Sorcerer's and BLUDTUPOWA

[Darvin]

I think that conversion in class features should be a niche that belongs to the transmuter and to him only. Thats my opinion at least.

I think this is the strongest argument I've seen against the "free CP wizard". This is already the Transmuter's niche, and he's a little narrow as it is.

Hmmm... maybe it's a little weird, but I've got a suggestion for the wizard: every time you cast a spell, each of the glyphs in the wizard's inventory has its mana cost reduced by 1 (minimum 0). When you cast the glyph, its mana cost resets.

Imagine a wizard with BYSSEPS, HALPMEH, BURNDAYRAZ, and WEYTWUT in his inventory:

BURNDAYRAZ (6 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
BURNDAYRAZ (6 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
BYSSEPS (0 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
BURNDAYRAZ (5 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
HALPMEH (1 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
BYSSEPS (0 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
WEYTWUT (2 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)
BURNDAYRAZ (3 mana, -1 to all other glyphs)

So long as the wizard rotates his spellcasting he can get enormous discounts, but he gets little benefit from just spamming BURNDAYRAZ. This might be one way to turn him into the utility monkey he seems to be envisioned as without just overbuffing his fireball or PISORF attack. In the above example, the wizard saved 18 mana on 8 spells, but he can only get such a big advantage by mixing up many different glyphs.

[Abraxas]

That sounds much too complex for what is supposed to be a beginner-friendly class (as does, to a lesser extent, the CP on pick-up idea).

[Blovski]

Darvin's idea is pretty interesting. -2MP wizard sounds very powerful (especially with the already very powerful Crystal Ball, Blue Bead, Pisorf/Rock Heart etc.) and would make the already unappealing (for wizards) MB just not a wizard boon. Special Burndayraz seems bad for such a core glyph for a first-tier class. The CP/things on pick up seems terribly fussy/quite OP to me and hits the balance between conversion trade-offs.

I suppose I've never really looked at the wizard statistically but I've always felt he's fundamentally a good, easy-to-use class that teaches and promotes caster play. Pisorf wizards are a hilarious subset. He can certainly cope with any sub-vicious purist scenario as easily as most classes and can also deal with a few of the vicious dungeons. I suppose if I'd object to anything, it's that he doesn't usually promote a variety of glyph use rather than that he's weak.

On the spellcaster list - Purist, Wizards are still a pretty unassailable spellcaster, with preps I think other more hybridy characters (assassin, fighter apparently, bloodmage) have pipped him (Paladin seems odd just because being stuck on one god is lousy for spellcasters and he synergises more with other strategies, spellcasters want to convert out of Mystera or JJ at the end)

Sorceror doesn't seem out of sync to me but then I don't play him much.

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Actually Mystera is another thing I think needs a rework - all her buffs are done better elsewhere except Refreshment, and the 5 piety hit for killing hings with magical attacks is frickin' annoying unless you're on a map without any.

Disagree -

Mystic Balance is great for caster assassins (15 mana for fireball-fireball-poison) or warlords (8 instead of 10 MP cydstepp) or maps where you *need* to get the most out of your spellcasting (e.g. Bloodmage on Demonic Library). It's not great in every scenario, but that's true of most boons. Her piety gain is probably the easiest of any god, I think, you have control over piety loss and she never locks you out of piety gain (can be a problem with EM and especially Binlor). Her plus mana boons are probably better than JJ's in my view unless you're really going for it.

Flames is a specialist boon - I think that's probably a little underwhelming and Refreshment too cheap but otherwise I think mystera's pretty fair right now, and I use her more than most gods.

(Mystera vs. JJ mana boons... JJ involves losing 2 potions for the big end-game spike most casters rely on (OK for gnomes, not great for elves, JJ generally gives you less useable piety than Mystera because of Petition/Chaos Avatar costs...))
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[Wargasm]

Thing is, if you get 2 JJ mana boons, you actually get more mana from the 2 potions you have left than you would have the 4 total. To say nothing of buying a 5th potion, let alone Gnomes. Hence why Mystara's boon is terrible by comparison. I admitted in the post the MB is viable once in awhile (basically CYDSTEPP and APHEELSIK), but since CYDSTEPP spamming is limited to one class and only a few classes benefit from using APHEELSIK vs. having more inventory space/converting, that's of limited use. Amusingly, if MB gravitated towards 4 instead of 5, it would be IMMENSELY better, since ENDISWAL, WONAFYT, HALPMEH, and IMAWAL would then benefit, BURNDAYRAZ would cost 4, and GETINDARE being 4 would still be affordable, and PISORF wouldn't cost extra. That alone would make me squeal with joy and actually take MB on non-Warlords.

Right now I only use Wizard when I want a Hoarder badge, because I can use a couple of extra spells that way. That's literally the only use for the class to me right now.

[q 3]

As a less drastic change, how about having the Wizard get one or two extra glyphs on the map? Possibly with reduced conversion values, possibly not, depending on how it would interact with the less/more glyph preps. (Maybe also have PISORF as a guaranteed spawn, both to encourage new players to seriously consider using it offensively, and to enable vets to use it without scumming or prepping Binlor.)

[Darvin]

Maybe wizard should just start with both PISORF and BURNDAYRAZ in his inventory?

[The Avatar]

On the sorcerer: I was envisioning (spell cost/2)•level. 3 per level with BURNDAYRAZ, and it nullifies the B2P problem.

On the wizard: What about making him a glyph magnet class? Less CP maybe.

[Nandrew]

Will probably look at sorcerer, considering that lvl1 bosskills are generally a big no-no.

Wizard? Well, maybe. Not what I'd call game-shattering right now, and certainly not something that we'd consider radically altering our game deployment schedule over. O_o

It's like Darvin said, patches and expansions can deal with minor issues like these. It's crashes, showstoppers and design issues that significantly poison large areas of the game that we'd halt progress for.

Not to say that we don't listen to balance feedback anymore, it's just that we kinda do other stuff first.

[Wargasm]

Will probably look at sorcerer, considering that lvl1 bosskills are generally a big no-no.

Wizard? Well, maybe. Not what I'd call game-shattering right now, and certainly not something that we'd consider radically altering our game deployment schedule over. O_o

It's like Darvin said, patches and expansions can deal with minor issues like these. It's crashes, showstoppers and design issues that significantly poison large areas of the game that we'd halt progress for.

Not to say that we don't listen to balance feedback anymore, it's just that we kinda do other stuff first.

It's cool. My fault for not finding the game sooner. Or maybe the world's for not informing me. Not your fault in any case.

[Nandrew]

Hah, I'm not trying to say that it's a problem, really. We obviously don't want to wilfully say "let's ship an inferior game", but I'm starting to think more and more that getting all of the design sorted to satisfaction (in other words, uh, perfection) is a little unrealistic considering our particular situation.

It has been an interesting few years and admittedly I think what's needed most from us right now is a little distance from the project to have a chance at that "big picture" look. Getting a formal release will also bring in a lot of new players and the vocal base for trends and developments will become that much larger. After a bit of time, releasing a hypothetical DLC pack would hopefully improve the game far more effectively than just making repeated, time-consuming tweaks right now.

Done correctly, many games go from good to amazing in the time that follows their release. We want to put our best foot forward on release day, but I think it's also realistic to assume that we could always do better, too.

Though I think I'm just rambling now. I reckon I had a point in there somewhere ...