[Wizard/Mage] Mid-range attacks
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2021 3:43 pm
As you can see from the title, in this post I’ll be talking about wizards (or, mages) and mid-range attacks. There’s no real introduction to the topic, so I’ll just dive right in.
Wizard sets have the lowest defense
I’ll start my argument with this. It’s evident that wizards have the lowest defense; you can see this from comparing nearly all level equivalent sets. Why does this matter, I hear you ask? Well, by having naturally low defense, wizards would have a hard time with their primary attack against monsters. It would take a wizard much more defense to be (name of enemy)-proof than all the other classes. On top of this, archers and gunners have way more range. This alone puts wizards into a bad spot on the Eliatopia class tierlist. How can a wizard, who needs to invest much more stats into defense, compete with other classes who don’t need to spend as much stat points? You may say that wizards have a defensive field, or wizards have a healing field, but I’ll be tackling these arguments later on. For now, the only thing to take away from this is that mages are at a disadvantage due to having to put up with waving their weapon directly in-front of enemies with having sets with poor defense. And you also have archers and gunners who have even stronger armour with being able to attack from range.
Wizards and stat spread
Unless you’re a hybrid class (which, to be perfectly frank, is a worthless investment), you’d invest your stats into the following areas: HP, MP, expertise, your respective stat class and defense. Naturally, wizards must invest their stats into MP more than any other class. This means that wizards have fewer stat points to put into the other areas. But then, since wizards have sets with poor defense, they’d also have to invest a lot more points into that. This leaves very few points for HP, expertise and magic. For health field to be useful and effective, you’d need to put quite a few points into HP too. See what happens? As a mage, I have to invest many points into other stats with leaving enough for magic and expertise, which is virtually impossible. There will come a point where you’d still be farming crabs as a mage but could’ve been grinding puffs if you were a gunner. Wizards have one defensive ability though – protection field. But it’s essentially useless unless you have a load of defense as the field does “inherit base defense”. Therefore, the glass-cannon mage build is viable – you forget about investing into HP and defense since you worry about your MP, expertise and magic. Some may say that crucial MP makes wizards OP, but I think it balances mages out since you have to invest actual stat points, instead of paying 1 coin per projectile you shoot. (Not to mention there’s other “OP” skill points… *cough* loot thief)
The PvP dilemma
The mage 1v1 scenario is most of the time neutral because you’re facing the same class with the same skillset (assuming stat points are more or less the same). Although it depends which mage build you’re running, archers and gunners will most probably win the 1v1 scenario. Gunners win due to range and raw DPS output: just run and shoot, run and shoot. Archers are an entirely different story. Fire 3 homing arrows and run in circles for a few seconds and you’ll find a dead wizard. I’m surprised there’s no kind of nerf imposed on homing arrows in PvP specifically. The warrior vs mage scenario is kind of interesting. Mages only have 1 ranged ability: thunder. When used well (and assuming warriors magically fall in its radius), mages win. But without thunder, it’s 50/50. Both players need to be in close-range, and again, this scenario entirely depends on class stat spread. There is some sort of pattern, though. The more range you have, the more likely you are to win. This obviously isn’t 100% true because a lot of factors come into play but if an archer can hit a warrior from a distance, the archer wins. The warrior would never be able to get into close range. So it goes something like this: Archer > Gunman > Wizard > Warrior. But this is only if the wizard has thunder, which is a skill that can perform nicely or terribly.
Thunder and MP usage
To be honest, thunder (most of the time) can only be used well against enemies with spawners. A level 1 thunder attack costs 6MP. Let’s suppose our mage can 1-hit shot rafflesias (or any monster without a spawner). For the thunder attack to be more useful than a primary attack, it must kill 7 rafflesias within its lifetime. Now, that’s highly unlikely, since a level one thunder’s lifetime is 11 seconds, and according to the latest patch notes, “lightning strikes from storm clouds only strike every 3 seconds now instead of every 2”, which means that the lightning can strike for a maximum of 3 times before ending. 7 rafflesias killed in 3 strikes is the same as 2.33 rafflesias killed per strike. Unless you’re relying on pure 50/50 chance (chaining crit), this is pretty much impossible. You also must position your thunder cloud at an optimal location, praying that all 7 rafflesias don’t bounce out of the radius. I’ve talked about stat spread before, but MP is literally what you need to farm as a mage, and thunder attack takes away 6MP when it’s level one. In a recent post by TrapFish, he stated that the cost for using MP is too great since you must buy so many pineapples to regain MP which leaves less money to buying new sets. This is a separate problem altogether, but I’ve linked this here anyway:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2512
So, now I’m going to be providing some solutions. Mages need another mid-range attack; relying on thunder RNG is simply not good enough. We need an attack that takes skill (i.e something that we can aim with). This will help with pretty much all the problems I’ve stated. Wizards would be alright with lower defense sets since they could attack from some range. The stat spread problem would be half-solved as wizards don’t need to invest as much into defense; a mid-range attack would make wizards stronger. The PvP dilemma would also be solved as they’d be better suited to the warrior 1v1 scenario. And finally, wizards would be able to battle more monsters with confidence with another skill up their sleeve.
Solution 1 – A short, powerful beam
Pretty much self-explanatory. This would cost around 3MP and would harness the player’s magical power, releasing a burst of energy. It’d start from the wand/staff’s tip (basically 0 + wand/staff’s reach) and become more powerful the further it goes. It would have a length of around 7ft (if it’s longer it’d become a bit too powerful) and initially, at 0ft, would have 60% of the damage of a regular primary attack. At 7ft, it would have 110% damage of a primary attack. I’d say it can be upgraded to a maximum of 4 times, up till level 5. Each level would increase the damage it can do by 10%. So:
Level 1: 0ft -> 60% / 7ft -> 110%
Level 2: 0ft -> 70% / 7ft -> 120%
Level 3: 0ft -> 80% / 7ft -> 130%
Level 4: 0ft -> 90% / 7ft -> 140%
Level 5: 0ft -> 100% / 7ft -> 150%
(Each foot would basically be worth an additional 50/7% which is around 7% extra damage)
Solution 2 – A longer, strong beam
I’m fonder of this solution. Again, it would cost around 3MP (if this is too high/low, lemme know with a reply) and would harness the player’s magical power, releasing a ray of energy. Like the previous solution, it’d start from the wand’s tip but would become more weaker the further it goes. It would have a length of around 15-20ft, and initially, at 0ft, would have 110% of the damage of a regular primary attack. At 15 (or 20ft), it would have 60% of the damage of a regular primary attack. It would also be upgraded to a maximum of 4 times:
Level 1: 0ft -> 110% / 7ft -> 60%
Level 2: 0ft -> 120% / 7ft -> 70%
Level 3: 0ft -> 130% / 7ft -> 80%
Level 4: 0ft -> 140% / 7ft -> 90%
Level 5: 0ft -> 150% / 7ft -> 100%
Final thoughts
So that wraps it up for this suggestion post. Hopefully it’s not too long and I don’t bore you, but yeah. Please, feel free to post any criticism or ideas to make this suggestion better. And you’re more than welcome to come up with your own solution: I’ve found that I’m not good at making them.
Wizard sets have the lowest defense
I’ll start my argument with this. It’s evident that wizards have the lowest defense; you can see this from comparing nearly all level equivalent sets. Why does this matter, I hear you ask? Well, by having naturally low defense, wizards would have a hard time with their primary attack against monsters. It would take a wizard much more defense to be (name of enemy)-proof than all the other classes. On top of this, archers and gunners have way more range. This alone puts wizards into a bad spot on the Eliatopia class tierlist. How can a wizard, who needs to invest much more stats into defense, compete with other classes who don’t need to spend as much stat points? You may say that wizards have a defensive field, or wizards have a healing field, but I’ll be tackling these arguments later on. For now, the only thing to take away from this is that mages are at a disadvantage due to having to put up with waving their weapon directly in-front of enemies with having sets with poor defense. And you also have archers and gunners who have even stronger armour with being able to attack from range.
Wizards and stat spread
Unless you’re a hybrid class (which, to be perfectly frank, is a worthless investment), you’d invest your stats into the following areas: HP, MP, expertise, your respective stat class and defense. Naturally, wizards must invest their stats into MP more than any other class. This means that wizards have fewer stat points to put into the other areas. But then, since wizards have sets with poor defense, they’d also have to invest a lot more points into that. This leaves very few points for HP, expertise and magic. For health field to be useful and effective, you’d need to put quite a few points into HP too. See what happens? As a mage, I have to invest many points into other stats with leaving enough for magic and expertise, which is virtually impossible. There will come a point where you’d still be farming crabs as a mage but could’ve been grinding puffs if you were a gunner. Wizards have one defensive ability though – protection field. But it’s essentially useless unless you have a load of defense as the field does “inherit base defense”. Therefore, the glass-cannon mage build is viable – you forget about investing into HP and defense since you worry about your MP, expertise and magic. Some may say that crucial MP makes wizards OP, but I think it balances mages out since you have to invest actual stat points, instead of paying 1 coin per projectile you shoot. (Not to mention there’s other “OP” skill points… *cough* loot thief)
The PvP dilemma
The mage 1v1 scenario is most of the time neutral because you’re facing the same class with the same skillset (assuming stat points are more or less the same). Although it depends which mage build you’re running, archers and gunners will most probably win the 1v1 scenario. Gunners win due to range and raw DPS output: just run and shoot, run and shoot. Archers are an entirely different story. Fire 3 homing arrows and run in circles for a few seconds and you’ll find a dead wizard. I’m surprised there’s no kind of nerf imposed on homing arrows in PvP specifically. The warrior vs mage scenario is kind of interesting. Mages only have 1 ranged ability: thunder. When used well (and assuming warriors magically fall in its radius), mages win. But without thunder, it’s 50/50. Both players need to be in close-range, and again, this scenario entirely depends on class stat spread. There is some sort of pattern, though. The more range you have, the more likely you are to win. This obviously isn’t 100% true because a lot of factors come into play but if an archer can hit a warrior from a distance, the archer wins. The warrior would never be able to get into close range. So it goes something like this: Archer > Gunman > Wizard > Warrior. But this is only if the wizard has thunder, which is a skill that can perform nicely or terribly.
Thunder and MP usage
To be honest, thunder (most of the time) can only be used well against enemies with spawners. A level 1 thunder attack costs 6MP. Let’s suppose our mage can 1-hit shot rafflesias (or any monster without a spawner). For the thunder attack to be more useful than a primary attack, it must kill 7 rafflesias within its lifetime. Now, that’s highly unlikely, since a level one thunder’s lifetime is 11 seconds, and according to the latest patch notes, “lightning strikes from storm clouds only strike every 3 seconds now instead of every 2”, which means that the lightning can strike for a maximum of 3 times before ending. 7 rafflesias killed in 3 strikes is the same as 2.33 rafflesias killed per strike. Unless you’re relying on pure 50/50 chance (chaining crit), this is pretty much impossible. You also must position your thunder cloud at an optimal location, praying that all 7 rafflesias don’t bounce out of the radius. I’ve talked about stat spread before, but MP is literally what you need to farm as a mage, and thunder attack takes away 6MP when it’s level one. In a recent post by TrapFish, he stated that the cost for using MP is too great since you must buy so many pineapples to regain MP which leaves less money to buying new sets. This is a separate problem altogether, but I’ve linked this here anyway:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2512
So, now I’m going to be providing some solutions. Mages need another mid-range attack; relying on thunder RNG is simply not good enough. We need an attack that takes skill (i.e something that we can aim with). This will help with pretty much all the problems I’ve stated. Wizards would be alright with lower defense sets since they could attack from some range. The stat spread problem would be half-solved as wizards don’t need to invest as much into defense; a mid-range attack would make wizards stronger. The PvP dilemma would also be solved as they’d be better suited to the warrior 1v1 scenario. And finally, wizards would be able to battle more monsters with confidence with another skill up their sleeve.
Solution 1 – A short, powerful beam
Pretty much self-explanatory. This would cost around 3MP and would harness the player’s magical power, releasing a burst of energy. It’d start from the wand/staff’s tip (basically 0 + wand/staff’s reach) and become more powerful the further it goes. It would have a length of around 7ft (if it’s longer it’d become a bit too powerful) and initially, at 0ft, would have 60% of the damage of a regular primary attack. At 7ft, it would have 110% damage of a primary attack. I’d say it can be upgraded to a maximum of 4 times, up till level 5. Each level would increase the damage it can do by 10%. So:
Level 1: 0ft -> 60% / 7ft -> 110%
Level 2: 0ft -> 70% / 7ft -> 120%
Level 3: 0ft -> 80% / 7ft -> 130%
Level 4: 0ft -> 90% / 7ft -> 140%
Level 5: 0ft -> 100% / 7ft -> 150%
(Each foot would basically be worth an additional 50/7% which is around 7% extra damage)
Solution 2 – A longer, strong beam
I’m fonder of this solution. Again, it would cost around 3MP (if this is too high/low, lemme know with a reply) and would harness the player’s magical power, releasing a ray of energy. Like the previous solution, it’d start from the wand’s tip but would become more weaker the further it goes. It would have a length of around 15-20ft, and initially, at 0ft, would have 110% of the damage of a regular primary attack. At 15 (or 20ft), it would have 60% of the damage of a regular primary attack. It would also be upgraded to a maximum of 4 times:
Level 1: 0ft -> 110% / 7ft -> 60%
Level 2: 0ft -> 120% / 7ft -> 70%
Level 3: 0ft -> 130% / 7ft -> 80%
Level 4: 0ft -> 140% / 7ft -> 90%
Level 5: 0ft -> 150% / 7ft -> 100%
Final thoughts
So that wraps it up for this suggestion post. Hopefully it’s not too long and I don’t bore you, but yeah. Please, feel free to post any criticism or ideas to make this suggestion better. And you’re more than welcome to come up with your own solution: I’ve found that I’m not good at making them.