Howdy folks. Ok, spent my whole evening on this but I think we are making progress.

There was a bug affecting all ranged combat, and it was penalizing TM to a large degree and bows to a very small degree. Fixing it required some changes to ... too many things, so essentially here is where we ended up -

* Ranged weapon POWER will now be factored in more heavily to the damage cap.

* High quality bows and all crossbows should deal about 5-10% more damage at the high-end.

* TM spells overall should do about 80% more damage.

* The damage cap on multi-shot spells was increased by 33%.

- Multi-shot spells should now message a wider range of damage types despite doing less damage per shot than a normal TM spell

- Was necessary to prevent multishot spells from never messaging above "light hits". May need some uptweaking still.

- Multi-shot spells should do:

~ Better damage than single-shot TM versus lightly armored targets
~ Similar damage to medium armored targets
~ Worse damage to heavily armored targets

- Multi-shot spells appear to take 50% longer to target

- Multi-shot spells have a small accuracy bonus built in, and a moderate defensive penalty to the defender

- Multi-shot niche is accuracy, more-easily killing stuff lower circle than you, and annihilating things with little armor.

- This is all subject to change. My testing just revealed it was not working well and I'm trying a hail mary here to make it do something fun.

* Min prep TM damage should be about 70% of a capped bow shot.

* Max prep TM damage should be about 125% of a capped bow shot.

The way armor and damage mitigation works, 25% comes out to more in the end. It also increases chance to stun and cause physical wounds. It may need to go higher, but I want to test this level out first.

Please let me know what you think. Any numbers you can provide will be helpful. I also would like some feedback to make sure I didn't change Ranged combat too far in the either direction.

Numbers on pulsing, or cyclic TM will also be helpful. I have no energy left to test those in depth.

Thanks!

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

Thank you, Kodius. I'm locking down like a six hour block today just to play with this.

Wow, that sounds like quite a bug. I will be putting in a few hours today to test this Kodius. Thanks for the hard work.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

My initial impression from testing is that you are just about perfect on this, Kodius. It feels like there's a punch behind TM and being a mage now, and I can't tell you how awesome that is. My general results are below. i have not yet had a chance to test PvP on challenging folks, but I have run the critter gamut from challenging "at-level beats me up some" (cabalists) to extremely tough "will kill me in minutes without heavy-duty crowd management disablers" (void moths).

Summary at bottom if you don't care about the middle part. The number results are from cabalists for me. All casts are fully targeted.

PD and DO performed interchangeably and as default type TM spells, my first results are from them.

Min prep: Kill in an average of 5.9 casts. General pattern of vitality damage was: 1-slightly battered; 2-beat up; 3-very beat up; 4-bad shape; 5-extremely bad shape (or dead); 6-dead. They all died between 5-7 casts, so not a ton of variance.

Max prep (105 mana or so): Kill in an average of 4.7 casts. General pattern of vitality damage was: 1-battered; 2-very beat up; 3-bad shape; 4-extremely bad shape/dead; 5-dead. They all died between 3-5 casts.

Multi-strike had much different results, but I think cabalists are "heavy armor" and so the multi-strike is, as designed, not great. Basilisk arrow ammo increased the damage, but not to any large degree.

Min prep TKT with slivers: Killed in an average of 12.5 casts.

Max prep TKT with slivers: Killed in an average of 5.7ish (there were a lot of "death's door" appraisals at the end of the last TKT casts that I tried to account for).

Min Prep TKS with slivers: Killed in an average of 6 casts.

Max Prep TKS with slivers: Killed in an average of 5 casts.

Max Prep SLS: Killed in an average of 2.7 pulses.

For reference on some other things related to cabalists: Maneuver cleave, with my kertig ignorat axe, will take a cabalist down to "extremely beat up" in one maneuver. Using my 2HE (special metal, heavy), I can still kill at a higher DPS rate than single cast TM alone, but it's pretty close. Cabalists are very challenging for my 2HE, so my feeling is that 2HE would still mash TM pretty well if I had 2HE as high as TM, but I am very happy with the current TM performance.

I tested my crossbow too. Arbalest (terrible appraisals) took an average of 6 shots to kill with pulzones. Slurbow (much better appraisal) took an average of 5 shots to kill.

Summary of feedback: I love the power of single cast TM now. It's not better than my 2HE or HX would be at level, but it's a heavy hammer nonetheless and I'm very satisfied. I think SLS is too strong by a long shot (probably all cyclics now). I think at the cap it needs to be cut in damage by 75% or so.

While the coupling of weapons and single cast TM has been overstated in the past, the coupling of cyclic TM and regular TM is definitely truth. My suggestion is to nerf cyclic TM pretty harshly from this new status pretty harshly, then add in foci that bring it to par but with a restriction on the foci against the use of other TM spells. Thus, you could use foci and a great cyclic TM with a weapon, but you could not use a foci and nasty cyclic TM spell with your single cast TM. The true danger here is the stacking of single cast TM with cyclic TM. Easily handled by a nerf to cyclic TM alone and the addition of foci that make cyclic TM work awesome, but only with weapons (not single cast TM). This gives War Mages true beast potential consistent with their TM/weapon guild focus (i.e., a war mage with a focus could drop a nasty damage fire rain while slicing and dicing) but it wouldn't allow really overpowered damage output (i.e., nasty damage fire rain, plus good damage Blu G, plus slicing and dicing).

On the ranged side of things, I think the bows might have gotten too accurate. I jumped into void moths and was able to hit them with crossbow when I don't think I should be able to. I think it will take some real PvP testing later to check this out though.

Big Note: Burn seems to have been broken in the mix. I can't hit cabalists with it at all, at any mana. That's not to say I hit them and don't damage them (they don't mind fire damage spells); I literally get the messaging that I'm missing them entirely. I can't hit them. Maybe an adjustment to DFA added until dynamic stancing comes in? Whatever it is, I put a prediction up and was throwing near 1600 TM full target burns at cabalists and it was all whiff. Suffice to say I can hit them with weapons far below that (and regular TM just fine as noted above).

I think the change made TM Exp way too high as well. I haven't been able to test this cleanly yet though. I think that should probably be the last thing you worry about tweaking.

All in all, Kodius, thank you. Hugh thank you. I think you hit the nail on the head with this hail mary. There's some tweaking to be sure, but I'm amazed that your one night "hail mary" put things so close to the mark of what "feels" right. I can tell my super heavy weapons are still better than my top TM at the top side of things (super heavy kertig 2HE and slurbow HX with special ammo), but the disparity is not nearly so big as to warrant complaint. Dropping TKS on a room a couple times truly feels like mage destruction now. Seriously, thanks.

I'll report back after getting a chance to PvP some.

I cant speak about FB, but BLB is considered single shot.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

Yeah, as a stealth mage, I'm with you there heh.

I should have been more clear on the 2HE note too; I kill faster with 2he without maneuver cleave, I just added that in there as a reference point for single strike vitality damage on the same target.

> How? I hate posts like this. Explain yourself so we can address what is wrong. Having one strong attack every 60 seconds doesn't in any way seem game breaking compared to Guild abilities that (for the most part) lack any kind of Cooldown!!

If maneuvers rival the power of guild abilities it makes those abilities far less appreciated, whos going to think about guild abilities when you can just impale as any class and do 6x the damage of any guild ability currently out.

Finished some PvP TM and ranged with Raikage. Raikage is just beyond my ability to hit (I have to stun him to get through), so he is a good target to test the accuracy boost of things. I couldn't hit him with any TM or any ranged without him being stunned, so whatever boosts are coming through, they're not over the top (i.e., greater than the penalty of him being stunned). I didn't get to test SLS because it was daytime. Whatever accuracy bonus is there for TKT, it's not enough to overcome the difference in our skill either (again, meaning it's not greater than a stun, which is probably good).

As magic and ranged go, for my small part, awesome job, Kodius.

<<All Multi-shot TM spells should have a large OF bonus from melee, a moderate one from pole and a small one from missile. Just in case that affects your testing.>>

Ahh, very helpful. I was casting from missile so that would affect the possible reading of accuracy boost there. We'll try again later.

As to the accuracy feelings, that was just anecdotal from my shooting at cabalists. It wasn't born out when I tried PvP, so I think there was nothing to it.

> A single impale shouldn't be killing things in one hit at-circle. So either you use other abilities or die while waiting 60 seconds for it to recharge.

I don't get how you interpret my words as impale = one-shot. Are you saying as long as a maneuver does not one-shot something at level, you don't consider it out of place?

If an attack is capable of killing your targeted in one hit it leaves no room for other abilities to be used.

You've not explained the sequence of events by which impaling an enemy nullifies your Guild abilities.

Impale, Impale, Impale, Impale back-to-back would leave you little other options.

But what I would see is Impale, hide, advance, ambush, retreat, hide, advance, backstab, retreat, get bow, aim, shoot.... some other stuff... ok Impale again.

Or prep TM spell, target, impale, cast, prep debuff, SMITE, chop, cast, prep spell, impale, slice, cast, SMITE, etc.

You just work your Guild abilities into the mix, along with normal attacks and the new maneuvers.

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"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes

>THATS part of the problem, maneuvers should not be so powerful that one chooses to utilize them as their first attack every time, regardless of guild.

Why not? It's not like most guilds even HAVE openers. Even if manuvers did diddly-squat, I'd probably use them as my first attack every time because they have a cooldown, and you pop your cooldowns so you can use them as many times as possible.

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>Forgive my snark, but welcome to the life of a warrior mage.

Will be posting again soon with a more general response to the TM changes but I feel like this is worth addressing in a post by itself.

The changes listed below do not seem to apply at all to the moonmage spell Telekinetic Throw aka TKT. It does not have increased target time, damage cap, accuracy bonus, etc etc. Notta.

I can only assume this is because TKT starts off as a single shot TM spell and doesnt become multi-shot until the moonmage in question learns TKS or Telekinetic Storm. As such, Im assuming its being regarded as a single-shot spell in the coding somewhere since it is the only multi-shot spell that is not multi-strike innately. Intended or bug? Seeing as it is a moonmage's ONLY multi-shot spell, I would like to see the features listed below apply to it as well.

Please look into it when you have the time, thanks.



Kodius on multishot tm below ->

* The damage cap on multi-shot spells was increased by 33%.

- Multi-shot spells should now message a wider range of damage types despite doing less damage per shot than a normal TM spell

- Was necessary to prevent multishot spells from never messaging above "light hits". May need some uptweaking still.

- Multi-shot spells should do:

~ Better damage than single-shot TM versus lightly armored targets
~ Similar damage to medium armored targets
~ Worse damage to heavily armored targets

- Multi-shot spells appear to take 50% longer to target

- Multi-shot spells have a small accuracy bonus built in, and a moderate defensive penalty to the defender

- Multi-shot niche is accuracy, more-easily killing stuff lower circle than you, and annihilating things with little armor.

Yeah, what Hallacatt said. I didn't notice it before (I just assumed it performed status quo against cabalists because they had heavy armor or something), but the target time is identical to other TM spells, suggesting it's not getting the multi-strike mechanics at all.

TKT is always multishot now, it does not require TKS to unlock that like 2.1. It does, however, use some odd mechanics that may be causing problems (Technical stuff that was needed to make it work properly with throwing multiple items in the room).

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Yeah, I'm voting for whatever kind of change has to happen to give it true multi-strike mechanics.

> I also would like some feedback to make sure I didn't change Ranged combat too far in the either direction.

I did some quick hunting in test with my Riot HX and pulzones, and it felt about the same as previously.

Which allowing for confirmation bias, means the extra 5 to 10% is probably working... or at the very least the changes didn't completely break anything.

>>By comparison, melee weapons around the same skill or slightly higher rarely touch assassins without the aid of disablers, maneuvers, etc. With significantly more skill, 2HE does more damage but is not nearly as accurate.

>>I still need to do more testing, especially with single target TM, but right now this feels like the perfect spot for TM damage and accuracy. Nicely done.

IMO it sounds like TM might be doing well damage-wise but could use a bit reigning in on accuracy. I'm not sure that weapons with skill comparable to TM should rarely touch mobs that TM is easily hitting/killing.

Nothing wrong with multi-shot TM having an accuracy boost, but if you're going from "weapons with a similar amount of skill miss a ton" to "TM skill comparable to those weapons always lands hits," something sounds a bit wonky.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

>>Assassins have parrying weapons (mostly) but not shields.

I agree that parry changes things, but think that comparing melee and TM effectiveness is a bit unbalanced in that context. Not that you can do much about it since you can't just go around fighting weaponless assassins for testing purposes.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

It'd not out of line for that creature. I believe bows are about as accurate on assassins. I just didn't have a bow around the same skill for comparison.

It's also worth noting 75 mana depletes my mana rather quickly and and target time for my paladin is around 13 seconds. It's be annoying if on top of that TM would be relatively inaccurate.