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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
The Mage Archetype Feedback
keyframe
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I'll start this by saying that I usually play mage classes in mmo's. That I'm well aware most of this is going to change / not meant to be addressed now, but will be for future tests. That as they stand, while I don't 100% like the direction, most of the abilities do feel good. (The exceptions I'll mention down below). That while I'm going to be fairly critical down below, it's coming from a desire to make the game better, that I appreciate the effort put in already, and what they have shown so far has felt good.
I think that's the points I wanted to make. I'm sure I have a few more but they aren't as important. I'm curious if others feel the same, and look forward to seeing how the archetype develops.
- The mage feels like a direct import of every MMO ever. - This is by far my biggest disappointment with the mage archetype as a whole. Just about every spell feels like any other mage I've played. Even some of the element buff swapping (shatter) is quite similar to WoW, and that's supposed to be the big defining feature of the mage. With how much effort is being put into everything else I'm left a bit disappointed at the direction of the mage. I'd love to see something non-elemental or just different kinds of magic in general.
- Element Swapping and Spell Debuffs - For the most part, elemental swapping feels decent when you pull it off but doesn't really feel like a main part of the kit at all. Most of the early spells have zero cross interaction with other elements, while each element only really having 1 interaction from Ele1 -> Ele2 overall. Then there's the spells themselves, where there's only 1 spell per element that directly applies any of the different debuffs. Even the Prismatic Beam only applies 1 of the 3 main debuffs you need in order to continue cycling through each element. Fire being the main exception here, but burning stacks beyond the first don't really seem to do much. (I really only saw the damage go up by 1 per additional stack of burning). Which leaves the weapon finisheres to help bridge the gap, but relying on a proc from your weapon to debuff your target just feels awful. So If elements is the direction the team wants to stick with going forward (See above), I'd want to see a lot more element interaction put into the kit. I'd also like to see a lot more of the debuffs being able to be applied so each player has a lot more choice in how they go about building their mage.
- Elemental Empowerment - Overall the buffs applied are quite nice and actually gives the player a reason to use their weapon(s), which I really like. That said I'm not really sure why there's the active ability linked to it. Why would you ever want to remove that buff from your weapon? Arcane doesn't do anything by itself (though that is something I'd love to see, arcane empowering the other debuffs or something else based on the debuffs applied), and there's no other reason in the tree to not use it. So having it as an option doesn't make sense. I'd either like to see it do something like Arcane Circle and have it give you all 3 at once or have it become Arcane Empowerment or something like that.
- Illuminate - This one is a minor thing but I liked the little orb of light that you can control in the early early early videos of the mage that were put out. That's all.
- Arcane Volley - If the main direction of the mage archetype is elements and playing off the others, there needs to be a reason to use an arcane attack. Why would I waste time casting on Arcane Volley when I could be refreshing Conflagration, or setting up the next set of debuffs needed? The player needs a reason beyond a bit of damage to stop playing into the main part of the kit. Perhaps arcane acts as an amplifier, depending on which element is currently empowered, or arcane consumes whatever debuffs are applied but gains extra properties based on the ones consumed.
- The Talent Tree - This one is basically guaranteed but while I'm at it... A talent tree that only really limits the players choices by removing 3 out of the 27 choices, doesn't really feel like there's choice to be had.
- Utility Spells - Again not the focus of these beginning tests but I'd like to see more utility spells. Especially the bubble levitate one from way back when.
- Slumber Breaks from Burning - Self explanatory and unsure if it should be removed or not but it was very frustrating going through the different spells and then remembering that the target was burning and having the CC break immediately.
- Frozen was inconsistent - This is probably more tied to performance then anything but half the time the mobs seemed to disregard or had a delayed reaction to being Frozen and would continue to move.
- Burning Stacks - Mentioned this above but applying multiple stacks of burning didn't really seem to add much beyond a very small (1) uptick in damage and the duration of the burning debuff. This leads to wanting to go for frost / lightning over fire most of time as you get a lot more out of the shocked/volatile or chilled/frozen debuffs.
- Blink's Pause - There's a pause in momentum right before the blink goes off, and while a lot better than some blink abilities out there, doesn't feel quite right.
- Magma Field / Ball Lightning - Maybe it's that I didn't really participate in a lot of dungeon / raid content but everything / everyone just seemed to move out of these abilities rather quickly (or I'd have to stay still and take lots of damage), making me not want to spend the time casting them.
I think that's the points I wanted to make. I'm sure I have a few more but they aren't as important. I'm curious if others feel the same, and look forward to seeing how the archetype develops.
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Comments
Finally your part about Magma Field / Ball Lightning, I completely agree. If I cast it after mobs were agroed they just avoided the spell, if I cast it as my opener they moved out of it quickly. Because of this, I have removed both from my spell line, they are just not worth the long cast time to "maybe" hit the mob once.
i agree the mage overall feels good and i can see where you're coming from with the wanting a bit more or more emphasis on the swapping or a build that isnt based on that. I assumed that more elemental options would come from future arch-type mixing but it would be good for them have these thoughts in mind when they redo the mage a bit i think they said in phase 2? But yea right now super early levels is nothing, early levels is either fire+lightning or ice+lightning but by the time we hit current max level you can do everything pretty much
i agree on 'why would you want to remove the elemental empowerment ever' other than maybe for pvp purposes since it makes your weapon glow, you would turn it off so you can hide in foliage better, but it would be nice if it wasnt such a niche use case and had more meaning or like a temporary buff or something. Could be like on use, next weapon strike forces proc
arcane volley is actually pretty good damage (if you're curious i posted a video in the official discord of killing a bear while using it for dps) but i think for a fire mage (burn -> conflag) it has 0 use case cause you want to get the next set of burn stacks going asap. When doing it more for the ice side you have forced periods of waiting to do the next shatter so it has a use there, but it seems weird that it doesn't really fit into any build other than by circumstance/filler
before i forget i wanted to comment on the "Frozen" status
so basically the issue is "SNARE" counts as a "CHILL" effect and thus if they have been snared you can then freeze them which is cool. The issue you will run into with this is they can only take 2 applications of chill or freeze within a short period of time and then the target gets a 10s status immunity. In theory, you can freeze a target twice quickly and then wait out the 10 second chill and freeze immunity. The problem i ran into with this is it feels pretty bad in group play.
So if any other person in the group is causing chill or snare they will get chill immunity after the initial application expires, and then you really only get 1 freeze+ shatter combo. Trying to figure out if someone else is causing chill/snare quickly to plan out how you want to go about this doesnt feel good to me. This also means 2 mages do not synergize well if they both have chill/freeze in their kit unlike the burn+conflag version. The frozen status itself is very powerful and i think the issue you ran into is if they had already started the attack animation it will "go off" where they are at or casted it at. I ran into this issue with the goblin mages because you can freeze them during their cast but it will still lob off the poison lump so it is mostly good for things that do a lot of physical attacks since they get stopped from continuing. Slow hard hitting is basically uneffected by getting frozen so im unsure if it is server issue or not since it has to do with how far into the 'cast' the target is in. I imagine its crazy op in pvp though but im unlikely to meaningfully test pvp until i decide to join a guild but we'll see lol
I would argue lightning into fireburn is better because its sustained dps vs burst of ice/lightning and is not negatively affected by your party. I am unsure myself on the way burning + conflag works because i did the fireball spell upgraded into conflag vs mama field into fireball then conflag and the conflag damage was a good chunk higher with magma field but i thought the burning was based off spell damage. It may be it was combining the conflag + additional burn stacks together that the field was providing but i didnt fully test this since i wanted to try ice/lightning and wasnt doing a lot of group stuff since generally the exp wasnt really any better than alone for me
magma field + ball lightning definitely feel more like group PVE oriented spells or large scale pvp battles not skirmishes. Ball lightning is free volatile stacks for your spells while its traveling through the target(s) and magma field adds a lot of free burn damage but if the targets are too low hp or move a lot they dont get good use. I did see where people would use ball lightining on a single mob you have it trail you in the ball lightning path ie: teleport past it so it follows you in the ball lightning traveling
and for the utility and fact that we basically unlock everything by current max level of 25, i agree it doesnt feel right that we can basically have everything but i hope that in their plans to update the class in the coming months it includes ways to spend points that makes you feel more like a defined build rather than being able to do everything
but yea main thing for my tldr of this is frozen/chill sucks in group play because target gets status immunity to chill pretty much right away
Oh I agree, doing so after shocked was pretty decent burst damage, though my point was why use the shocked debuffs on that when you can (re)cast Frostbolt and get the Shattering Shards effect (Frostbolt on shocked targets) and then set up for another combo with a different element. You get the burst damage plus you're continuing the rotation.
In general, the mage toolkit and abilities feel/look good.
Arcane feels very underwhelming, lacks abilities, and is missing an identity. Arcane volley is good as a baseline/basic ability but find I barely use it in later levels. In general I don't like spells that make me stand still like arcane circle, even though it feels like I need to use it.
I don't particular like that you are "forced" to use all elements and their associated conditions to do optimum DPS. I'd like it if I could just focus on one element if I wanted - like just being a fire mage. But as mentioned, burning doesn't really scale after initial application. Each element/arcane should bring something to the table that can stand on it's own feet and scale but still offer hybrid interplay if element swapping for different conditions is desired. I think this is especially crucial since damage type resistances/vulnerabilities will be a thing in this game (bring the right tool/element for the job).
I've always been of the opinion that the weapon tree should not just be passives but active abilities as well. And that our archetype should "augment" our weapon tree passives/abilities. If our elemental empowerment augmented those, it would give more basic abilities for each element and potentially more reason to switch between elements. I'd go so far as to say that our empowerment would just change (or at least add to) the damage type of whatever active weapon we are using (it does add elemental damage for the final combo finisher already), almost like a permanent "enchant weapon" on the mages own weapons. Alas, augmenting is functionality for secondary archetypes and the technology doesn't seem to exist yet.
I'd love more than just elemental magic + arcane as there are so many other types of magic. But 4 types does seem like it might already be a lot to manage/balance, so if that's what we get then I'll be happy.
Ultimately, the class is missing abilities that are likely still cooking and we are missing sections of the talent tree. So who knows what direction it will end up going, but at least we can give the devs some feedback
The issue with this is, in my opinion, the same one they are trying to avoid with the way they are going about the augment system. That implementing active abilities like that would be a LOT more work. Keeping things relatively simple and using additions like elements/conditions/debuffs that any archetype can use allows them to give players another choice without having to create a lot more work. As they want players to be able to use any weapon, so anything they add like you mention would have to be built for each archetype multiplying any work they need to do for any new weapon by at least 8, if not more. While it would be neat to get something specific to the archetype, I'd rather they make each archetype or the classes more detailed.
Regarding the bigger spells while solo, see a nice group of mobs charge Lightning Ball from just outside their aggro range, cast Magma Field as you move closer, do Hoarfrost+Cone of cold. Ball gives everything volatile thus more magic damage, they get frozen in the magma field and then shattered either because mobs are still in attack radius of the Ball or a full Lighting Strike.
Bigger spells in group, probably don't use Lightning Ball because of how much it can aggro, place Magma Field under the tank, move in for Hoarfrost+Cone combo, shatter as you please. When the frozen immunity buff stops after ten seconds, you can use Blizzard for another aoe freeze if necessary but again risk to aggro to much.
I can get great value out of all the big spells
In opposition of your comment on Ball Lightning, it is VERY strong considering you can shatter monsters with it. Ball lightning is specifically strong when monsters follow the path of the ball, so the tank (or the mage itself) can kite the mob into the ball's path while applying frozen to targets. Honestly, if tanks understand this concept, mobs are getting destroyed.
I think that the Frozen debuff is bugged right now, because when the icon disappeared, I can still shatter the monster with lightning skills.
Blink is a good skill overall, but there is a pause in the momentum when the animation finishes and it feels awful.
I have hope that they will add more choice of elemental skills with the second archetype. It would be insane to play with Dark Magic as well