» Thu Dec 15, 2011 10:46 pm
I have been working on my magic balance manefesto. It matches up close to what you have done Mysty in your mod so far so it may be useful for you in the future. I am going to wait for the CK before I make my changes but if you happen to agree with my ideas maybe I dont have to do anything.
Anyway so here it is, I also have an excel sheet that works out the mana costs and damage per mana of the destruction spells to see how they balance at different levels.
What is broken or problematic?
1. Enchanting is able to drop a school’s mana cost to 0 without any perks invested in that school (destruction being the most abused)
2. Combat mana regen is so low that it worthless using enchants/standing stones/perks to increase mana regen.
3. Mana regen does not happen during casting or when holding a spell to cast.
4. Spell cost is too high for our mana pools even when you have 50% casting cost reduction
5. The only way to increase spell damage is to use potions or the 2 perks per damage type
6. Armor has no downsides except its weight and minor movement speed decrease
7. impact can stun lock 2 mobs (even bosses) with ease with most non master spells
8. master spells casting time would be fine for ranged spells or long duration spells, but most of the spells are close range and allow for interrupts thus making the master spells not worth the cost of casting them.
9. Each magic tree has weak perks that need to be buffed in order to players to pick them
What works, what to preserve?
? Perks are the cost of hybridization. Making a tank mage should cost a lot of perks to have high offense and high defense.
? Illusion perks are a hybrid spell school for stealthy play, great for crowd control
? Restoration perks are a hybrid spell school for paladin play , (heals, damage undead, heal stamina)
? Destruction perks need to compete with archery for damage per cast and damage per mana (without the enchanting/alchemy damage boosting crazyness)
? Conjuration seems to be well balanced for offense and defense versus mana cost, except for necromancy spells that are weaker and more complicated to use
? Alteration perks are a replacement for light or heavy armor for mages.
? Spell costs need to be high when they are unperked to prevent warrior or thief specialized toons to be able to cast spells like a specialized mage can
? Spell damage needs to be low when they are unperked to prevent warrior or thief specialized toons to be able to cast spells like a specialized mage can
? Unperked a mage should not be very good at armor or physical weapons.
Design goals:
? Destruction
o Most like archery but with dual bows!
o Pure base damage is fine as is, but damage per magicka is very low with current perks and combat mana regen. Requires extensive use of fortify destruction to reduce costs
o Defensive ability of stagger is to high, should be some defensive penalty for having 2 spells, much like dual wielding cant use a shield
? Alteration
o Most like light or heavy armor, some more active defensive tricks would be nice
? Conjuration
o Offense and defense via summons
? Illusion
o Crowd control and hybrid sneak
? Restoration
o Block (wards),
o Healing
o Undead control
o More passive defensive spells would be nice
How to change this:
Enchanting mana cost fix
1. fortify destruction, alteration, illusion, conjuration, restoration all must be nerfed hard as options to enchant on equipment or exist on random loot
a. By having 0 cost destruction spells, it allows the player to pick health over magika at level ups and thus make a tank mage with no effort.
b. There is a lot of random loot that has fortify (spell school on it) change the scale so the max enchant per piece tops out at 5% with 100 in enchanting and all perks (20% max from 4 pieces)
c. Add ability to enchant mana regen on amulets
d. Fortify restoration needs to be removed from potions to prevent infinite stacking (it effects fortify enchants for alchemy, smithing and enchanting)
Combat mana regen fix
2. The combat mana regen will be changed to 3% (same as out of combat regen). Stacking Mana regen will be the preferred method for fixing out of mana issues.
a. The goal here is to use up enchantment slots on equipment without making mana useless
b. The player will be rewarded by having a large mana pool at the cost of a smaller heath pool (as it should be)
c. Perks and standing stones to increase mana regen are great ways to solve mana issues at the cost of other more defensive options
Casting mana regen shut off
3. I doubt these will be fixable via the CK, the other changes will have to compensate
4. New spells that allow the mage to become safe for a short time and regen mana will be needed
Spell cost versus damage issue
5. The casting cost perks are there to force a mage to pick them to make spamming spells possible before OOM happens, but even with a 50% cost reduction the mana costs on most spells is excessive relative to the mana pools toons can have. (Damage bonus effects only work on destruction spells)
a. Novice perk – no change (50%) cost reduction of novice spells
b. Apprentice perk – 50% cost reduction of apprentice spells, 70% cost reduction of novice spells, novice spells get 50% damage increase
c. Adept perk – 50% cost reduction of adept spells, 70% cost reduction of apprentice spells, 75% cost reduction novice, apprentice spells get 50% damage increase, novice get 75%
d. Expert perk – 50% cost reduction of expert spells, 70% cost reduction of adept spells, 75% cost reduction of novice and apprentice spells, adept spells get 50% damage increase, apprentice get 75% and novice get 100%
e. Master perk – 50% cost reduction of master spells, 75% cost reduction of all other spells, 50% damage bonus expert, 75% adept, 100% apprentice, 125% novice
f. This should give a huge incentive for anybody wanting to cast magic to dive deep into the perk trees of any spell school they want to cast a lot
No way to increase spell damage
6. Add 6 more perk levels to the augment damage perks
a. This allows a mage to spend a lot of perks to ramp up a certain elemental type at the cost of other perk picks, this is what we want to give the player hard choices on how to make their toon, it also gives them something to spend at higher levels to ramp up damage.
b. Each perk level increases damage to that element by 25%, the max being 200%
c. Perk requirements are 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90 destruction
d. With damage increases from perks, dual casted single target expert spells should be competitive with fully perked archery + legendary deadric bow and arrows.
Armor has no downsides for a mage
7. Each of the 4 slots that has light or heavy armor increase spell costs by 25% for heavy and 20% for light
a. A full set of heavy armor will double your spell costs
b. This should be possible via scripting, on equip add an active effect to the player that increases spell cost for all the schools
Impact can stun lock bosses
8. Change to a 50% chance to stun like the bow’s version
Master spells svck
9. Revamp list of each master spell
a. Firestorm – reduce cast time to 1 second, change base spell cost to be damage/mana good relative to other spells (100 mana base cost)
b. Blizzard – reduce cast time to 1 second, change base spell cost to be damage/mana good relative to other spells (200 mana base cost)
c. Thunderstorm – reduce cast time to 1 second, to allow player to re-aim spell, change base spell cost to be damage/mana good relative to other spells (50 mana/sec base cost)
d. Dragonskin – this spell removes the need for the perks placed in mage armor. The mage armor perks are balanced around ebonyskins 100 AR. And thus giving capped resistance in one shot is not good. Instead this should give 80% fire resistance and 20% magic resistance for 120 seconds.
e. Mass paralysis – increase casting range to 50 feet instead of pbaoe
f. Conjuration – no change, perma summons is what I would expect from a master level spell
g. Bane of the undead – need to test
h. Guardian circle – need to test
i. Meridias light – need to test
Some perks svck
10. Revamp of perks (note all novice – master perks fixed above with casting cost issue), these changes are additions to what each perk does unless noted otherwise
a. Alteration dual casting – mage armor spells gain +50 AR when dual cast
b. Stability – instead of duration 50% changed to duration 100%, second level of stability added for another +100%
c. Mage armor – add 2 more levels 3.5 and 4.0 for 5 perks total, each level also increases armor up time by 50% for a total of 250% at level 5 (these uptime increases effect dragonskin)
d. Mystic binding – bound weapons duration is doubled
e. Soul stealer – bound weapons also have absorb health, stamina and magicka on them
f. Oblivion binding – bound weapons also have a chance to cast paralyze on target
g. Necromancy – duration is 10X instead of double (necromancy requires a corpse and thus should have some benefit over atronochs)
h. Dark souls – undead get 200 more hps instead of 100, also each undead gets ice cloak spell that they can recast when it wears off
i. Rune master – armor mana cost penalty for destruction spells removed, allowed to have 2 runes at once
j. Deep freeze – has a chance to paralyze no matter what the health level of the target is (10%)
k. Intense flames – on fire damage bonus is doubled
l. Fire, frost, storm enchanter – instead of 25% change to 100%
m. Animage – removes armor mana cost penalty for illusion spells
n. Restoration dual casting – removes armor mana cost penalty for restoration spells
o. Destruction dual casting – change mana cost from 2.8 to 2.5, change casting time to double single cast time
p. Deadly Aim sneak perk now also allows for x1.5 magic damage when sneaking for mage/thief hybrids
Hoped for effects of changes:
Mana usage in combat – the player now can see the value of increasing the mana total, and also increasing mana regen. Going out of mana during a fight should be rare if the player is able to fix the problem via mana regen enchants, a larger mana pool, investing in cost reduction perks, or crafting mana potions.
Destruction – scales with level better if you invest in perks to increase damage, boss/powerful mobs are no longer cake walks that require impact stun lock to win. Must now use other spell schools to give you defense.
Alteration – mage armors last longer with more perks invested in them, they also scale better to replicate the usefulness of the heavy or light armor perks.
Conjuration – minimal changes, this school was already well balanced, fixed some balance issues between undead and atronarchs.
Restoration – keeps its hybrid friendliness, but also allows magic users to use wards more like shields at the cost of dual casting
Illusion – keeps its hybrid friendliness, no real changes
Hybrids – still viable for example ignore the alteration school and pick heavy armor with destruction should yield you about the same amount of physical defense as just alteration.
New spells:
Perk level: novice = 1 (effect up to level 5) , apprentice = 2 (effect up to level 10) , adept = 3 (effect up to level 20), expert = 4 (effect up to level 30), master = 5(effect all)
Alteration
Active defense spells based on telekinetic powers (replicates long range block knockdown effects, no damage except possible fall damage)
? Telekinetic push – 50 foot range, speed of light, single shot able to push mobs based on perk level of alteration. (novice) perk level also increases distance thrown.
? Telekinetic pull – 50’ range able to pull mobs to you, line of sight only, paralyzes mob (while spell is channeled) based on perk level. Constant cast spell. (novice)
? Telekinetic wall – 8’x8’ wall placed like a summons, no objects or spells can pass through it. (adept) 15 second duration default
? Telekinetic bubble – 10’ radius bubble around the player that no object or spell can pass through it. (expert) 15 second duration default.
? Telekinetic burst – 10’ radius blast around the player that works like push, but AOE. (apprentice)
? Telekinetic singularity – 5’ diameter sphere range 50’ “summons” that casts telekinetic pull on all foes in range (master) Uses your perk level to determine paralyze effect like pull does.
Restoration
Ward changes to replicate block (minus all the knockbacks in block)
? Wards no longer cost magic to cast while channeled (like a shield does not cost stamina to hold it up), but each damage absorbed by the ward subtract from users mana pool.
? Wards no longer add to armor, but instead absorb the same amount of physical damage as they absorb magic damage.
? Amount of damage blocked is what counts for training restoration
Auras – passive defense (only 1 aura at a time), duration = 24 hours, all apprentice level spells, effect any friends in aura. Aura size = 5’ radius per perk level
? Aura of Akatosh – resist fire 10% per perk level
? Aura of Dibella – resist frost 10% per perk level
? Aura of Julianos - mana regen 20% per perk level + magicka + 20 per perk level
? Aura of Kynareth – health regen 5% per perk level + health + 20 per perk level
? Aura of Mara – fortify health 10 per perk level and resist magic. 5% per perk level
? Aura of Stendarr – stamina regen 20% per perk level and resist disease (100%)
? Aura of Zenithar – resist shock 10% per perk level
