(Discussion) Spell Line - Ideas for Improvements

The changes made to the spell timers and fixing the linking of tiered spell timers is but the first of many many changes and fixes to help improve and expand gameplay.

One of the many things that the linked timers has brought up is the lack of "completed" magic lines. As an example, Flame and Energy lines have a full set of spells, whereas ice and mind don't have nearly as many spells.


Thus, I'm starting a discussion thread for people to offer input and insight on what they feel may be needed to improve the casting experience... Don't just limit your post to what needs to be fixed or changed, but draw from the good things that Horizons does as well.


The magic lines do not just contain ice, fire, and energy.. Druid spells, Mind, as well as dragon specific spells are also a big part of this... so please, this isn't just limited to biped spells here. Everyone is welcome to comment.

Also, in order for this topic to be the best help to the developers, posts need to be kept on topic.



Lets see what we can come up with. http://menkure.furry.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

-Menkure

For the Primal line I would like to see the following

Tearing Winds - Primal DOT and Primal Debuff or maybe a Melee Debuff as they seem to like haveing the opposite type of debuff for dragon abilities.

Shredding Winds - upgrade of Tearing Winds

I would also like to see a set of buffs like our resist/ward buffs that increase the skill or maybe better the damage of spells. I.E. Like our arcane resist/ward buff that effect fire/ice/energy (I think those are what it covers) that add damage or skill to all three acrane caster skills.

Like suggested many times before.
I would love it to see dragons being able to use all the biped spells aswell.
Now before you cry foul. let me expand on this idea.
First of all I find it highly illogical that I can create all the biped spells fully teched, but am unable to learn how to cast them.
But I do feel that there should be some limitations:
As with dragoncrafting we should gain less points in one spell skill needed for casting those spells as the specific biped spell school gains. So only +8 or so instead of 10 or 11.
On the other hand we should still be able to cast a fully teched spell of any school. But should need to use boosters for this on our scales and claws to gain the required amount of skill level to cast said spell.

It would immediately solve the big problem dragons have lack of spells to cast.

I can imagine that some will say. Great another thing dragons are good at. We need to level ump schools to obtain the same.
If that is a problem for some and VI has time for this, maybe a solution could be provided that dragons need to gain the necessary skill not by leveling Dragon but by performing quests which provide us with a mastery that give like +80 to flame, or +80 to mind, just like the mastery abilities for dragon crafting.

Ofcourse we also need the techniques to boost our scales, so we can be good in one specific school. This i contrast to the bipeds who can eventually become masters of all.

Salis

Well as far as dragon spells, here is a couple of realistic suggestions:

1. could be to lessen the spell recycle times and casting times just a little.

2. or, not sure if this is a spell line, but it would certainly be useful to have as a dragon spellcaster. Give dragons the ability to multicast 1 and/or perfect spell.

3. Perhaps not that I expect this one, some sort of a Primal based nuke similar to Firey Strike.

4. a DOT spell would certainly be nice, or perhaps a primal based root spell.

Summoning Spells - Simply needs more spells! They don't have to be damage based, but we've got TWO, count 'em TWO spells to use. *Not counting that JOKE of an "epic" spell, Shining Blades*

Ice - Damage spells! Ice Hammer *Summoning* and Ice Bomb are the only damage spells in the Ice line. It makes hunting fire-based creatures really annoying since most of my spells, as a mage, are fire based.

Energy - Again, attack spells! All I have as an Arcane class is Energy Strike and Energy Bomb. By the by, as a Wizard, why didn't we ever get a Group Energy Defense ability? I got Group Fire and Group Ice as mage, and even Group Mind as Sorceror, but no Group Energy Defense?

For dragons

An equivalent to energy and fiery strike (two would be nice). Maybe not a rooting spell, but a spell to slow enemies down, or stun them for 7-8 seconds.
I'd say a few debuffs too, and maybe one instant healing spell, instead of one of the breezes.
All primal based of course.

I would like to see the "Lasting Embers quest" burning embers crystal either have a higher % chance of working or 100% chance of working...

We all know how accurate our breath weapon is /sarcasm off.

Would be nice to have the DOT from that go off more often.

More Gift spells for Dragons! and Rez spells!

bipeds should have slower cooldown periods for higher level spells vs. the lower level ones, and things like "Epic Spells" that take freaking 20 minutes to recharge, and unless you have taken your 36 levels of mage, only has 1 damage and can MISS your opponent (and does so often without perfect spell). and even with PS and MC, a 60th level Gold Rage out damages an epic spell and has a 1 1/2 minute timer. For something like dark cyclone, you have to be 75th druid or 96th Ranger or other class to cast it. (not to mention 36 levels of mage) to get close to a 60th level dragon Gold Rage.

It's almost a must to have 36 levels of mage for a biped just for the triple damage / no miss ability for any of your normally cast spells.

I like the previous poster's idea of having that ability for Dragons, unfortunately their list of castable spells and the damage they do aren't really that great for a triple damage / no miss attack.

I think one thing we need to steer away from is simply adding in more AoEs in all the lines to replace the lost unlinked timers. It was removed for both consistancy and gameplay imbalance. Just giving the lost spells new icons is not a solution.

The spell lines, as well as schools need to be defined solidly. I would rather see schools defined and non-masterable abilities added to further establish roles for each school. I don’t want to remove choice, continue your quest to level all adventure schools to 100, more power too you! I do, in fact want to encourage making a choice. Being able to do anything you want is not a choice, it is being spoiled. Choose which role you are going to play for this session. If your group needs a healer, you should be a Healer, not spending your time throwing perfect multicast Thunders. If you want crowd control change to Sorcerer and dominate the battlefield, nothing moves or breathes without your consent! Don’t, however, stand there and complain that you can’t do enough damage with your 3 measly teched bombs. <mini-rant off>

As far as spell lines: Is nature intended to be for damage, support, or crowd control? Right now it’s a combination of all. Spirit is a pretty much standalone and well filled out with spells with a defined theme, hurt you heal me. Blight is debuffs. Life and Augmentation are pretty obvious. Once nature is defined more strictly and tweaked to that definition, the Priest lines appear pretty well set. The Nature line may well be left alone as a mix and simply tweak the individual Nature adventure schools with abilities that synch with their fortes. I would just suggest that in any Adventure School pass we look very closely at further limiting access to various spell lines. The nature AoEs and stuns were and are still a crutch for other priest class schools, as is Spirit in a BIG way.

Flame and Energy we know are for straight up damage. More AoE abilities for Mage or Wizard might be nice, but not more general access spells. Ice and mind appear to be pretty much CC and Sorceror abilities augment the weak spell lines. These don’t appear to be intended to be big damage lines, so not certain more kaboom needs to go in these. Ice could maybe have more defensive uses like a wall of ice, etc. That leaves summoning, the redheaded step child of the Arcane schools. The abilities of Conjurer and KNOC are pretty impressive, but the spell line might as well not even exist. We need to figure out what this line is supposed to do before we can start throwing new spells into it.

Except for the distinct lack of buffs for Primal, I don’t see any outstanding issues with the spell line. The casting delays could use a little love, though this can already be improved with delay altering scales and those yummy gummy maggots. Gold Burst will go a long way to helping the Primal/Power heavy dragons. (probably throwing lighter fluid all over everything but perhaps Gold Burst could be a medium yield point blank AoE instead of a supercharged single target ability?)

More input please!

Drev

For Dragons...

1). More Rez, Please. One Rez, at Lv100, Quested, 5k Hoard, 60min recast is Not enough. Nowhere near enough. Any biped can get several rezzes if they so wished, dragons don't have that *option*.

2). At least one Instant Heal casted spell. Primal Instant Heal ability is good, but not enough. You want to lump all dragons into one school, but yet you give us only three weak breeze spells, one breeze ability, and one instant heal ability. Not enough, again. Especially not when the only decent breeze is on a 5 minute timer, as is the instant heal. I'd put this Instant Heal spell on, say, a 30sec recast.

3). More Dragon Buffs. We currently only have 3 buff spells: Countercheck Primal (which nobody uses, because there are very few, if any mobs, that actually cast Primal Spells in the entire game), Promote Vitality, and True Grit. Okay, that's all in good, but where are our Speed+ spells? Alacrity Spells? Armor spells? Primal+ spells? We shouldn't have to rely on bipeds for this stuff. Bipeds don't rely on us, why do we have to rely upon them?

4). Gifts. We currently only have ONE gift. We need more. Bipeds get tons of Gifts, so many, that they can choose what gifts they want on at any given time to tailor to any given situation, and dragons have to run the little buggers down to ask for gifts to be casted on them.

5). A Gold Rage-like ability that is Primal-Based. Currently, Helians really get the short end of the stick, as one of the dragon's most defining abilities, Gold Rage, is Tooth and Claw-based. A Spellcasting Helian who wants to specialize in being a mage, gets shafted pretty hard here. My GF plays a spellcasting Helian, and her Gold Rage can barely do what my (I'm a Lunus) -Ravage- does. That's if it actually hits.

6). While we're on the subject of getting shafted, those breezes and Instant Heal as a Lunus, does jack for me. I might as well not even have the stupid things, to be honest. Could we increase the raw power of these spells and abilities, but decrease the effectiveness of the Primal Skill on them? That way, you give better equalization between Melee and Mage dragons, in how much they can heal. A Lunus Dragon has to pound his enemy flat, because he just simply cannot endure long fights because his breeze spells heal for such pitiful amounts, that it is ridiculous. Instant Heal can be barely a drop in the bucket too, and I'm only Lv54.. what is it gonna be like when I am Lv100, and my Instant Heal is way back on whatever the last quest puts it at, like what, Instant Heal VI? V? I bet it wouldn't even heal 10% of my HP in that case...

7) That brings me to my next point... could we please have the Dragon Quest lines finished?

Ice CC ? ... now I only have two CC spells instead of 5 (due to linking of Ice Shackle timers across Tiers)

I am in the process of relearning (having been absent for two years) my casting cycle with this restriction.

With social creatures I am now not able to deal with groups of 3 anymore. With solo creatures I can't kite in the same way I used to ... killing a mob 5 levels above me with kiting may have been overpowered but it was a real thrill knowing that if an ice shackle was resisted (and it was often enough) that I was susceptible to a one hit death ! Now its impossible to even contemplate attempting. I pull an add and I am running now.

With 2 CC spells (and one of them producing a massive fire resist debuff) I am now finding myself standing still not casting damage spells until close to the end of the CC spell timer. I don't think that is the way a mage should function.

I can't stay in melee range of any melee mob 10 levels below me and expect to survive - an additional CC for an Ice mage would be appreciated - maybe a slowing debuff ?

A suggestion, which was just mentioned to me in-game by Andaras (Tarrant). Andaras suggested that to help with the dragon spell line, a tech could be created. "Primal Recycle", which would work in a lot of ways like "Heal Recycle" does for heal spells.

The one thing though would be to limit the tech so it could not be put on primal bolt.. since it is a repeater. But, if a dragon's other spells were to be teched with something similar to reduce the casting time, this would definitely be a start in helping them out.


I like the idea, if not that it is feasible or practical, but it is thinking outside the box. There are a lot of other things besides just adjusting monsters and reducing their armor so that they are more balanced.

-Menkure

hopefully the revamp addresses many different aspects such as spells, abilities, stat gains, and skill gains. all could use some changes, depending on the class in question.

mind needs a repeater, and at least 1 damaging spell on a slow timer (~30 sec) the damaging spell should do extra damage to a mezzed target. and with the new spells, new spell techs for mind would be super.

summoning just needs a few more. we have ice hammer, flame spear.... so add maybe 2 more spells that function the same way. also add 1 that is not on a 7 second cast time, and has a short recycle. also look at the spell techs for summoning, there aren't many.

flame needs nothing. it could serve as a nice guide to how the other spell lines should look. 1 repeater, 4 nukes (2 short recycles, 2 long), 1 aoe, 1 flame debuff, 1 dot. awesome spell techs that compliment very well.

ice could probably use 1 more nuke, or another control type spell. but with the addition of ice bolt, the spell line is actually quite complete. 1 repeater, 2 crowd control (1 breaks on any dmg, 1 holds), 1 ice debuff, 1 nuke, 1 aoe. ice also has great techs for spells.

energy could use 2 more nuke spells(maybe improved energy strike) and maybe a crowd control. energy techs are also quite good.

Nature has effectively had thundercloud taken away (spellform no longer drops), and the timers aren't linked. I would say nature is fine as is.

Blight only debuffs, with 1 dot. Add a few more dots, or increase the dmg of the existing dot (withered state I think it is). If that is actually a tech blight poison im thinking of, might be nice to make a big increase in the dmg. NO ONE plays a blight based class currently.

Mind has ability "Mind Bullet" but the dmg output seems pretty low. Instead of more spells maybe just improve the existing abilities.

Spirit is probably ok as is, the bolt could be a little stronger.

Primal spells... well, the only one I see needing a big change is the bolt. takes waaay to long to cast. Either double the dmg output, or cut the casting time in half and keep the dmg out the same as it is now. The 2 ranged AOE's seem to be enough (and compares to other bomb-use classes pretty closely). The point blank aoe's are more melee really.... If you are a melee dragon you should be using barrage and gust. If barrage and gust could land a dot (Tearing Winds mentioned earlier) that would be nice. Lasting Embers should do more dmg. double the dmg and make it direct, people might use it again.

Healer class is fine as is, so long as they can rely on bolt from other schools... Removing spell use doesn't really make sense. If they've learned them in other schools and are in a casting type school, makes sense they would still know how to use.

If the point becomes class specificity, then perhaps add new, questable abilities for classes that are nice dmg spell-like abilities that do not master. Link mind bullets, make the dmg output go up. For blight spells, make the high dmg dot spell useable only in blight schools, or make a new ability (or beef up the existing ability corrosive rain) and make it strong.

Really, many classes have interesting but underused "Abilities" that fill some of these gaps in spell-lines. Beef those up so people will actually use them and choose to play that class: Sorcerer, Wizard, Shaman, Summoner.


The epics need work too....

I like Salis's idea of a dragon being able to learn bi-ped spells but I think a further restriction would get more people on board. That would be to restrict which school of bi-ped magic you can scribe.

Have Gerix give you a quest that would have you talk to a bi-ped about a certain line of magic, whether it's fire ice natural or whatever your scaled heart desires, once you choose though there is no going back and that's the only line you can scribe. And to keep in line with Salis's idea we'd still take a minor penalty in levels.

I think this would give the dragons a much needed source of diversity.

I thought this was an interesting thread and as a new horizons player I thought I'd chime in though my experience is to relatively low lvl spells(15 and under for mage and druid). I do have a few ideas though..
I like the repeating spells on the quick cycles,lightning bolt being one of the best low lvl spells when combined with thunder for those lower lvl groups your kiting. My idea would be to augment the lightning(any nuke/repeater spells) with another spell that would give it an effect. The augment can be a tech or specialized adventure spell specific to that school. the color of the bolt/nuke would also change an could be hotkeyed as normal.
Let me give some examples:

-Augment green: has the added power of slowing enemies according to the power of the augment and can randomly debuff one attribute. Damage is lessened by30% or more.

-Augment black: has the added power to cripple the enemies attacks for a short time. crippling would involve reduced damage output depending on the strength of the augment. damage is reduced by 50% or more.

-Augment red: has the added power to confuse your opponent for a short time. the confusion could make him do anything from dance to sleep to attack his"friends". damage is reduced by 50%or more.

-Augment white: this is a party buff that adds the base elemental effect to all weapons in the area for a duration based on the augment. no damage is done =D

Other ides for augments would be "special drops" the special augments would be unusual colors like cyan or crimson but would just add a certain effect to a spell or a augmented spell(well they are special) like an aoe effect,life syphon and so on with out additional reduced damage.

I had the thought that the augmented spells can be combined with each other and hotkeyed(i.e. green and black) at a cost of adding the reduced damage together and increasing the cooldown timer. It would give the players more options to work. those are just a few ideas but I think it would add some flavor to any nuke class.

As I recall, dragons only have 3 spell techs for primal - Primal range, Primal damage, and Primal flash (if that works). to be consistent with other spell "energies" there should be a tech to lower primal resistance (such as what Nature has).

As stated above, dragons should have some hoard powered spells, such as a spell side of Gold Rage, perhaps even Silver Strike. Why not a hoard powered breath weapon attack to truely make it AOE.

That would be an interesting idea, allowing dragons to have a secondary spell energy - with fewer points/level than the 8 Primal/level (9 with tasks). Sure would be nice for dragons to have 10 Primal/level . . . .

Before tweaking with spells, need to address the larger picture of revisiting the adventure classes (long overdue) and their roles in a group (as mentioned above wrt Nature spells). Are they support, such as healing, buffs, or debuffs, are they offensive for dps or strong debuffs? Sure there can be some secondary aspects, but a secondary purpose Life "bolt" spell (I forgot the name) should do less damage than say an offensive purpose Flame Bolt . . . . unless that monster was susceptible to Life damage (or resistant to Flame damage).

That, and considering changes to Multicast and Perfect if they are not working as intended or designed - as in they are mage-type only and not masterable to every spell energy type.

However, the Summoning line of spells is certainly limited.

For dragons...

Techs

I think dragon spellcasting would be vastly improved by introducing more techs. We can add damage (in a few forms) and range. That's pretty dull compared to biped casters. A lot could be done to improve dragon spellcasting just by introducing a few new primal techs.

Gold Rage

As has been mentioned already, gold rage is a problem. I tried playing a dragon spellcaster for 60 levels. It was so painful. Then I switched to melee and not only can I now kill much higher level mobs than I could as a caster - I also kill them much faster. Gold rage (melee, melee, melee) accounts for 80+% of my damage output. It makes a complete joke of spells.

And as has been suggested, a primal based alternative to gold rage would be good. I'd suggest something like a prime bolt multicast on the same timer as gold rage. It'd also be nice if we had primal equivalents to other attacks like bite and tail whip.

Gifts

I don't think we need the full range of gifts that bipeds have. I'd rather instead see changes which make it easier for dragons and peds to team up so we can get those buffs.

But maybe one or two more dragon-only gifts - and gifts we can cast on others (eg. bipeds) would be good.

Buffs

I think the main lack we have is damage converters - ala biped flame/ice/energy attack. For melee-type dragons, I think a buff with a modest hoard cost that converts your melee attacks to a different damage type would be nice. And if we had different options to what bipeds have (eg. any of primal, blight, nature, mind) then those would complement the biped versions nicely.

Spirit line could use another AOE (spell-not ability).

Thundercloud is on linked spell timers, not sure why someone posted they weren't linked, but they are.

I'm in the school of thought that says that the best way to sort the lack of Dragon spells is to give them access to the biped spell lines. Of course, there needs to be some sort of mechanism to stop us using every single one, all of the time - after all, bipeds have to do quite a lot of multiclassing to get access to everything. So how about this:

Casting a biped spell costs hoard - in fact, the hoard value of the spell itself. If nothing else, it would make it easier to track your usage. Repeating spells like bolts would probably have to cost less (maybe 25-50% of HV). This matches with current lore - we know hoard is a source of power for Dragons, so that's what we'd use to cast magic that taps non-primal planes, and primal spells were developed as a means to conserve hoard, to be used when a specific type of magic wasn't necessary.

Increase training points for dragons - and by a lot. Give us access to the biped magic skills, then let us spend points to increase them. If we got an extra 40 points per level for a hatchie, then 60 and 80 (retroactive) for adult and ancient, we'd have enough points to max out a selection of schools, or to spread more thinly amongst all of them. This would lead to massive variation in Dragon abilities, which is something we desperately need. You would, however, need a mechanism to stop the points being spent on anything other than non-primal magic skills.

Antonath

I'd be happy if dragon spells, abilities, and other such just had another tier or two.

.