The Mana World Forums

It's my personal opinion that the lightning spell is way too powerful and unbalances gameplay to favor the mage class. I'm wondering what the community thinks about this.

This is not about PvP which is an entirely different issue that can be rectified by adding m.def to some types of armor.

All suggestions welcome.

Whilst I agree that the Lightning spell is far too powerful, it would also be too expensive if its power was dropped. How can the cost be lowered?

Well, the Iron Ore drop rate could be dropped, but that would also lower the cost of those quests that require it. Perhaps the Iron Ore to Powder transmute spell could yield more powders?

The iron ore droprate was raised fairly recently..

The spell is not that powerful in itself. A good archer/warrior deals more damages per second than a mage with lightning. However these damages are reduced by armors. Magic damages are not; not even 1% reduced. Here is the problem.

I don't think the lightning spell is too powerful. There are many archers who do just as much damage with their bows at a faster rate.

I find it to be expensive as well, which in my opinion, offsets things a bit. If you lower the power rate it's just too darn expensive to be a mage and what other spells are there? Flar? Big deal...

Despite the assurance that PVP isn't the issue here, the underlying tone is that it is. People have been complaining about fighting mages in PVP and mages have been complaining about not being wanted in PVP.

Why not make certain types of armor that are more proof against magic? Proof against lightning? Etc...

JackDeth wrote:There are many archers who do just as much damage with their bows at a faster rate.

But those archers are high-leveled. Magicians can be 99 intelligent at lvl 50 or so. But, when archers are such lvl, they are slow or make many miss.
Most high-leveled mages will put their stat points on vitality, but even archers have high level, they have low vitality.
For example, my char Swimmy is a level 87 and archer. But vitality is still 6.(Agility and dexterity are 99)
My another char, swimmy Buster mule, is level 73, and magician. intelligence is 99, vitality is 65. He's powerful enough.
My Swimmy will die faster than swimmy Buster mule.

Then my opinion is that the power of magic should depend on their levels more. My swimmy Buster mule would be intelligent 99 at 50 level or so,
but magic attack wasn't improved much. The default power of magic should be lower, and increase with the level.

I'm sorry if I confuse you, I'm not native English speaker.

I see what you're saying swimmy.. but what about low level mages? Maybe have spellpower work on a curve.. the higher your INT, the less the benefit of more points?

I'll add my two cents here then. It's true that a mage can be pretty powerful early on by getting 99 intelligence. Keep in mind though, at the same level an archer could have 99 dexterity, and would just hit slow, but fairly hard. At that point, the mage will do heavier damage, but can't wear armor without a big magic penalty.

Later, an archer can raise his agility for quick hits, luck for crits, vitality, etc. The mage can do the same, the only difference being vitality is less effective with no armor.

Basically, a mage gets the more powerful attack earlier on, at the price of defense. Like someone said, a quick archer can easily match lightning damage with enough speed. In those respects, I see nothing wrong with the power level of lightning. With the proper stats, a warrior or archer can match the damage dealt by a mage, so lightning isn't unfair against monsters.

In PVP it's a different story, since #asorm works relative to your INT, so a warrior with asorm cast on them wont feel much better when they get blasted to bits. Then again, this isn't about PVP .

I rarely played lightning, so i cant leave a comment against or for.

Well, lightning may be more powerful but it's costly & at the same time the quest to gain this power isnt very easy.

Anyway, the topic is "Power of lightning spell", so mainly mage ppl getting into this topic to vote. It could rather be "Mage vs. Warrior/archer" , no ?

Voting shouldnt be biased.

Mages in most games tend to be a bit unbalanced. That's just the nature of mages. They yield powerful attacks but typically low health. Lowering the power of the most expensive and most useful high level attack spell (imo) is like taking away a warriors setzer because it's too fast.

I'm biased towards this because I play archer-mage and thus wear non-magic interfering clothes but shouldn't lightning do MORE damage towards people wearing metal aka armour? It's ridiculous that I have around 50int and that is nowhere near enough M.Defence to protect from being 1-hit KO'd by someone HALF my level with higher int.

I agree that in most games mages are seen to be very good players to play but there has to be limits. In most games magic players have more flexibility and can do more (aka stunning, trapping players, slowing, reducing stats etc) but that doesn't mean they need a 1 hit KO attack. I know pvp isn't very used right now but even still I hope you agree that my claims are not unjustified and someone will do something about this not just nod and smile.

What is this... a foxnews poll... where are the options for "Making it stronger"... and "Make iron ore cheaper"?

None of the above; the unusual distribution of stat effectiveness and equipment stat bonus force all characters to conform to a build that magic attacks happen to be highly effective against.

PvE is fine-ish (most mob builds could use a lot of reworking, especially with the level so accuracy/dodge isn't insanely high), but character stat effects (mainly max hp and damage reduction) need a lot of reworking for PvP to be fair.

I suspect a lot of the max hp errors are caused by using the default basic athena class for values (with very low base and growth rates for hp) to poorly simulate a classless system.


---Freeyorp

mistergrey wrote: In PVP it's a different story, since #asorm works relative to your INT, so a warrior with asorm cast on them wont feel much better when they get blasted to bits. Then again, this isn't about PVP .

I kind of disagree. I think this is more about PVP than some want to admit.

In PVP, all the warrior needs is one small mage backing him up and casting the #kaflosh spell. That will effectively put an end to his magic using opponent using lightning on him as the mage then kills himself.

Sometimes it's a matter of tactics.

Ftr, it's always about tactics which is why instead of creating brand new content we should try and modify what we currently have.

Flying back to my earlier comment about pvp, magic defence should be re-balanced. I can (but prefer not to) take back what I said about certain clothes eg metal armour being more vulnerable to magic attacks. Since armour already has a magic impairment value it seems logical that the amount of magic defence per int value should be re-evaluated. Clearly magic defence isn't really worth much atm against lightning.

Saying this, the only offensive spells mage players really have is rain arrows and lightning. Other ones are about as lame as attaching a dagger to an archer. Go back to what we currently have and rebalance magic so that the player level+int values make sense.