(this is a branch off of my second-tier mage spell thread, I kind of had this idea instead and I like it way better oops)
A lot of mage spells just suck. There's no getting around it. Why have a plague mage when the only time they're ever even sort of viable is when there's a healer enemy (if it even has enough time to heal, furthermore), and when you could just have an ice mage instead that can lock down anything it wants? Most elemental mages are just simply useless as damage dealers, and the only utility they have is via buffing your allies/making enemies more susceptible to your fighters.
Which is okay, I guess.
BUT I WANT AN ATTACK MAGE TEAM. I want to throw strong spells! I want to have a tactical mage team that, with the right tactics, can safely and quickly dispatch strong enemies and never need to restart the coli! I want it to be possible for any attack mage to have a chance to be a viable pick, regardless of element! I want mage teams to be viable.
AND I HAVE A POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
Multiple element-exclusive spells with their own status effects, perhaps between three to five for each element. The intent is to have slightly varied and yet similar abilities so one isn't necessarily strictly better than the other, depending on what you're looking for. I made these mockup examples up in my other thread, so I'll stick them here:
Fire - d a m a g e
- Sear, a burning attack that increases physical damage against its target.
- Desicate, a blast of intense fire which stops an enemy in its tracks and makes them unable to act.
- Inferno, a widespread attack which can hit the entire enemy group, though it might not do as much damage to a single target as the other abilities. Good for pesky four-team groups. Enemies hit will be stuck with damage-over-time burn for three turns.
Water- Peeling for your team
- Riptide, Drown but better! Before, it was essentially useless compared to a stun, but now Riptide sweeps all enemies and slows every enemy down if they don't dodge it. Like Inferno, Riptide doesn't do as much damage as a single-target ability, but makes up for it in its capability of hitting every enemy.
- Clairvoyance, when cast on a friendly target it will allow them to sense incoming attacks and have a significantly increased chance of dodging. Great for protecting your main damage dealer! Only one can be active at a time.
- The new Drown! A bubble of suffocating water manifests around the enemy's mouth/nose and sends them into a panic. The initial damage is small, but damage dealt will increase per turn until the status effect ends. While the status is active, they are disoriented and will flail about and have a chance of hitting anyone, friend or foe or themselves.
Wind- majorly crowd control and buffing allies, and a bit of fun chaos!
- Disorient, a gust of wind rushes into an enemy and knocks them off balance. An enemy that is unbalanced will take increased damage and will attack anything it can hit, including its allies and itself.
- Tail wind, With the wind behind them, your dragons have increased speed- and your enemies have decreased speed! This ability is not used on a particular target and instead creates an overall buff/nerf without dealing damage to anyone.
- Eye of the Storm, when cast on a friendly target it will form a circling wind storm around them, making them difficult to hit. An enemy that attacks this target will get deflected randomly into a different target, be it friend or foe.
Arcane - a well-rounded class with magic buffs, damage, and crowd control.
- Enfeeble, remaining unchanged, increases magic damage against your target.
- Meteor shower, calling down a rain of meteors and damaging all of your enemies. There are multiple meteors per enemy, and each meteor is its own attack- as such, each one can be dodged individually.
(Ex: 5 meteors per enemy. Each meteor has the potential for 200 damage. Each meteor has the chance to be dodged. If all hit, the enemy has been damaged by 1000. If four hit, 800 damage. Three hit, 600 damage, etc.)
- Gravity, creating a localized point of gravity onto an enemy and locking them in place. It would be interesting to see if it were possible to make enemies next to them have slowed speed (so you'd always want to cast it in the middle of a trio of enemies) but I don't know if that's possible.
Nature- an anti-melee support (or defensive support)
- Strangler, plants spring up under the targeted enemy's feet and lock them in place. They will constrict every turn, doing a small amount of additional damage until the spell wears off. A creature that is locked in place is unable to do melee attacks, and cannot dodge.
- Overgrowth, when cast on an ally, vines lie under the surface until the dragon is attacked. If attacked via melee, they will stop the attack and return half damage to the attacker. Magic abilities have shot of RNG at getting through, but if blocked, reflects the attack back at the caster.
- Nature's song, when cast, will heal every dragon on your team with the magic of life, at perhaps half the potency of Aid.
Light - status effects and support
- Dazzle, a glittering shaft of light shines upon your target and leaves them dazzled and unable to attack. This ability will do partial damage to enemies around it.
- Blind, an intense ray of light blasts your target and renders them blind, less likely to land attacks. There is a chance of blinding the enemies around your target as well.
- Illuminate, an encouraging light sacrifices the caster's breath and increases their allies' breath. It also increases the ability of the caster's allies to see weak points in their enemy and gives them higher chance of critical strikes.
EDIT: Adding in people's suggestions for elements I didn't cover!
______________________________________________________________
Of course, as these have been made at different times and different levels of knowing what I wanted to go for, each element is at a different "degree" of power so they may need to be recalculated accordingly to make sure they're not too strong or too weak!
• With an update like this, mages will become properly strong- however, they will still take time to do this damage as they must gain breath. For the majorly strong abilities, like AoE (area of effect, or multiple targets), or potent stat boosts/nerfs, I believe a very high cost would be vital- 70-90 breath potentially to keep a meditate dragon from using it twice in a period of three turns and to make players pick their moves carefully. Of course, this is assuming that the other mage stones don't get a rework alongside this.
• Fighters will still maintain their viability in quickly grinding lower level venues, and by keeping breath by killing with eliminate. Mages would be much more efficiently placed in highly difficult locations that fighters struggle in.
• Each element would have a potential place in a coli build. An update like this would give a HUGE variety in different metas, primarily for tougher locations that take time to clear:
>What elements work better in what venues- not just elemental counters, but mage abilities too?
> Does this elemental mage work better with mage battle buddies or fighter battle buddies?
> Should you have a primary mage team or a mixed team?
> Which elements should go with which? Should this element have a place with multiple mages on this team??
> Full on attack mage team or a few attack mages with a healing buddy?
> What abilities from this mage should you have and prioritize, taking into account the other mages' elements or their potential fighter companions?
• This would open up the possibility for tougher locations than Golem Workshop! As it is, you really can't effectively have a full fighter team in there as typically, you constantly have to reset- and NOT having breath for your fighters to eliminate is a nightmare in there, so the first battles are always precarious.
#Makemagesviable
A lot of mage spells just suck. There's no getting around it. Why have a plague mage when the only time they're ever even sort of viable is when there's a healer enemy (if it even has enough time to heal, furthermore), and when you could just have an ice mage instead that can lock down anything it wants? Most elemental mages are just simply useless as damage dealers, and the only utility they have is via buffing your allies/making enemies more susceptible to your fighters.
Which is okay, I guess.
BUT I WANT AN ATTACK MAGE TEAM. I want to throw strong spells! I want to have a tactical mage team that, with the right tactics, can safely and quickly dispatch strong enemies and never need to restart the coli! I want it to be possible for any attack mage to have a chance to be a viable pick, regardless of element! I want mage teams to be viable.
AND I HAVE A POSSIBLE SOLUTION.
Multiple element-exclusive spells with their own status effects, perhaps between three to five for each element. The intent is to have slightly varied and yet similar abilities so one isn't necessarily strictly better than the other, depending on what you're looking for. I made these mockup examples up in my other thread, so I'll stick them here:
Fire - d a m a g e- Sear, a burning attack that increases physical damage against its target.
- Desicate, a blast of intense fire which stops an enemy in its tracks and makes them unable to act.
- Inferno, a widespread attack which can hit the entire enemy group, though it might not do as much damage to a single target as the other abilities. Good for pesky four-team groups. Enemies hit will be stuck with damage-over-time burn for three turns.
Water- Peeling for your team- Riptide, Drown but better! Before, it was essentially useless compared to a stun, but now Riptide sweeps all enemies and slows every enemy down if they don't dodge it. Like Inferno, Riptide doesn't do as much damage as a single-target ability, but makes up for it in its capability of hitting every enemy.
- Clairvoyance, when cast on a friendly target it will allow them to sense incoming attacks and have a significantly increased chance of dodging. Great for protecting your main damage dealer! Only one can be active at a time.
- The new Drown! A bubble of suffocating water manifests around the enemy's mouth/nose and sends them into a panic. The initial damage is small, but damage dealt will increase per turn until the status effect ends. While the status is active, they are disoriented and will flail about and have a chance of hitting anyone, friend or foe or themselves.
Wind- majorly crowd control and buffing allies, and a bit of fun chaos!- Disorient, a gust of wind rushes into an enemy and knocks them off balance. An enemy that is unbalanced will take increased damage and will attack anything it can hit, including its allies and itself.
- Tail wind, With the wind behind them, your dragons have increased speed- and your enemies have decreased speed! This ability is not used on a particular target and instead creates an overall buff/nerf without dealing damage to anyone.
- Eye of the Storm, when cast on a friendly target it will form a circling wind storm around them, making them difficult to hit. An enemy that attacks this target will get deflected randomly into a different target, be it friend or foe.
Arcane - a well-rounded class with magic buffs, damage, and crowd control.- Enfeeble, remaining unchanged, increases magic damage against your target.
- Meteor shower, calling down a rain of meteors and damaging all of your enemies. There are multiple meteors per enemy, and each meteor is its own attack- as such, each one can be dodged individually.
(Ex: 5 meteors per enemy. Each meteor has the potential for 200 damage. Each meteor has the chance to be dodged. If all hit, the enemy has been damaged by 1000. If four hit, 800 damage. Three hit, 600 damage, etc.)
- Gravity, creating a localized point of gravity onto an enemy and locking them in place. It would be interesting to see if it were possible to make enemies next to them have slowed speed (so you'd always want to cast it in the middle of a trio of enemies) but I don't know if that's possible.
Nature- an anti-melee support (or defensive support)- Strangler, plants spring up under the targeted enemy's feet and lock them in place. They will constrict every turn, doing a small amount of additional damage until the spell wears off. A creature that is locked in place is unable to do melee attacks, and cannot dodge.
- Overgrowth, when cast on an ally, vines lie under the surface until the dragon is attacked. If attacked via melee, they will stop the attack and return half damage to the attacker. Magic abilities have shot of RNG at getting through, but if blocked, reflects the attack back at the caster.
- Nature's song, when cast, will heal every dragon on your team with the magic of life, at perhaps half the potency of Aid.
Light - status effects and support- Dazzle, a glittering shaft of light shines upon your target and leaves them dazzled and unable to attack. This ability will do partial damage to enemies around it.
- Blind, an intense ray of light blasts your target and renders them blind, less likely to land attacks. There is a chance of blinding the enemies around your target as well.
- Illuminate, an encouraging light sacrifices the caster's breath and increases their allies' breath. It also increases the ability of the caster's allies to see weak points in their enemy and gives them higher chance of critical strikes.
EDIT: Adding in people's suggestions for elements I didn't cover!
Laluzi wrote on 2018-06-07 16:56:41:
Ah, Earth. Most unloved of the mages. Let's fix that.
New Earth mage: Focuses on keeping your enemies down, but like any big rock, can pack a wallop.
Fossilize - Making some changes here. Fossilize currently makes a target take greatly decreased physical and magical damage while immobilizing them. Let's get rid of the magical aspect, for starters. I'm pretty sure that's a mistake. It's still worse than Congeal, so let's also have it deal a little damage over time. Being entombed in rock is not pleasant for one's anything.
Sandstorm - Summons up a whirl of grit and stone. Deals low damage to the entire enemy team, but has a chance to apply Blind to each member.
Rock Hammer - It's not a magic boulder by itself. The magic comes from chucking it at someone else. Deals large damage to a single target, 1.5 or 1.75x the base damage of current tier 2 magical attacks. And for this, I propose a new effect - Concussion. Target's breath acquisition is halved for several turns, and breath use is doubled. Hard to do anything complicated after you've been brained by a giant rock.
Rot - The target is attacked with noxious fluids. In addition to dealing single-target damage, this attack has a chance of applying any combination (or none) of the following effects - bleed-esque damage over time, lowered physical and magical defense, and decreased speed similar to the current Slow. Unreliable oozy goodness.
Contaminate - An exhalation of pestilence. Has the same secondary effect as the current Contaminate, but affects all members of a group (for lower base damage), and slightly decreases targets' physical damage output as well, so it's not completely useless on non-healer enemies.
Infestation - Summons a plague from the Wyrmwound's churning cauldron itself to infect a single target. The target will struggle to move for several turns (current Paralyze effect), and take damage over time similar to Envenom.
I think Berserk could work just as well, but tying the three together thematically, I think Paralyze fits better.
Shock - Same as before - single-target, paralysis. Only change is that it's now a higher chance to apply paralysis than it previously did.
Supercharge - Cast on single party member. Applies massive boost to speed (int/3?) but applies secondary effect called Static. Static might be a bit complicated for FR, so I'll lay it out.
Static lasts for three turns. It applies a small percent of damage per turn, 3% of max health, on a dragon that's elementally neutral to lightning. Ice, Light, and Water dragons take double damage, and Arcane takes half. Lightning heals that percentage.
Static might seem unpleasant unless you have another Lightning dragon, but it's... slightly contagious. Any enemy who makes contact with a Staticked dragon - either by physically attacking it, or by it physically attacking them - has a 25% chance to get the Paralysis effect.
Thunderstorm - No secondary effect, just a whole lotta lightning. Attacks all enemies; generates (enemies x3) lightning strikes and applies them randomly across all enemies. Dodge chance is calculated separately for each strike. Each strike does about half a 'normal' elemental attack in terms of damage.
So damage, paralysis, and a powerful buff with a bite. A Lightning mage would compliment a pure Lightning team gloriously, but put in with other dragons, it'd need to spend some time healing between Supercharges - or just forgetting buffs and dealing damage on its own. Or you could put in a nature mage and employ those nice flat heals to even things out.
Other thoughts for Supercharge - instead of increasing speed, it doubles breath gain for all actions.
New Earth mage: Focuses on keeping your enemies down, but like any big rock, can pack a wallop.
Fossilize - Making some changes here. Fossilize currently makes a target take greatly decreased physical and magical damage while immobilizing them. Let's get rid of the magical aspect, for starters. I'm pretty sure that's a mistake. It's still worse than Congeal, so let's also have it deal a little damage over time. Being entombed in rock is not pleasant for one's anything.
Sandstorm - Summons up a whirl of grit and stone. Deals low damage to the entire enemy team, but has a chance to apply Blind to each member.
Rock Hammer - It's not a magic boulder by itself. The magic comes from chucking it at someone else. Deals large damage to a single target, 1.5 or 1.75x the base damage of current tier 2 magical attacks. And for this, I propose a new effect - Concussion. Target's breath acquisition is halved for several turns, and breath use is doubled. Hard to do anything complicated after you've been brained by a giant rock.
Rot - The target is attacked with noxious fluids. In addition to dealing single-target damage, this attack has a chance of applying any combination (or none) of the following effects - bleed-esque damage over time, lowered physical and magical defense, and decreased speed similar to the current Slow. Unreliable oozy goodness.
Contaminate - An exhalation of pestilence. Has the same secondary effect as the current Contaminate, but affects all members of a group (for lower base damage), and slightly decreases targets' physical damage output as well, so it's not completely useless on non-healer enemies.
Infestation - Summons a plague from the Wyrmwound's churning cauldron itself to infect a single target. The target will struggle to move for several turns (current Paralyze effect), and take damage over time similar to Envenom.
I think Berserk could work just as well, but tying the three together thematically, I think Paralyze fits better.
Shock - Same as before - single-target, paralysis. Only change is that it's now a higher chance to apply paralysis than it previously did.
Supercharge - Cast on single party member. Applies massive boost to speed (int/3?) but applies secondary effect called Static. Static might be a bit complicated for FR, so I'll lay it out.
Static lasts for three turns. It applies a small percent of damage per turn, 3% of max health, on a dragon that's elementally neutral to lightning. Ice, Light, and Water dragons take double damage, and Arcane takes half. Lightning heals that percentage.
Static might seem unpleasant unless you have another Lightning dragon, but it's... slightly contagious. Any enemy who makes contact with a Staticked dragon - either by physically attacking it, or by it physically attacking them - has a 25% chance to get the Paralysis effect.
Thunderstorm - No secondary effect, just a whole lotta lightning. Attacks all enemies; generates (enemies x3) lightning strikes and applies them randomly across all enemies. Dodge chance is calculated separately for each strike. Each strike does about half a 'normal' elemental attack in terms of damage.
So damage, paralysis, and a powerful buff with a bite. A Lightning mage would compliment a pure Lightning team gloriously, but put in with other dragons, it'd need to spend some time healing between Supercharges - or just forgetting buffs and dealing damage on its own. Or you could put in a nature mage and employ those nice flat heals to even things out.
Other thoughts for Supercharge - instead of increasing speed, it doubles breath gain for all actions.
Mohenjo wrote on 2018-06-23 09:58:32:
I like the ideas you and Laluzi have so far.
My favorite types I've seen are the ones that affect everyone, and the ones that affect each element.
Here's a few move suggestions:
Plague:
Contagious Disease - Contaminates the target with an infection they can spread through physical contact for 5 turns. Attacks this dragon gives or receives have a chance to infect the defender or attacker. The infection heals plague over time, but damages all other elements (Water, Shadow, and Nature take 2x damage; Plague and Light take half damage, and; and the rest take normal damage).
Shadow:
Night Eye - A shroud covers the battlefield hindering the eyesight of non Shadow or Light elements. Shadow and Light elements have increased Agi, other elements have decreased Agi.
I might make a few more later :)
My favorite types I've seen are the ones that affect everyone, and the ones that affect each element.
Here's a few move suggestions:
Plague:
Contagious Disease - Contaminates the target with an infection they can spread through physical contact for 5 turns. Attacks this dragon gives or receives have a chance to infect the defender or attacker. The infection heals plague over time, but damages all other elements (Water, Shadow, and Nature take 2x damage; Plague and Light take half damage, and; and the rest take normal damage).
Shadow:
Night Eye - A shroud covers the battlefield hindering the eyesight of non Shadow or Light elements. Shadow and Light elements have increased Agi, other elements have decreased Agi.
I might make a few more later :)
Renaiwom wrote on 2018-07-15 13:20:05:
I love what you've got so far! Lemme take a crack at the missing elements in the original post?
Shroud- Their existing super attack is a perfectly fine starting point- maybe buff the application a little but... at the same time, my poor Mire Flyer if this gets buffed and she muffs an Elim against a Blackwing Croaker...
Hide And Seek- The dragon melts into the shadows, and can neither deal nor be hit by melee attacks. Magical ones have an accuracy debuff but deal more damage. The user also cannot be Guarded, and allies casting buffs must contend with the accuracy decrease as well.
Roulette- Shadow's circus nature doesn't get enough love. When cast, Roulette will randomly deal enough pure damage to knock out any dragon or other normal opponent on the field (i.e. does about the same damage as a rallied Scratch + Eliminate). Any dragon/opponent includes your team and the caster themself. I guess it's similar to the Doom effect suggested earlier, but much more random.
Congeal- Arguably already the best Mage attack in the game, so leaving this be.
Crystallize- Freezes the opponent, rendering them brittle and vulnerable to physical damage.
Blizzard- Lowers visibility for everybody on the field. Ice-element magical attacks do more damage, and all dragons take chip damage each turn.
| Shadow's theme is darkness and trickery, so that should be reflected in their items. |
Hide And Seek- The dragon melts into the shadows, and can neither deal nor be hit by melee attacks. Magical ones have an accuracy debuff but deal more damage. The user also cannot be Guarded, and allies casting buffs must contend with the accuracy decrease as well.
Roulette- Shadow's circus nature doesn't get enough love. When cast, Roulette will randomly deal enough pure damage to knock out any dragon or other normal opponent on the field (i.e. does about the same damage as a rallied Scratch + Eliminate). Any dragon/opponent includes your team and the caster themself. I guess it's similar to the Doom effect suggested earlier, but much more random.
| Ice is all about cold preservation, and I'd like their abilities to reflect that. As opposed to Shadow's randomness, they should be very precise and targeted in general. |
Congeal- Arguably already the best Mage attack in the game, so leaving this be.
Crystallize- Freezes the opponent, rendering them brittle and vulnerable to physical damage.
Blizzard- Lowers visibility for everybody on the field. Ice-element magical attacks do more damage, and all dragons take chip damage each turn.
Of course, as these have been made at different times and different levels of knowing what I wanted to go for, each element is at a different "degree" of power so they may need to be recalculated accordingly to make sure they're not too strong or too weak!
• With an update like this, mages will become properly strong- however, they will still take time to do this damage as they must gain breath. For the majorly strong abilities, like AoE (area of effect, or multiple targets), or potent stat boosts/nerfs, I believe a very high cost would be vital- 70-90 breath potentially to keep a meditate dragon from using it twice in a period of three turns and to make players pick their moves carefully. Of course, this is assuming that the other mage stones don't get a rework alongside this.
• Fighters will still maintain their viability in quickly grinding lower level venues, and by keeping breath by killing with eliminate. Mages would be much more efficiently placed in highly difficult locations that fighters struggle in.
• Each element would have a potential place in a coli build. An update like this would give a HUGE variety in different metas, primarily for tougher locations that take time to clear:
>What elements work better in what venues- not just elemental counters, but mage abilities too?
> Does this elemental mage work better with mage battle buddies or fighter battle buddies?
> Should you have a primary mage team or a mixed team?
> Which elements should go with which? Should this element have a place with multiple mages on this team??
> Full on attack mage team or a few attack mages with a healing buddy?
> What abilities from this mage should you have and prioritize, taking into account the other mages' elements or their potential fighter companions?
• This would open up the possibility for tougher locations than Golem Workshop! As it is, you really can't effectively have a full fighter team in there as typically, you constantly have to reset- and NOT having breath for your fighters to eliminate is a nightmare in there, so the first battles are always precarious.
#Makemagesviable
I like pings
