As in like the area explore areas that I wouldn't even know the location of to get into much less know all the ins and outs of getting around in them?

If the sleek blacks can be in area explores then forget about newbies being suggested not to play empowerment characters, empwoerment would be 99% easier than any newbie hoping to find an area explore and thier sleek black without eating 50 mob deaths even checking the places it could be outside the area explore.

My current mage has learned of and checked something like 12 sleek black locations with no luck, but I wasn't even taking area explore places into account at all, unless you are talking about places like spiderhaunt and whistlewood and the like instead of places like thar-acia, the vaults, and those out of the way hidden entrance types of areas.

If they can be there I might as well scrap looking at all and power to level 51 and then start hitting all of the area explore places before I even think about cabalwars and such.

>If they can be there I might as well scrap looking at all and
>power to level 51 and then start hitting all of the area
>explore places before I even think about cabalwars and such.

Oh no, don't power to 51, you're supposed to be playing the game at all ranks. Why not just play something that can compete without getting items from explore areas at level 35 instead? Leave the mages to the elite players. People like you should stick to warriors, rangers and assassins and bards, or empowerment classes if you're good at rp.

There is no point in doing anything but powering to 51 on mages to be competant anymore. You MIGHT get lucky and get an old spot but it seems like every mage I make I only get the new ones since the change. Oh well though, if this is how it's going to be, I'll just roll empowerment chars and warriors from now on.

>Oh well though, if this is how it's
>going to be, I'll just roll empowerment chars and warriors
>from now on.

I assume you realize that you're being a huge drama queen right here.

I chose melee class over mage because of the changes *shrug*.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

I kinda agree though, it's funny seeing mages delete at level 37 with 31 hrs complaining about wands.

I will say this, I'm done with non-shapeshifter mages for the near future. Having to check 100 potential spots is not my idea of fun, especially when 80% of the hero-range warriors these days are villagers, and there are two liches who haven't died in about 5 months and a year, respectively.

How is this any different than the game was 4-5 (or more) years ago when not every single player knew every single wand location?

Seriously. There is a vast difference between not everyone knowing the 20 locations, or not knowing which aura location went with which shield and barrier and having to check every single location for every single wand until you find each one, the work being entirely additive and finding one wand in one spot tells you nothing about the other two. That is vastly different. The tone of this post is probably off, but I think it was a rather silly question.

Most of the time when I read your posts I think "Wow, this guy's a ####." You probably (hopefully) don't mean to come off that way but you do anyways.

And I think you sort missed my question. What happened during that time before people knew the sets, knew the 20 locations to look, etc? Was the game broken then for mages?

>Most of the time when I read your posts I think "Wow, this
>guy's a ####." You probably (hopefully) don't mean to come
>off that way but you do anyways.

Yea I get that, as in understand intellectually, but when I read them back in my head they don't sound that way, so I'm not sure how to overcome it without having someone proof read for me.


>And I think you sort missed my question. What happened during
>that time before people knew the sets, knew the 20 locations
>to look, etc? Was the game broken then for mages?

I'm not infinitely familiar with how mages shook out when they first came in, but, what I do know is that there is a big big difference between 20 interlinked spots which a single person could feasibly explore, barter, randomly stumble upon, and duo stalk for, and 100+ totally random spots.

It's sort of like perfecting every skill with and elf warrior, versus doing it as an orc berserker. Yes both are possible, no neither class is broken, but one is hard but bearable, and the other is stupidly difficult and mostly a complete waste of time and effort that only a masochist would attempt. If you are a type of player who feels it necessary to perfect every skill, then you are probably not going to play an orc berserker. Similarly, if you are the type of player who feels it necessary to find/use/always have ABS with your mages, you've just been demoted to orc status, and you will probably find something better to do with your time.

Tac

People like me invtested a LOT of time in finding the locations by exloration, bartering and information exchange. I do not have anything like that time to invest in CF anymore and therefore find the moving of the goalposts a huge handicap. I have three choice left to me:
1) Only play empowerment (not gonna happen) or warrior classes for the time that I have to play CF for enjoyment.
2) Play mages up until a rank that allows me to explore the locations I know due to previous investment and then delete when I am screwed because endless searching is not enjoyable.
3) Play warriors caste classes until they are all found by others and then get the information via OOC means (Not what I feel comfortable doing!)


Why could the locations not have stayed the same but bring in the randomness instead of specific sets?!

-----Abernyte

The Veil in and of itself has completely squeued(sp) the way mages/villagers are played now. The system has created this overload when one side dominates it REALLY dominates.

Add to the fact edges have made certain things tougher/easier to do and the game itself is RADICALLY different than it was 4-5 years ago.

Here's the thing. My first mage didn't find a single sleek. I survived on Cabdru's sleeks that had 1 or 2 charges and what limited wands I could find. Second mage found no sleeks but had limited wands almost all the time. Third mage got lucky and found a sleek through a lucky teleport and traded IC info for the other spots. Fourth mage made it a point to share (write down and keep a list) of spots with every mage I met. I developed a nice little list and found all my sleeks. Fifth mage had the list and found his sleeks relatively easy. Sixth mage (third year with playing mages) was able to find all her sleeks (which coincenidentally my easiest set) without ANY problem. Then the system changes.

So now what I'm thinking to myself is that I'm not going to have sleeks with any new mages until my fourth or fifth character or three years down the road.

Forgive my French, but #### that.

I'll still play shifters, because shifters can be competitive with A/S/protection and a minimal set. Invokers/Transmuters/Necro are pretty much completely not plausible because as I said, half the hero-range warriors (if not more than half) are villagers these days. And mages stack up horribly against villagers 75% of the time.

I guess my point is...that was playing the game. These are memorable experiences for you. You don't list off "First mage, died lots, second mage, had a little more ABS, died less, third mage, more ABS died a little less, fourth mage..etc." By the time you start talking about your fifth mage the wand system is passe. This attempt was to jump start the process.

This isn't to say we aren't looking at it. As with all things in the game, we put something in and then monitor it for balance.

Won't bring back the mystery for them. It just makes things tedious.

No person who has played, say, a voker with wands and without will want to play the latter.

If they have experienced having wands, and think they won't be able to get them this time, they won't make the invoker.

You can't force the sense of wonder and discovery that comes from doing something for the first time back into CF. The first time you do a quest, it is awesome, the second time it is easy XP.

The first time you figured out the wand system it was rewarding.

Having to do it again is redoing work.

If you can see that, I dunno. You can't make CF "go back in time".

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

Doing it at 10th time for 10th mage is nothing but a wasted hours before I start to play.

P.S. I dont play mages anymore, so its past experience.

I've actually done 4 ABS chars now since the wand changes this year, and I wouldn't particularly want to play any of them again now.

First was an AP into his 40s, I found my aura early on but couldn't find barrier until around 200 hours, and never found sienna.

Second was a gnome shifter who found aura and deleted from boredom after about 100 hours at 37th without finding any others.

Third was an elf transmuter who found aura early, but still hasn't found other wands at just below 40th level and around 200 hours.

Fourth and most recently was a dark-elf shifter just below 40th with about 100 hours who didn't find any wands.

That's about 600 hours and all of these chars have gotten atleast legendary awareness, and usually 10k-20k more in observation experience, so that should prove I've been looking hard. It's a pretty huge drain on my enthusiasm having to play so conservatively without sleek wands, even though I have very short-duration limited aura and shields usually. I've worked with numerous other mages in hunting for ABS, and they have all expressed similar frustrations. Sharing suspected locations doesn't really help with so many possibilities anymore.

I honestly liked the old system better where there were predictable locations for ABS. The thought of having to use my sparse edge pool for wand edges so I can go back and explore all of the old locations a second time is extremely frustrating. I'd rather give up on mages all together, honestly.

I doubt adults get as much of a kick out of it.

Why? Because it's "busy work." It's the #### your boss tells you to do when the shop is slow. It's scrubbing baseboards and ceilings with an SoS pad and a bucket of QUAT sanitizer when no one is going out to eat. It's basically ####. You're forcing the PK-lovers to explore again when they may have gotten over their "exploration bug" years ago and just enjoy the competitive and RP aspects of the game more these days. You are making it harder for people with less time to enjoy playing a mage. Hence, you are inadvertently skewing the game to be more melee and empowerment class-heavy. I would think the long, long powerswing of the village and the melee classes in the Empire, not to mention the ####ton of paladins, warriors, etc, in the Fort might speak to that.

The change didn't help. It was change for the sake of change. The system wasn't broken, and now I'd argue that it is closer to being that way.

.

I understand, cognitively, that some (few) of the players will be happy all of the time, most of the players can be made happy a lot of the time, and some of the players simply can't ever be made happy.

The more time I spend on threads like these, the more I feel like the whole MUD is category #3 and the less I'm inclined to do things to try to make category #2 happy, so the healthy thing to do is to take a break from posting on anything wand-related or otherwise argumentative for a bit.

>The more time I spend on threads like these, the more I feel
>like the whole MUD is category #3 and the less I'm inclined to
>do things to try to make category #2 happy, so the healthy
>thing to do is to take a break from posting on anything
>wand-related or otherwise argumentative for a bit.

I think pretty much everyone is happier than they seem during arguments. If we were that unhappy we'd just stop playing. Anyway, I'm sorry if I've made posting on the forums frustrating and depressing for you. For everyone one of me there's a ton of people who don't post and are just happy with everything you do. I'm still happy with 95% of the mud and think you guys do an outstanding job overall.

I don't think a single person posting on this thread has fallen into your #3 category. Sorry.




Edit - Maybe Guilo, I dunno.

I ####ing love shifters and will continue to play even if you decide to say '#### you mages no sleeks!'.

Just that from my experience playing OTHER mages, especially with the Veil/Huge Village it's a lot of times not feasible to be billy badass. If I want to roll a trannie to be an RP character, I'll still do that.

I think you're the one creating Drama honestly by getting so worked up about this. I for one stated in my post I find it funny to see characters to delete at 35 hrs and such complaining about not finding wands. THOSE are the players/chars in category #3. Lumping all the rest of us who say the system sucks in with them would be like lumping you in with Beront FOREVER because you agreed with one thing he said.

I still loves you Neppers.

The problem with this thread is there's too many voices and opinions to reasonably take on.

As far as I can tell there are the following complaints:

1. IMMs haven't clearly stated how much a/b/s/other-protections a mage NEEDS in the 30s/40s/50s.

(I think Nep pretty clearly spelled this out, but judging by Valkenar's response it needs to be spelled out even clearer for at least some people).

2. Mages should be able to get aura and shield in the 30s without difficulty.

(the problem is that what's easy to get at level 30 is a joke to get at level 51 - so making the locations easier would essentially be giving mages aura and shield on the proverbial stick).

3. Mages should not have to spend more than 100 hours searching for their personal aura, shield, and barrier.

(OK, now here I totally agree with whoever said this, and out of all the above, I think this is the most legitimate complaint - but it is drowned in this sea of complaints and problematic suggestions so it's almost impossible to ferret out a response. And then you have other people piling on the hyperbole and it just becomes a gruesome mess to look at, let alone read and intelligently work through).

It would be nice if someone could make a list like the above of all the categorizations of complaints to make the in box more manageable. Then at least we would all be speaking the same language and know what the issues are.

Basically what I'm saying is, the more I read people's bitching and the more I argue with people, the more I start to perceive everyone as someone I can't make happy whether they are or not.

So I'm going to try to read/post less of this kind of stuff for a bit until my attitude is less toxic.

Just play MyBrute

I hate to say it but the bottom line is your opinion is the minority. Granted, your opinion is the only one that will ever count but its hard to argue "people can never be happy" when people have railed the wands system for years and years consistently because the playerbase doesn't like the wand system.

http://www.qhcf.net/phorum/read.php?2,660540,660540#msg-660540

None of this is shocking. Its been the same story since day one and it'll be the same story another ten years from now.

Stop bitching about what you think is wrong with it, and design A COMPLETE solution.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Paladins, druids and shaman have a complete solution called sanctuary. It's a spell they all can cast themselves.

I think running the contest was his way of admitting he thinks the system, with the recent change or without, is pretty flawed. If you think about that, thats a big step for an IMP in this game, generally.

"New payment options w/ Iron Realms"

>Paladins, druids and shaman have a complete solution called
>sanctuary. It's a spell they all can cast themselves.

They sure do. Mages are not paladins, druids or shamans. If you've got an idea, post it on the contest. I'm not jumping into this thread.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Since when to druids have sanctuary??

Simple.

Mages get aura and shield as spells. Barrier as a spell that has a 6 hour duration and a 48 hour cool down. Alternatively give barrier to all mages besides invokers and give it a 20 hour cooldown.

Problem solved.

Yeah, you're eventually going to get what you might call "drama" from them.


Edited to add:

I'm getting over it.

Or Empire, honestly. At least in hero range.

...but for a lot of us the game JUST ISN'T THE SAME as it was 5 years ago. And not just because of the changes. Because of the changes in US, and RL and ####.

Like hearing it or not, I don't have 25 hrs a week to explore for #### anymore. I really wish I did. But I don't.

I don't want this to come off as complaining, but Zulg said he wanted real feedback and solutions to the problem (which, I feel kinda left out since no one has even told my idea sucked which I'm sure it does).

Whether there was an OOC wand list or not, if there was never one circulating and you had to find everything IC it was still fine through RP and whatnot, but having new spots in area explore places is just insane to me and makes it suck whether you have a list or not.

Even if every single mage in the game knew the old 30+ spots or whatever.. that still required them having to check every single place and THEN having to deal with getting them. That right there was enough to make it fine, why should players have to work harder to get their abs then that? I could understand if ABS was an "I win" situation and in some cases it is... but even with full abs ragers can easily beat you depending on class and most of the time when you need it most is in raid situations even if it's non ragers it's a necessity.

I'm not trying to be a drama queen like nep said, or even spark some thing to make IMM's pissed at me. I'm just pointing out that most of the playerbase agrees and that it IS an issue, even though I realize it's not like CF is a democracy. I will just not play mages anymore, and be fine with it, and lots of other people are doing the same. Which is why the IMM's made the Village stop accepting members at the moment, that just shouldnt happen on a game of balance that you guys are so amazingly good at.

Mages are quite viable with an opportunistic or extremely conservative playstyle and in group fights. If you don't want to play that way, then don't play a mage. Mages have combat word of recall, free teleport and identify. That's what you get instead of the ability to jump into a fight against a warrior and have decent chance of winning.

There's a reason you never see a mage retrieve pre-40 or actively defend either a counterraid or retrieval. This isn't just battle against battle, either. Other than a necro with a decent army no mage is going to retrieve against opposition.

They're pushed to the limit even without anyone in range.

>There's a reason you never see a mage retrieve pre-40 or
>actively defend either a counterraid or retrieval. This isn't
>just battle against battle, either. Other than a necro with a
>decent army no mage is going to retrieve against opposition.

Sure you will, as long as the opposition doesn't include a healer. You just have to do hit and runs. Wield a poisoning dagger, attack the outter, then word either as soon as someone comes or when you see them coming. If you want to try the risky version, tank them for a round or two then word. After an hour or two (or a few thousand gold) you'll eventually be able to wear down the outer, probably without dieing.

>They're pushed to the limit even without anyone in range.

Right, but maybe mages are supposed to be an elite set of classes. They're not supposed to be on-par with non-mages unless the player has loads of patience and area knowledge.

The staff has said repeatedly that they don't think mages need ABS, and they clearly aren't going to change their minds. So if you think they do you must be assuming one of the following:

1. The staff is ignorant. They just don't play, watch or keep stats on the game so they have no idea how mages balance against melee.

2. The staff hates mages. They know mages are weak, they just keep it that way to hurt your feelings.

3. The staff has different standards. They look at different things than you do, balance-wise.

1 is false, 2 is just stupid, so it's got to be 3. Unless, of course, you're just be wrong that they're underpowered and maybe mages really *can* go toe to toe with everyone else without a problem. Perhaps people who can't figure out how to make a mage as tough as a warrior in the 30s and 40s are just pathetic, stupid and worthless as players. That's also a possibility, though I personally don't believe that.

As far as I can tell, the staff just wants mages to be extremely conservative or group-oriented in the mid-ranks. That's just how it is and is going to continue to be. The ABS contest was a nice step towards making the system be less sheer-drudgery, but it doesn't change the fact that the staff simply doesn't want most mages to have significant damage reduction. As long as that's true, mages are going to stay balanced how they are now.

Bottom line: Mages are not for people who want to be competitive by themselves in the midranks, unless they have elite knowledge and skills.

What sense is it to create an entire range of classes to be purposefully inferior?

Mages should -situationally- have the capability to stand toe to toe with a melee class in the 30s through 40s. Yes, it requires preparation and exploration on the mage's part. I'm fine with that. The system almost works.

I'm not fine with your bottom line. Mages should not require elite knowledge and skills to be competitive, nor should they be pigeon-holed to be extremely conservative or group-oriented. That's inane.

Barrier has not been a part of this conversation, yet, either, and I'm quite fine with that. I wouldn't care if barrier had a level 43+ restriction.

As I have said, the change to the abs system did not address what I see as a larger issue - levels 30 through 40, the unplayable zone of the mage class.

>What sense is it to create an entire range of classes to be
> levels 30 through 40, the
>unplayable zone of the mage class.

I really disagree with that, but I can't see anything to be gained in arguing it.

because it's hard to argue without arguments

Seriously, we all know that mages reach their top at hero (at least most of them). If an abs mage at hero is not considered a balance-breaker, there is no phucking way a level 35 abs mage will be one.

If you think that a 30+ mage with wands is a death machine, how you can justify an existance of 51 level mage with wands in this game?

Otherwise, what is the point in moving all wands/edges/artifact-object to a near-hero zone where mages become more powerful naturally anyway. It is not like many mages plan to sit at 47 (?) to get an additional barrier source before moving to hero.

There are reasons why many melee classes sit at middle ranks to harvest PKs. I believe you're smart enough to understand these reasons. And I honestly see no point why make it even harder for mages rather than easier in order to counter that kind of level-sitting of fighters.

The problem is that you're arguing something different than the issue at hand.

Your claim: hero mage > 30s mage.

Post I was responding to: 30s mage < every other level range of mage.

>If you think that a 30+ mage with wands is a death machine,
>how you can justify an existance of 51 level mage with wands
>in this game?

I didn't say a 30s mage is a death machine. (Although some builds can be.)

>The problem is that you're arguing something different than
>the issue at hand.
>
>Your claim: hero mage > 30s mage.
>
>Post I was responding to: 30s mage < every other level range
>of mage.

Well, 30s mage < 40s < 51s mages (in most cases).

Still, I've read the abs thread on the contest forum, but I couldn't fetch the reason of moving wands and posibility to explore for them towards hero range other than "we think it should be moved there".
Just a few points:
- if you want exploration aspect in getting wands I can understand it. But why don't let level 30 mage explore for it and make detect artifact available. For a middle level mages exploration is hardly an easy walk even with this spell.
- why move the barrier edge and most of barrier sources to near hero? If you make barriers available for 30s mages, it will not make it worse for other classes than hero mages vs. other classes.
The only problem I see with that: affordable wand sources at 30 will be easy for heroes, but I think it can be solved with level limits on wands like this wand works for 30-35, etc. Hell, you can even come with separate sets of sleeks for 30-40 and 40-51.

>If an abs mage at hero is not considered
>a balance-breaker, there is no phucking way a level 35 abs
>mage will be one.

For what it's worth, I could see the level 35 guy being more threatening depending on the class matchup. For instance if the mage were an anti-paladin. Even without unholy blessing, dude is going to have pretty high damage output with bloodlust and iceball. What makes that balanced is that usually his defense sucks. Give him easy a/b/s and his defense no longer sucks.

The matchup part of it is key.

As a level 30 invoker, I've killed a lot of people in 1-2 spells. I haven't done a lot of that as a level 51 invoker.

There's not a lot a level 47 human necromancer has going for them that a level 37 human necromancer doesn't, (they may well even have the same level zombies), and their range (for various reasons) is typically much easier pickings.

Etc.

I'm not saying 30s mage is king of the world, but they're not always a joke either.

>The matchup part of it is key.

Sure it matters, but it matters at hero as well.

>As a level 30 invoker, I've killed a lot of people in 1-2
>spells. I haven't done a lot of that as a level 51 invoker.

But probably a lot of people killed your 30 invoker with 1-2 bashes (considering how common for people to have hero gear at midranks or at least midnight dragon) and they haven't done a lot of that at hero.

>There's not a lot a level 47 human necromancer has going for
>them that a level 37 human necromancer doesn't, (they may well
>even have the same level zombies), and their range (for
>various reasons) is typically much easier pickings.
>
>Etc.
>
>I'm not saying 30s mage is king of the world, but they're not
>always a joke either.

That is my point. Let them use wands like they can at hero. Even in the recent times of well know sets 30s mages weren't dominating. And with new changes they are basically "obligated" to rank through to hero. My cheating ring reports new locations and they are crazy. Why would 30s mage even bother to get wands from many of those locations and I'm not even talking about barrier but merely shield/aura.

The problem is, if you can realistically get a wand at 30, getting at hero is going to be a joke. We wanted mages to have some sleek locations that would present a danger at hero -- mostly not 'this will kill you' but more, this might mess you up a little creating any number of kinds of windows of opportunity for enemies, or, this is going to take you a couple rounds to kill creating other chances for your enemies, etc.

But that does make things harder than it used to be on a lower level mage, too.

I have a thought about this I'm going to bounce off a few people.

>For what it's worth, I could see the level 35 guy being more
>threatening depending on the class matchup. For instance if
>the mage were an anti-paladin. Even without unholy blessing,
>dude is going to have pretty high damage output with bloodlust
>and iceball. What makes that balanced is that usually his
>defense sucks. Give him easy a/b/s and his defense no longer
>sucks.

And if you give 51 AP full abs his defense no longer sucks too (assuming no big unholy here). But we allow their existance yet we deny 35 AP abs existance. Could you come with comprehensive logic behing it?

And overall 35 level ap is not more threating because of many other problems. His spells/skills probably aren't mastered, he can be bashed (even with abs) by many level sitting 40s warriors, he can be gaunted by 40s conjurers, he can be dirt/disarmed, etc.

Even if you come with extreme examples of abs mages like midranked necro with a sick army, charged 36 AP, badass 38 invoker, etc. Still, they aren't dominating the game/range as 51 badass scions invokers, 51 charged APs, or 51 liches.
And what about poor a midlevel defensive shifter, for example? We don't let him use wand because 30s abs necro may be dangerous?

The decked level 35 AP may be more likely to kill my level 35 elf than the level 51 AP is to kill my level 51 elf. Why? Because level 35 characters are just more fragile. Except for our theoretical AP, since he has a/b/s on a stick.

Nothing has ever been gained through arguing, much less discussing, with you guys.

Why avoid all the other points made in this thread? Is the legitimacy too much?

I'm just so tired of arguing about most of it. Feel free to search years of archives for my opinions if you care.

>I'm not fine with your bottom line. Mages should not require
>elite knowledge and skills to be competitive, nor should they
>be pigeon-holed to be extremely conservative or
>group-oriented. That's inane.

Well as Nep says, he disagrees. So either you have different standards (about what being conservative is, what level of knowledge is elite) or you just suck at playing mages. My statement is based on two facts:

The staff (at least Nep and Zhulg) thinks mages don't need abs to compete.

Mages without dam redux seem (to me and others, including elite players) to be quite underpowered in most situations.

There are only a few ways to resolve this.

I'm not saying it should be this way, I'm just saying it *is* this way and it's not going to change via more of the same. To see any change you'll need to convince the powers that be that you and everyone else aren't just bad at mages.

>The staff (at least Nep and Zhulg) thinks mages don't need abs
>to compete.

There are non-sleek ABS sources, you know. It's rare that more than half of them are maxed.

>There are non-sleek ABS sources, you know. It's rare that
>more than half of them are maxed.

I would dare to call it misinformation.
Well, technically speaking, probably only 50% of them area maxed. But this is just because other 50% aren't worth of efforts needed to get them.
When you narrow common locations to "affordable" wands (considering char level and wand level), they are very often maxed (especially barriers).

>There are non-sleek ABS sources, you know. It's rare that
>more than half of them are maxed.

Well sure, I even know 3 or 4. Personally I've dumped a few hundred hours into looking and not found enough, but I'll accept that I'm just not a smart enough person for abs. Still, I am more than willing to believe that it's entirely possible to have consistent abs. Lightmage manages to find tons of it, so yes, I believe you that abs is out there. The only point I'd make on this is that the "more than half" statistic may be misleading, since it counts wands (e.g. in the 5th circle) that are meaningless for consistent use.

Anyway, that's all beside the point. Last I heard it was official staff position that mages don't need ABS. Scarcity and necessity are two independent variables here.

>Well sure, I even know 3 or 4. Personally I've dumped a few
>hundred hours into looking and not found enough, but I'll
>accept that I'm just not a smart enough person for abs. Still,
>I am more than willing to believe that it's entirely possible
>to have consistent abs. Lightmage manages to find tons of it,
>so yes, I believe you that abs is out there. The only point
>I'd make on this is that the "more than half" statistic may be
>misleading, since it counts wands (e.g. in the 5th circle)
>that are meaningless for consistent use.

It's really not meaningless, in that the wands in the most difficult areas are, more or less, the ones that are always out.

>Anyway, that's all beside the point. Last I heard it was
>official staff position that mages don't need ABS.

I'd say that take on it attempts to simplify a nuanced position into black and white extremes.

>It's really not meaningless, in that the wands in the most
>difficult areas are, more or less, the ones that are always
>out.

Huh. Well that's interesting. Do they just have lower limits? I don't understand why people would preferentially farm the harder-to-get wands.

>I'd say that take on it attempts to simplify a nuanced
>position into black and white extremes.

There's some truth to that because ultimately it does boil down to a black and white statement. Either mages need more access to abs or they don't. My point in simplifying isn't to create a strawman out of an extreme version of your position, but I really do have the impression that you believe that abs is unnecessary most of the time. If that's not so, then I appologise for mischaracterising your position, but it's not really feasible to write a 12-page dissertation on the staff position on abs (as I interpret it, obviously). Sometimes a summary is needed and "mages don't need abs to be successful in pk" is my understanding of your general position, broadly speaking and with the knowledge that there are some provisos and caveats.

>Huh. Well that's interesting. Do they just have lower
>limits? I don't understand why people would preferentially
>farm the harder-to-get wands.

Well, it's two things.

I think the harder to get ones, for whatever reason, are better known.

The harder to get ones also tend to be higher level and thus last a little longer too.

>There's some truth to that because ultimately it does boil
>down to a black and white statement. Either mages need more
>access to abs or they don't. My point in simplifying isn't to
>create a strawman out of an extreme version of your position,
>but I really do have the impression that you believe that abs
>is unnecessary most of the time. If that's not so, then I
>appologise for mischaracterising your position, but it's not
>really feasible to write a 12-page dissertation on the staff
>position on abs (as I interpret it, obviously). Sometimes a
>summary is needed and "mages don't need abs to be successful
>in pk" is my understanding of your general position, broadly
>speaking and with the knowledge that there are some provisos
>and caveats.

I'd say my position is that mages, in general, don't need (and probably should struggle/sacrifice to have) full A/B/S on top of their cabal/class abilities and easier-to-manage preps for every fight. Probably, they need or should want some of it for a lot of fights.

If you're thinking, "No one would take the extreme position that you need the full wack of everything and the kitchen sink for most fights", I probably can provide a lot of counter-examples with just the last month of forums.

>I think the harder to get ones, for whatever reason, are
>better known.

Maybe people assume that you can only find them in more remote/dangerous places, so they don't look so hard in less remarkable places. I know I'm guilty of that. There are definitely low-level places (like the keep of Fhalugash) that I haven't really searched well enough to be totally sure lack a dam redux wand.

>I'd say my position is that mages, in general, don't need (and
>probably should struggle/sacrifice to have) full A/B/S on top
>of their cabal/class abilities and easier-to-manage preps for
>every fight. Probably, they need or should want some of it
>for a lot of fights.

Okay, well that's reasonable and basically my understanding of your position. To me, if someone needs something in "a lot" of cases, then it's fair to say they need that something in the general case. Maybe "a lot" means something different to you. What you said still doesn't tell me whether you think mages need abs in a general sense. Since you express disinterest in making abs much more available, it still leaves me assuming that you don't think mages need consistent and significant dr.

I say "mages need abs" the way I say "cars need gas" They don't always need a full tank, and you don't have to refuel every time you go out, but generally speaking you need at least some gas if you want to get anywhere. There are alternatives to getting gas. Playing conservative is like pushing instead of driving; you can eventually get where you need to go it'll just take forever and probably not be much fun. I'd better stop before this analogy gets any torturous (if that's possible).

>If you're thinking, "No one would take the extreme position
>that you need the full wack of everything and the kitchen sink
>for most fights", I probably can provide a lot of
>counter-examples with just the last month of forums.

Sure, some people are crazy. I've agreed before that full abs, stoneskin and protection is too powerful to be a 24/7 thing. But you can make aura/shield more common and barrier rarer, for example.

If you can suggest a phraseology that indicates "the staff has no intention of increasing your access to abs because they don't think you need it for every etc except xyz and also abc, barring qrs etc, but they do need it for..." in a concise way I'm all ears. I can switch to "the staff doesn't think mages generally need significant dam redux" if that seems more accurate to you.

Get beastly +dam set and autumn and enigma, and teleport is all kinds of places for free, you have combat word of recall, and 100% lore.

That's not what makes a mage... and where is it that says mages have to be opportunistic and group fighters. Maybe back in the day on group fighting, but not really so much anymore.

Depending on your character, there's an excellent chance that you have an amber you can't reasonably get solo in the low 30s. Shield is generally a little easier.

Were we under the impressions that aura + shield made mages unfairly strong in the mid 30's? Personally I've never found that to be the case. While having barrier at 35 feels a lot like bringing a gun to a knife fight, having aura+shield usually feels about right, if not necessary for some classes without much inherent dam redux.

So I guess my question is, why is there an excellent chance that you can have an amber to can't reasonably get solo in the 30s?

Tac

I mean, at level 30, if you knew both locations.. you would not necessarily have a huge advantage over anyone. I fought a rager with generic aura and shield and still lost... it's not like you'd be giving mages a win stick.. And I'm playing probably one of the best mage pk classes there is.

Granted, Orcs and a few other classes might be like dang, that guy's a beast. But I sure as hell feel like that with more people than I'm comfortable with.

I'm also currently struggling finding my aura and shield location. I'm tired of eating mob deaths, too, exploring for my sleeks. There are three locations left for me to check that I know of and I can't reasonably gather those until 40, maybe even later.

It is no fun to have 3-5 ragers in range (especially with hero ragers scouting over cb whenever they enter an area with a mage in it) every login and the only damage redux I can gather is a generic aura wand that is rarely in (or an aura scroll but that's one time use). I'm tired of getting obliterated, literally, every fight against a berserker because they can throw on 35 dam in 20 minutes and deathblow me. It's not like a mage is built for parrying.

And it's not like I play to avoid fights. I hate not pk'ing.


Tangent - I'm kind of dissatisfied that no real change came about the wand system. The biggest difficulty, mages level 30 - 40, was completely unaddressed.

Hands down, having full abs on a mage is a necessity... not for every fight per se but definatly over 70% of them. Why of all classes are mages the ones that have to work SO hard to gain strength? Sometimes the new abs sets make me feel like I'm on a lich quest or some ####.

They need GIVEN spells. I say take sleek amber and sienna out and give them as spells for every mage and make sleek blacks the searchable wand... 32 for aura 38 or 40 for shield. It shouldn't be this hard and time consuming to be competant on a game about fun for simply being a mage.

on the Contest board.

I'm not having it again right now.

I was looking through the board to see if he ever posted anything before I pointed it out.

There were a billion great suggestions and the solution was... screw it if you can't find your abs take a costly edge for simply one of the three spots and hope you can find that one instead.

That takes away edge points for needed other things, it dosent fix mages at all really pre hero, and it still makes us spend hours and hours of searching for the things that make us competant.

I just can't see how the solution fixed ANYTHING. We shouldn't have to pay for new locations, if that's really where the imms want to keep the focus.

in that it didn't address anything with mages in the ranks where they need it the most. Mages need help in the 30s. By the time they hit 40s they're ok because they have more skills and spells to put to use (top tier forms, invoker shields, duo, so on) but they're easy kills until then.

And you can't expect a mage to realistically explore mage-y areas for sleeks until they're 40+. Too many of the mobs and areas are just too difficult.

A mage cannot actively pk, defend, or retrieve in the 30s without at least a combination of 2+ of aura/shield/protection/stone skin.

Also, death blow still needs to be tiered differently than it currently is. 3x damage in the 30s is too much. I don't know if I posted my thought here or qhcf but it should fall something like this -

2x 25 to 36
3x 37 to 44
4x 45 to 51

There's a reason almost every Battle character that wants to be a Mageslayer sits in the 30s (Marcus's thieves and warrior, Nep's thief, current Drillmaster, etc). Easy pickings.