Just curious, but when are you planning on showing us your plans for the rest of the ELR? The stuff that you're wanting us to trust you on because it's supposed to be so awesome that we won't care about any of the incoming nerfs?

We've had enough doom and gloom for the week. Can we have some good news this week?

~ Methais

Do warmages not use MStrike at all? (Particularly when Haste is just about to fall anyway, or has already done so and you might as well hit two creatures before you re-cast?) As I said, pretty much every character of mine, ever, has gotten those first 5 ranks to enable that ASAP. If I'm going to be stuck in 5s RT anyhow, I might as well hurt twice as many creatures. Pleasant bonus in getting more effective ball-spell splashies, too.

What weapons is everyone using? I know Throgg uses a highly Enchanted maul, because the RT could still be completely reduced. Flares? Weighting?
Bards with Tonis are usually advised to use things like Sonic Daggers: screw the AS/DS HP, go for the flare. Same same for you wizards? (I know when I was still in my 30-days after the shift to the web--so, unlimited free reallocations--I cranked out the +39hp damage-weighted two-hander, and just needed to roll a 101 to lay a hurtin' on everything; "very quickly", with Haste running.)

How common are scrolls/items with <that Paladin spell, maybe> Champion's Might? The one that gives faux CM ranks. Or using up some of those Self Knowledge certificates from the last Duskruin...

Do warmages typically make friends with Rangers, and get Mobility cast on them? I always loved me getting some from Erek, when that crowd were dragging me into the Illoke Stronghold (25 levels over my head)...

>601 AS (+120 over baseline)
>Completion time: 6:43
>Total casts: 73
>Casts/kill: 2.92
>Total mana: 730
>Mana/kill: 29
>Spells used: e-wave (2), major shock (71)

So, to be clear, on the snow critters and fire critters you didn't use their opposite element bolt and instead used less effective in that scenario (or use fire against trolls), and more expensive, major shock?

Dear Estild: Can we add a feature to 405 that detects elemental weaknesses in critters? Straight up like Detect in the old Final Fantasy games? Lots of people apparently aren't realizing that you can get up to double damage in some situations by using a specific element bolt.

>It takes me 2 hits of Pain (711) and one of Disintegration (705)to kill a like-level Spectral Triton Defender with 0 ranks of the relevant lore.

Then you're a bad hunter. If you can use 705 to take over 1/3rd a critter's health, you're spending 27 mana when you should be spending 15. Personally my experiences are nothing like that, but if you really have such a powerful 705, stop using pain.

>>Do warmages not use MStrike at all? (Particularly when Haste is just about to fall anyway, or has already done so and you might as well hit two creatures before you re-cast?)<<

I personally never got any MOC, since M-strike stops haste and (here is the point) I never allowed haste to drop at all. I had a macro (stop 506\rincant 506\r) which I hit every 45 seconds or so. I can still do this of course, even with the proposed changes, but only 4-5 times. So, it would be run in, kill one or two critters, run away until the cooldown is over. Lame. And of course, younger mages won't be able to do even that.

>>What weapons is everyone using? I know Throgg uses a highly Enchanted maul<<

Genarally speaking, yes, I currently use a 7x perfect maul. However, when I first started out, I had trained OHE and shield, and was using a fel-hafted waraxe and 6x shield. (The waraxe having HCW and the shield giving me a better defense). I didn't switch to THWs until somewhere in my late 70's. Even with the HCW, the waraxe (only 4x and doing base handaxe damage) wasn't killing things fast enough. The loss of the shield wasn't too inconvenient, since by then the major thing that would kill me was maneuvers and/or CS based spells, not weapons; the best protection against those is to disable the foe and kill them faster, before they can uncork something nasty.

I must say, I suspect that the Dev team's main target here is haste cast on others. I have a moderately advanced ambushing rogue; when she hunts with wizard friends they keep her hasted, and indeed the results are pretty sick. From hiding its ...

Ambush leg (1 second RT) (for tall creatures)
Hide (1 second RT)
Ambush head = death (1 second RT)
Rehide (1 second RT)

Average time per kill 4 seconds. Sometimes less, if the target's head is within reach on the first attack. I only do that in swarms, however; I need to be polite and give my wizard buddy time to get a hit in. This is in marked contrast to my warmage needing 10+ attacks to kill a like-level creature. I strongly suggest that these changes to haste apply only to casts from an outside source, and leave self-cast alone. That would avoid warriors, rogues, paladins etc. from becoming unstoppable killing machines, while still keeping warmages viable.

>>Fighters, at least, have the cleverness to know that if they can barely scratch the beasts, they use a non-crit-weighted weapon.<<

Oh please. I am aware of the need for an adequate end roll to trigger a weapon's crit threshold. I do have other characters who ambush regularly, and the mechanics there are similar. Early on as a warmage it's easy to get good end rolls and get that benefit. Later on, I wasn't getting that nearly as much, which was one of the reasons I switched to 7x perfect maul. I didn't think I had to be that detailed, but apparently I do.

>> Can we hear the results of some competent warmages,<<

You can criticize me after you cap using weapons.

<Crit weighting, for warmages who are bitching about how badly their weapon AS sucks, IS FRICKING STUPID, PEOPLE! Fighters, at least, have the cleverness to know that if they can barely scratch the beasts, they use a non-crit-weighted weapon.

That is entirely situation on what you're fighting. Something in plate is much harder to get that initial crit to activate the weighting, but for lower armored enemies that's not really a concern. I'd have to double check but I think a 106-108 endroll will break the threshold on the cloth-wearing monks in Sheruvian temple. Using a claidhmore that immediately activates 40 post-DF crit damage, you need endrolls over 300 to get anywhere close to that with a maul or what-have-you. MOST of my kills are from crits, only the stubborn and lucky ones manage to die from bleeding.

Understandably this changes as one levels up further but on anything below chain, claids are vastly superior. I've graphed it out and it wasn't even close.

Using a damage weighted weapon guarentees you'll be hitting it 5 times, whereas I can get lucky hit non-limbs for fatal crits regularly in 1-3 swings.

But, you know, thanks for calling me stupid.

No, actually, I can freely criticize others... just as they have felt free to do with me.

Sucks when the shoe fits both feet, don't it?

</snarkiness>

.

.

Even with a maul, you're still relying on getting a decent-to-good roll. Because "AS < than <those other guys'>."

Try it with a Greater Elemental Flaring shortsword. Or one of those black ash mattocks (even with randomized damage weighting, dishing out the minimum every second will add up).
With flares or damage weighting, you can also adjust your stance to not necessarily be "full offensive"; you just need to be at the "any die-roll hits" stage.
OH LOOK! Free DS, to help alleviate the "warmages' defense sucks so bad, too!" cries.

.

.

You people who've been responding to my posts in other categories might be onto something: this whole "I'm smarter than you" is a pretty cool zone to post from.

<Try it with a Greater Elemental Flaring shortsword. Or one of those black ash mattocks (even with randomized damage weighting, dishing out the minimum every second will add up).
With flares or damage weighting, you can also adjust your stance to not necessarily be "full offensive"; you just need to be at the "any die-roll hits" stage.
OH LOOK! Free DS, to help alleviate the "warmages' defense sucks so bad, too!" cries.

Not sure what's up with you today but the bad advice and saltiness just keep coming eh?

Maybe you should actually try putting your (bad) suggestions into practice and testing them out before acting like you're the only one who's thought about how war mages work in the last 30 years.

Damage weighting is only better if you can't crit, which means you are not in the "can hit with any die roll white not in offensive" range AT ALL. If you had that kind of AS v DS advantage, you'd be critting like a mofo in offensive. Switching to damage weighting and advanced stance is only going to slow you way down at that point.

Also the whole POINT of the warmage is the added disablers allow you to swing for the fences in relative safety. Ignoring those to instead use stance like a square is the least efficient thing you could possibly be doing.

"<HCW handaxe while hasted>" -- Throgg, and probably other warmages

Okay, well, that explains it.

You were doing it wrong. (Probably, ALL of you have been doing it wrong.)

Crit weighting, for warmages who are bitching about how badly their weapon AS sucks, IS FRICKING STUPID, PEOPLE! Fighters, at least, have the cleverness to know that if they can barely scratch the beasts, they use a non-crit-weighted weapon.

.

If You Are Hasted, You Use Flares. Or DAMAGE Weighting.

.

.

Now. Can we hear the results of some competent warmages, and their feelings about Haste possibly leaving them at only 1s, and not being run all the time, and suchlike.

Would you stop posting if all you're going to do is insult people?

>Sorry, V. But using fire against cold- based targets generally doesn't produce better results than major shock because it doesn't increase the DF of the spell.

No, but they're vulnerable to the spell, its like they have inverse crit/damage padding. You will get better results. Some cold critters are so vulnerable to fire you'll rank 3 crit them with the splash damage from 908.

No, actually, I can freely criticize others... just as they have felt free to do with me.

Sucks when the shoe fits both feet, don't it?

</snarkiness>

.

.

Even with a maul, you're still relying on getting a decent-to-good roll. Because "AS < than <those other guys'>."

Try it with a Greater Elemental Flaring shortsword. Or one of those black ash mattocks (even with randomized damage weighting, dishing out the minimum every second will add up).

With flares or damage weighting, you can also adjust your stance to not necessarily be "full offensive"; you just need to be at the "any die-roll hits" stage.

OH LOOK! Free DS, to help alleviate the "warmages' defense sucks so bad, too!" cries.

.

.

You people who've been responding to my posts in other categories might be onto something: this whole "I'm smarter than you" is a pretty cool zone to post from.

Krakii

You could make suggestions without being offensive.

>>Damage weighting is only better if you can't crit, which means you are not in the "can hit with any die roll white not in offensive" range AT ALL. If you had that kind of AS v DS advantage, you'd be critting like a mofo in offensive. Switching to damage weighting and advanced stance is only going to slow you way down at that point.

Actually, Keith - it's situational. As is a great many of our positions that we each (all of us) trot out. In some instances, you're absolutely right. In some situations, you couldn't be more wrong. And if there were a median calculation, I'd be willing to bet that the positions each of us like to use for support in our personal views are frequently edge cases - and the rest could be shown to possibly go either way.

After all, let's consider why a maul might be a great weapon for a war-mage.

I can tell you for a fact when I had the basket-hilted broadsword, I didn't miss crit weighting, not one bit. And that was before crit randomization became the watchword of the game. Of course, during that phase, I was not hunting undead, and several of the creatures were either soft (and thereby easily stunned) or immune to crits, in which case - well, you know. At any rate, while I can say I didn't miss it, I do have to give the nod that it was situational, and 'only' lasted for some 20 or so levels. I changed because. . . boredom.

I can also say, though, that if I still had that weapon, success in the Scatter wouldn't change overly much - even if the tactics would. So while situational, it's a broad case of situations that could apply. Bandits, though - likely a different story. Which, happily, returns me to my main point above.

Doug

Throgg, ironwight ftw?

Also, I am curious, any thoughts on the new tremors option vs using tonis bolt with the changes to 513?

Tal.

I understand that,V. But the extra flare is still generally less damage than a high end roll from major shock. As the average is several casts per kill, sacrificing significant damage for a low chance of crit kill is a bad bet.

You seem to be under the impression that bolts are crit based. They are not. They are primarily attrition based. Most of your kills come from damage or multiple attempts before a crit kill.

<Actually, Keith - it's situational. As is a great many of our positions that we each (all of us) trot out. In some instances, you're absolutely right. In some situations, you couldn't be more wrong. And if there were a median calculation, I'd be willing to bet that the positions each of us like to use for support in our personal views are frequently edge cases - and the rest could be shown to possibly go either way. --Doug

Hey I'm here to learn, enlighten me! Other than non-critable enemies and heavily armored foes with good DS, who prevent you from getting stage 1 crits, when else is crit weighting sub-optimal? (Not sarcastic, very much would like to know)

I took a 10 year break so your reference to "basket-hilted broadsword" is over my head a bit. Also HCW from a ohe is a long cry from the +40 of a claidhmore. The DFs are better (meaning less endroll needed for crit-1) and fantastic crit weighting will do a lot of the work for you once you crack the crit-1 threshold. I get fatal torso crits on a regular basis.


<Seems like you could still be at max efficiency for a good portion of your hunt, then just switch strategies once the increased haste cost gets too much and you want to toss in a cooldown period. Then rinse, and repeat.

<Don't think that because you hunted in a certain way before the changes, you have to hunt in exactly the same way after the changes. --Fyon's player

That's the current plan. I don't think swinging without haste is in the cards, too risky and weak. Basically I expect to have to bolt (or maybe 502?) while the haste cooldown is taking place. Also strategically setting up swarms for a big hasted slaughter-fest, rather than casting it as soon as I enter the area.

I was a big proponent of removing the penalty from 513, I'm very glad Estild opted to include that in the spell revisions.

The question for me isn't whether warmages will be 'viable' in the monk sense of the word. I'm sure it will be possible to level one.

But after the changes, can I still justify spending a huge number of TPs into weapon style and CM when I only get to take advantage of those skills half the time? And the other half I'm basically just a poorly designed wizard?

I can't really afford to beef up Strength, THW, Dex AND spell aiming to be good at both right? So I end up being a fun mutant for 1/2 and a crappy wizard for half.

Or just fixskill into pure wizard and save a lot of heartache and metric ton of TPs. At which point my race and stat choices become very sub-optimal as well. Sigh.

I've yet to see any of these changes bring much to the table for warmages. 909 sounds cool though a 10sec cooldown on stomps is a wrench in the gearworks. After getting effectiveness essentially cut in 1/2 it would take a lot to balance those scales.

Also, you might consider for those classes most significantly impacted by the changes giving them a rapid migration week similiar to what new characters get...so they can thoroughly test out various builds instead of blindly picking one based on what they read, and then being stuck until next years fixskill.

Or if you don't want to risk the potential abuse a weeklong (or whatever) rapid migration period could spawn...open up the test server with all the changes and let us go play there with rapid migration permanently turned on so there is a way to test various builds before committing.

I think this is a great idea considering the amount of changes that are taking place.

>Okay, well, that explains it.

>You were doing it wrong. (Probably, ALL of you have been doing it wrong.)

>Crit weighting, for warmages who are bitching about how badly their weapon AS sucks, IS FRICKING STUPID, PEOPLE! Fighters, at least, have the cleverness to know that if they can barely scratch the beasts, they use a non-crit-weighted weapon.

>If You Are Hasted, You Use Flares. Or DAMAGE Weighting.

>Now. Can we hear the results of some competent warmages, and their feelings about Haste possibly leaving them at only 1s, and not being run all the time, and suchlike.

And people call me snarky and rude. I think you deserve this award more than I do.

/hands award to Krakii

The absolute nerve you have to tell literally everyone they are doing it wrong and don't know how to play this game. Why are you even allowed to post on the forums still? As far as I can tell you contribute absolutely nothing to discussions and instead just belittle people and insist you are the only person who knows how to play this game and everyone just needs to grow up and learn to play.

>>Other than non-critable enemies and heavily armored foes with good DS, who prevent you from getting stage 1 crits, when else is crit weighting sub-optimal?

I think Robert took a stab at this, and was derided for it - but interestingly enough, some of that same information was included as a reference by Tav for why bolt crits don't work as a defining criteria for bolt effectiveness.

I don't know that I can do this topic the real justice it deserves, most especially since the advent of crit-weighting and damage-weighting randomization. I suspect there's some point where cross-over occurs, and the advantage falls one way or the other.

But I will say this and I think this is pretty solid:

In those cases where the war-mage could attain any lethal critical result on a swing naturally (without crit weighting) before randomization - the damage weighted weapon will be superior. The reasoning is straight-forward - any lethal crit will be randomized and may stay a lethal crit, or may not. The damage weighting will be added irrespective.

As we know, any attack that does not break a threshold to achieve a crit rank one result will discount any crit weighting, and so again the damage weighted weapon would be superior.

Conversely, damage weighting is added to the end combat resolution and does not modify critical rank resolution (boo!), so any natural critical result that is neither zero nor lethal will benefit from the critical weighting over the damage weighting - most especially in those conditions where the critical weighting is enough to move the critical rank from non-lethal to lethal before randomization.

So in either end of the spectrum edge cases, damage weighting wins. In the middle spectrum, it is far more convoluted. But - you've piqued my own interest now, so I'm going to see if I can find some way to put together a simple chart that might help definitively answer this part of the question. Math. . . oh gads. Look out!

But - before I spend an hour or so to see if I can build such a summary, let's look at another example. Robert mentioned flaring weapons as something that the war-mage should consider perhaps even ahead of crit or damage weighting. It drew little commentary, but with crit / damage randomization I believe Robert is more right today than ever in that regard. Don't get too swelled a head, Robert.

Infrequently (and to varying degrees), flaring weapons will provide an additional damage factor, with a separate critical rank determination, always applied to wear the attack landed (if at all possible). So, a feras dagger (which has the happy benefit of flaring every swing for a very limited number of swings) aimed at the eye of a target, may strike the target for 1 point of damage to the head - and then a lightning flare with attending hit points and critical resolution is applied, also to the head.

In the case of this flare - 1 point of damage would not be enough to kick in a crit rank determination on the strike, and a damage weighted weapon would be considered more effective. But the separate roll to determine a lightning critical to the face opens up an entirely different possibility - a rank 5 crit or higher is going to cause 25 damage (more than any damage weighted weapon) and stun for 10 rounds. In my day, we call that wizard chow. And all this irrespective of armor type worn!

War-Mage Suggestion: If you haven't tried using a feras weapon as a set-up / disabler while hunting, do yourself a favor and give it a shot!

What I don't know - with weight randomization (both crit and damage), and flaring weapon mechanics, if one fires more 'consistently' to the benefit of the war-wizard.

So in summary: Always reach the upper bound, or never reach the crit threshold - damage wins. Summary chart for varying degrees of crit versus damage weighting forthcoming. And flaring weapons, most especially in aimed scenarios, may well be better than both.

There's a reason why those frequently flaring projectile weapons are so popular - easy to aim, likely to hit aimed point, ease of reaching fatal crit level, and even when you can't quite get that far there's always a chance for a flare attack with a separate critical resolution that still will seal the deal.

I'll tell you honestly - if a handheld weapon of any type could be aimed as successfully as a projectile weapon could, in the current scenarios of war-magery, I'd go for a perfect forged, switchable flaring weapon every time over what I have to work with. Put 'em prone (or other setups) to maximize the weapon crit potential, and watch the flares clean up where the crit didn't quite happen.

BTW, the basket hilted broadsword went through a couple changes - going from memory here, but I believe it was a 60 point weighting, changed to a 40 point weighting, and subsequently to a 20 point weighting. Before randomization, this had the happy benefit of the Elf getting at least 61 points of damage every swing that connected (and this was HasteII days, too!), before anything else was calculated. When it was changed to 40, I let it go - and then randomization came in and really hurt that particular use case. It was obscene, yes - and ultimately boring, even before the changes to the weapon.

Doug