First, why does mage suck at high level gameplay, but is good at low-mid level gameplay?
Well, the answer is simple. Most of mage’s skills suck compared to other classes. At low-mid level gameplay, you are not nearly as reliant on using skills. Pretty much every class can get away with using their normal attacks, and be perfectly fine. In this regard, mage is fine, because its normal attack is actually on-par with the other classes. Once you start getting to higher level gameplay though, the normal attack for the most part becomes obsolete. You basically never see anyone above level 80 using their normal attack, they are always using their skills, because the normal attack just isn’t powerful enough. To give some examples, archers almost exclusively use arrow hoard (homing arrow for specific situations), Warriors use rage + power smash or ninja slash, cowboys use money power and coinshot, whipmasters use tornado and snakes, yet mage uses… their normal attack, because most of its skills are actually weaker than its normal attack.
Let me go back to that last statement, most of its skills are actually weaker than its normal attack. So, how can this be true? Well, the skills are based on the base damage of the player, except the base damage for mage is based on only 1 orb, from 1 weapon, not all of the orbs. With max crucial MP and 2 wands, a mage makes 8 orbs, while normally being able to actually land a hit with 4-6 at a time. Even saying the low end of that at 4 orbs, that means the normal attack damage is in reality 400% higher than what the players “base damage” is. So, a skill like magic breath and storm cloud become essentially useless since their damage multiplier is less than 400%, making them actually weaker than the basic mage attack, not even including the extra rune damage you get from each orb individually, which adds up. This also explains why mage is still good at low-mid level gameplay, because its basic attack is actually quite strong, so you can compete very well with the damage of other classes up until they start relying on their skills, that's where mage falls behind because it’s skills can’t compete.
So, how can we fix this?
Well, since I’ve highlighted that the problem is the skills, naturally, the fix would be to target the skills and make them actually worth using, so that’s what I’m going to do.
Storm Cloud:
Currently, this skill at max level does 360% damage of a normal attack. Given that this attack has a wide range and doesn't require activity from the player to use it once spawned in, I don’t believe this attack should be tremendously powerful, but it should actually become somewhat useful.
Changes:
- Increase the damage at max level to 500% (100% damage per stage)
- Give a 50% chance to light the enemy on fire (I mean, it is a lightning strike) which deals 200% more fire damage at max level (40% more fire damage per stage and fire damage based on your primary weapon’s fire stage)
Poison Cloud:
It’s only right this gets the same change as poison smash did - add in the amount of poison damage based on your primary weapon in addition to the base poison rain damage.
Magic Breathe: (Renamed to something else, am bad with names tho)
Well, magic breathe has been one of those skills that has been pretty much always useless since it was added.This is just based on the mechanics of the skill itself. It doesn’t do alot of damage, you are required to be stationary for an extended period of time to use it, it still uses a good amount of mp, and it doesn’t even outrange the mage basic attack. My suggestion for this is a complete rework of the skill, here it is;
Rather than be a “breathe” skill, I suggest for it to be more of a “summon” type of skill. Basically, I believe it should be essentially an upgraded version of the basic mage attack. When holding M and attacking, you summon elemental fireballs on each side of you, and 1 in front of you. These fireballs start as being spread out, but begin to merge closer together as they travel, and eventually merge into 1. When they merge, the damage of that 1 is the total of all fireballs combined. Essentially, think of the arrow hoard skill, but in reverse order. Please see the end of this post for a visual on how I picture this skill to work
Details:
- Base damage of each fireball 500%
- Damage increase per stage 100%
- Stages 5 - max damage of 900% (sounds like a lot but when factoring in the mage damage issue I highlighted above, it’s more like 300-500% increase which is more inline with other skills)
- Base MP cost - 7MP
- MP increase per stage 2MP (15 MP use at max level)
- Base amount of fireballs 1 (the one infront of the player)
- Fireball increase per stage 1 (max of 5 fireballs, 2 on each side of the player and 1 in the middle)
- The fireballs will travel at a slightly slower rate than arrows
- The skill will have a similar “cooldown” to arrow hoard
- The fireballs will travel a maximum of 20 feet, with them merging into 1 ball after 15 feet (only 5 feet of the OP damage fireball).
- *this skill does rune damage*
Storm breathe: (also renamed to match)
Along with the magic breathe rework, this skill would also then need a rework, but it would be very similar.
Details:
- Every time you use the “new” magic breathe attack, your storm cloud shoots 1 fireball identical to the others.
- Base damage of this fireball 500%
- Damage increase per stage 100%
- Stages 5 - max damage of 900% (same as above)
- Uses an additional 1MP per stage (In total this whole skill tree at max level costs 20MP)
Protection Field:
The protection field used to be arguably the most OP skill in the game, but it has gotten severely nerfed since then, and I believe it has gotten a bit too nerfed.
Changes:
- Field defense increased to 10% per stage (max of 50% defense, from the max of 32% currently)
- From my estimate the current animation after the forcefield breaks is set to 5-6 seconds, this should be reduced to 2 seconds. The forcefield is MUCH easier to break now, this isn’t really needed anymore.
Defensive Field:
- HP increase per stage changed to 60 from 50 (extra 50 HP at max level, nothing major)
Orb Field:
Again based on the damage issue I highlighted earlier, this skill just needs its damage buffed a bit, because right now it does basically nothing.
Changes:
- Damage increased per stage changed to 40% per level (total of 200% damage at max level vs 100% right now)
I know this seems like quite a lot to change, but really it’s just some fairly small-mid buffs to the existing skills to make them more viable, and the replacement of an un-used skill to give mage access to a more powerful attack like the other classes have.
Magicbreathe Replacement Visual
Red balls are the fireballs, black lines are the fireballs trajectory (I don't know if this is actually 20ft ingame, just a very rough estimate)
