I haven't tested every spell in depth yet, but this is my impression so far -
Spells that need nerfs -
-Forcefield. I don't use this trick as I consider it a cheat, but should fixed nonetheless.
-Cone of Cold. Duration of the freeze is too long, CD is too short, and it works on practically everything.
-Blizzard/Tempest/Inferno+Glyphs should require LoS or enemy AI needs to be better at escaping them.
-Crushing Prison duration should be reduced and/or damage toned down.
Spells that need buffs -
Mana Drain, Mana Cleanse, and the Spell Shield line. I grouped them as they're pretty redundant and all are inferior to glyph of neutralization and/or mana clash. There are few enemy mages, and you're going to want to kill them fast, not drain their mana or dispel them. And for any caster you're not going to kill fast, glyph of neutralization is in a far more useful line than the anti magic line.
Heroic line. Don't last long enough, aren't a significant enough bonus, not worth the mana to cast.
Spell Wisp line. Nothing worth taking, pretty much all inferior to similar but superior spells in other lines.
Disorient/Weakness. Both first spells in their lines, but it'd be nice if they were worth casting.
Arcane line. The spell power bonus isn't worth taking the 3 completely worthless slots in front of it. In fact it's not worth a single slot.
Spells that need to be fixed/changed
Débuté par
Odd Hermit
, nov. 24 2009 10:30
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#2
Posté 24 novembre 2009 - 11:40
Seraphael
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Check the projects on this site. Search word: balance. Contribute with suggestions on the various rebalancing mods. Some of your ideas have already been done.
#3
Posté 24 novembre 2009 - 03:12
DragoonKain3
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No shimmering shield bug mentioned that needs to be fixed? 
In any case, the sheer power of Mana Clash is offset by its situational use AND by crap skills in front of it. It's balanced in my eyes, in where glyph line is dangerous to be used in a multi-mage party (you don't want to dispel with neutralization right?) but has other useful spells, while dispel line has short cd's and preempt your tank to be spell immune.
And people underestimate spellbloom. It increases mana regen by 3 over a 20 second period, which a 30 mana increase for all mages (+5 only for caster) over 30 seconds. Which is underwhelming on paper.
But consider it over a 90 second time frame, in which it will increase every spellcasters pool by 90, and the caster actially gains +15 mana for the deal. In comparison, rejuvenate increases one targets stamina/mana by 80 over the same time frame, and it costs the caster 50 mana. Sure bloom only works with spellcasters, but if you have 2 or even 3 mages, you can see the obvious benefits of always keeping it on.
Grease is there for fire mages, while Stinging Swarm is a decent DoT spell thats very effecient mana wise and worry-free (no friendly fire). It's not a WOW line, but it has its uses. Plus it has the best tier 1 spell in the game with spell wisp, where the increase in spell power alone pays for the fatigue... fact that you 'frontloadl' your spells is just gravy.
Heroic spells are fine. All of them are on 5/10 sec cooldown, and all are on 20 second duration. Just have a tactic set to keep them up... your support mage is the easiest one to make tactics for, and Wynne starts with combat tactics skills.
Arcane bolt is a decent spell, with low cooldown, mana cost, and average power, that works on ANY monster on the game. Shield is not worth it I find (its only good if your defense is already high), but staff master is multiplicative and thus is useful. Use something like Winter's Breath, a +20% cold damage gloves, and staff mastery, and it essentially replaces tier 1 spells altogether. Very useful for those who don't nuke, like your support caster.
Crushing Prison is balanced by the fact that it does not stun reds. Useful to one shot whites or disable yellows (but at an ENORMOUS mana cost), but practically useless against reds where they can't CC them and the prison's damage is largely nullified by much lower duration.
As for the rest...
AoE needs LoS I agree with, just like Blood Wound does. Therein lies most of their power, and needs to be changed.
Forcefield just needs a minor change. I'm thinking 5 sec duration over 10 sec time cd. Makes it much more mana intensive keeping it up, you only can keep it up for half the time, shorten its durations so you can't easily AoE over the ff'ed tank, while still maintaining its usefulness for clutch situations.
Cone of Cold just needs to run on diminishing returns over a 10 second time frame, kinda like stuns. So 1 CoC mage is useful, but every CoC mage after that becomes less and less useful. Other than that, it has high mana cost for low damage, so nerfing it beyond that makes it useless.
Another one is the Death Hex/Cloud combo. If doing Entropic Death dispelled all spells involved using it (like Storm of the Century), I would have no problem spending 8 overlapping talents per mage to do a big nuke. As it is, it only needs 4 overlapping talents on each mage to participate in the combo, which is a good deal especially with the entire line being of use.
In any case, the sheer power of Mana Clash is offset by its situational use AND by crap skills in front of it. It's balanced in my eyes, in where glyph line is dangerous to be used in a multi-mage party (you don't want to dispel with neutralization right?) but has other useful spells, while dispel line has short cd's and preempt your tank to be spell immune.
And people underestimate spellbloom. It increases mana regen by 3 over a 20 second period, which a 30 mana increase for all mages (+5 only for caster) over 30 seconds. Which is underwhelming on paper.
But consider it over a 90 second time frame, in which it will increase every spellcasters pool by 90, and the caster actially gains +15 mana for the deal. In comparison, rejuvenate increases one targets stamina/mana by 80 over the same time frame, and it costs the caster 50 mana. Sure bloom only works with spellcasters, but if you have 2 or even 3 mages, you can see the obvious benefits of always keeping it on.
Grease is there for fire mages, while Stinging Swarm is a decent DoT spell thats very effecient mana wise and worry-free (no friendly fire). It's not a WOW line, but it has its uses. Plus it has the best tier 1 spell in the game with spell wisp, where the increase in spell power alone pays for the fatigue... fact that you 'frontloadl' your spells is just gravy.
Heroic spells are fine. All of them are on 5/10 sec cooldown, and all are on 20 second duration. Just have a tactic set to keep them up... your support mage is the easiest one to make tactics for, and Wynne starts with combat tactics skills.
Arcane bolt is a decent spell, with low cooldown, mana cost, and average power, that works on ANY monster on the game. Shield is not worth it I find (its only good if your defense is already high), but staff master is multiplicative and thus is useful. Use something like Winter's Breath, a +20% cold damage gloves, and staff mastery, and it essentially replaces tier 1 spells altogether. Very useful for those who don't nuke, like your support caster.
Crushing Prison is balanced by the fact that it does not stun reds. Useful to one shot whites or disable yellows (but at an ENORMOUS mana cost), but practically useless against reds where they can't CC them and the prison's damage is largely nullified by much lower duration.
As for the rest...
AoE needs LoS I agree with, just like Blood Wound does. Therein lies most of their power, and needs to be changed.
Forcefield just needs a minor change. I'm thinking 5 sec duration over 10 sec time cd. Makes it much more mana intensive keeping it up, you only can keep it up for half the time, shorten its durations so you can't easily AoE over the ff'ed tank, while still maintaining its usefulness for clutch situations.
Cone of Cold just needs to run on diminishing returns over a 10 second time frame, kinda like stuns. So 1 CoC mage is useful, but every CoC mage after that becomes less and less useful. Other than that, it has high mana cost for low damage, so nerfing it beyond that makes it useless.
Another one is the Death Hex/Cloud combo. If doing Entropic Death dispelled all spells involved using it (like Storm of the Century), I would have no problem spending 8 overlapping talents per mage to do a big nuke. As it is, it only needs 4 overlapping talents on each mage to participate in the combo, which is a good deal especially with the entire line being of use.
#4
Posté 24 novembre 2009 - 04:52
Bluesmith
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See thread on overpowered/underpowered talents.
#5
Posté 24 novembre 2009 - 05:03
Guurzak
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