Sup Nerds,
Long time lurker, first time poster. Did a search and couldn't find anything. The only thing I likedd about WoW was wands. What does anyone think about range weapons for casters?
I think it should cost something like a bow or throwing weapon would... Mana? Some player crafted ammo?
foyay said:Sup Nerds,
Long time lurker, first time poster. Did a search and couldn't find anything. The only thing I likedd about WoW was wands. What does anyone think about range weapons for casters?
I think it should cost something like a bow or throwing weapon would... Mana? Some player crafted ammo?
I think an auto attack for casters doesn't work so well with this kind of game, but who really knows what this kind of game even means? If it's more efficient for a "caster" to wand than to med, then something is wrong with the game, in my very much less than humble opinion.
The usual way a game like this (whatever that means) uses wands is as a means for casting spells. Mostly for mages (damage spells) but perhaps for healers (healing or damage spells).
Traditionally a wand-based spell would be less powerful - something to use if you are out of power or have used up all your useful memorized spells (depending on the game system). So that you don't sit around like the low level wizard from the early days of D&D with nothing you can do but beat futily at a mob with your staff after using your one magic missile or sleep spell.
Also traditionally it would have a limited number of charges and might not be rechargable - so you only use it when you really need to - or if you have a lot of wands.
In Pantheon one dynamic will be that certain types of attacks will be more useful against some enemies than others. So to take an obvious example, a wand of magic missile will be enormously useful for a fire or cold wizard when he or she runs into an enemy immune to his or her specialty. Unless the enemy is immune to magic missile too, in which case it is "feets don't fail me now" time. Likewise a fireball spell will be quite handy for a cold wizard and a iceball wand for a fire wizard. As I said these are obvious uses of wands there are many others.
Lol, I seem to keep coming into discussions counter or tangential to Iksar and Krixus, I’m really not doing it on purpose. I dislike the idea of playing a character who sits down half the fight because it’s the most efficient thing for me to do, not to mention that if I was the mob I would leap slam the guy with the audacity to sit down and lower their guard while I’m busy trying to kill him and his friend.
If in combat and out of combat mana regeneration function completely separately from each other, then some form of auto attack or high efficiency action is needed to fill the gap between using the appropriate high power spell. Active wand skills could very easily be the high efficiency tool to augment selective mana usage. Conversely there may be some form of active mana regain skill that can be used by mana intensive characters in a sustained battle. In my opinion using a mana skill that lets you cast a 1000 damage skill every 10 seconds is the same as wanding for 10 seconds at 100dps.
It’s all a matter of how VR decides to structure the combat system across the classes and roles. Now out of combat there should absolutely be some form of active rapid mana regeneration skill that allows mana used to replenish their mana pool. A maximum challenge battle should deplete 75% of a group’s total with the extra 25% for when things go wrong, this will also equate to a much more active play style for healers than was traditional in EQ. Needing to wait for 10 minutes while the healer slowly regens their mana is too tedious, even 2 minutes of nothing is likely to cause AFKs, so healers always had to use as little mana as possible. So having something to do while a fight is on the hairy edge of disaster is more engaging than sitting in the corner trying to get enough mana to cast another spell.
I made a thread a while back: -
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/7886/why-don-t-warriors-need-to-med
The title was intended to be thought provoking, but I admit was perhaps somewhat misleading and caused some ire...
Anyway, I very much like the idea of wands or at least *some* alternative to just being prone and stationery for much of your time as a caster, yeah.
I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but if you want to give wands to casters something would need to be sacrificed. For example, your spells do less damage, or your mana regen is lowered, or your spells use more mana. Or a combination of all of those. I think most people would prefer just to not have wands.
Iksar said:
Personally? I'd rather not have caster auto-attack.
Same reasoning could be applied to non-casters. I think non-casters should not have auto-attack.
It is not really fair that a Ranger can target a mob, click auto-attack, and walk away from the keyboard for XX minutes. Or a Tank auto-attacking a cornered mob, etc.
Casters always have to be there, casting.
:)
Bonechip said:Same reasoning could be applied to non-casters. I think non-casters should not have auto-attack.
It is not really fair that a Ranger can target a mob, click auto-attack, and walk away from the keyboard for XX minutes. Or a Tank auto-attacking a cornered mob, etc.
Casters always have to be there, casting.
Seems fair enough to me, that's a part of melee/physical classes and they wouldn't be getting terribly far like that. I'd bet that if a ranger hit auto attack (only auto-attack) at the start of a fight and a wizard went afk to grab some water at the same time that the wizard could make up the difference within +/- 20 seconds by dropping a few big nukes. But really auto-attack for physical DPS is a very big part of creating a different feel between physical classes and casting/magic classes, physical DPS being more consistent vs magic being more bursty in general. I'll paste a response from a similar thread:
Iksar said:Auto attacking is for flavor and balance. When 30-40% of a melee's damage comes from auto attacks it gives melee a different feel next to casters and smoothes out their DPS compared to the more bursty nature of casters. Once you add things like crit/dodge/parry to the game all DPS then becomes spiky & unpredictable (without auto attacking melee/physical). Without auto attacks you end up with a game where melee are just melee flavor casters, and I would much prefer:
Rogue hits a skeleton for 16 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 10 piercing damage (off hand)
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 41 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
Rogue hits a skeleton for 17 piercing damage (main hand)
Rogue hits a skeleton for 9 piercing damage (off hand)
over:
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Rogue backstabs a skeleton for 100 piercing damage!
Wizard scorches a skeleton for 100 fire damage!
wait...
Auto attack also makes weapon upgrades much more noticeable and exciting as melee get to see their consistant damage go up much more visably than just having slightly bigger numbers on their ability presses.
Honestly I am hoping this game isn't going to be one where you press a button every time the global cooldown is up, that's too mindless.