I have been hearing so many 'nerfs' towards mages that nobody has actually announced. I as the develeopers:

Is the BSoL nerf going ahead? Becuase after playing on the PTS mages are getting rediculously weak.

After doing that, i have heard you are cutting the shaddow damage on a sissirat staff in half. (I know that rhymes, but that sbesides the point) I mean i am not having a go, actually i am, Mages are not the best class at the moment, fighters just need the right techinque in pvp matches, they have a huge health advantage, aand their damage isnt bad at all.

SO the point i am trying to make here is, why are the mages still being nerfed? We try hard to get the right armour, for example i spent nearly 3000 kcs today getting the right armour (man'nes ribcage level 100 with shaddow bonuses), now if these new adjustemnets are coming into action there will be no point. Stop listening to the fighters for a change and listen to the MAGES!

And another question, how comes fighters are constintly getting new skills? What was the last mage skill?(bill doesnt count as its not specialised for mages)..point proven..

It is simple, the powers that eb are once again trying to balance a part of the game that will never satisfy anyone.

Supposedly the new skills will transfer over and be a benefit for the PVE game...we shall see.....

In answer to your questions, yes BSOl is being nerfed to pacify those that say the " GOD MAges " are to tough.

There is a new skill for mages as well..crispy critters or something like that as well as a I am rubber skill which should help mages who use shields.

The Sissi Staff question is more aobut nerfing a mistake that showed up on the PTS. Seems the staff there is abnotrmally powerful.

If you are more interedsted in teh changes exactly check out the Dev posts's especially Stephens.

I dont PVP so I ahve no first ahnd knowledge of what the true status of these nerfs are....they are all called game balancing.............but complain alot and your voice saeems to be ehard more..that is all I can say

This explains some things

1) Sissi Staff:

It's a bug and needs to be fixed. It's not like Steve arbitrarily decided to nerf the weapon.

2) BSoL:

This is about balancing the various primary classes and skills based on player feedback and data mining. I know Mama was testing BSoL this morning, so I'd like to hear her feedback on the issue (and any other mages that have tested build 119). Since I don't regularly play a mage with BSoL, I can't comment further.

3) Shadow Bolt:

I'd like to see feedback from shadow mages on this issue. My guess is that it's too powerful and needed balancing. If you have one skill out of many that's so egregiously better that nobody uses the other skills nearly as much, then perhaps it's necessary. On top of that, with the new cast speed modifiers (see below), it might be really, really overpowered.

4) Cast speed modifier:

I assume this means that mages might find gear that lets them cast faster (just like ranger and fighter gear that affects attack speed) - that's huge!

As you can see, it's not as bleak a picture as you think.

right i understand, you are giving us mages advantages and more disadvantages. I can see how some of your points make sense, some don't, however if you are still testing in the PTS i can't do much about it, however i would want an update on the situation before the new patch is released so i can have my voice heard aswell.


Thank you for your time in giving me a response, much obliged.

If you want updates and want your voice heard, then you need to download the PTS, test the changes, so you can decide for yourself instead of listening to rumors and provide your test feedback here on the boards for the devs to read. That's what the PTS is for! If you don't test the content and provide feedback, then your concerns are relatively moot.

Sigh.. its the everlasting game of what class gets nerfed (X), of which Y persons play, and C is the amount of complains. The formula for this natural behavior would be X < Y which is equal to C*100000000000000000

Of some sort, it'll never end. Nerfs come and go, and nobody ever will be 100% happy. I know what this thread is..

This complains of ranger nerfed dont listen to mages, mages nerfed dont listen to fighters and fighters nerfed dont listen to rangers, is going on for so long I can finally start laughing about it.



.. Edit.. Wow.. I.. did took.. or drunk something that caused me to write a bunch of crap.. but anyway, I am serious.

Ripper isn't giving you anything but information. He's a well-informed, courteous, and helpful player, but if you want to talk about who's creating the patch... not him.

PTS stands for "public test server" - anyone can take a look at the changes on PTS. Anyone can look over the patch notes as well, although just looking at them may not give you a proper sense of what's significant and what isn't.

Here are the patch notes for build 118. Ripper already linked to the patch notes for build 119, which are in addition to (and modifications of) the patch notes for build 118. There's no need to worry about rumors of patches, we're putting out the patch notes for everyone to see. There's no need to ask others what the patch does, PTS is out there for everyone to see.

What Anson said! I've never claimed to be a dev, so I apologize if you got that impression. It wasn't my intent.

The Blue Screen of Life changes have tested really well from our vantage point -- so long as you have a very high intellect build. Players that have a more even intellect / endurance split will find these changes will drain their mana much more quickly.

An all-int mage will have roughly 60% of their mana left by the time they're reduced to 0 health with BSoL on at the max rank. So, if you're relying on BSoL then you may need to drink a mana potion or two if you're not at least 80% intellect.

The thinking behind this change is to give a stronger tradeoff for using this skill. We're increasing the mana pressure when using this skill to achieve this tradeoff.

With BSoL, a mage is able to go all-intellect. With an all-intellect build, a mage has the highest DPS in the game. At max rank, BSoL provides 80% damage reduction. This is an effective 500% increase in health. Top-of-the-line DPS coupled with 5x health is clearly overpowered.

No other class can achieve this survivability and DPS. Could you imagine an all-strength warrior or all-agility ranger? Sure, but they'd die in like 2 seconds because they'd have no health. An increased tradeoff is required to remove the dominant strategy possible with all-int BSoL mages.

I hope that makes sense. I'd also love any feedback from players that have tried this change to BSoL in PvE.

steve

I did play a bit this morning to see the difference in BSoL in PvE only. I'm not particularly worried how the changes affect PvP, I rarely ever PvP. It's a lot better than build .118 that's for sure. It still kills any extreme min maxers, no all INT anymore for PvE.

In testing .118 I was ending up at 50-60% health/mana on normal in Rasputin 1. After switching gear to give myself about 3k more hit points I was ending up at 70-80 health mana depending on the group. Some groups I was still ending up with 50% health/mana or less. That just seems a bit weak for a capped character with excellent gear. Remember this isn't bosses, this is regular mobs.

For .119 I switched to BB 1 and back to my min/max gear. Still getting beat to hell, 50-60%. Bumped my HP with gear and did a lot better but was burning mana pretty fast. Had to wait for regen a bit too much. But health/mana was often 80% or better when I finished a group. Some groups, particularly if I pulled a double group that included stun mobs were a lot more difficult. The stun reach is ridiculously long, the mobs stun even when you are far away, not fun.

Honestly, I'm simply going to have to adapt. Since I've (quite literally) adapted to every other change so far, this one will be no different. I can even deal with the Gym freak change too.

There's so much great stuff with this patch. For the first time ever in the game's history each set of dungeons has it's own quests. This is so great for the players in their 40's or 50's, plus with Cowbell you get an xp boost too! Parkaboy gained 2.5 levels just by running all of the Shadows Embrace quests. The new social panel is fantastic. New crazy stuff, like mobs now have factions that will fight one another! There's also a new "mini pet" mechanic that's a lot of fun.

To the OP, don't listen to the rumors. Download the PTS and play the new content for yourself. The devs will listen to you if you have concerns.

I think many of the Mage Changes are necessary, as ATM Mages are too powerful. In PvP, I can be reasonably evenly matched against people in full Rainbows as a Mage with predominantly Purple equipments. Sissirat's Staff in particular is bugged, it's waaaay more powerful than it should be at a particular level.

Personally I'm not too sure about the changes to BSoL because most "non-god" Mages I know (including myself) already have problems with BSoL failing, ie. losing all mana before you die in PvP, and my END is about 25% of my INT at 70% BSoL. There's only a few PvP Mages (those so-called "god" Mages) that don't have that problem frequently. Of course, these are merely speculations, as I don't participate in the PTS.

Something easily negated by Holy Roller if you aren't careful.

That is true but these ranged attacks are constantly going and holy roller only every few seconds. Most mages I fight just run away when I am about to win and attack me, and run away again and repeat.

Then you should use Fear, Stun, Slow or other curses to keep them from running.

DarthNinja
lvl 100 Arch Ninja