Reducing Mage Power

[Xianio]

Currently wizards/Sorc's are still thought of as one of the most powerful classes. High damage, pretty good hp, can reach high ac with nearly undispellable defenses. So how do you weaken a mage without making it useless? Well it's gotta keep it's damage, it's gotta keep it's hp and it's gotta keep its DC's.

However, there are some things which the mage simply doens't need to keep.
1) The ability to spot every sneak on the field. One of a mages main weak points is that if you don't build for hp you don't have a ton of it. So I say we remove most of the mages spotting gear. Mages can kill sneaks without it, just use aoe's like icestorm or horrid. Requires a little guess work but lets sneaks counter them nicely. I say we remove:
Robe Of Eyes: +10 spot/listen
Raven/Owls/Trueseeing Amulets: +10 listen..spot and listen/spot
From there useable items and:
C&C: +10 spot/listen
Trueseeing: +15 spot
From there castable spells.

This change would make them -crappy- spotters unless they multiclassed to max the skill and even then it would only be ok. Personally I think that's fair as wizards especially have skill points to burn so taking a few levels from them so they need to focus hard on spotting wouldn't be a bad thing in my mind.

Also, mages currently can reach 40-45 ac. Could someone tell me why a mage with damage shields, massive DR and really no need to put any points into anything but int/charisma and con. can reach ac's equal to if not better then a fighter/ranger who needs to spend -tons- of money to reach this point. Mages shouldn't be AC tanks while being able to have near undispellable 50% conceal, damage shealths and instant killing spells. We didn't let our bards do all this, I don't see why we let our mages.

To fix this massive flux in balance I say we lower it by reducing armor avaliable to mages as reducing spells isn't fair as it's there main weapon.
I suggest we disallow mages from having:
Hardiness boots. Allow them the con boots but they don't need the +5 ac.
Limit the Armor to +1
Make mages unable to use natural armor +4-5 ammy's.

Now this may seem like a large blow to mages but let us remember that if built right mages are amazing tanks and don't require help from -anyone- to kill just about every class in the entire game. I'm all for mages being powerful but they should require some skill to play. A mage can still gain +4 to tumble by multi'ing away for 1 assassin level for next to no penalty at all (-1 level 9 spell slot) to gain a good ac bonus and 23 dc on a death attack AND sneaking potential.

I think this would be a very fair way of weakening mages so that they cannot kill everything. Afterall a class that can dispel -everything-, use unblockable damage, do damage to everything just for being hit and have 30/+5 dr shouldn't be able to spot sneakers and out-melee pure barbs/fighters. (Just look at Casas's, the things got mid-40's ac do very well using -no- real damage spells against melee's. ie: Negative circle str draining spell + bigby's imposing hand + mords = even paladins with <30 ab versus his mid-40 ac.)

[Casas]

Undispellable, they only have Shadow Shield (there's a better amulet), mage armor (+1 dodge), and shield of deflect (+5 is out there). GDispel rods are 30k and one of those works pretty decently. It's HP is d4. I see mages over and over that have <100 HP.

Soul of Rak makes icestorm useless.

Trueseeing is +10 spot.

I sent in some nerfs to Rary for spells all the time, stoneskin and premo currently on my agenda. I wanna get them reduced by 5 each, or have them unable to be stacked.

Most class AB is 37~43 and AC of 40. My WM has a 40ish AC, and he uses a scythe.

Bards AC was surpassing 55 with amazing damage output, mages damage isn't difficult to shrink.. imp evasion, and decent reflex/fort. They go boom.

More so now that firebrand is fireball on mail order delivery.

[Xianio]

Although statistically that seems very true it doesn't change the fact that mages are still insanely powerful.

That's my point exactly. Average ac = 40ish for melee classes. Classes which should have ac. Mages should rely on proper spell useage and high disruption tactics. No other class can do 200+ damage in 1 round from across the field then another 200 by the time the person reaches them then another 20+d6 everytime they take a hit. Something that could do that doesn't need to be able to reach fighter level ac.

A good example of this is how often does your mage get beaten? You play one of the best mage builds on the server and I've seen you take everyone of my builds at 50% of the time most of which better then that. That means you can spot my sneaks, beat my ac tanks, kill my damage dealers and beat my wizard (admittedly my wizard is a bad build) all with one character. The reason for this is because your ac is fighter level, you can lower my ab by 10 with bigby's and you can attack every one of my saves and one of which is bound to be low.

And if Soul of the rak makes icestorms useless switch to other spells like negative energy circle to lower strength to 3 so they can't run. I don't see how making sneaks into anti-mages as being unfair.

In my mind mage -shouldn't- be able to reach ac higher then most classes final ab. The entire premise of a mage is magic to kill and if you get into combat you should have a low chance of survival.

Also just because trueseeing is +10 doesn't mean that it's not unfair still. My -pure- wizard can reach 73 listen and spot. ie: I can spot everything. This is WAY to powerful for a class who has listen/spot as crossclass skills.

Mages might not gain a ton of ac spells but even with those small amount of spells they still have figher equal ac. Empowered dex, + all those spells = a ton of extra cash to be able to afford big ac gear that most fighters can't afford until late 20's. Mages have +5 armor. No other class gets that.

Mage ac should top out around 35, not 45.

Mage listen/spot should top out around 30-40 not 70-80.

Mages should be anti-everything based upon spell choices, not because they can do what a bard can do better, what a fighter can do better and what a sneak can do better.

Finally changing spells is a lengthy process which causes balance issues (we've been trying to balance spells now for ages and mages are still powerhouses of the server) so why don't we try and change the ac/detect gear for them so we create weaknesses rather then weakening the class itself.

[AntiChristMofo]

i couldnt agree with you more Xianio

but dont take the spot and listen gear away because some of my meeles use them for sneaks

plus giving them low AC would mean that people with be able to crit them better and easier and stonesking with some DR and flame shield thing cant stop a crit from taking of some HP with it which is usualy about 20 hp max with some chars but if my reaper gets hold of a mage with low AC and crits they wont even stand a chance of fighting back since he can crit 155 he can kill most chars with 2 hits unless your a con whore tank

and what you must understand bards and mages are totaly different a bard without his buffs is usless but a mage without his buffs can still be a very dangerous char

[Xianio]

The bard thing was exactly my point. We weakened them but mages were still more powerful then they were so I think it would be fair to weaken a mage as well.

And I'm not trying to take away that gear from everyone. Just make it limited so that mages cannot use it. So the gear doesn't go away, it's just "no usable by wizards/sorc's"

[AntiChristMofo]

o ok then fair enough i think i understand now lol

[Rary]

I do have to say, mages should not be getting 40AC. It should be no more than 30. It'd be ok if +5 weapons and +5 armors were in, but they aren't and that hurt melee and not mages in this area.

Mages should rely on spells for defense and offense, not AC or AB for that matter.

This idea is much better than not allowing skins and premo to stack.

[AntiChristMofo]

well if i had to vote for anything it would be to lower AC since they all all those defsense spells

[Xianio]

I plan to hold a vote after this discussion. Just getting the basic discussion out of the way first I think would let people have a clear idea before voting.

[A95]

I don't exactly like the fact that mages can beat any class if they want to.

And I was told in my Staffs thread that mages staffs were going to get changed since they were from the +5 d12 weapon days. I don't believe that ever happened.

[Rary]

Staves for mages were changed already. They had haste and DR ones before.

[Protoss119]

The only reason mages are that powerful is because of one spell: Phantasmal Killer. They eat up melees for breakfast. There's no need to weaken the DCs of the other spells though, just that one in particular. No need to go at such great lengths...

Besides, if mages couldn't spot, we would all be ruled by sneaks. Wizzies usually have spot more than Sorcs do, since they have more points to spend on it. Since there are more Sorcs than Wizzies (and most of these sorcs don't have the head for C/C), no need to eliminate spot forever from them.

I haven't seen a single Bigby get thrown in quite a while, to be honest.

[Rary]

PK is useless. If they can't stop that, then they can't play well.

Hold person would be overpowered if you never learned the first time and got items to resist it.

I laugh when I get a mage spamming PK at me while I kill them. I figured they learn, but usually log off because they were hoping that making a mage purely for PK was good until they realized it isn't.

But right now, PK is easier to stop than any other spell except grease.

[Protoss119]

How many fighters have died to a DC 23 or 24 PK? WHEN THEIR WILL SAVE IS 4?

...

That's what I thought.

[Rary]

If they don't do anything, alot will die to it.

Would you go in toe to toe with a rogue as a fighter and not wear a single listen or spot gear?

Would you go in to a battle with a mage with all AC gear?

I mean if you don't equip yourself against, yes you will die.