Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Mage blizzard should be reworked
rodzor
Member, Braver of Worlds, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
The blizzard spell as it sits now has basically no place in pve or pvp, basically an RP spell.
These are the 3 main issues I see with the current blizzard spell:
1. It is an AoE around your character (when should a ranged DPS be diving into a group of enemies?)
2. it does very little damage, I understand the freeze effect procs off the chill it applies however you can do that with hoarfrost and cold cone instantly instead which is much smoother and also ranged.
3. if you cast the skill you are unable to do anything else during the entire animation so you might look cool doing 20 damage per tick however you are a sitting duck and not much of a threat to the enemy in PvP.
Overall the spell just doesn't feel good considering how far it is in the spell tree, you have ball of lightning which is a monster in PvE and it also has good use in PvP, and you get that spell much earlier on. I really can't see a use in any situation for the current blizzard, but feel free to prove me wrong in the comments if I may have looked over something with the spell.
These are the 3 main issues I see with the current blizzard spell:
1. It is an AoE around your character (when should a ranged DPS be diving into a group of enemies?)
2. it does very little damage, I understand the freeze effect procs off the chill it applies however you can do that with hoarfrost and cold cone instantly instead which is much smoother and also ranged.
3. if you cast the skill you are unable to do anything else during the entire animation so you might look cool doing 20 damage per tick however you are a sitting duck and not much of a threat to the enemy in PvP.
Overall the spell just doesn't feel good considering how far it is in the spell tree, you have ball of lightning which is a monster in PvE and it also has good use in PvP, and you get that spell much earlier on. I really can't see a use in any situation for the current blizzard, but feel free to prove me wrong in the comments if I may have looked over something with the spell.
1
Comments
I'm also not concerned with the 'sitting duck' aspect.
However, these two things combined should see the damage increased.
So, imo, it isn't a case of needing to be reworked, it just needs to be balanced - and it isn't as if we currently expect the classes to be balanced.
1. cold cone has, well, cone shaped direction, it isn't very far either;
2. if you were to use hoarfrost (which if I remember correctly) can reach a lot farther, then you still need to walk to apply cone of cold
I dont't think it needs rework or buff. but if anything, it could always have a passive upgrade in the future.
So, in regards to cone, it is actually a pretty far range even though the cast area starts at the character, also once again both those skills are insta cast and you freeze the player so you can kite away/blink while casting another ability. With blizzard if you begin to cast that you are a sitting duck, it is definitely not worth a suicide in to cast the ability.
I do kind of agree with you here though, a couple passives could definitely save this spell, however the base spell would still be almost useless(last spell you would put any points into)
DAOC had tons of sieges and stuff like that. Hibernia mages had a PBAE, like blizzard, and it became one of the deadliest spells in sieges, as it went through walls. It can be used it creative ways, and should definetly be in the game imo.
Where I'd like to see this spell used is as a rotation break. It should be something so situationally powerful that if you see the right opportunity to use it, you drop your rotation, get in to position, cast it and hit big numbers.
To me, any spell that I can look at and think "that fits in a rotation" is a spell that needs to be adjusted, not the other way around.
Could just make it a placeable aoe?
To me (others may well disagree) the notion of it being a point blank AoE (PBAoE) is what makes this ability.
If it were a placeable AoE, the "skill" is using it would be to have your cursor where you want the spell when it's time to cast it in your rotation.
If it is a PBAoE, the skill is in getting yourself to the most opportune spot as quickly as you can, casting itand getting back. There is skill to be had in ensuring your larger spells are all on cooldown while you are moving, and there could even be build synergy in regards to.taking abilities that can be cast on the run.
I personally will always rather see abilities that take player skill to really use over skills that just kind of don't. A placeable AoE is a small amount more skill than just a nuke, but it is only a small amount more.
Also who said mages have to be ranged dps? especially when u have secondary archerype with say fighter or rogue down the line. You might even see the opposite where mage mage might give u the ability to make blizzard a ground circle aoe instead
Arcane circle->magmafield-> hoarfrost->cone of cold-> lightning ball-> laser beam-> chain lighting-> full charge lighting strike-> 3 auto attacks -> lightning strike... rinse and repeat. Casting a blizzard at any point will interrupt the rotation to do less damage and less debuffs, not worth. especially since you can only freeze twice in a short period of time anyways.
This is all true based on the damage Blizzard does right now.
Once we get the full combat system implemented, and we start having groups of players understand each others capabilities better, this is likely to change.
Any tank that has the ability to AoE pull players to them has great synergy with this ability.
Keep in mind as well, we can expect to see at least 24 different augments for Blizzard, each of which could well alter the ability in drastic ways. I'm sure some augments will add CC, some others may make it a placed AoE, some others will increase the damage, or the area of effect. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the augments for this ability made it a PBAoE on a friendly target (ie, you cast this ability on your tank as the center point).
This is why we can't really judge an individual ability right now - all we know for sure about what we are seeing is that it is not the final form of the ability.
I agree with you, it staying a pbaoe skill. I trust the best mages will find a great use for it in sieges and things of that nature in pvp
You're missing one of the strongest synergies with Blizzard - and that's the fact that it spams "Frozen" on enemies, refreshing Conflaguration on the enemy with the Thermal Equilibrium talent.
Yea i think it might just be super unfinished, I'm hoping augments/2nd archetype will add a lot more variety to mage for our pve rotations and pvp scenarios.
Yea that's what I hope for too, I haven't played other classes as much so I am not sure how unfinished their skill trees are but it just feels bad to have a dead skill on your skill tree. I am not really saying we should have all the promised skill variations at this moment, but at least have a legitimate use for every skill they are putting in the game currently.
Blizzard isn't affected by the 2 freeze limit for some reason. As long as it's not immune when you cast it - it keeps conflag up for the entire time you're channeling Blizzard.
For PvP, it's pretty lackluster - but it's not hard to hold your conflag + blizzard combo until Blink/Dash is on CD and use the rest of your kit to fish out blink. Freeze immunity only lasts 15s while Blink has a CD of 30s.
Okay, I wasnt aware of that ignoring the freeze CD, but it sounds like an unintended bug to me since it should be the same debuff as other freezes. Probably wont be like that for too long. If that is the case it might be worth using in big PVE aoe pulls at the end of laser combo to shatter again with lightning strike.
Aiming is only one skill.
An MMORPG should encourage many skills - including aiming.