Game Design Early Mage Succ

...But, in all seriousness, early-game Mages needs a buff, or at least a shift around of it's Skills.

In my time playing and leveling my Mage up to LvL 30, it has been grindy and utterly miserable in comparison to literally every other class!

...Take that with a grain of salt, though - maybe these problems get better in the later levels, but, in my personal opinion, here's why Early Mage Succ:

Damage Output Issues
The Mage really sucks at dealing damage in early game. When I fought the boss of Decrepit Sewers with my Shaman for the first time, I beat her in a clean half-minute. Short, simple, sweet.

...And my Mage? At least a whole minute to get the boss to HALF HEALTH.

The other classes can almost always win in a duel* against Mage because it's damage is so terrible! It's just sad!

*While I'm not a half-bad Pvper in Wynncraft, I DO suck at normal/'new' PvP in Vanilla.

How Mage Spell Succ
The damage issue shouldn't be that bad for Mage, right? Just spam your offensive Spells - Ice Snake and Meteor can carry you through early game, right?

Hahaha...ahahaha...no.

...Because you don't have them until the late LvL 20s-30s! It makes grinding up to that point a massive pain in the back side!

My suggestion is to give Ice Snake first, and give Heal as the fourth spell, instead. You're not gonna fuss over a small chunk of health when you've generally got less than 500-1000 of it to work with, you can just pop a potion or something and watch it go right back up!

Why Ice Snake as my choice of First Spell? Well, first of all, because it gives you a secondary attack, which also acts as a sabotage, if you've gotta pop it and run from a horde or clump.

Second, it's an extremely clunky, hard-to-use Spell when your target's even a block below or above it, so the Mage coughing it up as your first spell should give you more than enough practice to adjust to using it.

Also, you've got a ton of flat, mostly even ground for practicing how to aim the Ice Snake and practicing combos with your main attack.

In addition, as of now, Heal officially doesn't do a single digits of damage, but can annihilate a cave in by healing it!

...That makes so much sense, doesn't it, Content Team?

(Look, I don't mean to insult you guys, because your work's awesome, but please make the tutorial make more sense. I don't know, have Mages Heal the guard so he can cast a Spell or something instead?)

Meteor Succ
I can see this ruffling a lot of people's feathers, but hear me out - Meteor is almost useful already!

...Keyword: Almost!

If I had a dime for every time it missed because the targeted mob could walk away, I could by Hero Rank!

But I can already hear that one guy in the comments going: "just knock them into the Meteor, scrub!"

...Should you really have to use what's meant to be a Promise of Death kind of spell as a Situational Trap kind of spell?

...Meteor Feex?
Developers, if you're reading this...please, at least make the base LvL Meteor a bit faster.

Maybe, instead of having it target the closest mob in range, have it instead through a 'Magic Rock,' which will fly like Smoke Bomb and, upon landing, then it would summon the Meteor?

It would stop people from spamming Meteor, and it makes a whole lot more sense than: "Your Meteor was instantly vaporized by nothing because you summoned another one."

You'd be throwing a thingy (the Magic Rock) which would spawn the fun thing (the Meteor), and that means you can only throw one fun-thing spawner at a time! It makes a lot more sense, and prevents a likely broken strategy from being viable.

(... Though it'd likely be a death sentence for the people who DO spam Meteor as a strategy. RIP!)

TL;DR:
- Make the First Spell Ice Snake, please
- Please buff the Main Attack Damage of Mages by, like, idk, 30%? Whatever's balanced, so that it can hold a candle to the others.
- Heal's a tad expensive for how little it actually heals. Maybe buff it a bit
- Can we please aim the Meteor like Smoke Bomb instead of having an instantaneous lock-on targeting system?

That's all for this thread, I guess. Just a personal bundle of thoughts of mine in text, so you can (and prolly should) take it with a little grain of salt.

 

Yeah sure but generally the 4th spell is Crowd control. (smoke bomb, war scream, uproot, arrow shield) I'm fine with this but it would make mage inconsistent with the other classes

Mage already has a high damage output so I don't see it needing to be buffed. you can't compare mages damage to shaman's because shaman is meant to have a super high damage output

Heals probably the best spell right now except maybe vanish. It also allows mage to tank better then warrior.

Yes this is something I would like to see

 

I disagree to levels that should not be possible

 

This would be better if at level 6 heal spell got its first upgrade which makes it damage nearby mobs

 

They do have a point though. Mage's healing in the early game is actually pretty trash, but most people don't mind for the sake of convenience. You have to keep in mind that heal actually starts off at costing 8 mana, then goes to 7 at level 16 and finally 6 at level 36 (which 36 is the transition to midgame imo), and along with that you can't realistically spam it due to low intel and mana sustain that early on. You're far better off utilizing teleport/meteor with your mana to the degree of honestly not even using heal other than light damage build up in the environment/clearing debuffs. I don't think that heal should be buffed due to that though, as later it becomes one of the best spells in the game (only really losing to vanish/spin/aura (with spell spam) imo).

Now then, onto the actual thread itself.

Yes. Mage's dps is garbage in the early game compared to the other classes. I still wouldn't say it's particularly bad per sae, but that's because I know what I'm doing. For a new player, you won't have any clue how boosting stuff like raw melee really works and how to utilize it the best, and as such, yeah, I'm not surprised Mage took you that long to kill Witherhead. For reference, I also did Mage as my first character and it literally took 5 minutes to defeat Witherhead. That is how garbage it's dps can be because it has no damaging spells.

As for your complaint about PvP, it's not really valid in this case. This is because Wynn PvP is horrendously imbalanced to begin with and should pretty much never be a factor when determining how good a class is. I understand this was to reinforce your point about dps issues, but it's such a minuscule factor that it doesn't matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

I agree that pots are quite literally better than heal in the early game, but I don't believe Ice Snake should be the first spell. The reason is not so much because I think it would be bad if the player learned how to use ice snake properly early on, but because this would mean Ice Snake would get it's freeze super early on (level 16, to be specific). This completely memes on the need to put yourself at some distance while playing Mage, especially since most mobs in the early game are just basic melee mobs. In other words, you would be completely safe by just spamming Ice Snake, since Ice Snake is very spammable due to its innate low mana cost and slow duration once you get to the t1 and t2 upgrades (Ice Snake goes from 6->5->4 mana respectfully).

What you suggested is what already happens in the tutorial.


I am assuming you just forgot, but even with that in mind yeah how can we blow up a boulder with spin attack?

Meteor isn't as bad at level as you and I both make it out to be. The reason is because not many mobs even move around that much in the early game to begin with. Sure, some have charge or the like, but very few spam it to the degree of "you will never hit them with it". Plus, Meteor hits like a god damn nuke when it does hit. In a way, I kind of like this meteor more, because I have to carefully utilize it in conjunction with my melees/tps to get the most dps potential.

That being said, I wouldn't mind Meteor being slightly faster at level 21. Most players favor a spell spam orientated playstyle, and as such, it will be infuriating trying to play spell Mage this early on. I can't say much on auto aim though, because sometimes it's my best friend and other times I wish it never existed.

In short, yes, I agree that Mage is the worst class in the early game, hell I would and have argued that even with the upgrades it gets in midgame it is worse than the other classes and only really begins to pick up in the late game. But at the same time, I don't really think it needs much changing. Despite how pathetic heal is until later, Mage is still a decent/good enough class on its own since teleport instantly gets out of stunlocks/hordes (and is excellent for spacing when utilized properly), has decent range through its melees, and meteor acting as a tactical nuke.

 

Archers, assassins, and warriors attack the boulder themselves; with the mage and the shaman, the player heals the guard so that the guard can attack the boulder.

 

Ice snake works well where it is. If anything, mage's biggest advantage is that heal is the first spell. It allows it to surivive far better than any of the other classes, even if it has lower dps.

As I mentioned, mage doesn't need, and in fact, isn't really supposed to have high dps, due to the power of heal spell. Comparing mage to shaman is comparing apples to oranges, except the oranges have a machine gun. Shaman ties with archer as the highest damage class, and even then is maybe too powerful. Mage is meant to have some of the lowest damage, but to have amazing power with its spells, which is absolutely does. Meteor is the third highest damage spell in the game (excluding a few special builds), with only arrow storm and multihit coming in close. Arrow storm is hard to land effectively without hawkeye, which is absurdly overpowered, and multihit is not much better than meteor despite being on assassin which theoretically has much higher damage.

Heal is kind of weird, because a water mage has brokenly powerful heals. Like, unkillable levels of power. However, my thunder mage has heals that are about on par with a level 80 healing potion. Buffing heal would be a terrible idea; I'm pretty sure people using lament or king of hearts could become literally unkillable. Further, it is extremely powerful early game when it generally far outclasses potions and mana isn't as important. However, I wouldn't mind a rebalance purely because of how bad it can be on a non-water mage.

And as for the last one, oh please god no. I hear people complain about meteor's auto-targeting, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why. As long as you're halfway decent at leading enemies or timing spells, you should almost never have a problem with it. All you have to do is not look straight at an enemy while you're casting it. It's slow, but if you know how to use it, it's perfectly effective as it is.

 

lol

 

First of all, about your argument that Mages aren't supposed to have good dps: Every single enemy is harder to kill with Mage than with any other Class in early game.

Sure, it might get much better in late game, but that doesn't excuse the miserable grind which is the early-mid game. I get that Shamans and Archers are supposed to naturally have more DPS, and I'm okay with that.

The problem is that Early Mage Succ because it can't kill mobs in time. If a LvL 15 Mage suffers a hit or two from every single mob they fight, the damage adds up FAST. Other classes never even notice the shockingly high damage mobs can deal if you let them gang up - after all, they can kill them fast enough so that this is never a problem, and they can pop a potion or two to recover that ONE little hit they took.

Mage? The basic attack can't carry it, which makes not getting very many offensive Spells a major issue.

Keep in mind - early mage can't spam anything. It's gotta play it overly safe, and often struggles to kill a lot of mobs. It also doesn't have much natural Defense to back it up, like Warrior.

Also, I don't mean to sound mean when I say this...but who likes Meteor auto aim? Maybe if it shot for the STRONGEST enemy in range, instead of the CLOSEST one, but...honestly, it's kinda klunky - you sometimes delet your enemy, but oftentimes hit the Tamed Ocelot next door instead.

...And why should you have to LEAD your target into the path of a Meteor? I'm no fantasy nerd, but I'm pretty sure you should be able to hit them with an asteroid without running behind them. I get that there's Teleport for that, but...

Anyways, what you said about Heal...I can only say this: what if you needed an attack Spell...

But [R-L-R] said:
W E O N L Y H E A L W I T H M A G E

...Ice Snake, at the very least, needs a gravity update. And a hotbox update, because I cannot stand how it just goes 'nope' the moment it hits a ledge.

Eh, Mage just isn't really beginner friendly, is what I'm really trying to argue here.

...Also, it's called EARLY Mage Succ for a reason. Early game, where you DON'T make complicated Spell builds?

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Me: Okay, so Teleport's like AoTE, from Hypixel Skyblock. Teleports eight blocks, and alla that. Simple eno-
Teleport: Sorry, you can't warp.
Me: What?
Teleport: Can't have you warping into walls.
Me:...But I'm 12 blocks away from the wall!
Teleport: Exactly.

 

Well, yes, having lower dps does tend to make enemies more difficult to kill, but as long as you're careful with your mana usage, heal more than evens the odds. Mage also has arguably the best melee attack in the game, even if the damage is slightly lacking. I can't say it's felt low since before Gavel was a thing. And even if they did give a high damage spell as the first one, it wouldn't be all that useful. It costs even more than heal, and as has already been pointed out, you can't really spam spells in the early game, even with cheaper spells.

It is a lot better once you get all your spells, but of them, heal is by far the most powerful and the most beginner-friendly.

The auto-target on meteor has never bothered me, and honestly is usually helpful as long as you properly kite mobs. I generally either kite lobs in a circle or just drop one and walk backwards. It's not the easiest spell to land, but that's not the lock-on's fault. And you can disable it by not aiming at a mob.

Ice snake needs some fixes (bring back the long freeze), but that's hardly a crippling issue.

 

There's a problem with your argument.
You're not gonna take hits. If you just utilize teleport, kiting and running you can take down nearly everything in the early game.
And mesosphere makes it nearly instant, so there's no leading. Right now mesosphere saves the autotarget system since it near instantly happens and directly on the enemy.

 

Only possible at level 11 (and above). Before that, the mage cannot do that.

 

I'm gonna be honest as one of the oldest mage player with a lot of knowledge about everything in the kit.
mage is WEAK in early stages but dominates in later stages LVL80+ since then she can have solid HP/WD and defense sustain for good healing (support) or get some good damage in on mobs with meteor.

i would recommend to just let mage be as it is since it is a skilled class to play and is not like shaman where you can basically place a totem and everyone inside that circle gets killed in 2/3 seconds tops.

Mage is one of the most balanced class in this game at the moment in my opinion.

 

I disagree about some aspects. Mage spell is indeed pretty bad earlygame, but mage melee is probably the best of any of the classes early game.

 

If you find it difficult to get to level 11, having a meteor isn't going to help you.

 

I agree, but the Wynncraft Help classes page says 1/3 Difficulty for mage, however it is hard to use and weak (early game) and 3/3 Difficulty for shaman, which is powerful and easy to use if one is not used to different playstyles.
This encourages the new players to use the mage even though it is a skilled class to play as.
Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to fix up the difficulty of mage without buffing it late game where it is already powerful, apart from the suggestions which I think work quite well.

 

But the whole mage class is literally spamming meteor and heal. Besides meteor mage has no effective offense damage. Please don't alter it unless mage got other means of effectively dealing damage. Honestly arrow storm has more need of a nerf, it can do 300%/400%/600% repectively while meteor can do 500%/500% faster/ 500% + deferred damage, but archer has a much higher base damage! And arrow storm cost less! (I don't want to change them both, they are so cool)

Also mage is actually not that bad at early game, the base attack is accurate, ranged and can deal aoe damage which makes up for the poor damage. Honestly it can be more effective than the melee classes and may even be comparable to archer and shaman, archer is not that good at crowd control, and both archer and shaman can get instantly killed by melee mobs.

I agree that heal at some point sucks when you have dozens of worthless leftover potions, unless you caught fire or debuff. Maybe they should make it repel/stun mobs(will be good if you are surrounded by mobs and you are low at health, so instead of using teleport and ice snake you can get yourself safe while healing a bit).

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I guess they think shaman is hard to use because of you need to make sure either monsters or yourself is near the totem.

But mage is really easy, much easier and more user friendly than warrior. You can play it well even with poor aim(in contrast to archer), bad at melee(compared to warrior and assassin), and can't space well(compared to archer and shaman)
And you can get into areas above your level and fight powerful mobs without constantly dying

 

Btw compared to the other 3 spells ice snake seemed less useful, maybe be they can change so you can choose to conjure the ice snake to circle around you like a shield, helping you to block off some hits.

 

Literally freeze ebemies for few seconds. Combined with meteor it id a great spell.
Also then mage would be the only class without stun spell

 

I mean the choice to, or maybe after blocking damage it launches out, or maybe it just stun melee enemies around you.

It is good but maybe not as useful as the other 3

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Agree that it is very balanced tho, or maybe it should have less health and make base attack/heal/ice snake to tackle(but not main damage output, mit should be reserved for meteor) enemies a little more.