Hey there,

So I got to thinking...having just played my first mage type to lvl 30something (shifter) and finding my wand locations I came to realize why it is I never played a mage. Despite whatever arguments people want to throw out there, certain mages do *need* wands to pvp effectively, take for example your mid rank offensive shifter. There is no way in hell I could stand against a seasoned warrior/assassin/any melee char without some form of damage redux, and stone skin alone does not cut it. Personally, this is why I have always played empowered classes. Empowered classes paladin (selfren) and shaman (panir) come with a ton of damage redux on hand sac/prot etc. along with more than capable offensive abilities.

My request is this, why not just review mage class balance, determine what is missing and then make up for the needed dam redux with class spells? will it really cause that much trouble to just give mages the spells Aura at lvl 30 and Shield at lvl 32, and then instead of a quest for the "detect artifact" skill, you can quest for the barrier spell at lvl 51?

I realize the popular opinion of IMM's and some players is "Mages don't need no wands to compete" however, if you take a moment and look at the majority of the posts on this board, people do beleive you need these to compete, and so they will go through the great pains of finding them all again, and documenting where they are from.
So rather than update wand locations all the time and such why not just give mages the needed abilities(spells) to compete in the first place and then balance as needed? I mean obviously the durations would be shorter to begin with lvl 30 aura isn't gonna have a duration as long as the lvl 60 spell from a sleek, and it will cost mana...wheras now I just have to walk somewhere (easy) and pick it up.
What is the major concern with this approach? and why do these wands need to exist in the first place?

-P

With fourth tier forms. Anyway, if shifters are too weak, the solution should be to tweak the forms to be more powerful at the levels they are weak. ABS are explorer perks and should either remain so or be removed from the game.

Something class specific would work much better. ABS are perks for explorers and should not be required to compete agaisnt unprepped foes.

agreed. some kind of class specific skills for mages wouldn't be so bad considering invokers already get shields. The effects could be something like svirfnebli's inherent stone skin. it works for this long, and then has a cooldown until you can do it again. I definitely wouldn't be against that.