QUOTE(Rei-Tenshi @ May 24 2013, 05:07)
Want to compare me to HTTP, or any heavily upgraded melee? I have some experience with melee too, though not nearly as upgraded on the melee side. I don't play that much either, which is why I choose to invest my time and effort into Mage. So, let me give my perspective:
Melees cruise for thousands of rounds on IWBTH grindfest, barely paying attention while holding an attack button down. They barely bat an eye at 200 round Legendary IW. Live in Europe near the servers? How about screen refreshes so fast that you can't even tell what's going on?
Meanwhile as a mage, I struggle to get through 250 IWBTH grindfest thanks to being forced to use Imperil for any reasonably upgrade monster (hint: most of them) and thanks to cooldown on the only spell I have capable of killing said monsters before they annihilate me. Sure, I can blast through single round RoBs and arena impressively enough, but that's because they are both short and lack the damage growth found in IW/GF.
Tenboro's assertion that you can somehow alternate or cycle through strong attacks is just flat wrong. Mixing phase leads to a substantially reduced primary attack and therefore more damage taken from more surviving monsters. Not to mention, from loading up on one element, I get a stronger T1 attack than I would get from a second T3 attack with a mixed set. The only potentially positive difference here would be that T3 can target all monsters when maxed, and T1 can only target 5. That is not a good justification for switching since two weak/moderate T3 attacks + resists will still leave many strong monsters alive. Not to mention, the changes to Abilities and AP cost has left most people without the ability to even have a complete skill set for one class, or even one elemental type if you're a mage.
However, I am pleased to see some changes here intended to reel in some of the advantages melee has over mage in general. First, the throttled 4 turn/s refresh rate mentioned previously in the discussion. It's a fair cap, considering I can't even come close to this given the number of spell that have to be juggled for mage play. Even using mouse macros on the key spells (Imperil, attacks.) The closest resemblance is holding R to repeat T1 spells, and this only lasts 3-4 turns at most. Second, the 1-turn, 1-HP SoL punishes melees for the most part, with minimal impact on mage (though it has still gotten me from inattentive/drowsy playing.) That is good and all, but when you can pass through a 1000+ rounds with no effort needed to survive, what difference does it make? It only comes into play when melee players start facing multi 1-shot skills/crits that deplete SP.
I can tell that Tenboro is putting serious effort into balancing melee vs mage, but there's still work to be done. Cutting back forge upgrades does nothing to close the gap between the two. It just reduces the gap between forged and unforged players, by marginal amounts. Monster hunger/morale? Kind of punishing people for abusing melee extreme survivability in hind-sight, but w/e, it's not my time that was wasted. Those who have known Tenboro over the years know that no unbridled success goes unpunished. Most of the "255" army will soon be discouraged and commit suicide.
I think at this point there is no hope of reining in melee survivability in GF, so I think to reduce the huge disparity between melee and mage, GF itself needs to be changed. Decreasing (or removing) the monster damage growth and imposing a hard cap on the number of rounds per play would significantly improve this balance.
That would leave you with mage having a decent speed/power advantage in the short runs (Arena/RoB) and Melee still having a decent (not overwhelming) advantage in survivability in the long runs (IW/GF), as it should be. It would also reduce the incentive for highly-forged-hath-moguls to buy up all of the pertinent materials, which drives up the prices and blocks most other people from forging. If their continued forging doesn't get them anything extra (hard cap on GF), then they have no incentive to continue, and prices fall, causing a wider distribution of forgers, people that can survive longer, and
ultimately less complaining to Tenboro.
QUOTE(danixxx @ May 24 2013, 05:27)
Are you guys killing urd in first or what? I mean i finish the new ROB in a lot less turn with just my forged estoc.
I have no intent to do that new RoB as a melee, but wouldn't the clear best option be to Silence Yggdrasil and focus entirely on FSM? Splash damage from attacks/skills would kill most and significantly damage the others by the time you finished with it.
HentaiVerse 0.76, Wall-EEEE
May 24 2013, 17:30
