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With them mentioning revamping the mage class, what changes would you like to see?
Lithion
Member, Alpha Two
For me, i would love to see more pure arcane abilities like the purple magic missiles ability. I know most of the abilities focus on elemental combinations but it would be cool to have a more simplistic raw arcane damage build that maybe isn't as effective as elemental combos but still can be effective.
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I like when you need to do a combo and have some skill to do damage too.
Oh no, please, no more sheep. Lol
I agree with @Lithion about more pure arcane ability. Except maybe reserving the most powerful for the MAge Archwizard unlocking powerful arcane blasts of essence itself. Kind of like a nuclear EMP blast, but an arcane blast that does some damage, but more interestingly would disable or consume all the essence around, disabling others from using a magic ability for a few.
These could be augmented in lots of ways, and have a huge variety of softer CC, which is the other thing I associate with Mages.
Vortexes of energy that possibly silence, streams of raw power that slowly push enemies away, cascades called down upon the unsuspecting from above their heads like meteors or like we saw in Apoc, maybe to root or Daze...
I'm a big fan of mages being able to do 'Area denial' through soft CC to discourage people from bunching up, because it's thematically easier to balance than giving them massive AoE damage imo. It's fine if it comes with some damage too, but at least if it has soft CC on it, you can make the cost high, and then people might finally think about whether they need that many AoE mages because if you're 'paying' mana for CC that doesn't stack, it starts to matter.
That's the game style I like. Glass Cannons and ArchWizards can just augment all that with elemental stuff and make them do more damage.
Mages are Artillery. A Basic Mage should have big slow chunky AoE spells, not ALL of which are damage but all are high impact 'Trump Cards' being layed down on the battlefield which everyone on both sides needs to react to, they are NOT a DPS class, when a Mage dose damage its the LETHAL HIGH BURST that matters not the 'per second' part. And you should really have a LOT of utility, a spell applicable to most situations in the game but which is not the ONLY or nessarily BEST way to handle that situation vs what other archetypes can deliver.
Mage dispropirtionaly high impact needs to be balance with lots of counter-play options. Spells should be lost durring casting (but not the mana) if you take too much damage and a mage has reduced movement speed when casting as well as big visually obvious windups that telegraph their spells. And the damaging AoE spells SHOULD do Friendly Fire so you have to be tactical when employing them to punish clumping (if the enemy is not clumped then something ELSE is your spell arsenal will probably be better, because the enemy will have some other vulnorability which is why a wide range of spells are needed to make Friendly Fire viable).
Mage/Mage augments then should Provide a variation on that base. Ramp UP and DOWN the spell size/speed. Up to real Nuke levels with one augment, down in cast time to rapidfire magic missile spamming with another, Penetrate spell resistence with a different augment etc. These are the kinds of specialization which a player can actually feel makes them unique. Take inspiration from D&D Meta-magic feats here (quickened, empowered, persistant etc ) elemental augments for a Mage are redundant and boring, not to mention illogical, they work well for a OTHER archetypes that want Mage secondary, but not for a Mages own secondary, so don't make every set of Augments that a secondar archetypes gives be the same, that makes it impossible to have good compelling and playstyle oriented augmentation for the 'pure' combos like Mage/Mage.
Many Non Mage second archetype augments for a Mage base archetype should focus on reducing oponents counter play against the mage by relaxing a specific aspect of the Mages counterplay vulnorability. Cleric augments could reduce (but not eliminate) Friendly Fire, Rogue augments make your casting animations less observable so your spell is not telegraphed, a Tank augment makes you not lose spells on taking damage, a Ranger augments can give full movement speed when casting etc etc. A bard augment lets you precast a spell but not release it untill you want as you litteraly juggle orbs of ready to release spells that can release in a burst. All of the things which make a mage hard to play as CAN be removed with the right augments, just not ALL of them so players have to prioritize, and in all cases they gain some of the play style of other archetypes in order to do so.
The mage as it exists now is what it should be with 4 different 'counterplay-mitigation'' type augments on it and spells that are half the damage and half the utility they should be. This is because the Mage has been designed WITHOUT the augments in mind so it has been made 'end game' ready prematurely with a certain narrow 'run and gun' style which I feel SHOULD exist in game, but only as the style of the Mage/Ranger (SpellHunter) Class. Thouse 7 other Mage based classes need to have their own style.
Seconded. Scope creep is a thing. There are still things that need to be hammered out and an entire archetype that needs to be actually revealed and implemented still.
But seriously, making iterative design passes on archetypes is not scope creep. I do agree they have lots to build out. And would also vote that finishing Rogue and Summoner are critical path.
It may be they have one team working on those archetype builds. While another team is working on archetypes gameplay iterations. While other teams are doing all the other things.
I am just here to disagree on the use of scope creep in this discussion
Lol
IMO that should be the Bard
IMO that should be the Bard
To build off your idea of molten ground, I wanna see the rock ability combined with a fire blast which than explodes the rocks to do a massive AoE explosion.
I think like-2-like archetype synergy should exist so long as it is based on coordination and skill between 2 players and not just "we each spam things that stack". Many games either omit or activly exclude such synergy which reduces player choice as it means right off the bat 1/8th of other players are not viable for partying with.
That said the example provided would be doable by a solo mage, as any one mage can cast all the lava and ice spells themselves sequentially to make this combo go off so it's not really a true synergy in my book. A synergistic effect would need to come from skills which have been augmented from different secondary archetypes, and thus nessesitating 2 players would required.