sdi mage vs sampire damage balance

McDougle

I don't think anyone will disagree that an SDI mage even at close to 200 SDI  just can't match a sampire in damage output .here are a few thoughts on fixing this.
right now WW attack does XXX damage to every monster it hits while chain lighting and other mutli target spells do XXX damage divided by targets i suggest instead mage spells do XXX damage to all targets
slayer talismans for mages, not more sdi but slayers that will stack with our spellbooks the way they do with warriors weapons 
i feel that these two simple changes will put more mages in event dungeons 

Arnold7

Don’t think a pure caster can solo para baldron or demon.  To do real damage you need them held in place fighting a pet or someone else so you can use the death ray.  These paras easily dispel ev and other summons that you cast.  Also, you run out of mana before you can kill one.  If anyone knows how to solo these with a mage that is not a tamer would really like to know how you do it.  Running away and then casting spells they run into is not practical with these they just have too many hit points.  Thanks.

TimSt

Arnold7 said:

Don’t think a pure caster can solo para baldron or demon.  To do real damage you need them held in place fighting a pet or someone else so you can use the death ray.  These paras easily dispel ev and other summons that you cast.  Also, you run out of mana before you can kill one.  If anyone knows how to solo these with a mage that is not a tamer would really like to know how you do it.  Running away and then casting spells they run into is not practical with these they just have too many hit points.  Thanks.

It takes my pure caster a while to solo a para demon or balron. Too much time which is why I stopped playing the events with those mobs.  

McDougle

Arnold7 said:

Don’t think a pure caster can solo para baldron or demon.  To do real damage you need them held in place fighting a pet or someone else so you can use the death ray.  These paras easily dispel ev and other summons that you cast.  Also, you run out of mana before you can kill one.  If anyone knows how to solo these with a mage that is not a tamer would really like to know how you do it.  Running away and then casting spells they run into is not practical with these they just have too many hit points.  Thanks.

This brings up three more adjustments 
1. No true cold spells for mages nothing at all for an area spell and mind blast is ridiculous slow. Add AOE and a decent direct damage cold spell 
2. No way for a mage to leech mana perhaps an adjustment to the mastery scaling off real skill level.
3 summons,  mage summons are just so 1998 weak and need a buff to be able to compete in today world 

Seth

Is this topic about sampire vs mages to perform area damage or solo Balron paragon?

All I see are spellweavers doing thunderstorm and pets or warriors “solo” only with bard support. Sampires are the ones collecting grey robes because they can’t suck life from paragons. They are also the ones luring the paragons to the killing zone where all thunderstorms are spamming,

McDougle

@Seth it's not about a specific example but rather a general thing comparing mage damage output ability to sampires and imo about why we see so few  pure mages in these dungeons 

Seth

Well, as you know I have tamers, mages, sampires, etc. Recently I also tried my mages for both the Demonic forces, and the Bloodspawn.

I am not asking for alot of damage, just enough to be counted and get looting rights for a chance to drop. So I used thunderstorm, it can even kill mobs in the next room without opening the door. 

Pawain

Mages need 2 skills. They have plenty of room for taming skills, meditation and one other 120 skill.

Sure let my mages do even more damage while I stand there and say all kill. 

Apparently the OP has not held a 30 demon book and cast energy bolt at a Balron.

Seth

Pawain said:

Mages need 2 skills. They have plenty of room for taming skills, meditation and one other 120 skill.

Sure let my mages do even more damage while I stand there and say all kill. 

Apparently the OP has not held a 30 demon book and cast energy bolt at a Balron.

Yup, Now I remember I actually tried that with my sdi mage and the damage is awesome

Jepeth

Our PVP friends will show up any moment to say that magery doesn't need any augmenting because mage spells hit every time while melee has a chance to miss repeatedly. And so I think any discussion around magery needs to be viewed from the perspective of "can this be done so as to not disrupt the current PVP meta."

It's no wonder they keep adding SDI items to the game as there is an SDI cap for PVP and thus these items aren't too disruptive.

And in this way I wish summons, field spells, and something with damage over time had more utility. I would think a "if player is in heat of battle yes/no" check could determine how effective these spells would be in PVM. 

Seth

By the way just to add:

Sdi mage using cold mystic spells can damage Hiryu more than 500 Hp per hit. Spellweaving wod can hit more than 1000 Hp per cast, with reaper form and arcane empowerment, level 6 spell bonus. 

My sdi mage has 185 from gear and goes up to 245 if I recall correctly. I think it can go higher if I add 5 sdi town buff and also I wonder if inscription adds more too. 

Energy spells vs demons are also high though I didn’t recall the damage value. 

Arnold7

Thunderstorm works great on the lower end stuff but I only get 17 to 30 points per hit on each target.  I think that is great for getting credit towards drops and use it when I can when I see a room filled with monsters.  I will kill everything except the high end paras.  But, don’t think you can solo a para with 3000 or more points that way even if you did not run out of mana and the para did not heal itself.  I think 17 to 30 points a hit is about average for thunderstorm.  If you can get more than that would like to know how you do it.  Thanks.

Arnold7

Oh, and have to agree the one spell that does cold damage is worthless.  It’s a low end spell so even if your target has no resistance to it, it still does not do as much damage as your higher end spells do to targets that have high resistances to fire or energy damage.

Pawain

YyyArnold7 said:

Thunderstorm works great on the lower end stuff but I only get 17 to 30 points per hit on each target.  I think that is great for getting credit towards drops and use it when I can when I see a room filled with monsters.  I will kill everything except the high end paras.  But, don’t think you can solo a para with 3000 or more points that way even if you did not run out of mana and the para did not heal itself.  I think 17 to 30 points a hit is about average for thunderstorm.  If you can get more than that would like to know how you do it.  Thanks.

Thunderstorm worked very well on the first level of the other dynamic spawns. 
This time it just damages the first level.

But it is nice that all the mobs are demon so you can use other spells to kill them effectively. 

Seth

Arnold7 said:

Thunderstorm works great on the lower end stuff but I only get 17 to 30 points per hit on each target.  I think that is great for getting credit towards drops and use it when I can when I see a room filled with monsters.  I will kill everything except the high end paras.  But, don’t think you can solo a para with 3000 or more points that way even if you did not run out of mana and the para did not heal itself.  I think 17 to 30 points a hit is about average for thunderstorm.  If you can get more than that would like to know how you do it.  Thanks.

Why is there a need to solo para balron. I use sampire and getting drops on 3 shards without even solo a single one. I even avoid wisp and elder gazer para unless more than 1 of us.

Grace

How about power scrolls for inscription to 120 so that an inscription mastery could be introduced.

Many ideas out there am sure for inscription mastery bonuses.  Initial thoughts are:

Keep innate summons buff
Have mind blast damage also scale to inscription level 
Let mind blast work with slayer books
.........

McDougle

As you can see i am at 175 SDi 130ish with my demon slayer i do indeed know how to use and am well versed in how to play a mage at no point did i say that my ability to use direct damage spells was not on par with sampires 

what i did suggest was i had no AOE spell that could do the same damage as WW chain lighting is 300 damage spread over 6 targets VS a WW attack that does 300 to each.
and while in @Pawain little world the monsters wait in line to attack so i can wack them one at a time i shockingly am often surrounded by enemies.

nothing i suggested is OP or takes away from another build 

i simply would like to see more than one or two types of builds used in these events 

Pawain

I do not see WW attacks that do 300 damage to each target.  I have not tried mongbats tho...

Can you show your Melee toon using WW and doing 300 damage each to multiple targets please.

Seth

I am not sure about your shard but the 3 shards I went I saw 

• Tamers that I need to thank for their pets who help tank the paragon balron while I joined in. Mostly, mages are tamers while some use mystic sw mage.
• Bards
• Spellweavers, quite a lot in Atlantic depending on the time and level.
• Archers and throwers. The good ones get the shot before I can reach, well done.
• Healing paladins?
• Sampire, err…  not quite effective to solo paragon balron, thanks to life taint. Are we playing the same game? 

McDougle

Pawain said:

I do not see WW attacks that do 300 damage to each target.  I have not tried mongbats tho...

Can you show your Melee toon using WW and doing 300 damage each to multiple targets please.

the actual numbers are irrelevant the point being that a fighter does XXX damage to each monster they hit while a mages damage is split between them is is unequable and should be fixed as is no slayer talisman for mages each point i have made is valid and fair.

ForeverFun

Yes, chain lightning, meteor swarm, etc should not water down the damage based on the number of targets.  Some other area effect spells don't appear to water down damage based on number of affected targets (firefield, wildfire, etc).  One could argue that more targets should equate to bonus damage per target, not a damage reduction per target - maybe this should come with running the magery mastery. (certain spells do more damage with 2 targets, but then damage drops per target beyond 2 targets).

Pawain

Sure make my 2 main guys more powerful.  I am ok with it.  I did the events I got the books, I'm ready to kill stuff.

Add 50% chance of insta kill for any spell that hits more than 4 targets while we are at it. 

Don't ask for small increases go for the gusto!

McDougle

Pawain said:

Sure make my 2 main guys more powerful.  I am ok with it.  I did the events I got the books, I'm ready to kill stuff.

Add 50% chance of insta kill for any spell that hits more than 4 targets while we are at it. 

Don't ask for small increases go for the gusto!

That's the spirit balance for all now about the lack of damage reduction for gargoyles..

Pawain

Gargoyles do not deserve nice stuff.

Seth

I also support ideas to make any template more useful, fun... and powerful at least for PVM. But when compare with another template, what if they don't level up but down instead.

Can I also ask for sampires to be more effective against EM bosses? Its always pets and pets. Sampires need to be balanced with same power as pets. 

Pawain

Seth said:

I also support ideas to make any template more useful, fun... and powerful at least for PVM. But when compare with another template, what if they don't level up but down instead.

Can I also ask for sampires to be more effective against EM bosses? Its always pets and pets. Sampires need to be balanced with same power as pets. 

Come to LS events.  Your pet is dead in seconds.  Tonight both I and my pet were dead for the whole boss encounter.  Boss kept pulling in my ghost so I could not res either.

Seth

Pawain said:

Seth said:

I also support ideas to make any template more useful, fun... and powerful at least for PVM. But when compare with another template, what if they don't level up but down instead.

Can I also ask for sampires to be more effective against EM bosses? Its always pets and pets. Sampires need to be balanced with same power as pets. 

Come to LS events.  Your pet is dead in seconds.  Tonight both I and my pet were dead for the whole boss encounter.  Boss kept pulling in my ghost so I could not res either.

Aye, trust if your tamer finds it hard, no one will find it easy. 

Merus

I agree that magery AoE and summon spells could use a rebalancing pass.  Blade spirits could have more the power of EVs as a 2 slot and EVs could be bumped to 4 and be slightly less powerful than the RC.  I would say a 10% damage reduction for all AoE targets, but damage output isn’t split.

Yoshi

“I’m not sure what the point in even discussing this is. They do not have time to even adjust a single piece of text on mannequins etc,
Newer/returning players are erroneously being told that SDI is capped at 15% in PvP.

what makes you think they have time to play with things that aren’t even broken?

Who do you think you are, a paying customer?”

Mariah

Yoshi said:

Newer/returning players are erroneously being told that SDI is capped at 15% in PvP.

https://uo.com/wiki/ultima-online-wiki/items/magic-item-properties/

Sliss

McDougle said:

This brings up three more adjustments 
2. No way for a mage to leech mana perhaps an adjustment to the mastery scaling off real skill level.

Well, a necro-mage can leech mana, but the biggest downside compared to a sampire that a mage cannot heal while doing damage. You either heal or you attack. If you are up against a high level mob, all you do is heal.