Some comments on Archmagic

[Mektor]

Hello,

Here are a few comments regarding some archmagic arcana :

The lower level ones seem to be in a good place and are very similar to those found in other schools, so I won't comment on those.

Archmagic is also the only school to have some useful perks, namely Focus Morium and Enchanting. At least when using it alone (i.e. up to power level 10) focus morium does not really show a difference. The only reason I use it is for buffs to last longer. All school buffs, which usually last between 5 and 6 minutes at 100-120 skill range, are extended by a minute and a half or so.

The renewal of buffs is a very annoying aspect of being a mage. Focus morium helps with that and it is very much appreciated. It could be interesting wish that focus morium helped extend them further. It doesn't improve the strength of a character, but is rather a Quality of life improvement, which would come at the cost of good level moriums. Would be a nice change to have a little buff on that front after all the nerfs to power so that the "magic review" does not end up being nothing by a long series of nerfs. Whether the nerfs are needed for balance, they do take their toll on morale.

There are only a few spells I think need to be looked into.

First is Glacier, which is the ice equivalent of Meteor, so to speak. At the moment, the targetting seems broken. It is much harder to target it than most other spells. Range seems very short for some reason, and LOS is more complicated than direct damage. I have no idea why. Damage also feels low for a rare spell with minimum skill of 79, 30 mana, a long cast and a long time before it hits. It doesn't do more damage than other rare spells with shorter cast time, mana costs and lower skill req (i.e. sun strike, Holy lightning, explosion, etc.).

Arcane Empowerment is a very nice spell. However, unlike other buffs, there is no consistency in the power it gives. At nearly max level, it seems to range between 23% buff and 27% buff. I have no idea why this changes so much, but the spells working they way they do, if there is a "chicken vs. egg" thing going on, this is an annoying issue ot have as you cannot simply override this spell with a better version of it. Casting it multiple times makes it look like it is removed, when it is in fact not removed at all, and leads to the spell falling off even when buff timer shows it is still up.

In the CC category, only Ice Wall is worth its salt. All others have durations way too low to be worth anything in either PVP or PVM, unless I happened to test it only against mobs with very high resists.

Finally, Summon Fiend needs some love. It is an epic level spell, which only requires 36 archmagic. It is supposed to summon one or many imps, but it always summons only one. You can ahve multiple imps out at the same time, if you cast it everytime the cooldown is off (3 minutes). In reality however, the imps are suuuuuuuuuuper weak (even weaker with the recent change to spell damage). They die in one hits. For all intents and purposes, it is a joke spell. I would recommend buffing the imps a little, and making it so a single summon creates the maximum amount of imps you can have (max being 5 imps at 150 int) so that it feels like an epic spell worth using from times to times.

[Mektor]

Little addition : Magus Tempus Renuo Contego (Evil Omen) is supposed to "curse the target so the next harmful event that affects them is magnified", but what it does is reduce Arcana resistance by 1 (at about 110 Archmagic and Incantation). Based on info provided, that means the next spell will hurt for 0,25% more. Definitely needs to be reviewed.


Ventus Noxa (Water Trap) lowers your z-level, which can be used in multi-floor buildings to go down one floor. I'm guessing that would work for all similar spells (Swamp sink?)