Mages have a major problem
 

i recently started an archer account today because i wanted to experience more classes, after my mage became lvl 20 i decided to do it for money

so the first thing i noticed is that archers constaintly shoot regular arrows at the opponent.......

and then i remembered fighters and clerics do constant melee damage to enemies in between skills

so mages therefore also do MELEE damage as default auto attacks......wow thats not right

mages hav to constaintly pump out spells manually instead of getting a USEFULL auto-attack. that is y everybody has to use lvl 1 magic missle. that problem is using sp every time u cast it. sure 3 sp(or less if u empowered it) isnt much but we shouldnt hav to manually do an attack to fill in between the good attacks

my suggestion to the gms is to SLIGHTLY decrease the damage of all of the mage spells(like 5 or so damage) and add an auto attack that doesnt involve slapping the enemy with your staff/wand.

im suprised i havnt run across this problem before but this also makes mages horrible for laggers, which i am one of. now that i hav an archer i am thinking about changing over just because of the problem

do u agree or disagree? and plz no spam or stupid replies

Ever played Diablo & Diablo 2? Works the same way, but noone ever complained. It's still one of the bets RPGs ever made.

You have enough skills to spam, and when not, you can run. Your damage/sec is the highest from all the classes.
You didn't run into this issue because people don't see it as an issue. ^^

im not saying that we dont do enough damage because we do a lot

im saying the auto attack shouldnt be a melee attack

and ive never played diablo

its fine the way it is...and ya man d2lod =] love everything on it its so ballanced. plus everyone who plays d2 has a mage and they dont care. mage is the most popular cast and ppl live with it, and so can we...to bad we cant go MF'in in fiesta thou xD!

It's fine how it is.
It's expensive because of SP cost, though.
Other than that, you should just be aware.

Pretty soon the delay between spells will decrease.

You get more spells as you level. But the manual casting made me switch classes in CB2 lol.

Hmm, the only problem I've had so far is that the cooldown empower is bugged, so half (or more) of the time it won't work.

Every RPG ive played made you press a button to cast a spell. And mages always had a basic attack of melee, so its not like this is any different. Mages deal the most damage anyway so....:P

i guess im all alone on this one lol

another point is that almost nobody buys skill lvl upgrades for magic missle either, so maybe ill settle for making magic missle lvl 1 auto repeating

watever ill just hav to deal with it then

Well I do kind of agree with you in a way. I would love to have an auto attack that is not melee. I mean, we can hardly tank them compared to other classes, and having a melee auto attack is a pain!

But yeah, almost all the other mmorpgs are like that, so I doubt we'll be able to get that change. D: Maybe they could do what FlyFF does, and have wands doing ranged auto-attacks while staff with melee attacks. I don't mind that either. xD

However, both are probably going to do very little damage anyway, so I think I'll just stick to the spells even if we do get ranged auto-attacks.

id be up for that as well, i use wands

this is the reason im gonna do full end mage because we cant tank with an auto attack that does 11 damage

I don't really see any need to go full END. END is good for AoE, but even putting all of your points into it is far too much. Later on, you'll want to party up with a tank and a cleric. You won't be getting hit as much, so it defeats the purpose of getting END as a mage, anyway. If you're going to solo a lot, it wouldn't hurt, but I don't see many mages solo-ing at a high level.

On another note, Magic Missile works very well. We don't really need a ranged auto-attack.

Like alot of people have said before me...using magic missle on lvl 1 cancels out the need of a ranged standard attack..You simply use magic missile lvl 1 for pvp/pve and spam it since its recharge is like 1-2 seconds or so if im thinking correctly.

^ True .

This is the price of being a mage. it is like this in every reasonable game. There's no reason to have wands that do moves that don't cost any sp as default, it's not what a mage is about. A mage is about high output of damage with skills. We don't have defensive capabilities, we don't have useless default moves...all because we have our spells. MM level 1 is your "melee," or your "arrow." =]

Also, an END build mage is useless. utterly useless. I've tested it. AoE mage? lawl...you wanna go and start AoEing the only mobs that give decent exp at the higher levels and see if you don't get one hit even with full END? Or how about the fact not only will one still one hit you, but you have mobs of them on you. It's just pointless at high levels. =p

There's a vid of a Mage AoE'ing spiders. It was alot of them too. o_O

EDIT: I tried to find that vid, and I couldn't find it. ._.

I'm pretty sure that by the time your AoE and END are decent enough to mob spiders, they'll only be half-decent for EXP.

Try an END mage and AoE mobs in Collapsed Prison.

lol you cant aoe mobs in prison....if you pull a group with a bat harkan an ogre in it u = pwned lol

It was sarcasm, but thanks for pointing out the consequences of doing that. =P

At any rate, you use AoE spells in a party. Since Mages hardly ever solo at higher levels, there's no point in getting END. At all.

The main stat you should be pumping is INT, and maybe SPR if you want to crit more, get a little more SP, and make use of your magic defense. We have very little need for END, because we shouldn't be getting hit anyway (even when we're pulling monsters). We're damage dealers and masters of magic - both offensively and defensively.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say that Magic Missile is your bread and butter for an "auto attack". Sure, you have to spend 3 SP and manually press the button everytime, but consider that you already have extremely high SP and 3 of it is a very small fraction. I find it more useful than an auto attack, anyway. With its cooldown at 1.3 seconds, I attack at nearly the same speed an archer with a crossbow does.

My Mage is 4:1 End:Int. I'll prolly test it myself before I scrap this character.

That's if I ever get the balls to grind to 31 v.v

I really see little point to putting in a lot of END for a Mage. You could argue of course that it adds a little more defense and HP, but isn't the point of being a Mage to not get hit?
Anyway, I'm really starting to get the feeling that I should restart my Mage, because I powered up Magic Missle. *Sigh*

Hey there. I didn't notice you joined.

Anyway, unless you mean you raised it's basic attack power, I think you're fine. I put 5 points into lowering its cooldown and spam it as my main attack. I find that I'm in action a lot more than mages without it since it's nearly instant-cast.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what I did. So much for firepower over speed.
Anyway, my new Mage is level 4 and I've already put one point into lowering the cooldown of Magic Missle.

Its like that for almost all MMOs. Its not that they need to decrease the amount of damage, its the time it takes before you can cast the spell again. Or give us more spells.

Simply put, if you don't like a mage, don't play it.

=]

Uh just my opinion but mages should have an auto cast like in WOW. Mages do something called wanding which is pretty much a magic bolt of energy I guess kinda like an archer auto shooting his arrow accept it looks cooler. That would make mages a lot better and even out the auto attacking. Just because of the archers auto attack and fast dps im thinking of going archer instead of mage because even though mages can pump out a lot more instant dps an archer does constant damage which in the long run is kinda better especially for pvp id love to be able to constantly be doing dps on someone even when im not casting skills.

Could someone tell a bit of a noob about these points to shorten the cooldown time on spells pls, i'd really appreciate it... ty

If you've done all of the cooldown/sp cost empowerments any level of Magic Missile is still extremely effecicient compared to the other 3 starting spells of the same level.

If you're trying to maximize DMG/SP cost that's one way those spells are useful. I sure as hell get them.

I fully empower MM before messing with the other spells. If i can one shot any enemy with say MM4 or MM5, I would rather do it with it, then with other more SP costly spell.

Also think if you're farming what would you rather do. (these are just examples, not meant to be completely proportional to what u do IG)

MM1, MM1, MM1, MM1, MM1 --> dead mob.
or
MM1,MM1,MM4 --> dead mob
or you could always
Fr4,IC4, -- dead mob, but have to shroom soon.

Anyway this last part was stupid, the big point is that, well spend the EP where you are most likely to use them, depending on your playing style. ;)

I don't really look at this as a problem, honestly. They take that much damage before I don't actually care...

The cooldown time can be a pain sometimes, but I've adjusted the rotation of my spells to it. Almost lowering the cooldown on MM is really nice. I use MM1 when I'm in a party and if I am going solo I usually blast the monster with my high lvl MM and then use my MM1 after that.

Its not really a big problem, some sp each time u attack... Mass destruction. Out of sp? stones or potions. out of stones or potions? recharge for less than 200 c.

In world of warcraft you have a wand that requires no mana to use and it constantly shooots out stuff while your spells are on cooldowns or if u have low mana . they should have something like that in this game

Please dont necro