New Spells/Spell Bonus/Firewind

[Guinex]

I am curious to know if either spell bonus is messed up right now, or if firewind has been weakened and the dice for damage has been moved to frostbolt?

[*Splork*]

Spell damage bonus is now being counted before saves, resistances, etc(previously it had been added at the end of the damage calculation). This means that if a creature saves vs your casting, you will not get the full amount of damage for the eq that is worn. This change was necesarry to add spell dam and avatar bonuses to all mage spells and also to allow us to add more damage spells. There was simply no way possible we could allow a possible 180 base damage to spells( 100 spell eq, 80 av bonus) before a spell was ever cast. One side affect(that I had not thought of) has been the fact high level mobs and players make saves the majority of the time(except against bards), I am working on this now.

The base damage for firewind was lowered a tad(not much ) so that the highest level mage spells are all within a % of one another. However, Frosbolt is still quite a bit higher than the old firewind was. The overall affect should be a more dynamic and interesting way of fighting, as well as mages being able to use basically a firewind damage spell regardless of what type of immunity or resistance a mob has up. Rather than previously where a player had to lower themselves to a spell(disint) which was almost 100 hps less damage than firewind.

I honestly believe that once combined with the other new mage spells(haste, slow, improved haste), as well as the fact avatar bonuses and spell dam eq was added to all mage damage spells, that mages will have an overall power gain. This is in no way meant to be a nerfing and if it is I will revisit it quickly.

As well, I added a few more book poppers for each book a couple days ago but I guess nobody has sang since the originals were set since nobody has mentioned it....

Enjoy,
Splork

Hopefully I should have saves worked out by tomorrow night.

[Deju]

I understand that this was technically a bug that needed fixing. However, I'm sure you guys can also understand that cutting spell bonus (and avatar bonus? i dont know about this one) essentially in half is a rather large blow to a very large portion of the player base.

I'm sure there will be quite a bit of yelling about this one, but I would like to offer up a comprimise:

In an effort to find a way to help players try to get some of this blasting power back, perhaps we could double all the spelldam caps? This wouldnt immediately give any player more power, but would allow them to work towards getting their bonuses back to where they were.

Hopefully that is a mutually agreeable suggestion?

Just a thought....

[blackmore]

Ok, since this isn't intended to nerf mages, I'll refrain from bitching and just post some facts.

My understanding was avatar spellbonus was 120hps for winds (I don't have numbers from tests done years ago). Add to this 90 spellbonus (mage prime at max spelldam), Blackmore's spelldam bonus was 210hps. Assuming a mob always saves, that's basically 100hps/spell that bmore lost, or roughly 150hps/round. Regardless of intentions, that's a HUGE nerf to have your primary means of damage dropped by 150hps/round. I can pretty much assume frostbolt isn't going to make up for the other 100hps/spell. The one I cast as a test did roughly 240hps, which isn't much considering there used to be 200hps added to winds. Also consider firestorm is still the biggest avatar damage spell. There isn't going to be anything to compensate for that loss.

Also, the books are extremely difficult to obtain - so saying that with the new spells, mages will increase in power is misleading, because the majority of mages won't have the spells for months and months, having to rely on their winds that are less powerful.

Finally, with spelldam basically halved, in the time that bmore reached 5x40, all his drachma and all his new eq has gone towards spelldam. In those 3 or 4 years, however long it's been, he's succeeded in possibly not really losing much power on his winds, while giving up 1.0 ac, +1 to hit and +1 to damage. With all the talk of new spells, eq and abilities that constantly increase the power of characters, from Blackmore's viewpoint, when this change is taken into effect, he's gotten less powerful in all that time.

[blackmore]

[quote="Deju":hj4ky2t9]
In an effort to find a way to help players try to get some of this blasting power back, perhaps we could double all the spelldam caps? This wouldnt immediately give any player more power, but would allow them to work towards getting their bonuses back to where they were.
[/quote:hj4ky2t9]

In order for bmore to solo with spelldam, almost all of his spelldam eq is bought with a ton of drachma, and a lyme forge. Unless a significant amount of ingame solo-based spelldam eq got added, it will take a couple years to regain the power through spelldam eq.

[12345]

Actually, you're all ignoring saves. It's been known for a while that cry of the avatars works out to be a bigger damage spell than firewind even though firewind does a lot more damage. This is because bard charisma makes it damned hard to save and everyone else makes their saves against mage spells near constantly.

If the actual problem, which is saves, is fixed, it will effectively double the power of every spell you cast. ie. You'll get supercharged instead of nerfed, because not only will that lost spelldam blast through, but all the normal damage that you've been thinking you were getting, but weren't.

[Deju]

After a conversation with Splork, I think I actually understand the situation here (believe it or not).

I would agree with 12345 assuming 1 thing:

By "fixing" the spell saves to mobs, and have them actually fail their save... the save failure % must be set to a decent number. Basically the amount of damage i lost due to moving the avatar/spelldam bonus before the save should approximately equal the base spell damage + my avatar/spelldam bonus that i gain every time the mob failed a save.

The question really is, will the save failure rate be high enough to achieve this?

All that said, one thing that would be nice is if there was a message telling us when the mob succeeds in its saving roll. I know, we dont want to add more to the battle spam, but it would be nice to see something like "Demogorgon stands firm through your cone of frost" or something. Maybe it could be added to the gag_fight list of stuff too?

Again, just a suggestion.

Thanks,

Deju

ps. I understand that you dont want every player in the game to immediately have the new spells, but making the poprate so low (im currently 0 for 62 on one of them) just frustrates players and makes them skip it and go back to doing other things, thus defeating the purpose of putting the new spells in at all.

[12345]

Deju is exactly correct.

Old method:
~250 damage (saved) = ~125
~125 + 120 (Avatar 40) + 90 (PMage +spelldam) = ~335 / cast

New method:
I think I heard firewind damage and Avatar bonuses are being lowered...
~220? damage + 90? (Avatar bonus) + 90 (PMage +spelldam) = 400 or 200 saved.

If the new save is 50/50, it comes out to about a 35 damage loss. However, we were also told that firewind is being weakened to make room for frostbolt... so assuming that is stronger, it's close to being correct.

Since mages are 2-1-2-1-2, etc. That works out to about 50 damage lost per round. So it really comes down to how the new saves are calced and how good frostbolt is.

[Weasel]

Nods offensive spells appear to be consistantly nerfed for me.. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that's with 2 of the winds being masterful - otherwise dbl stab + 6 winds, and on top of that is all the additional HP cost while battling the mob (2-3 times as much HP cost as prior to these changes) due to the additional rounds taken to kill the mob, which in the end means the effect overall is more than halving player effectiveness in this case.

Another good measure for me is running Oly, since I do it a lot. My effectiveness there has been halved consistantly, measured by how many full regens I need to do to run the same group of mobs in the area, and I seem to be getting hit harder too.. although it probably just seems that way because it's taking more rounds to kill a mob now due to the spelldam nerfing. Apparently Oly hasn't been touched so it's not a change with the area itself.

Pretty severe changes..

Overall effect - we're spending even more time regenning and less time playing, while getting less exp than we used to (solo) due to other recent changes. It seems kind of a pointless result of these changes, not to mention boring (seriously, who wants to spend even more time regenning?).

As Splork said below, "This is in no way meant to be a nerfing and if it is I will revisit it quickly" so I hope there is no need for us to freak out just yet

[12345]

Heh... you don't see that every day.

Weasel doesn't think this is a personal afront to him

Just teasing bro.

[Weasel]

well actually, now that you mention it.... hehe

[Leaf]

Actually I wasn't going to mention this at all. I thought it was something
they were going to fix... I was soloing and noticed that my damage on my
Firestorm was A LOT weaker then a week or 2 ago. I just thought they
upped the mobs in the area, but I guess that wasn't the case.
I don't belive this "change" was good at all. If u added new spells u shouldn't
have changed the calc that would effect every other spell in the game.
beyond retarded.
Like most ppl already said. Previous mobs were stab stab wind wind DEAD.
Now it's stab stab wind wind WIND WIND WIND DEAD. That cost at least
75mana Extra that we didn't need to case in the past. And in a sense 75
mana WASTED, on a mob that we use to be able to kill...

[_edd_]

[quote="Weasel":3gtwzn59].. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that's with 2 of the winds being masterful ..[/quote:3gtwzn59]

I've winded self in arena and figured out that masterful wind means nothing at all. It costs same amount of mana and it doesn't affect saves at least in arena.

[Weasel]

[quote="_edd_":32nf6pr8][quote="Weasel":32nf6pr8].. a mob I hit all the time that took a double stab and 3 winds (sometimes only 2 winds if I was lucky) now takes double stab +5 winds - and that's with 2 of the winds being masterful ..[/quote:32nf6pr8]

I've winded self in arena and figured out that masterful wind means nothing at all. It costs same amount of mana and it doesn't affect saves at least in arena.[/quote:32nf6pr8]

ahh ok thanks, interesting to know. So I guess mob is dbl stab + 5-6 winds regardless of masterful then. cheers. Add on an additional 400 or so HP cost in additional fighting duration as well.. not good.

[brand]

[quote="*Splork*":1bsrl4n2] I honestly believe that once combined with the other new mage spells(haste, slow, improved haste).[/quote:1bsrl4n2]

is this the case? i look at help files and it says these spells is all druid. i am agreeing that they should be mage spells. spells of this nature have always been the for wizards and such. giving them only to druids really upsets the balance between new and old class characters. this isn't a simple weaken spell this is haste. let's leave treehugging to the druids and real magic to the wizards.

brand

post script: can anyone list the names of the new spellbooks, just for me?