Interestingly enough, I always hide my profession. I see no no need to advertise my strengths and weaknesses. My warmage is described as a "travel guide", for example.

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

>This would give us a crowd control spell that we could ACTUALLY USE...frequently. Sure, we've all used it on occasion, but I'll hazard a guess and say few use it regularly.

I use major ewave all the time. If people die, I feel a little sorry, but this is the tool I was given to hunt, and I try not to kill anyone.

>I use major ewave all the time. If people die, I feel a little sorry, but this is the tool I was given to hunt, and I try not to kill anyone.

True enough, but that's no more 'ours' than regular e-wave. But that is part of why I started the tangent thread, to see if that was something anyone else cared about. I suppose that makes me curious if bards are more likely to use Disruption or major ewave or wizards vs Cone, etc. Of course, that's a question for (a) different folder(s) so I'll leave that be lest I get my hands slapped.

But back on point, and with absolutely no disrepsect intended, I find it interesting that the first response regarding if anyone uses open implosion is answered with a different non-player safe area effect damage spell. I may be stretching, but that seems to almost make my point. Other spells are viewed as acceptable, but Implosion is still shunned. Perhaps I'm wrong and tomorrow a dozen posters will say they use open implosion daily. Perhpas the 2 mana difference or 4-6 seconds to close the implosion once cast is the issue. I don't know, but I'm curious.

--Jurp

>>but that seems to almost make my point.

Agreed. Makes it perfectly, I'd say. An open spell list spell, even though it costs more mana, is more deadly than a sorcerer spell?

My sorcerers would love to see more deadly spells, especially above 15 mana cost. And here, deadly is intended to include deadly to other player characters.

No one should be totally comfortable or safe hunting around a sorceress with her dander up.

Doug

>It's still tracked, but the desire to have it imbedded has decreased dramatically.

Yeah, something about those pesky mechanics that they made to have certain spells backfire in town had a lot to do with that, too.

>It's just carries such a stigma that most of us don't use it. The rest of us rarely use it because you then have to burn an extra 17 mana to close the rift.

If I feel the need to use it, I do. If I feel the need to close it, I do. If not, it can stay until it's finished.

>So, the question I pose is this...does anyone have any use for the multi-pulse lasting version implosion or would they be interested in it becoming a single blast area affect spell where the void closes instatnly...like the focused version is?

I like the current open version. It's a better version of tremors or quake as far as finding hidden/invis critters or people. Also quite nice to shut up a bard that thinks song of noise is an I-win button against sorcerers. It can also be useful as crowd control in swarms.

>Another thought would be Channel it for additonal mana cost (not sure the coding pain here) to close it instantly so it still only costs the caster 3 seconds instead of 6.

Something like that would be a much better option.

>Advanced apologies if this has already been beaten to death and I didn't notice. I may also be barking up the completely wrong tree. Maybe it is used commonly and I'm still living in the past. Maybe 4 seconds to open and close (and 6 seconds before you can make your next move) doesn't bother anyone, it certainly doesn't pulse again quickly enough to damage anyone in that time. At this point I'm just tossing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

I don't know that it's been beaten to death, but I also don't think it should be anywhere near even being considered as something that needs worked on for the time being. There are a lot of things that could be done with the profession and I don't know that messing with a pretty viable, functioning spell is the way to go.

It can seem that way, and sometimes is even presented that way (the 'other profession' envy thing).

But in honesty, the root of the problem is the sorcerer was purposefully moved from arguably the top or near top hunting efficiency slot to the bottom. Justifications at the time were unsettling, but not terrible. Then, those justifications never were followed through for the other classes.

This caused the sorcerer profession players to be left with a class that was aligned to a set of stated goals that no one else was aligned to.

It is a tough situation, and one that has lingered. The comparisons aren't necessarily envy in most cases. Most sorcerers have experience playing other professions as well -- a part of the challenge of the class is supposed to be its difficulty in attaining the pinnacle of power.

It's pretty good, except for that pinnacle part. . .

Doug

>My problem with 435 is how easy it is for capped critters to dodge it, very annoying.

One of the big reasons I haven't been too big on tearing 720 a new one is that I myself find 435 to be pretty weak. Since I never found 435 to be all that strong, I never get too bent out of shape when comparing it to 720.

>Of course, an easy fix for the two, by definition, weaker minor circles would be to be given a third. That'd be something unique, a long stick. The only profession with 4 circles.

When I first saw this suggestion, I thought that it would be completely unrealistic, simply from a balance perspective. That we've gotten a response saying even a change to training point costs is virtually out of the question, the idea of an entirely ADDITIONAL spell circle seems even moreso outlandish.

That said . . . I've been thinking about it more and more, and gave it a serious once over.

I added up the mechanical benefits that would be gained, primarly spell based DS oriented, and came to the following results:

Foresight: 10 DS, stackable, castable on others
Windward: 20 Mental TD (+1 per two levels over 8), stackable, castable on others
Focus Barrier: 30 group DS (only usable when not using Mind over Body)
Premonition: 20 DS, (+1 per two levels over 20)
At rank 50, that would be 75 DS, and 41 Mental TD. That is a SERIOUS increase in DS, and has to be taken from somewhere.

Additionally:
Iron Skin, if lore were implemented, would allow up to double chain ASG group. If lore were only 1xable studded leather.
Brace's 25% disarm if hit on the arms
Blink's 25% Fasthr effect on physical attacks.
Mind over Body, reducing group stamina cost by 20% (if not using Focus Barrier)

Thats a WHOLE lot of stuff to justify our gaining access to. At the very, very least, Cloak of Shadows would have to be reduced from 1 DS per rank to 1 DS per 2 ranks (-44 DS at cap, in exchange for the 60 DS by level 20 of Minor Mental). Assuming we would have to split our training 4 ways instead of 3, you might expect to see a far post cap player with 160 in Sorcerer circle, and about 40ish ranks in all the secondaries. The loss of Minor Spiritual ranks would have an additional 1 DS/per loss, which helps "justify" such a change, while Minor Elemental has its .5 DS/.25 CS loss. Assuming a post cap 3x in spells character, to fund taking Minor Mental up to level 35, they would have to sacrifice somewhere between 35 DS in MnS or 17 DS/9 Sorcerer CS in MnE to afford those ranks, which in turn provide 67 DS (-44 DS from CoS and -35 DS from MnS is 79 DS, while -44 from CoS and -17 from MnE is 61 . . . so working with it is reasonable).

On the other hand, we DO have the lowest self-spelled DS in the game, potentially tied with Empaths, so maybe such a drastic adjustment to CoS isn't necessary (+.66 DS for every rank would result in +58 DS at cap, instead of our current 88, or 44 if it was .5 per rank). We would gain some small amount of self-spelled DS from this change, but my comparisons found that we are 10-20 DS below Wizards and Clerics in self-spell DS as it is, so thats fine. Premonition also provides maneuver defense, which we are sorely lacking. The more I look at it, the more this addresses things.

What I DO think would have to be done is change our non-sorcerous lore situation. There is too much potential for power in the minor mental circle, power which was designed for Monks and Savants, who will likely be balanced around it. What I would suggest is that we would only be capable of 1xing Spirit, Elemental, and Mental lore, rather than 2xing them. The BIGGEST reason why is because Sorcerers are awesome, but even we don't deserve to cast from double chain without spell penalty (leave that for the Savants and Monks). With 75 ranks in Trans lore, we could cast from studded leather, which is pretty significant. While I don't see any real loss from losing 2x elemental, following the upcoming E Lore review, that could be a detriment. And I think at least a few Sorcerers out there (Virilneus?) have over 1x in Spirit lore. So this wouldn't be free.

An additional requirement would be that all equations which take into account our mana controls would now only give .66% credit to EMC and SMC, now taking all THREE controls into account (MMC would of course have its training cost reduced, as would Mental Lore). This is so that we do not "get" this circle for free. That said, we would of course improve our skill in mental spell scroll infusion, but thats another issue entirely.

Assuming CoS was nerfed to cost us some of our DS, would this really be broken?

I should mention that spells like Thoughtlash, Vertigo, and Shroud of Deception are all intensely sorcerous spells.

I'd also suppose that as a penalty to this, that "Ithzir mental resistance" would have to stay in place forever, V.

To sum up:
Minor Mental list would add about 60-75 DS
Compensate by nerfing CoS a tad, also keep in mind, loss of ranks from MnE/MnS
Spirit/Elemental/Mental lore only 1xable, Mental lore costs reduced to normal. Prevents abusing Iron Skin.
Mental Mana Control becomes required fare for all control based spells, increasing training requirements (but with benefits like Scroll Infusion, +1 mana regen/20 ranks, etc)
Dragonclaw would be our first and ONLY melee-centric build spell.
Premonition provides Maneuver defense.

What am I missing?

oh, and I suppose major mental would be acceptable too as a fourth circle... but I fear we'd be waiting awhile for that one.

>Not that high. I suspect if such a change occured, our Mental Lore cost would be brought down to 7 as well (though upping all of them to 8 wouldn't be out of the question). I never used 2x spell aim. I could easily have translated the points required to 2x Spell Aiming into 1xing Mental Lore for a higher armor group. I'm also a huge Sorc. Lore buff . . . I'm 2xed. I could have 1xed Sorc Lore and 1xed Trans lore instead, and had points to SPARE! I suspect the average sorcerer would rather 1x Trans Lore than 1x Sorc lores for that purpose.

Right, but you'd be forgoing all elemental lore and all spiritual lore. There would be a significant opportunity cost to pursuing ironskin as such.

In its Iron Crown "RoleMaster" roots, there was an Essence/Channeling [Elemental/Spirit] hybrid spellcaster called the 'Sorcerer'.

The Essence/Channeling/Mentalism [Elemental/Spirit/Mental] hybrid spellcaster was the Archmage, with completely different spell lists (although there was some overlap) and training costs, apart from Spell Research which cost the same. (In GemStone terms, he would probably have access to the Arcane list, the Creature list, and that'd be about it.)

I do not, offhand, recall the names of the Essence/Mentalism and Channeling/Mentalism hybrid spellcasters, though rest assured that they existed.