Mages Underpowered?

[Jaxel Von Doom]

Weapons seem to do as much damage as spells but an equilvalent weapon tends to have lower requirements than an equilvalent spell. Spells also tend to miss more often that my melee attacks even though I have 19 INT and only 5 DEX. Spells also do not grant any stat bonuses at all while some of the stronger weapons grant stat bonuses. Most of the better stat giving armors and high protection armors have high STR requirements which someone using spells is unlikely to have.

Granted, RESIST is a lot harder to come by than ARMOR but I still miss more with spells than my dagger. I also have 40 in my relevant magic skills while I am untrained in my dagger. So skills affect the damage range but not the hit rate?

I fail to see how a mage can fight a melee user on equal footing (and hence see elves as totally useless).

[Ainessandil]

I have an elf and dont' really see a problem. The magic stat needed for top spells (which I don't have yet) is no worse than the str requirement for best weapons. I agree that getting no stat bonuses from spells is a negative, but the ease of raising armor vs. resists is a major advantage it seems to me.

[Jaxel Von Doom]

There are plenty of mid range 10-13 damage weapons availible that only have 5 or no STR requirements while all spells that do more than 10 damage have 10 MAGIC requirements.

Yes, ease of raising ARMOR compared to RESIST is an advantage, except that I still see spells miss about 2 or 3 times a combat, every combat, even though I have 24 INT. I miss with my dagger about once every 3 or 4 combats even though I have only 5 DEX. I'm pretty sure the people I attack have high armor so I should be missing more with my dagger. Also, I have 86 armor and the people I attack miss maybe once every 2 combats or so. This being the case, I fail to see how the difficulty of raising RESIST makes any difference. In fact, spells have an overall higher chance of missing.

[FBGsartre]

I too think there is a bit of imbalance. You can buy a Great sword in the shops that does 24dmg for only 480 gold. It has uncommon status and the only requirement is 10 strength. If you want a spell that can do that, you need to get really lucky and win an ultrarare or pay 1,440 gold for it. Then that spell requires 30 magic to use.

(Further, my understanding is that armor defends against spells the same as it does weapons, and that resists is merely the analog to agility.)

I'd bet that there are very few in the top 25 that rely on magic as their primary weapons.

[Jaxel Von Doom]

Hmmz, in that case, does that mean that my 24 INT misses more than my 5 DEX because everyone pumps RESIST instead of AGI? That hardly seems the case. As it stands, spells have less benefits, less damage, less accuracy and more requirements than weapons. Exactly what benefit is there to using spells at all?

[Vhalember]

I'm in agreement with Jaxel. Spells have higher requirements to use than weapons of the same damage level. Weapons also give stat bonuses whereas Spells do not....

This is why I dumped all my spells in favor of weapons over the past few days... and I'm doing alot better because of it.

[Elithrion]

Well, there's someone in the top 10 right now using spells as his primary weapon >.> That said, I'm only there because the new ranking system seems to make it comparatively easy...
Point being, yeah, I totally agree about weapons being better than spells. Yet another issue is that if in the super-long term you completely tune out your character and have all items you want, it will be impossible to compete with spells only. Simply, once you have 4 spells equipped, any more will get you no benefit. If you have 4 weapons equipped, on the other hand, you can still add more weapons for more stat boosts (*imagines a warrior running around with 8 weapons*)

[edit:] I can see just one benefit to spells, basically - there are fewer categories, so it should be "quicker" to acquire the correct spell type than the correct weapon type for your skill investment (the quotes denote that the spells you acquire will still suck more, so it will take you just as long or longer to get spells that are actually powerful)

[Crepitus]

I think spells are underpowered too.
I have weapons doing 23-27 damage (there is a 30 dmg one in the game) but I haven't even heard of a spell doing more than 25 and I don't have any that are as good as my weapons.

Add to that the randomness of which type of spell you would have the best damage for and you would normally have to train multiple skills to go with your variety of spells.

IMO 4 great swords (no more) is the way to go.

[FBG_OChaos]

im consistantly sticking in the top 20 as an elf with spells only for attack.

I can battle the same person and receive completely different results because of only using spells though.

If I could re-roll, I would go for strength and the great sword skillset method.

[Elithrion]

I can battle the same person and receive completely different results because of only using spells though.
Yeah, I'd have to say that spells can make my results fluctuate anywhere between winning by 50 life and losing by 50 life against the same person... [edit:] then again, I suppose the same could theoretically also happen with weapons, but this makes a more interesting complaint :D

[Kortag]

Will the magic be better in the future? because the way it is now mages are alot weaker than fighters.

the major thing is: spells do not give bonuses, weapons do.

[Maldak]

I'd echo the points made here about spells. The only one I've seen in the high damage range has been an UR in the shop which I couldn't afford
Damage 24ish requires Magic 31 and gives no other bonuses - the equivalent largesword costs under 500, is uncommon and would require strength 10 below its damage. The rare and presumably UR weapons boost stats.
Currently I've got 3 largeswords equipped and my Strength raised - a few other weapons boosting stats. I wanted to go the line of spellcaster and can get my magic up to 34 with items sitting in my bank so using those URs wouldn't be a problem - finding them is a different matter however. :(

The highest magic charm or jewelery I've seen as yet is the +9 I have equipped - I have some +10s for other stats and have seen +15s in the shops so I don't doubt there are +10 to +15 magic ones out there and suspect they have the same drop frequency as any other stat so don't see any problem with this aspect.

Also the minimum damage weapons appear to be 3 whereas I've found a few damage 1 spells - the only time anyone would even consider equipping those would be if they had less than 4 offense slots filled - and probably not really even then.

[Ainessandil]

I have no way of knowing if the strong disadvantage of magic users/elves is real or just perceived, but whichever it is, Zeras, do you have something in the works to adjust it (coding, or perception, whichever is needed)?

If you do, I know you won't say what, in advance, but it would be nice to know the question/problem is being addressed.

By the way, I've often abbreviated your name to just "Z", but in another thread (which I'm too lazy to try and search for) there was a reference to Zeras and Z, implying they are two separate admins... although I don't see a "Z" in the members list. Is it ok to refer to you as Z, Zeras, or is there indeed someone else who goes by that 'title'? (Or perhaps, there's no one else but you just don't like it?)

[Gil]

Will the magic be better in the future? because the way it is now mages are alot weaker than fighters.


the major thing is: spells do not give bonuses, weapons do.

I won't say magic will be better in the future because better is highly subjective based upon the person making the observation, but I am considering making some possible changes and I certain Zeras and myself will be talking about this in our next meeting.

And I will not elaborate so don't ask ;).

[Ainessandil]

I won't say magic will be better in the future because better is highly subjective based upon the person making the observation, but I am considering making some possible changes and I certain Zeras and myself will be talking about this in our next meeting.

And I will not elaborate so don't ask ;).

That's all I wanted to hear. :)

Thank you.

[Gil]

I'm beginning to notice there is a TON of things on the next meeting agenda LOL...