine them on the test server before releasing them to live. However, as the patch grew the amount of code in the backlog made it difficult to fix issues on the live server and caused more work for Rex. Because of this, we are releasing the changes in an unfinished state. We are doing this so we can more quickly refine them and polish them and move on to other changes that are needed before Season One.
Just bear in mind when using these systems that they are not 100% complete and tested. Additionally our patch notes we tried to document to be as complete as possible but may have missed a few spell changes, but the spell descriptions in the spell book have all been updated individually describing their conceptual changes (if any). Certain changes listed will not be live immediately. There will be some issues and more changes coming over the next week. Our goal is to have all the changes finalized and functionally as intended by the end of the week. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause all of you guys and just know we’ll be working as fast as possible to fix whatever issues arise and push the rest of the changes.
ENCHANTING CHANGES
In addition to magic rollout, this week we'll be implementing the new means to obtaining and applying enchants:
The main thing we wished to address with Enchanting was accessibility to the player base. Enchants are very powerful tools and a fun gear progression that few players have access to. To address this we will be making enchanting possible via an NPC enchanter for a gold fee (We will introduce in game knowledge of this when the time comes). To do this you will have to bring an Enchanting Rune to the vendor who will then allow you to apply it to your weapon/armor/jewelry.
We’ve also changed the way Enchanting Runes are obtained. They will no longer be craftable, instead becoming loot dropped by various end game mobs. Mobs will drop “A Peculiar Rune” which you can then infuse with Infused Particulate (IP) to turn the Peculiar Rune into a rune used for enchanting. The Enchanting Rune received is random, and the amount of IP needed to empower the Peculiar Rune varies as well.
Another thing we wanted was to allow more RP leeway for players who wish to use enchants. The lore frowns heavily upon the use of magical items and magery but with enchanting being such a powerful and interesting system we wanted to provide an avenue for players to justify using them while not completely ignoring anti-mage RP. To do this all Enchants given by the vendor will be Consortium approved and marked as such. While this won’t save you from the most die-hard Decusian purest it does allow Republic-aligned players to engage in the system without having to break their RP and deal with rogue mages.
The caveat to legality though, is only player enchanters will have the ability to “over-enchant” an item, which is the process of applying runes over the normal, stable capacity and imbuing stronger properties. This process is a risky endeavor as over-enchanting runs the risk of breaking the item if pushed too far, as well as injury, or death to the enchanter.
MAGIC CHANGES: BASE DAMAGE FORMULA
The base damage calculation formula for spell damage has been changed. We realized early on that the changes made to the formula in the first review were flawed. It cannot be understated how much of an improvement this will have on the expediency in which we can tweak and change magery. This will result in a huge change to the damage output mages can expect, especially on lower mana cost spells. Damage will be substantially reduced for lower mana cost spells and increased for higher mana cost spells.
Here are some examples.
For a mage with 120 Arcane Incantation, 120 Arcane Linguistics, 50 (Maximum) Spell Damage Increase, and 125 Intelligence:
- Current: 20 mana spell results in 94 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- New: 20 mana spell results in 40 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- Current: 40 mana spell results in 107 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- New: 40 mana spell results in 77 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- Current: 60 mana spell results in 46 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- New: 60 mana spell results in 113 (on the top end) damage before resists.
- Current: 80 mana spell results in -87(on the top end) damage before resists. (Yes, negative.)
- New: 80 mana spell results in 150 (on the top end) damage before resists.
As you can see the curve of the last formula made it impossible to have high mana cost nuke spells and made lower mana cost spells too powerful. With the new formula, it follows a more natural curve scaling with mana cost.
While this seems, and certainly is, a massive nerf to the damage output of mages it does not tell the entire story. The formula just calculates the BASE damage of spells, spell damage can change on a spell-by-spell level. Last review we introduced new mechanics to the magery system for the different trees. Heat Stacks, Plague Stacks, and Frost Stacks being the main ones. With this pass, we’ve further improved and refined these mechanics to try and create a more fun and engaging system where mages are rewarded for ‘combo’ing spells. We’ve likewise given Pagans some much-needed love after being left behind during the last pass of the system.
With the changes, we really wanted to focus on identity for each subclass of mage and further incentivize mixing multiple spells to achieve maximum damage output.
REMOVAL OF SPELLS
We’ve removed roughly half of all spells. There are several factors that led to this decision. Many of these felt redundant, unused, or did not fit well with the design and balance we wanted for magery. But this is also to help newer mages who are breaking into magery get spells that are useful to them through research. To further help with this we’ve moved several spells into abilities that can be purchased with animus under the skill trees, removing them from the spell research list.
The main reason is that a spell list of 300+ spells is simply not something we are capable of tracking and balancing. As we say often; we’re a small dev team of volunteers and have to choose wisely where we allocate our time and resources. With Rex being our only coder he’s needed for every change that is made and can only do so much. We hope with these changes magery will be in a much more manageable, balanced state and we can devote more of our time and attention to balancing and improving other aspects of the game.
It’s also important to note that this is not the final spell list for mages. We still plan to introduce new powerful and unique spells through the acts that can be obtained through various methods. Some cut spells may be introduced in other ways as well in the future. While the spell list will never reach the staggering levels it once was, it still will be expanded on and improved.
Below we tried to list all of the major changes. There are a lot of minor tweaks to spells that aren’t worth noting or we may have forgotten to list some changes here. Some of the things listed may not be live yet and will come later as we work through the rest of the change.
GENERAL ARCANA
General is remaining very much the same. There have been some tweaks to how their passive functions but generally it will be the same. With a lot of the utility removed from the other trees General will become more of a utility tree to support the others.
MOVED the following spells into abilities that can be purchased with Animus from the Skill Menu:
- Energy Aura
- Blackrock Staff
- Shield Of Righteousness
- Levitate
- Sex Change
- Telekinesis
- Greater Telekinesis
- Fates Embrace
CHANGES
- Eye Of Darkness - Changed the look of the world when you’re scrying mode, but expect more changes to this spell in the coming week including cooldown and duration changes
REMOVED
- Holy Lightning
- Heavens Descent
- Implosion
- Magic Trap
- Magic Lock
- Remove Trap
- Camouflage Item
- Expose
- Feather
- Dispel Field
- Mass Dispel
- Cloaking Veil
- Exchange Life
- Healing Flash
- Greater Recover
- Restoration
- Blade Spirit
- Energy Vortex
- Animated Weapon
- Energy Field
- Wall of Stone
- Magnetic Pull
- Weight
- Sanctuary
- Time Spasm
- Enchant
- Consecrate Weapon
- Haste
- Spell Shield
- Mana Drain
- Curse
- Arch Protection
- Curse Weapon
- Gift of Life
- Cunning
ARCHMAGIC
We felt like Archmagic was overall in a good place design-wise, being more focused on CC and utility than raw damage. We wanted further this by allowing different ways to apply Frost Stacks as well as a bit more choice one when the Archmage freezes their targets. We hope the changes will result in a cleaner and more satisfying “combo”ing of spells.
MOVED the following spells into abilities that can be purchased with Animus from the Skill Menu:
- Ice Sword
- Obelisk Of Wrath
- NEW ABILITY: [ColdSnap - We’ve added the ability to choose when you freeze your target via a new “Cold Snap” ability. This will allow an archmage to stack frost stacks on many targets at the same time and choose the best time to freeze them. To go along with this we’ve extended the
CHANGES
- Frost Stacks (Passive) - All offensive Archmagic spells have a chance or a guarantee to apply 1-2 frost stacks depending on the spell. Frozen Footprint puddles dissipate once a chill stack is applied to a target.
- Frozen Footprints limited to 1 per tile max (down from 3), These puddles cause chilled stacks
- Ice Wall - Reduced duration to 10 seconds, no longer applies frozen stacks
- Shatter/ Wither - Shatter now finds all frozen targets within range and applies damage to them all at the same time. Shatter now has a short cooldown. Shatter damage increased
REMOVED
- Migraine
- Air Blast
- Water Blast
- Harm
- Air Vortex
- Mind Blast
- Hurricane
- Tornado
- Incognito
- Ice Bridge
- Purge
- Summon Fiend
- Air Elemental
- Water Elemental
- Dampen Spirit
- Motion Confusion
- Tomb Trap
- Slowing Spirit
- Paralyze
- Water Trap
- Cold Stare
- Terrify
- Feeble Mind
- Clumsy
- Avalanche
- Horrific Beast
- Wisp
DIABOLISM
For Diabolism we really wanted to push for the idea of forbidden magic raising the dead while spreading disease across the battlefield. The Plague Stacks didn’t quite function as we had envisioned originally so we redid them to be better in line with our original design concept.
MOVED the following spells into abilities that can be purchased with Animus from the Skill Menu:
- Corpse Explode
- Shadow Slip
- Summon Familiar
CHANGES
- Plague Stacks (Passive) - Changed the way in which plague stacks calculate their damage and decreased the duration of a stack before decaying to 18 seconds.
- Infection - Now applies plague stacks and resets the decay timer on all plague stacks on the target.
- Disease - Applies plague stack and increases the total number of plague stacks on a target by 20%.
- Plague - Applies Plague Stack and refreshes Plague Stacks on all targets within the AOE.
- Spread Sickness - Spreads 50% of the Plague Stacks on a target to all enemies in the surrounding area, resetting their timers.
- Poison Strike- Converts 50% of the total Plague Stack damage into instant damage, removing all Plague Stacks from the target.
- Raise Skeleton) - Skeletons can now only be raised from fallen corpses. It will attempt to raise as many skeletons as there are corpses around the caster, limited by the caster’s follower cap. Corpses of fallen skeletons can be re-raised by recasting the spell. Improved the combat abilities of Summoned Skeletons.
- Combine Skeletons- Skeletons can now be combined into 2 higher tiers. Combined tier 1 skeletons make tier 2. Combined tier 2 skeletons make tier 3. Skeletons reanimated with the Raise Skeleton spell always return as tier 1 skeletons.
REMOVED
- Pain
- Disease
- Poison
- Lesser Anoint
- Lesser Deface
- Cursed Soil
- Greater Deprivation
- Lesser Deprivation
- Pain Spike
- Inner Shadow Strike
- Deprivation
- Anoint
- Deface
- Defile Hit
- Greater Anoint
- Greater Deface
- Toxic Water
- Curse Water
- Blood Pact
- Blood Drink
- Leech Poison
- Necrotic Mending
- Blade Spirit
- Summon Daemon
- Raise Warrior
- Exhaustion Wave
- Swamp Sink
- Rot Flesh
- Darken Vision
- Mass Curse
- Temporal Stasis
- Succomb
- Intensify
- Deathly Obsession
- Spike Wall
- Fighting Dead
- Vampiric Embrace
- Wraith Form
- Self Poison
DIVINE
Divine we felt was in a decent place design-wise. They will remain more healing focused than other mage types. We wanted to create more interactions between heat stacks and their offensive spell. We’ve changed the way heat stacks work to become bonus damage, rather than a negative damage debuff.
MOVED the following spells into abilities that can be purchased with Animus from the Skill Menu:
- Sword of Faith
- Fire Bug
- Detect Undead
- Exorcism
CHANGES
- Rain of Fire- Each bolt has a 50% chance of generating a heat stack on the target. (3 bolts)
- Flame Strike - Gain an additional 20% bonus from heat stack crit.
- Judgment- After a gestation period deal damage to the target. Final damage now increases for each heat stack applied to the target during the gestation period.
REMOVED
- Wrath
- Lesser Evict
- Evict
- Flame Wave
- Sun Strike
- Greater Evict
- Volcano Erupt
- Inner Holy Strike
- Inferno
- Bless Food
- Bless Water
- Fire Seed
- Reveal
- Unshackle Spirit
- Shackle Spirit
- Cure
- Heal
- Arch Cure
- Remove Curse
- Lesser Healing Hand
- Noble Sacrifice
- Pillar Of Life
- Fire Fly
- Call Holy Fire
- Fire Elemental
- Awe
- Fear of Death
- Night Sight
- Gift of Sight
- Shield Of Faith
- Enemy of One
- Divine Fury
- Banish All Evil
PAGAN
Pagans were left in a bad place after the initial pass. We wanted to give them some love and bring them up to par with the other mage trees. We wanted to further give them an identity that focused on pets and summons to differentiate them from other trees.
MOVED the following spells into abilities that can be purchased with Animus from the Skill Menu:
- Create Staff
- New Ability: Blessed Bees
- Lure Stone
- Field Of Truth
- Reaper Form
- Enchanted Grove
CHANGED
- Leaf Whirlwind) - Now as an additional effect to the spell will buff your follower/summon increasing its attack speed for 10 seconds.
- Grave Beetles - Now as an additional effect to the spell will buff your follower/summon increasing its damage for 10 seconds.
- Earth Titan - Reducing its rarity from Artifact to Epic.
- Unholy Sigil- As an additional effect to the spell will buff all followers/summons within the area of the AOE.
- Mana Spring - 15-minute cooldown added.
- Regrowth - 20% increased healing when targeting summons.
- Hand Of Protection- 20% increased healing when targeting summons.
- Whithering Grubs - Healing increased.
- Healing Stone - Portion of all damage is stored into stone. A higher percentage is stored from self inflicted damage from Pagan healing. Summoning now costs the caster’s HP.
- Life Tree 15-minute cooldown added.
- Druid Familiar - Completely reworked. Having a familiar out now reduces your total mana from 10-60 depending on which you choose. All familiars (except pack goat) were completely reworked with vastly superior stats and abilities that scale with higher mana cost.
REMOVED
- Throw Rock
- Thorn Prick
- Torture
- Rock Slide
- Pure liquid
- Life Spring
- Summon Fey
- Earth Elemental
- Call Darkness
- Rising Colossus
- Snotling
- Stone Stare
- Swamp Sink
- Disillusion
- Sleep
- Earth Shield
- Dull Weapon
- First Strike
- Cat Reflexes
- Weaken
- Reactive Armor
- Agility
- Precision
- Giant Strength
- Strength
- Hollow Reed