lycoris
Posts: 89 Joined: 02-16-17
Last post: 2196 days
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Yes please. Stopped playing mage because I got tired of every single system taking a dump on me.
From evaporation to repair rates to potions to lack of weapon options, we are seeing a large group of players with no interest in playing mage who just don't like the idea of giving anything nice to the minority.
Gaav
Posts: 3 Joined: 04-13-17
Last post: 2762 days
Last view: 2722 days
Thunder locks enemies for 6 seconds. has 2000 range (Pretty much more than anything else.) Can chain and kill pretty much any regular mob in late game dungeons/Shadow missions. Sure mana evap sucks right now. But down the road when you're rank 1 in multiple classes, You need to punish someone from shooting adv magic and other shenanagins. Everything has a downside. Just one of mage's. Next warriors will ask for WM to not have 10% penalty, then for either more range or charge to work through magic. It won't end. Things are okay like this. Also, mana evap stones from alchemiest would then be obsolete. Just use those. Very easy to make.
lycoris
Posts: 89 Joined: 02-16-17
Last post: 2196 days
Last view: 74 days
You have to make the evaporation stones one at a time through ranked Synthesis, no auto crafting option, involving MP potions and unstackable small gems that must be separately gathered through unreliable methods. They are one of the most annoyingly fiddly consumable crafts in the game. Not easy in the slightest if you plan on using them often. Even golems are significantly easier to make. You'd save time by just drinking extra potions.
A good alternate solution however would be to make these less of a pain by adding them to drops somewhere or Shyla's shop. If ranged players can buy a big stack of ammunition, mage players should be able to buy a big stack of their ammunition too.
LazyFae
Still a casual gamer
Posts: 306 Joined: 02-23-17
Last post: 947 days
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I don't see mana evaporation as balance. Just an annoying feature that is just another reason to avoid magic, particularly early on as a giant. If you want balance, readjust mp usage by the actual spell, adjust cast times, adjust stun times, adjust damage, and/or even adjust area of effect. Mana evaporation may currently be an acceptable reason to keep from properly reviewing magic rebalancing, but balance is what i've been hoping to see in this game, even if it takes time. So properly changing the spells themselves would be an appropriate reason to get rid of evaporation and keeping the 'balance' that people claim it introduces. _________________________ Discord: Tonkatunk#7079 https://github.com/Tonkatunk/Mabi-Pro-Lazyfae-Mods
Waltz
Posts: 10 Joined: 04-17-17
Last post: 2750 days
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Dear MabiPro developers. I am Waltz, a new player who has joined Mabinogi on 4/16/2017. Being a new player was a bit tough in the beginning and even more so when I picked up Magic. I love Magic in any form of MMORPG that I've played over the years. Mabinogi being quite unique. So in my first few hours I hung out with Redlion and he showed me the benefits of magic, the pro's the con's. I was enthralled, excited and left in jubilation to become a mage to be able to don my robe 'n wizard hat. However as a new player it took me some time to build up my income in order to get my first two spells. Roughly one hour to get my first two spells and then for my wand it took four hours of killing Red Foxes/Gray Foxes to get my first wand, and even then during that four hours it wasn't enough. I had saved up roughly 19k at the time and I calculated it would take another four hours to get the other half of the amount I needed to buy a wand.
So I ended up asking for help in Global, which was fine. I got assistance from Jean and Laur/Willow until I was able to get my first wand. Which was in fact a Fire Wand, I was finally making my mark as a small time mage, however I knew it was going to be even worse. So being excited, I wanted to take my wand for a test run. I began charging up my Ice Bolt's and just as I was ready to go, I ended up accidentally hitting my tab key which swapped over to my broadsword. Naturally I changed back before I was hit with the prompt message of "The Mana connected to the Wand has disappeared." For a moment I was like "Well okay then, guess I lost my charges." I went to fire up some new charges only to find out that my MP had been completely wasted and I hadn't even gone out of my way to cast a single spell. I asked Jean about it and he responded promptly "Mana Evaporation.".
So getting into the meat and potatoes of this story, Mana Evaporation occurs when you have a full MP Bar and equip a wand, and then when you switch a weapon your MP (By lore standards) that is connected to the wand is diminished and is lost. Now in terms of this being a gameplay mechanic, it's in my opinion quite bad. This will discourage new players from actually picking up Mage as their main. It forces you to play something else that you just might not want to in order to bypass that issue. Even then another problem with ME, (we'll call it ME for short) is that in any form of PvE if you need to switch your weapon for any reason that's MP out of the window and that is common knowledge by anyone's viewpoint. Now going further down the rabbit hole for Mage. As I said I am new, but I take time to observe and check out what the game has to offer. Starting off was very rough, if I didn't have any help I wouldn't have bothered picking up a Wand to begin with, the outright cost is rather high and the lowest being a 41k Wand. Sure you can crank out the dosh for it, but the benefit of having it isn't a benefit at all if you can't fully utilize the wand, that includes the MP along with it. ME in a PvE situation is a do or die situation and to make matters worse no shops sell Mana Potions and even then, drinking too many Mana Potions will give you Mana Poisoning. There are from what I was told certain "Stones" you can get to circumvent it. But it's just truly not enough.
ME causes huge discouragement (at least in myself) to continue playing Mage as well as the financial upkeep to upgrade your wand. Which in turn forces the player to play another class first in order to build up finances enough to actually support their main class, which in this case "would be" mage. I would imagine that a new player who got their wand, was excited to use it went into a dungeon and went to use their wand, only to switch it out after they used it for a bit would find it to be pretty heartbreaking to watch their MP go down the drain. This also discourage's spell-sword play or any form of MP related build that can be done via combo's.
For example Fire Bolt > Enemy Knockdown > Weapon Switch (Sword) > Assault Slash > Weapon Switch > Ice Bolt Charge
It completely negates the auxiliary weapon slots that are in the game. Also players who use Healing Magic in their builds are going to be looking for alternative means to heal. Say you use a melee weapon and you take a pretty bad hit, you are also Potion Poisoned, so those aren't really an option for you right now. You switch to your Healing Wand and heal up. You then put it away and swap to your main weapon, only to find your MP is gone. Drinking a Mana Potion to replace the evaporated mana would only harm you further, it brings progression to a small standstill for those who want to hybridize between Melee/Magic outside of Alchemy.
I can only stress that MP Evaporation is reworked. When you perhaps remove your wand you lose maybe 1-3% of your MP total and not your entire bar. As in terms of magic for what I do know, putting your entire being into a low level magic attack would not be necessary. This maybe could be tied to wands. The higher level want the more MP % is lost upon it being removed instead of having it entirely washed out and made useless. This would encourage more spell use, but at the same time thinking ahead/critical thinking in situations where you need to spare MP for yourself for later usage and not a one and done type deal. Now I know what you're thinking. "Well if your situation is so bad. Just use a bomb." But that's not the point that's being made here. You shouldn't have to use a bomb because of a mechanic that removes your MP entirely and gives you no alternative other than to use one because you are put in dire straights.
Please reconsider Mana Evaporation as it hurts us players who are mage's at heart. I beg of you, not as someone who likes mage, but as a new player looking to carve a niche for themselves in MabiPro. _________________________ If you have something to say to me, say it. If not, keep your hands off the keyboard as to not waste my precious time on your idiocy.
Urudezu
Posts: 29 Joined: 04-14-17
Last post: 2715 days
Last view: 2702 days
Here is the way I see it: each "class" has a weak point. Mages have Mana evaporation, Warriors have 10% health loss on windmill, archers can miss EVERY SINGLE SHOT AT 99% WHEN THE GAME LAGS!
This game was designed to be difficult to play/learn/master over other MMORPGs. Mana evaporation only applies to wands, wands are only NEEDED to cast advance magic (I know they boost normal spells).
"Fixing" this is a slippery slope to easy mode for this game, if that is what you want you can always play on the normal Nexon server with instant load skills, armor skills, difficulty nerfs across the board, all day travel at moon gates, Fighter class (stupidly OP), Gunslinger class, Puppets, more dragons, ETC.
I have a lvl 2k+ character on the Nexon server, I prefer a game that doesn't hand me everything for free. I say keep the mana evap. I can still cast Fire/Ice/Lightning bolt with a Bow equipped and not worry about my mana disappearing.
lycoris
Posts: 89 Joined: 02-16-17
Last post: 2196 days
Last view: 74 days
The problem is, this is one of many weak points. Have a look at mage repair rates, potion accessibility, resource (MP, as opposed to Stam) regen, charge times, AP costs, difficulty in learning skills, restriction of skills to specific weapons, and lack of accessible weapon variety.
Should all these things be changed? Of course not. I'd be real sad if page quests stopped being a thing, they're interesting.
Should we stop pretending mages aren't at the bottom of the heap, and admit they could use a couple small touch-ups? Absolutely.
Heck, I even think evaporation could be salvaged as a mechanic by improving the ways to counteract it. Stones were already mentioned as a good one, but the wand upgrades could be, too. As it stands they're terrible, if you give the entirety of your wand upgrades to only evaporation removal, you don't even get to 50%. This means sacrificing MP use upgrades. I believe removal of evaporation is a better option than doing nothing at all, but it would be more interesting still to give players further ability to counteract it. What if these upgrades gave 30% evap reduction each, for instance? Not only does the sacrifice become worth making, it leads to more strategic decisions to be made. If implemented along with some greater accessibility for preservation stones, this would be better than just removing the mechanic.
sergalbait
Posts: 13 Joined: 04-14-17
Last post: 2720 days
Last view: 129 days
pretty sure archery's on the bottom of the heap. even the slightest server/client mismatch on the percieved location of either you or a monster will cause your shot to miss 100% of the time. If anyone suffers from packetloss they're going to miss a lot more often than they should be. Being able to miss even at 100% makes Archery the bottom of the heap.
Here is the way I see it: each "class" has a weak point. Mages have Mana evaporation, Warriors have 10% health loss on windmill, archers can miss EVERY SINGLE SHOT AT 99% WHEN THE GAME LAGS!
This game was designed to be difficult to play/learn/master over other MMORPGs. Mana evaporation only applies to wands, wands are only NEEDED to cast advance magic (I know they boost normal spells).
"Fixing" this is a slippery slope to easy mode for this game, if that is what you want you can always play on the normal Nexon server with instant load skills, armor skills, difficulty nerfs across the board, all day travel at moon gates, Fighter class (stupidly OP), Gunslinger class, Puppets, more dragons, ETC.
I have a lvl 2k+ character on the Nexon server, I prefer a game that doesn't hand me everything for free. I say keep the mana evap. I can still cast Fire/Ice/Lightning bolt with a Bow equipped and not worry about my mana disappearing.
The problem with this 'weak point' is that WM is not a requirement for melee players. It is VERY useful, yes, but not required to play melee. The only time WM is ever REQUIRED is for a few bosses that level up if you don't WM spam them. Other than that, you NEVER HAVE to wm. Not to mention that the -10% isn't much of a weakness at all. For 10% of your health you can use I frames to dodge an attack that would do FAR more and even make a monster wait on your I frames to end while you load defend to counter it's melee attacks, or some other skill that you can load during the animation. Take further into account that with 2x server drop rates and you get hp30s much more commonly and early on than mp30s (Most early mobs drop MP10s while dropping HP and/or SP 30s) and that -10% health is usually covered in 1-2 presses of the h key.
Ranges weakness is a mix of pure luck and connection to the server that I have never agreed with. Even if we got 100% aim like in Live (I think it's actually +3% atm if you reach 70% meaning you can get 100%) you can still miss from now actually being at x aim % or even in range to shoot. There are plenty of times where you will miss every single shot because you are actually not in range at all but the game is showing you in range.
Magics weakness is far larger on a base level. Without using a wand, or a much harder to acquire at the moment stave, you are locked out of five whole skills. Even using a single wand type will lock you out of two other skills. You also lose all upgrades to make your three basic spells stronger as well if you chose not to use a wand. Magic also requires time to charge for everything. Meanwhile WM takes a second to load and has a rather large AoE by rank 1 for a nice chunk of damage. Crash shot takes a bit of time to load and aim but also has a decent AoE and damage to it.
On a final note, magic, unlike any other play style, tries its best to force you to hug one element and do nothing but that one element, while melee and range do not force you to stick to one weapon type or one skill. Even alchemy doesn't force you to use one element. You can power up no elements with a normal cylinder, or power up one and weaken the rest BUT still be able to use them all.
Removing mana evap, while not lore friendly, is gameplay friendly. Taking lore friendly methods to fix it would be better but require more work where other things could be worked on. EX: Giving meditation a passive of reducing mana evap based on rank, or/and even doing the same to a much smaller degree with magic mastery.
Jean
Posts: 28 Joined: 03-31-17
Last post: 2232 days
Last view: 94 days
Another short term quality of life improvement you could do is make the wand bonuses actually significant to justify the enormous durability cost. For instance, I think it's an ice wand provides +5 damage per ice bolt? You can easily change to +20 or +30, which in the grand scheme of things is no damage whatsoever, but would help justify the costs of a wand.
That kind of approach might help balance out the suffering in the early game without breaking anything late game. Obviously I'm just tossing out random numbers for illustration's sake without thinking about it too hard, but you get the idea. You can do the same thing with firebolt and lightning bolt as well. Firebolt's pretty good already, I'd say.
Urudezu
Posts: 29 Joined: 04-14-17
Last post: 2715 days
Last view: 2702 days
Lets look at the advanced skills:
Close combat:
Final hit. Very fun, can deal with up to 3-20 enemies if you are skilled enough/kill them fast enough. 10 Min cooldown, 414 ap rank 1, medium difficulty to rank.
Archery:
Crash shot. Good damage, good aoe, CAN MISS! 490 Ap rank 1, fairly easy to rank
Magic:
Thunder. Great damage, can hit up to 12 enemies at rank 1 full charge, long casting time, 409 ap rank 1, very easy to rank
Fireball. Massive damage, clears rooms in a dungeon, better aoe than crash shot, Single highest damage output (excluding Spear of God), long casting time, 383 ap rank 1, easy to rank
Ice spear. Great damage, Best crowd control in the game, long casting time, 436 ap rank 1, very easy to rank
Alchemy: (I don't use alchemy much so no comparisons... sorry)
So why do you want to Buff the only skill set with the most advanced skills AND the best damage.
Comparing crash shot to windmill doesn't help as windmill is one of the hardest skills to rank in my opinion, and windmill isn't an advanced skill.
Windmill's radius is smaller than crash shot, fireball, ice spear's explosion (that can chain), but is the same as thunder (r1 wm - rf thunder)
lycoris
Posts: 89 Joined: 02-16-17
Last post: 2196 days
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Windmill: Used with any weapon. Charges very quickly. Costs very little. Very effective bread and butter attack. Players start with it learned. Can be a pain to rank, but that's about it.
Final Hit: Used with any weapon. Is an advanced skill that helps but is not at all required to be a proficient warrior. Moderately challenging to learn. High rank is not required to be useful as it uses combat damage.
Crash Shot: Can be used with any bow. Pretty easy to learn as no luck is required. Yes, it can miss. High rank is not required to be useful as it uses combat damage. Honestly I would say this is pretty comparable with the below magic skills.
Thunder: Can be used exclusively with lightning wands. (Staves are not very accessible on this server at this time. I haven't yet seen a single player with one.) Requires high ranking to be useful unless you max charge it. Requires commitment of keeping the wand equipped to avoid evaporation. Requires high MP usage. Can be interrupted by other attacks due to strike delay. Moderately challenging to learn.
Fireball: Can be used exclusively with fire wands. Requires 5 lengthy charges to even cast it. Most other players would have everything dead before you're done charging. Requires commitment of keeping the wand equipped to avoid evaporation. Requires high MP usage. Moderately challenging to learn.
Ice Spear: Can be used exclusively with ice wands. Requires high ranking to have decent damage output. Requires commitment of keeping the wand equipped to avoid evaporation. One of the most difficult skill quests in the game, but probably the only one of these spells that can be a bit more speedy to use.
Summon Golem: Can be used with any cylinder, gets a bonus from Clay. Continued use of cylinder not required after setup. Can be difficult to rank, but wipes rooms like nothing else if you put some time into making the crystals and ranking its associated masteries. Easy to learn.
Water Cannon and Flame Burst: Can be used with any cylinder, gets a bonus from appropriate element. Easy to learn and rank, needs some ranks to be effective. Requires crystals which can be easily bought from an NPC. High damage potential especially on a Royal Alchemist. Can use a lot of stamina.
There's nothing wrong with the magic skills, it's just the surrounding ecosystem that drags them down. However, to say that they're "the best" is absurd.
ZanathKariashi
Posts: 35 Joined: 03-09-17
Last post: 2462 days
Last view: 298 days
Good...Magic is for people that aren't stupid and know how to learn a class.
Mana Evaporation exists to seperate the wheat from the chaffe. If you don't know how to manage it (and it's super easy by the way), Mage is not for you, try Alchemy, the Magic for the Magically Disabled.
If mana evaporation negatively impacts you, then it's doing as it was designed and preventing you from easily hybridizing and encouraging you to upgrade your wands to make them more efficient.
A Pure Mage doesn't need them as you, by design, will always be hovering around 0 mana except when you pot up to cast a int magic. Chain-casting, your bread and butter, is most efficient when you have less than 10 MP because any mana above what it takes for a single charge is wasted (10 of course being the smallest mana pot available, which due to meditation still being too garbage to keep you floating in CC range even at cap, so basically have no choice but to use them).
Mana Evap stones pretty much only exist for Party Healing and Blaze. That's it. Maybe some mana shield related stuff though I can't think of any off the top of my head since mana shield tends to work against wanting to spend your mana pool.
Any other type of mage hybrid is either opening with Int magic and will probably spend most of their mana pool charging anyway or is using chain-casting wands which as before are more efficient at zero mana.
And if you don't fall into either of those camps, doesn't even need to trigger mana evaporation as magic bolts don't require wands to cast (unlike alchemy with Cylinders) and the bonus for using a wand is actually pretty minor, a little bit of increased range, an tiny speck of damage tacked on the end, if all you're using it for is the 2ndry effects of it's bolts you don't even need a wand, like IB/LB for knocking an enemy out of an attack or stunning them briefly so you can set up another attack or Firebolt for when you need to run Fire-counter or to open with a 5 charge FB to soften them up.
mana evaporation is simply there to put a little bit more thought into what you're doing and why.
lycoris
Posts: 89 Joined: 02-16-17
Last post: 2196 days
Last view: 74 days
Mabinogi is a game about choices and freedom in character customization. If your argument is "my play style is the right one, options aren't necessary" then you're doing it wrong and attacking others' choices and experiences by trying to force restrictions on them. The changes proposed in this thread would not prevent anyone from playing the way they're used to playing.
Good...Magic is for people that aren't stupid and know how to learn a class.
Mana Evaporation exists to seperate the wheat from the chaffe. If you don't know how to manage it (and it's super easy by the way), Mage is not for you, try Alchemy, the Magic for the Magically Disabled.
If mana evaporation negatively impacts you, then it's doing as it was designed and preventing you from easily hybridizing and encouraging you to upgrade your wands to make them more efficient.
A Pure Mage doesn't need them as you, by design, will always be hovering around 0 mana except when you pot up to cast a int magic. Chain-casting, your bread and butter, is most efficient when you have less than 10 MP because any mana above what it takes for a single charge is wasted (10 of course being the smallest mana pot available, which due to meditation still being too garbage to keep you floating in CC range even at cap, so basically have no choice but to use them).
Mana Evap stones pretty much only exist for Party Healing and Blaze. That's it. Maybe some mana shield related stuff though I can't think of any off the top of my head since mana shield tends to work against wanting to spend your mana pool.
Any other type of mage hybrid is either opening with Int magic and will probably spend most of their mana pool charging anyway or is using chain-casting wands which as before are more efficient at zero mana.
And if you don't fall into either of those camps, doesn't even need to trigger mana evaporation as magic bolts don't require wands to cast (unlike alchemy with Cylinders) and the bonus for using a wand is actually pretty minor, a little bit of increased range, an tiny speck of damage tacked on the end, if all you're using it for is the 2ndry effects of it's bolts you don't even need a wand, like IB/LB for knocking an enemy out of an attack or stunning them briefly so you can set up another attack or Firebolt for when you need to run Fire-counter or to open with a 5 charge FB to soften them up.
mana evaporation is simply there to put a little bit more thought into what you're doing and why.
I don't even know where to start with this... Mana evaporation exists because the first director behind mabinogi hated magic and weaved a lore reason into why it's stupid. I'll hand it to him, it's a neat way to get your hate across. Further that with the long RNG based drop quests and high repair costs with decent rates and the fact that meditation, at any rank, is literally worthless, and wooohboy, what a good set up.
"Preventing you from easily hybridizing" you mean like...literally every other skill set? Holyshit, I guess switching from a bow to sword better nef my dex by 75% for 5-10 minutes! That'll sure make me think twice about doing two styles of play I enjoy!
Never, EVER, use that chain cast excuse. That is, no mater what, a BUG that should be fixed. Everyone can say "Oh, mana evap is a lore reason!" So what's the lore behind chain cast, that would normally cost mp for each bolt loaded, suddenly NOT NEEDING the mp if I don't have enough...? Not one? Oh, well, that sucks. I will never see this as anything other than a bug that was never bothered to be fixed, as it makes no sense lore or game-play wise.
Also yeah, manashield isn't a mage skill. That's a joke. That's a skill for everyone who doesn't use their mana constantly. As a pure mage, it's sorta trash. As a hybrid, it's sorta nice, as ANYONE ELSE that doesn't even touch magic, it's glorious...which is weird but I guess okay.
Sadly the bonus is really minor outside of upgrades, and even then only chain cast for bolts, which is even more of a reason that mana evap is crap... Meanwhile, aside from cylinders, as their skills boost in damage quickly, basic bolts in the early game deal 'eeeh' damage, while even a rank N combat and sword mastery person can dish out 50+ damage with upgraded swords per hit quickly. That takes time, but as repair costs for melee and ranged weapons are much smaller than wands, it's something they'll get from just playing normally instead of trying to save up for it in the early game.
I'm not saying that chain cast mage isn't the only option. Anyone can play how they want, and to be blunt, the int magics do not hybrid well honestly. Thunder locks you to the wand, IS, FB, and TH all cause displacement lag if you dare move while they explode/strike. It's just a little silly that a bow or cylinder can be freely swapped out for a melee weapon (or each other) with no downside what so ever, but if you wana take 30(25?) seconds to launch a fireball and swap to a bow or some swords or a cylinder or just your fist or a different wand to take out stranglers (which there will probably be plenty/a few), you get punched in the face with a massive penalty.