Future of the Sorcerers?

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asin
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Future of the Sorcerers?

Post by asin »

I am really concerned about the future of the Sorcerers. After seeing the changes made to other blasters – most importantly to the Mages – this guild seems to be kind of useless or obsolete from now on. Let me give you some examples.

Parties will less likely to take Sorcerers in because:
- One of the major advantages of being a Sorcerer was that we were able to decrease the resists on mobs. Without this feature some mobs are impossible to kill, now the Mages have this ability on their own, this new feature makes the guild obsolete in said parties.
The second feature is that we can check resists on mobs, so can Templars.
- It was announced that from now on blasters’ sp cost was halved on prestige mobs. If you are an awesome sorcerer with average mages you run out of sp the same time as the others do. From now on you don’t stand a change keeping up with the other blasters. NOTE: this is just a speculation because the Wizards might make this feature work for Sorcerers too.
- Monsters are getting unleashed when someone enters the room; therefore you are a danger to your own party.
- Compared to Mages, our criticals suck. Mages can crit and swarm the same time. It saves sp and deals huge amount of damage the same time. On the other hand as a sorcerer you can just crit once and that’s it. On the side note, Water Priests can’t funnel us to help the whole spell.
- Lack of control of the type of elemental damage we deal with Seize. Having the wrong type of monsters out it just a waste of sp or even in some cases you even heal the mob because of that.

In general I have found these things problematic:
- I was told I suck and “no pain, no gainâ€� which is true. And the reason I suck is not lack of skills/spells or EQ. It is just down to having kinda low masteries. If you make a mage without having masteries you do OK, with decent masteries you get to be decent. On the other hand as a sorcerer without masteries you just suck big time, after a painful period of time you get decent masteries and you just become a “reliableâ€� and “normal/semi-decentâ€� blaster with huge issues as mentioned above.
- The constant portal drain from the seize spell is just annoying. For me it is around 10% sp for the whole run. With decent masteries it gets almost unnoticeable which puts you on the level of an everyday blaster. Some cases when you start the spell you can even see 5-10% of your sp disappear before you can force the first monster out which is just frustrating. Masteries should make you better, not stopping you from leaking sp big time.

Before the tune to the other blasters the “no pain, no gainâ€� theory was applicable to the Sorcerers because of the unique features we have had. Now that they were given to other guilds there is no gain anymore, only pain remains. From my point of view either the Wizards want to see the guild dead or the guild needs to be tuned big time. I prefer the second one so I think these changes could make the guild playable and enjoyable again:
- Remove the portal drain completely.
- Monsters not to break free and hit the party.
- Increase the base damage of the seize spell big time not just the last crit tune and/or make a swarm-like feature for seize, like they hit again without any extra sp cost.
- Seize controllable: When you cast the spell you force open 5 different coloured portals for the 5 damage types. Through spell syntax or sorc_cmd let us control what combination of the 5 portals to open up, and make it fixed till the spell lasts.
kraven
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Post by kraven »

2 words...stacking resist debuffs...if sorc+mage debuffs work together to even greater decrease=good thing
gumbei
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Post by gumbei »

that is 3 words? (or 15?)
khade
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Post by khade »

You don't have to be good at basic math to mud, though I'm sure it can't hurt.
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goderic
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Post by goderic »

I suspect the upcoming mage alterations will have some sort of price to go with them... we'll see.
Anyway, as for sorcs, a lot of the issues could be alleviated with:
-ability to cast without wielding guild item
-availability of the 'meditation' skill, and
-better regens, perhaps an uptune of the regenerative vortex.

I do worry about the issue of 'power creep' in general in the game. Sometimes I think players are getting just that bit too good, and that applies across a wide range of guilds.
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zaltaiz
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Post by zaltaiz »

I already gave a short answer on guild channel, but there's a detailed answer: no.
khade
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Post by khade »

As I see sorcerers, they are a guild designed to say, in essence, "I'm good enough that I can afford to suck, in exchange for a chance to be incredibly powerful, eventually."
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dracu
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Post by dracu »

I already gave Asin my opinions about sorcerers, but i'll repeat them now for others to see.

Asin wrote:
- One of the major advantages of being a Sorcerer was that we were able to decrease the resists on mobs. Without this feature some mobs are impossible to kill, now the Mages have this ability on their own, this new feature makes the guild obsolete in said parties.
Nope, decreasing resists on monsters has never been a necessity, more like a topping on already abuse cake that is known as eq-party.

Asin wrote:
The second feature is that we can check resists on mobs, so can Templars.
Test of the elements is not nearly as accurate as recognize energy patterns, you can get some idea what types to try, but that's about it. I also don't see a problem about this anyway.

Asin wrote:
- It was announced that from now on blasters’ sp cost was halved on prestige mobs. If you are an awesome sorcerer with average mages you run out of sp the same time as the others do. From now on you don’t stand a change keeping up with the other blasters. NOTE: this is just a speculation because the Wizards might make this feature work for Sorcerers too.
If you are an awesome sorcerer, you'll slaughter everything. You might run out of sp faster, but that doesn't equal being bad, though often it does. No, spdrain will never halve on prestigious monsters, it would be very much abuse :D

Asin wrote:
- Monsters are getting unleashed when someone enters the room; therefore you are a danger to your own party.
This was luckily fixed and i'm very glad about it. You can still fail and critically fail checks, which causes spirits to hit others which is perfectly fine.

Asin wrote:
- Compared to Mages, our criticals suck. Mages can crit and swarm the same time. It saves sp and deals huge amount of damage the same time. On the other hand as a sorcerer you can just crit once and that’s it. On the side note, Water Priests can’t funnel us to help the whole spell.
Zaltaiz already answered this pretty much perfectly, good sorc can deal 8 times the amount of damage than mage with a good crit and swarm, though it's rare to see that kinda crit from both sorcs and mages. We can crit numerous times during single round, mages can't. Let's say i have 4 spirits fighting, if the spirits all gained critical abilities, they ALL have a chance to crit on one round, has happened to me lots of times. We need no funnel, though it grieves me we can't get the most out of spells and tunes, like funnel, spell impulse etc.

Asin wrote:
- Lack of control of the type of elemental damage we deal with Seize. Having the wrong type of monsters out it just a waste of sp or even in some cases you even heal the mob because of that.
Zaltaiz answered pretty much perfectly on this, too. "Lack of control mirrors the ability to do a lot of raw damage.

Asin wrote:
- Increase the base damage of the seize spell big time not just the last crit tune and/or make a swarm-like feature for seize, like they hit again without any extra sp cost.
Umm no, we'd probably one shot cramlens etc with that :)

Think i'll better get back to work :C
Embracing the darkness is the only solution to this madness.
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solar
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Oh hai!

Post by solar »

I have always entertained myself (well, now you too, seeing that you are reading this) with the questionable 'idea' of some day Sorcerers receiving another 'multispirit' command, making use of both malevolent and benevolent types.

While this isn't bloody likely ever going to be implemented (I am sure that people have probably brought up a similar suggestion before, umpteen times), the 'new' command would mimic the similar type of area damage benevolent commands do. (windstorm, tempest, twister): An entity that deals X type damage each round to all present unwarded targets.

This would, however, make use of the additional damagetypes of seize - not just cold and asphyx. This 'entity' would be able to deal all the damagetypes seize can, either dealing the same type each round to all targets, or randomizing the type to each target each round. Or change its damagetype every few rounds etc.

And it needn't rock. (Just raise masteries safely)

Seize would still very likely be preferred.

It could be called, for example: Chaotic area-reaving power-entity of doom-imposition elemental mushroom-cloud. (aka CARPE DIEM)
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dracu
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Post by dracu »

Rumours has it, that there is going to be another multispirit spell which uses ALL the spirits, malevolent, benevolent and neutral. However so far, only Sriel would be able to use it. The idea has been around for almost as long as i remember, so maybe 2020 or maybe not or yes or boogie.
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eysenc
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Post by eysenc »

Goderic wrote:
-ability to cast without wielding guild item
One can cast haste etc outside combat while wielding the scepter so I don't see why this would be that good. I wouldn't want to use sp consuming spells while in combat since the sp drain from sorc spells is already high enough. Can ofc be done with enough wp-sec levels or certain eq.

Goderic wrote:
-availability of the 'meditation' skill, and
-better regens, perhaps an uptune of the regenerative vortex.
Meditation can already be trained in various secondary guilds and while using it with regen vortex the spregen rate is actually good.
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