Regarding dropping the damage-giving value of prof gear and changing MMI, along with having spells minimum and maximum reinforcing proficiency:
The latter will make higher minimum requirements for starting to mage for newbies. It is an interesting thought to use prof gear to unlock spells that otherwise would be outside level range though, but that's an aside that won't happen often because for most levels MMI change isn't all that drastic
(I'm of the opinion that game balance should be focused between levels 100 and 300 as that is where most content is. Though not everything should be perfectly balanced, for then all choices will be same, and there's is only an illusion of choice just like with intended imbalance). The MMI change (and potential resistance/MMI-decreasing effects of prof)will result in streamlining MOB strength. This does mean that player-shattering outliers will be easier to kill for players that have reached that point in their gear so at the levels where Daemon Duality is good investment will not be forced to imperil.
Of course, compared to the players who wear crude to superior gear like you'd expect most starting mages to they are beyond the impossible - as is expected when a hundreth of their investment is still ten times more than the value of the gear. But conversely, if the average mob becomes stronger, the minimum power required to mage will rise much higher. This, combined with the prof requirements raising the barrier, means that most mage gear dropped will become bazaar food, the gear worthy enough will become far more valuable - raising the barrier further and because of that becoming a mage isn't something that can be done in 2 days, nay, a week anymore. With the low gini index on mage gear, gossamer will further drop. Not to mention the possibility that new mages reach levels where they need stronger equipment to do well on normal before they reach the levels where they will have sufficient wealth-gathering prowess to get said equipment, which would result in large influx of melee players - and their melee sets will perform better than mage sets until they're at the point where the mage set receives fair portion of the power from forging - and money spent on that could be further spent empowering melee set, resulting in the new situation that only best melees at the point where forging has lost most of the benefit can get better results from normal maging than meleeing. Already less than valuable gossamer would lose even more value in such situation because it will only be used to get enough prof to cast spells to grind prof for vast majority of the players who are so rich to build up a secondary forged-up set as they're not rich enough to sacrifice damage for CR.
Alternatively, assuming the bonus from prof is enough to surpass streamlined mobs for most mages it is entirely possible that new wealthy mages will outdo current melee at median difficulties.
@Death Grunty: Well, people actually have to make choices in the tree under the levels where they have completed the game. But yeah, by the time one reaches 250 and has +10 to all from shrine with +50 from AP training they can melee and mage quite effectively. Not perfect, there's still a loss ofc, but the sacrifice isn't crippling.
Whether this was intended, I do not know.
@HTTP: You're correct, but as Katalox of destruction can support both holy and dark effectively there's the argument that individual focus for element should be superior than 2 focuses - I looked at new oak numbers and it is definitely superior to new redwood, without accounting for CR. As for what chosen said: when it comes to holy, with exmax stats at 250 and +10 shrine/+16 aura/+38 from stat distribution you get results that have gossamer superior to phase only in the case of oak's feet(a 0.03% advantage) - in all other cases it is a loss. However, if given oak has naturally low prof rolls it indeed follows that bigger slot than just shoes will have advantage. Anyhow, oak still loses to katalox, but not cripplingly, just need oak that is a half tier above 'loxie.
@discrete OC:
That has pretty styling possibilities with opacity (IMG:[
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style_emoticons/default/smile.gif). But stancing will stand supreme.
@boosting spell debuffs instead of damage: Cute but those boosts have to be pretty darn significant - comparable with standard debuffs, even - because a monsters that was debuffed by spell is alive to strike back. But if done this will make high-difficulty maging and elemental maging easier while weakening low-difficulty maging. As it it it takes some very significant investment and no small amount of practice/skill to reach the point where upping difficulty above 'normal' is good decision.
@low tier spells having double speed: Yay. Can get one tier 1 spell off without being eaten alive. Which is significant change to now where you'll need double haste for that. Now look at all those agitated monsters!
Joking aside, this would be - even more, option to optimize like that with gossamer- would be welcome for more use of lower tier spells.
This post has been edited by Lement: Feb 17 2013, 19:16
Possible future revamp
Feb 17 2013, 07:08
