Mana shield needs a major nerf

[joshei02]

9 hours ago, wongyuuu said:

Absolutely. There are good raiders that can easily melt mages in PVP especially in Akram.

There are many underlying factors that need to take into consideration before nerfing this skill in my opinion. Might as well try to get the end gears first on your characters before complaining about the said Skill.

Not to burst your bubble but you can easily rekt mage if you know how to one target (2-3 players) with the right combination of skills.

killing a target with 3 man already sounds like killing a sub geared tank. they are supposed to be crystal cannons, not siege tanks.

half my guild (tanks, scouts, raiders) are making a mage just for pvp. A friend of mine literally made a mage named NerfMe. now tell me they're not overtuned. Make them a more tanky version of bourgs, but not as tanky as knights.

 

 

 

On 1/13/2023 at 8:57 PM, Avatar said:

I’m in agreement here with DoubleRose.

During PvM, any mage I party with will instantly die, even with mana shield, unless I were to use sacrifice and get the mobs off of them when they skill. 

I hope they can like make the current mana shield a PvE skill only and add a second skill that’s PvP only with a higher duration (if they’ll even consider it in the first place). For PvM, I’d argue and say it needs a boost. So I hope it’s not nerfed for the Mages sake. 

If a mage dies while they aoe, they are doing something wrong with their class. A good mage who knows mastery of their kits almost outlives everyone else except the main tank, sometimes they outlive the main tank too.

Edited February 27, 2023 by joshei02

[Avatar]

1 minute ago, joshei02 said:

If a mage dies while they aoe, they are doing something wrong with their class. A good mage who knows mastery of their kits almost outlives everyone else except the main tank, sometimes they outlive the main tank too.

PVP/PVM cannot be compared when utilizing mana shield. Mages almost always die doing PVM if the knight/champ hasn’t used Sacrifice and the mages AOE. It has been my experience that every mage I party with is in the same boat. 

[joshei02]

4 minutes ago, Avatar said:

PVP/PVM cannot be compared when utilizing mana shield. Mages almost always die doing PVM if the knight/champ hasn’t used Sacrifice and the mages AOE. It has been my experience that every mage I party with is in the same boat. 

try to party with mages on end game dungeons. those that already know their kit, Our mage actually is the one tank running in 2nd room of hoo, better than our knight. and someone posted a video of a mage soloing COU.. how is that balanced? you can't really judge the current situation if you haven't leveled to max and seen people on max gears.

 

 

Edited February 27, 2023 by joshei02

[Avatar]

Just now, joshei02 said:

try to party with mages on end game dungeons. those that already know their kit, Our mage actually is the one tank running in 2nd room of hoo, better than our knight.

 

The issue is you cannot completely nerf this skill looking at solely max level. It has to be fair across the board for all mages. 

If what you say is true, the ones tanking HOO most definitely have valor gear or exalted gear (which is apparently better than valor). The skill then supplements as extra HP on top of buffs that add even more HP. 

Im all for changing the skill, but I’d rather consider making two separate skills. 1 that can only be used for PVP and the other only for PVM. 

[joshei02]

Just now, Avatar said:

The issue is you cannot completely nerf this skill looking at solely max level. It has to be fair across the board for all mages. 

If what you say is true, the ones tanking HOO most definitely have valor gear or exalted gear (which is apparently better than valor). The skill then supplements as extra HP on top of buffs that add even more HP. 

Im all for changing the skill, but I’d rather consider making two separate skills. 1 that can only be used for PVP and the other only for PVM. 

the thread is not asking to nerf mage to the ground, just give their skills a bit of tuning, make them also make choices on what to do with their build rather than giving them everything on 1 stat which is int(survivability, damage, hit). TBH if you check value of their skills, they have most of the skill point efficient skills in the game. Take for example sight of the magi, yes it gives accu. but no other skills gives that much stat for 10 sp. if you  have 400 int you get what? 600 hit? thats already a full set of substats on a full set of equipments. yes it's skillpoint intensive to fully utilize mana shield, but they only go 2 elements most of the time anyway.

[Avatar]

2 minutes ago, joshei02 said:

the thread is not asking to nerf mage to the ground, just give their skills a bit of tuning, make them also make choices on what to do with their build rather than giving them everything on 1 stat which is int(survivability, damage, hit). TBH if you check value of their skills, they have most of the skill point efficient skills in the game. Take for example sight of the magi, yes it gives accu. but no other skills gives that much stat for 10 sp. if you  have 400 int you get what? 600 hit? thats already a full set of substats on a full set of equipments. yes it's skillpoint intensive to fully utilize mana shield, but they only go 2 elements most of the time anyway.

You have some good points here. 

But the point of the thread (from when you quoted me) was nerf the skill specifically as it was OP for PVP. Not what you said.. but like I said, you have some fair points. 

[joshei02]

2 minutes ago, Avatar said:

You have some good points here. 

But the point of the thread (from when you quoted me) was nerf the skill specifically as it was OP for PVP. Not what you said.. but like I said, you have some fair points. 

All classes should be looked over tbh. Scouts for example are extremely gimped in this version, so are gun classes.

[FrozzenBite]

I think the mana shield should work like this

if you get any damage when you on mana shield state, it must be drain your mana until the shield break, (like if you receive 1k damage so your mana should drain 1k) since mage can reach 10k+ mana.

So now we need to increse the cooldown of this skill to avoid mana shield skill spamming, decrease total damage needed to break that shield, and increase mana cost 50% of total mana. 

Now the mage can decide, he can go with 100% mana and full skill, or 50% mana left+1mp potion to survive. So mage can't go with burst damage and tanky anyone at the same time anymore.

i think balance mean there is chance to killing on 1v1 with same gear on combat class, but in this moment we cant because the shield is so broken.

[Phish_]

13 hours ago, Avatar said:

The issue is you cannot completely nerf this skill looking at solely max level. It has to be fair across the board for all mages. 

If what you say is true, the ones tanking HOO most definitely have valor gear or exalted gear (which is apparently better than valor). The skill then supplements as extra HP on top of buffs that add even more HP. 

Im all for changing the skill, but I’d rather consider making two separate skills. 1 that can only be used for PVP and the other only for PVM. 

This is a good point and I think it is one of the things that makes balancing difficult sometimes. A new mage at level 100 is going to be fragile yeah, but a mage thats 250 and geared well is incredibly strong. Maybe some of the issue is to tone down how mana shield scaling is. 

Also again, it's not just a matter of 'mana shield is too strong' but more so mana shield is too strong for how much, damage, range and crowd control mages get in conjunction with good survival. The mage class is very versatile which is cool but they are a bit omni powerful in pvp (but pvp has a lot of balance issues at the moment).

Is it even possible to make a buff skill like mana shield only work in pvp? What happens in pvp/pvm maps like ruins?

Edited February 27, 2023 by Phish_

[Avatar]

15 minutes ago, Phish_ said:

This is a good point and I think it is one of the things that makes balancing difficult sometimes. A new mage at level 100 is going to be fragile yeah, but a mage thats 250 and geared well is incredibly strong. Maybe some of the issue is to tone down how mana shield scaling is. 

Also again, it's not just a matter of 'mana shield is too strong' but more so mana shield is too strong for how much, damage, range and crowd control mages get in conjunction with good survival. The mage class is very versatile which is cool but they are a bit omni powerful in pvp (but pvp has a lot of balance issues at the moment).

Is it even possible to make a buff skill like mana shield only work in pvp? What happens in pvp/pvm maps like ruins?

It’s just an idea for separating the skills. I’m not quite sure how that part would work. Perhaps similar to the ones we currently have.. where unless you target an enemy player/monster you wont be able to use the skill. Or maybe even if you have the PVM version enabled, then players can bypass it once the system detects they’re players. Same with monsters. 

Again, no idea if it’s possible. 

[DoubleRose]

13 hours ago, joshei02 said:

All classes should be looked over tbh. Scouts for example are extremely gimped in this version, so are gun classes.

Deserved buffs for other classes is why a mana shield nerf would need to be light. Base attack speed on xbow, gun, and bow are too low. Increasing those will be an indirect nerf to mages. They might need other changes and so do other classes.

[joshei02]

14 hours ago, DoubleRose said:

Deserved buffs for other classes is why a mana shield nerf would need to be light. Base attack speed on xbow, gun, and bow are too low. Increasing those will be an indirect nerf to mages. They might need other changes and so do other classes.

I believe aspeed was nerfed for all classes. Correct me if I'm wrong. would be nice if they made new aspeed sources or buff existing ones like increased base attack values, since the removal of some items that gave aspeed made aspeed like a trivial stat.

If they don't want to nerf said skill, I think it would be fair to buff existing dps mechanics to indirectly nerf the mages skill reinforced mana shield, regular shield is ok; the problem is the reinforced version of it.

Edited February 28, 2023 by joshei02

[DoubleRose]

3 hours ago, joshei02 said:

I believe aspeed was nerfed for all classes. Correct me if I'm wrong. would be nice if they made new aspeed sources or buff existing ones like increased base attack values, since the removal of some items that gave aspeed made aspeed like a trivial stat.

If they don't want to nerf said skill, I think it would be fair to buff existing dps mechanics to indirectly nerf the mages skill reinforced mana shield, regular shield is ok; the problem is the reinforced version of it.

High base attack speed would increase scaling. If you have base .5 attack speed and raise it to .7, a 10% boost in a attack speed will give .07 more attacks a second instead of a .05 increase. The devs might want to consider switching out some of the 24% attack speed everyone gets for higher base attack speed on all weapons, though maybe that would make single target dps builds too strong when fully geared. I think just the slower weapons need some help.

A better idea than that would be to increase attack speed substats somewhat. A max substat is 2.25%. That's not even a quarter of a p7 (and 1/6th a p10). Compare that to 25 of your class's main stat and 60 crit. Those end up giving more dps than the attack speed. Make it go up to 3% maybe. Not much, but something.

[Phish_]

Agreed the attack speed substats are unneccessarily low and even if you want to use a melee build 40/ap or 60/crit or 25 main stat are better melee dps than 2.25% attack speed on top of the fact that they also give you more skill damage too.

[Bobbity]

So, fix the game and balance it around the current Fortified Mana Shield? I would've preferred removing it and forcing mages to rely on the base Mana Shield + some other damage mitigation or avoidance from their masteries. It just seems too... convenient. Or maybe unintelligent for a class that stacks INT.

[Phish_]

Thats a separate issue than mana shield lol, it just happened to come up in this topic.

[Bobbity]

I have a possible solution to the problem, but it's one mages will dislike - it will require a different playstyle from them.

Currently, you can go into combat with Fortified Mana Shield up precast (duration 10 minutes) and recast it during combat when it pops. Effectively, it's cast twice at almost no cost. This is one of the major problems other classes have with the skill.

To solve this:

- Cut the duration radically from 10 minutes down to 5/6/7/8/9 seconds 

- Increase the cooldown from 6 seconds to 12 seconds. 

- Increase mana regen from mage skill tree passives, especially Mana Siphon

- Increase mana consumption from mage skill tree passives (up by 2%) 

- Remove the current skill animation and replace it with a smoother, shorter one such as the buff casting animation

- Add a mechanic that replenishes the mage's mana pool if the skill damage received during the effects of the shield matches the element of the mage's mastery/masteries. (The shield is still damaged.) 

OR

- Add a mechanic similar to Victorious Respite and Invigoration that replenishes mana on successful spell crits and last-hit kills.

 

 

Problems with this idea:

- It doesn't match with the base skill Mana Shield, despite sharing the same casting instance. Right now, whether you cast Mana Shield or Fortified Mana Shield, you still use the same mechanic. After this suggestion, do you now have two different mana shields? If so, can both be cast at the same time? Aren't we back to square one if that's the case?

- The name might not be accurate any longer. The suggested shield isn't more fortified, it's more versatile. Maybe call it Ablative Shield now? Something like that.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Bobbity

[prettywomanlover]

Currently, I think for cleric mana shield should not be nerfed, other than adding a longer cooldown, or making it so they cannot be used within 15 seconds of the last one.  For mages, I have not played mage honestly but i heard there was a secondary mana shield for them, I think that should simply be removed, they do not need it an will be overpowered without it, they should not get an extra shield they are supposed to be a glass cannon class. 

 

Thanks, let me know your ideas on how they should go about tweaking mana shield for the next update

[Bobbity]

Maybe we'll end up with 3 different versions of Mana Shield: Common, Holy and Elemental.

Common is the one from the Common Muse tab, no changes done to it. Consumes up to 50% of max MP to absorb damage.

 

Holy Shield:

Active: Consumes up to 70% of max MP and reduces damage taken from Neutral, Fire, Wind and Ghost attacks and skills. The shield takes increased damage from Earth and poison-element damage.

Passive: The cleric gains 2 HP recovery per 2 character levels for 2/4/6/8/10 seconds after the shield was cast.

(The passive component can of course be implemented as a separate skill.)

 

 

Elemental Shield:

Active: Consumes up to 50% of max MP to manifest a layer of shielding that absorbs damage.

Passive:  Adds an additional layer of mana shielding for each elemental mastery achieved equal to 2/4/6/8/10% of max MP (at no cost). Each layer also absorbs 15% of the elements against which it is strong and takes 15% additional damage from elements against which it is weak. Layers collapse when taking damage greater than their 10% max MP. They regenerate in t seconds if they do not take elemental damage of the type against which they are weak. Additional layers do not regenerate if the mage has no mana.

 

 

In the latter case, a storm mage might have mastered Wind and Water elements, thus having a base shield equal to the regular Mana Shield PLUS a Wind Shield and a Water Shield. The Water Shield will be strong vs Sorcery and Fire attacks and reduce them significantly. However, it will be weak to enemy Wind, Poison and Ghost attacks and collapse after taking damage >= 10% max MP. It will regenerate in t sec if the mage doesn't take Wind damage again; if they do within this period, the Wind Shield does not regenerate. Damage can continue to pierce through into the base Mana Shield AND the elemental layer beneath.

The mage is now left with a Wind Shield layered on the base Mana Shield. This will act like the Water Shield, in that it's strong against Water and Poison attacks and weak against Sorcery, Earth and Holy attacks. Damage taken will have filtered through from the now-defunct top layer of Water shielding, impacting the integrity of the Wind Shield. However, the Wind Shield is strong or neutral vs some of the elements against which the Water Shield was weak.

 

Edited March 10, 2023 by Bobbity
Left out some words again, sigh.

[Kokokrunch]

I wonder what gears & experience does these ppl have that are complaining about the mana shield. Take away a mage's mana shield and you hit them 3x they die. Also you dont compare strength on 1on1 PVP with a different class than yours. I am a Mage user, I have different sets per different class I battle with and situations (like Akram Arena). I reset my skills based on who I battle with or which class. Imagine how a headache that is. This aint a 1on1 game, its a team game. Gotta learn how to prioritize, communicate which targets to focus. 

I dont mind nerfing our mana shields, it just makes it more exciting so other classes wont have any more reasons/complains about mages being OP (when we beat em) jooke!! , just make sure these adjustments are balanced, specially with our squishy defense.

See you in the battlefield  

[Forestwithin]

On 3/8/2023 at 7:11 PM, prettywomanlover said:

Currently, I think for cleric mana shield should not be nerfed, other than adding a longer cooldown, or making it so they cannot be used within 15 seconds of the last one.  For mages, I have not played mage honestly but i heard there was a secondary mana shield for them, I think that should simply be removed, they do not need it an will be overpowered without it, they should not get an extra shield they are supposed to be a glass cannon class. 

 

Thanks, let me know your ideas on how they should go about tweaking mana shield for the next update

it is not a "extra shield".. it is just pretty much putting more points into the shield. 
And people still seems to fail realising how much points you actually spend on it to have a good shield.. 

[Bobbity]

This is why I say to add more obvious weaknesses and strengths to Fortified Mana Shield. The investment is HUGE to get what they have - and still a decent raider with good timing can pop up behind you and burst that little bubble a few times. When I say obvious weaknesses, I mean that anyone with patience and a good eye will know what to do to take you down 1v1. 

Honestly, I'm more in favor of mechanics we don't have (yet?) like short-range teleportation or summoning party members to your position. But it's as if people are obsessed with finding an easy way out. This is actually starting to get even more annoying than the cleric / buff discussion (which I note has died down.... interesting, no?)

 

The whole point of being a mage is having a bag of tricks to do what needs doing and cover your butt. If you don't understand how that works, easy examples are Merlin, Harry Dresden or Alex Verus. A trick up your sleeve for every occasion. I suggest the community start THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX FOR A CHANGE.

 

(In light of the last statement, I suggest an ability called Spell Steal that allows the mage to learn and use 1-2 skill(s) from another class if used in the last 120 seconds. No, I have no idea how that'd work. Just throwing that out there into the universe.)

Edited March 13, 2023 by Bobbity
Annoyed at lack of comprehension, post scriptum.

[BaconEggAndDeez]

On 2/27/2023 at 1:16 AM, Avatar said:

PVP/PVM cannot be compared when utilizing mana shield. Mages almost always die doing PVM if the knight/champ hasn’t used Sacrifice and the mages AOE. It has been my experience that every mage I party with is in the same boat. 

Then bourg can just touch grass and die instantly ? Mages, in any game in the world aren't tanky. This manashield should be used wisely and in emergency, just put it 40s CD, same as bourg rigging and such.

[GodOfEntity]

1 hour ago, BaconEggAndDeez said:

Then bourg can just touch grass and die instantly ? Mages, in any game in the world aren't tanky. This manashield should be used wisely and in emergency, just put it 40s CD, same as bourg rigging and such.

Bourg dmg is supposed to come with a trade off. They're supposed to be glass cannons. 

[BaconEggAndDeez]

24 minutes ago, GodOfEntity said:

Bourg dmg is supposed to come with a trade off. They're supposed to be glass cannons. 

But not mages ? kek