MabiPro: The Authentic Old-School Mabinogi Experience

Okay so..I'm not going to touch any of the other points, but...

Icebolt is for utility.
lightningbolt is the bread and butter damage of a mage
firebolt is the largedamage+knockback for a mage.

This is not addressing the damage or balance, etc. Just..I wouldn't use icebolt for your comparison, as damage really isn't the 'goal' of icebolt. Its usage comes from being able to have five projectiles loaded up to quickly stun enemies/force them to behave certain ways.

I'm not trying to start any kind of argument over anything here, just.. you might want to use lightningbolt in your examples.

Having a skill akin to magic weapon mastery would greatly boost bolt damage while holding a wand, seeing how casting bolts with wands right now is pretty lackluster without any chaincasting, and it would decrease int magic loading times too. It would probably have to be rebalanced to fit this server but otherwise I think magic weapon mastery would be a way to make wands actually worth using besides int magic or chaincasting.

Sadly, LB falls behind even more actually. Aside from the knock down on a cc+2 if there's no other foe in range, or a mass AoE spread for a damage cut, which I don't even begin to know how to read into that for game balance on judging what's better. I haven't added in the elemental masteries, but as I'm sure we're all aware, magic is the most costly in it's own skill set compared to any other set regarding AP. If rank 9 ice bolt with a cc+4 wand doesn't beat a fully upgraded gladius and rank E smash and WM (without even factoring in combat mastery), and rank 9 LB doesn't come close in comparison, then I don't know what to say honestly. "Just rank even more things" to beat low ranks and a single upgraded sword (that you start with so all you have to do is upgrade it over time) is crazy.

One thing I'm noticing that really nails magic in the head is needing 20 int for any effect on the damage. From ranking a few of the bolts to rank 9 (not all of them, just using one at a time as an example) you still fall short of a base +20int by a few int. Meanwhile with some melee and ranged skills, by the time you hit rank 9 you get +2-6 damage. Sure in the end that +5% damage from +100 int adds up, but it really makes the early game feel so low compared to other skill sets. Argh, I don't know what to say about this. Focusing on early game for getting into magic while keeping late game not crazy strong by altering early game. What could even be done?

I think a good point for them being balanced is the range of everything. Magic bolts have 1200 range (+200 with wand), windmill is 300 Rf-6/400 R5-2/500 R1, smash is 170 (normal attack range for humans). Archery is 1700-2500 (but lets ignore archery for now).

Lets assume fully upgraded items (ignore money and MP/SP costs)

Rank 1 cc+4 firebolt (also rank 1 fire mastery) is ~375-675 damage per shot (before stats/items)
Rank 1 cc+4 lightning bolt (R1 mastery) is ~55-165 damage per shot up to 5 enemies (before stats/items)
Rank 1 cc+4 Icebolt (R1 mastery) is ~85-95 damage per shot, 5 shots (before stats/items)

Rank 1 Smash full upgraded Gladius (rank 1 combat mastery/sword mastery) is ~160-410 damage per hit (before stats/items)
Rank 1 Windmill full upgraded Gladius (rank 1 combat mastery/sword mastery) is ~80-205 damage per spin (before stats/items)

Fire bolt/smash is 2 second load time. Ice/Lightning bolt is 1.5 second load time. Windmill is .8 sec load time for half of smash's damage and almost 3x range aoe.

Maybe the bolt spell are weaker than melee in the early game, but late game I think they win. Even if you double the melee damage due to dual wielding, the 8 times range more that makes up for the damage potential (in my opinion).

I agree to a point. The range is nice, but it's not a great trade off early game. The bolts with CC upgrades are very strong, but outside of that they are really lacking, and early game they are REALLY lacking. They need a wand with upgrades to be great unlike melee and range skills that have their damage jump greatly from ranking a skill. Rank E smash is 200% dmg for 2 seconds and with all 10 base stats with just your fists that's 16 max damage which is only a few points shy of rank E ices 21 max. Rank E LB is 46 and clearly wins, though with a much wider damage range, and firebolt clearly wins with 27max and wins harder with a full charge. The second you put a everyday short sword in your hand though you get 14-32dmg with nearly 80% balance to keep you on the high end.

I guess what some of our gripes with magic are, is there's nothing friendly to it in the start. It's either meh without a wand, or great with a wand which isn't starter friendly. There's no 'simple' weapon for magic to be okay with in the start. I love that it can fit in with range, melee, and even alch, but just mage on it's on early is slow and not rewarding or fun. Then again that's just with bolts. Mana evap and other things like INT magic are still weird subjects due to magic being so weird...

So are you saying you want to buff magic in the beginning and then nerf it in the late game?

I don't even see a point to wands AT ALL unless you use fusion bolt or stronger spells. Even the buff to respective elemental spells wasn't added until about G16.

Magic is bad early and good late game. Why is this bad again?

This is still going on? I gave up awhile ago. People are just stubborn to change.
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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.

being that the last post was a week ago, I would say the discussion is done

Chain-casting isn't a glitch though. The wand sucks in a huge amount of mana, either from the user or the environment when triggered and fully charges for however much the wand is crafted to do, though the user needs a small amount of mana to start the reaction. Of course it's also very unstable and tends to drain more mana than required as well.

Chain-casting wands are an attempt by the Druids to replicate Math's technique of drawing mana directly from the environment to fuel his spells with only a tiny bit of up front mana required, but without the requirements of being part-fomor and REALLY skilled.

This allowed them to field larger armies of less skilled druids with the firepower of more skilled druids, which was a pretty big deal during the 2nd war as by then most of the talented mages had died out or sided with the Fomors.

You could theoretically learn to do it, but humans aren't really built for interacting with Erg in that manner.

Mores was able to learn a basic version to let him chain cast basic spells without a focus, because he's a descendant of Math, who was Half-Fomor himself, and was a naturally talented prodigy on top of having the little bit of fomor blood.