Mages, gear and meele. A personal view.

Mages, gear and melee. A personal view.

Melee A melee character power is proportional to his equipment. His damage output will depend on his weapon, on his damroll, on his hitroll and his skill %. Typically a well dressed melee will walk around in +50/+50. For example a melee (if we state that enhanced damage give +50%) with a avg 27 weapon will give 40.5 damage base. The damroll bonus will double that value. Imagine a melee gets a equipment that improved dirt kick. Now his chance to fail dirt kick will decrease from 25% to 20%. Every proficiency gear aids a melee. Specially weapon proficiencies.

Mage A mage power mostly depends on his class selection. And a very tiny bit on additional spell level equipment. The single thing a common mage can do to improve his spell damage is to gather a piece of eq that increases his spell level. Even this will not be much. Let's say I use a spell that deals 200 damage. This is most times in FL something close to damage = Level x 4. Raising my level to 51 means that I increase damage by 1/50. 200 becomes 204 and so on. L52 => 208, L53 => 212. Most of the impact come from the fact that higher spell levels are harder to save against or cure. Let's say you managed to get max spell level and that this impact saves by +?? svs vs spell. So now your opponent saves your spells 80% of the time instead of 90%. If we imagine that saving the spell halves the damage. Then [(100x0.2+50x0.8)/(100x0.1+50x0.9)]= (20+40)/(10+45) = 1.09, which means you have increased your damage by 9%. Regarding spell proficiency, this has no impact in spell power, except for Battlemages who get some nifty bonus on a few key spells. For the most, gear that improves spell proficiency, just aids with not failing to cast the spell. This mostly only affects races like giants who can fail mastered spells, and mages who get furied by a feral.

HP Gear HP gear is interesting, as it extend the time a character can stay in battle before dieing. A elf mage will have ~500 HP base (pre trains). With 1 prac and train saving this can get up to 700 HP base (trained). Meeles tend to have ~1000+ HP. For them HP gear is not as advantageous as for a mage who can get +300 HP in HP gear, improving his HP by ~+40%.

AC gear AC reduces meele damage, which translates into more HP. From my experience I can get -300 AC in most characters, but to get -500 AC I need to really put some effort. This improvement in AC from 300 to 500 can mean an effective increase in HP by ~20%. In my opinion it's always more advantageous to take HP gear over AC gear, even in the debatable case of clerics.

Mana gear. Having more mana is always nice, but it improves little unless you are getting out of mana in PK. Which will mostly only happen for an unskilled player, or when your opponent erodes your mana.

Conclusion My main point is, more EQ always favor melees over mages. Yes, HP gear will allow a mage to live longer, but does not allows him to kill faster. Hit/Dam gear for meele increases their power greatly, allowing them to kill faster. Being able to kill faster is good because your opponent has less time to react, recover from mistakes or run.

A corollary of this is that an universe where cabaled players can be fully decked will always favor melees.

What can be changed? Easily? I have no idea. Changing spells to take into account spell proficiency would mean lots of code work. I hate save breaking equipment. (Having your gear decrease your opponent saves). It's counter-FL IMHO. The easiest would be to have more spell level gear. Which is the opposite of what has been happening.

Disclaimer. - All numerical values are not exact and intend only to be objects in comparisons. Don't go around saying I said "X affects Y by Z".

Mages do not need more + spell level. They changed MOST + spell level to mask for the reason of mages having access to too many sources of + spell level and creating scenarios of casters that could wreck anything nearly at will.

I hardly see that as possible, what I see is some spells being hard to cure, such as sear blindness.

But the fault of that is from weak consumables, not spell level.

And the tendency of some characters to forgo saves so that they can kill people in 4-6 rounds in hitdam suits.

I disagree that HP eq is always better than -AC eq. I think it largely varies based on:

1. what your -AC is already

2. what kind of healing ability or consumables you have

3. what your saves are like

4. most obviously what your vuln is

HP is only better than -AC if you have no reliable method of healing, or if your have a ton of -AC already. 

If you have a healing spell or the time to farm a hundred nymph hearts, bonus HP is only a mediocre stat at best. +HP is only a buffer, after all. Even with all the best +HP eq in the game equipped, you're only going to last another 2-3 rounds against the best melees than if that eq had no +HP. 2-3 extra rounds isn't going to accomplish all that much, and certainly not as much as the defensive boost from -AC. 

Now, if you have a huge amount of -AC, diminishing returns make +HP more effective, but I want to say that's really only beyond -500.

Another case for -AC is one you bring up on your own. The tendency for people to stack hitdam. If you mass +HP, you are offering NO extra defense against their massive damage numbers, nor are you in any way hindering their hit%. -AC combats, effectively, both hit and dam, and will give you a much better window of opportunity to blast their save-deprived corpses.

PS: 

weak consumables

Consumables are the biggest PITA in the game, and it is because they are quite the opposite. The idea that we have so many curative consumables already is troubling enough. And it is in fact these same "weak" consumables that give melee classes a large portion of their advantages over mages.

My opinion on HP > AC for healing classes, is that a higher HP pool allows you to hover at bellow 50% HP with more HP, and thus bait them better into their death.

And on general , if one do the math based on AC damage reduction, HP gear ends up allowing you to take more damage before death than AC gear (in my view). That is for non self-healing classes.

I do agree with you Enethier that AC > HP for infinite self healing meeles. I just disagree on classes who have to bait because they can't lag.

Mya, the mud was changed because mages having too much + spell level was making them too powerful. Again this is not my opinion. This is a fact. It is why hakeashar lenses are masks, why dragonskull helmet was changed do a dragonbone facemask. Ring of ultimate evil is now mask of ultimate evil. The staff did not do this because it seemed like a nifty change, it was done to balance mages casting at 52/53 too easily.

How do you tell what your spell level is?

The thing is, Mya is right, to a point.

The nerf to mages where +spell level items got changed to masks is a big one.

I can agree with +mal level restricted to face only, but when you have stuff like the the Dragon Helm from the Arena, that's not really needed.

At the same time, melees have been getting slight buffs here and there - most of the stuff you can buy from the Astral Bazaar is melee oriented - the RP necklace is great for melees and not that spectacular for mages. Most edges are melee oriented.

A second version of the RP necklace can be created, where the 3 hit/3 dam can be replaced with say 30 hp.

A few mage oriented edges can be added (just a couple of examples):

An edge can be added (100rp) that that makes you healthier (20-30 hp)

An edge can be added (200rp) that that gives you +spell level

The prices on the stuff from the Bazzar are crazy. The most RP points I've gotten on a character of mine was like 27 and I RPed my ass off. Guess I just suck at both PK and RP.

I think that if the bazaar was to give +spell level, it'll need to be higher than 200.  Like closer to 400-500, IMO.  You can get 400 RP points with a bit of time and effort to buy +2 slvl?  No thanks.  Additionally, +slvl on a mage is huge, even with one level.  Before the change you could easily get your caster level to 53, which is just egregious.  If I remember correctly, some classes cast some of their spells at a higher level anyway (shamans an example).  Giving them tons of +spell level on top of that is just ... no thanks.  I think that the nerf was a good one.  And yet I do like the idea of +slvl from the bazaar.  Just most costly.   Not all the edges are melee oriented, but it certainly seems like it.  I count only 2 (maybe 4) that are melee oriented only where one only applicable to primarily communers.  Everyone else can gain benefits from most of them.     But back on to the topic directly, Volg did say something during the AMA about how more mage stuff and specific things will be implemented. "Volgathras (Admin): I have been building tons for mages, lately. Wait till Ayluins Lament is done. The ultimate rewards are mage-tastic."   So there's at least some things coming.  As Mya originally stated she didn't know how to change her views on what she considers wrong in the OP, it does mean that some changes are coming for mages and we can use this time to give Volg more ideas to what can be added.  

The prices on the stuff from the Bazzar are crazy. The most RP points I've gotten on a character of mine was like 27 and I RPed my ass off. Guess I just suck at both PK and RP.

  RP points are easy to get, it's how you go about getting them is the trick.  Send a snippet log of you RP'ing to the prayer forum (replay tells/says/etc [help replay] helps A LOT here), write IC notes in game, use the journal.  Seriously, I think the journal is overlooked by a number of people.  I've gained 60 RP points on one character from about 10 journal entries alone.  Again, points are uber easy to get, they just take you making a small effort to bring your RP to the staff's attention.  

Personally, I like them when they are well written and will award anything between 2 rp points (I stood up, brushed my teeth, went to the arena and killed a wolf there...) to 12 (interesting story giving background info of a char / detailing how they feel, inner conflict, etc).

Your mileage may vary.

Not going to quote your mistakes (and speculations), but there are quite a few of them in your post, Magick.

Besides, those are just examples. Chill.

An easy fix for this would be to make the edges that are melee-damage based also effect spell damage.  I don't see why only melees should get an advantage over a range of classes in some cases.

The problem is that everyone but me thinks +spell level gear is very powerfull.

It isn't. 53/50 is  +6% and from saves +9% (from almost best case scenario) = +15%. (+3 spell level)

Good, yes. OP no.

This on par with Ogre damage bonus.

And certain cabals powers damage bonus.

And you have to sacrifice at least 2 equipment slots and have access to cabal stuff for the third level (ATM).

All your opponent has to do is replace one of his equipment with a saves dedicated slot for -10 svs you class main spell type and bam, you lose the extra damage from the  saves (9%).

Meeles get the ability to disarm cursed weapons. No one cares. Everyone is happy.

Some mage get L53 spells, it's suddenly the end of the world.

"If I remember correctly, some classes cast some of their spells at a higher level anyway (shamans an example)"

Yes, but it's more like Shamans cast Maledictions at L50, every other poor smuck casts it at L47. Anyone who plays a Shaman and a non shaman can check this in-game. It's a good system, as Maledictions can be debilitating and it works.

The problem aren't Maledictive spells. It's cures to maledictions. And in this I agree with Anume.

Curing a L50+ blindness with Red potions or Gyvels is a pain. But this isn't a spell level problem. It's a consumable problem.

One that could had been fixed with a new more powerfull rare cure blindness, or a tweak of the code to limit:

-either blindness affect max level to L51.

-cure blindness to affect max level impact to L51.

No need to gimp mages landing rates, because some guys decided to skip his malediction saves.

Plague and other maledictions aren't a problem. I recall a time when getting plagued was really dangerous. When even your own mount would desert you at first sign of a plague.

Not going to quote your mistakes (and speculations), but there are quite a few of them in your post, Magick.

Besides, those are just examples. Chill.

You're also right, they're just examples, but if someone likes those examples, they could be put into the game.  It was my opinion that one of them was priced too low, example or otherwise, and stated why.  If I'm wrong with why, I'd love for you to correct me.  That's how we learn.  Just telling someone they're wrong does nothing for anyone.

As for telling me to 'chill' ... seriously?  When have I ever been anything but calm and collected?  That, my good sir, is just offensive.

"If I remember correctly, some classes cast some of their spells at a higher level anyway (shamans an example)"

Yes, but it's more like Shamans cast Maledictions at L50, every other poor smuck casts it at L47.

Well, they would still cast it at a higher level relative to everyone else.

... I completely forgot what I was planning on adding here, just staring at the screen for the past 5 minutes wracking my brain.  Unless I remember soon (which I likely won't), I'll just leave that there.

Guess I will have to put some more thought into the slvl specifics before arguing otherwise.  Saw something somewhere and can't remember (yes, it's turning into a theme here) what it was exactly, so I guess it's my fault.  I'll counter appropriately later after some digging if I'm right.  If I'm wrong, consider this the retraction.

Sorry for being newb but can someone explain slevel?

Spell level.  The level in which you cast your spells.  For example, if a 50th level battlemage finds an item that gives him +1 to spell level, he'll then cast his spells as if he were 51st level.  Ability to save against it, remove it, dispel it, duration, potency, etc will all increase appropriately.

Dear Sirs,

All of your contributions is as always welcome from my part.

I just got my first interesting idea for a piece of Mage equipment.

A pair of embroidered silk purple gloves.

Object 'silk purple gloves ' is type armor, material leather. Extra flags: bless. Weight is 0, value is 60, level is 40. Armor class is 10 pierce, 10 bash, 10 slash, and 15 vs. magic. Affects spelllvl by +2.

Affects affllvl by -2.

Affects maledlvl by -2.

Affects mentallvl by -2.

Affects managain by 10.

What a strange piece of EQ. What does it do?

It increases all spells level by two and then decreases all AFF, MAL and Mental levels by two.

This means that only spells that aren't of this type will be affected. Spells such as Sanctuary, Curatives, Recalls.

Managain means the user will regain more +10% mana.

Bless, because it looks nice.

15 magic AC, because it's a wizard glove, of course it will protect you best against magic.

Didn't use +AC bonus to not screw invokers. Also penalizing bash/slash/pierce AC values is bad again to invokers.

Gloves, because there aren't that many useful gloves. Only HP Flaming gauntlets for goods, and those mana runed gauntlets ones.

I find them pretty tame.

And the +2 spell level might conflict with spell cap if you are using other +spell level gear. Only Morlhach can tell this. But they should be solid for uncabaled mages.

Those look good but wouldn't those also let necro's raise zombies at higher levels? I could see that being a problem unless there is something in the code limiting the zombie level not just spell level.

Necros cannot raise zombies above something like 52-54. The spell allows for a much higher level to be raised, but there is a hard limit imposed. The spell it self is limited to 8-10 levels higher. Obviously, you can't raise level 58-60 zombies.

Why not just remove healing consumables? 

Warriors shouldn't be able to heal 600 HP etc - I think this is one of the main factors thats creating a gap.