by Wargasm on Fri Aug 31, 2012 3:05 am
Yeah, I dunno. People keep talking about how it's too late to make any major changes, yet I'm unconvinced this is near what I'd call a finished produced. Sorcerer and Wizard are both fairly close to their Alpha versions, and do little to account for Beta changes. Sorcerer is entirely unchanged, although I think the +5 mana is a great late game advantage. It's a class that heavily benefits early game from alternating between melee and magic. The mana shield could use a buff because as is it's just a terrible power. It's basically "your melee attacks deal extra magic damage equal to your level." For one, your level is never a good amount for damage. Even double your level would really only be good at levels 2 and 3. 20 damage at level 10 is just barely useful. For two, due to your class mechanics, only about half your attacks will be melee. Third, for some reason, it's magic damage. While that makes sense, why not just make it unresistable damage? It's a barely relevant amount as is. It doesn't need to be subject to resists.
Wizard's not much better. The glyph sense is decent, but since you already start with the most important glyph for your class, it's of questionable value. Speaking of which, that ability is negated by a prep (although several other classes benefit from the prep) but they did combine it with glyphs being small items. This was useful to me early game when I didn't have valuable preps and very few items were worth buying anyhow. Which is acceptable, since it's a tier one class, but it's annoying for PQIs and such when you have to use the class later. Then you get a very, very slight discount on glyph prices in exchange for a gigantic kick in the junk. Which - I mean, I understand from a flavour perspective why the weak, bookworm, limp-wristed spindly little wizard doesn't hit very well. Thing is, without extra mana or BURNDAYRAZ doing extra damage, all this does is lower your total damage output except at very specific mana breakpoints.
Consider: Level 10 Wizard, 50 base attack for most classes, but you have 37.5 (I forget which way it rounds, I think I always have some kind of attack buffer equipped anyhow), so you're losing 12.5 damage on your free attack and if you somehow didn't get a Pendant/Mage Plate/JJ shrine etc, 13 mana. This isn't one of the breakpoints (either wherever there's a difference between how many BURNs you can cast at 5 mana instead of 6, or where a mana potion will heal an extra mana compared to the point before). So by default, you have a nerf on your normal attack damage for NO EXTRA BENEFIT. Now this gets a bit better if you have a mana pendant, or even better mage plate (although that nerfs your attack to plain uselessness for Wizards) because at this point you can actually get an extra fireball or two out of your mana.
Downside is that even then, you're looking at (again, level 10) and extra 40 or 80 damage in exchange for a massive nerf to the attack that doesn't cost anything to use. This wasn't even a very good trade in the Alpha, except around AAs. In the Beta, there's stuff that retaliates fireballs, making it even more rubbish. Generally this is only a benefit when you have 10 or 11 max mana. Once you've hit 12, this ability is more of a nerf than a buff except in very specific cases of regen fighting. The math runs even worse at lower level where you're typically more likely to need your regular attack. Consider this: from a pure damage perspective, this ability is worse than Mystera's Flames ability, which is already something people caution you against taking in most circumstances (which is also bad - something called a boon, which costs a limited resource to obtain, should be generally considered a good thing.) Worse, there's an item that gives the same ability with no drawback.
There's a few other issues with some other stuff, but I think these two classes suffer the worst right now, and unless someone decides it's NOT too late to make big changes, there's really no point of going into it. :p