T95 Magic DW effect

Hey, happy to chat around this.

Im still trying to understand the devs decision to pick the bleed/DOT effect.

• It wasn't really our decision; we reached out to CM to gather / relay to us overall sentiments towards the 3 offered: essentially they just told us which the favored was
  • (obviously the initial design was our doing*) and the initial design was an exploration of can magic be something that isn't just crit / how can we offer different play patterns within styles. I can chat on the reaosns why this can be a good thing if needed.

Obviously bleeds/dots have alot of issues like youve stated, the primary being group pvm (IMO).
Stuff like sunshine etc are alot easier to fix (if we think they're 'issues') We could for arguments sake have every ability apply all buffs the same since the combat rebalance project -> but this leads into some balancing questions (IS EZK+Roar+Zerk fair?) and playstyle questions (is it interesting if bleeds are always good to use no matter what? With melee inparticular i think its slightly interesting the DoT priority goes down in berserk) -> That being said there are some clear buffs that IMO should work with everything; like prayers

We absolutely could have gone with the WM effect (if that's what the overall sentiment was) but I think it's fair to say it felt more like glove/boot slot effect that you'd want to use alongside FSOA/crit stuff and something we can revist for future rewards

I think the devs just have a hate boner for magic and want to see it suffer because of 4TAA mechanics, thoughts?

Magics personally my favourite style (though I'm not a fan of 4T like you stated - but I want magic to feel good inspite of that)

HMU if anything you want to discuss

I was considering doing something with them pre-launch if i get time, if not asking the community what they want; they seem perfect to tie in in someway. (e.g. the overcharge counts for the reset, or change the effect maybe so it 'auto' walks combust ,something like that)

In general I'm not keen on walking; but I appreciate some players like having extra actions to perform in combat: ideally we'd replace it with something that has similar gameplay -> I combust, I have a sigil or spell that buffs it i can press outside of GCD

On the topic of DoTs, are you considering changing Magma Tempest to a DoT since it already has the same functionality? Is the new weapon special attack going to be a DoT? Have you considered changing Sonic Wave/Greater Sonic Wave to have synergy with DoTs since Concentrated Blast/Greater Concentrated Blast have synergy with the critical strike focus of the Fractured Staff of Armadyl?

Magma has always been a bit of an odd child, I'm not sure exactly how it being a DOT would work : e.g. does anything inside the zone just get set on fire, so the dot sticks on them if they leave (and it reapplies as long as their in the zone -> could be pretty cool)

Sonic is interesting, now that we've moved over to it and gconc being 'open' we have more room to work with it I feel
e.g we could make sonic longer cooldown and more impactful if we wanted (like fury got) in which case we could unlink sonic and conc.
OR alternatively we could just blast up the power for sonic (increase the buff amounts or up the synergy with DoTs -> e.g. could give it a bit of flat damage on each hit for DoTs so it rivals conc a bit more)

The new spec will be a DoT or synergise with DoTs yeah. (at one point it was magic's version of SGB) but we'd like to save that as a standalone spec

Thanks for the questions

Have you guys considered elite dracolich > rapid fire > sgb to be unfair? if not, then ezk roar zerk is fair. let bleeds be buffed and not overrode by other players' bleeds.

Give us the option to play as we want, without losing dps due to "metas". let everything be equally strong. Magic is bottom tier right now. help it.

also, as magic cant even come close to the 30k hit cap, consider increasing spell damage?

I've not done the math on it to compare but I think EZK would outdo the ranged combo mentioned (it's not the exact point but interesting) - the general point is just we need to be aware of 'just' unleashing damage buffs etc

The 30k Hitcap I think is not necessarily a good reflection of somethings power -> when mage was top dog during EGWD it would still hit 'lower' than the other styles, but would out damage through pure numbers. (Zuk omnipower vs Zuk overpower is a good example, where omni isn't hitting 30k's but gets the extra hits)

Though I do respect that magic is at the bottom of the pack right now!

Thanks for the questions!

Can we know a little about those upgrades for T95 Weapons? Are they still on the menu or they have been moved to somewhere else?
Can we expect something like, an Item that requires other T92 Weapons as ingredients and then provide T95's with additional effects?

Still planned, yeah. We'll get out specifics closer to the time.

Like an EZK Upgrade requiring that "Unreleased Item" + Masterwork Spear of Annihilation + a third ingredient, and the output is an Upgrade Item that makes the EZK Untradeable, gives a small stat boost and the ability to extend Bleeds like the MWSoA does, reducing Switchscape and giving players one reason not to chuck their EZK into an Essence of Finality.

Other Upgrade could be Lengswords gaining back the ability to use Hurricane by using the same "Unreleased Item" + Khopeshes (MH for MH and OH for OH) + a Third Ingredient.

They're less likely to be both stat boost & extra effects as it's essentially double dipping damage though I respect the need/want of everyone wanting EZK to get MWSOA effect in some form (but we'd rather fix that for the base version)

can always rely on akritia to do the math - TY!

It's not really my call on whether we do polls, and I think they are useful for select stuff, but they definitely have issues (a lot of which can be mitigated, but that takes extra time to get us to that place) e.g. you get a lot of fake votes or first glance votes (players that haven't played with anything you're trying out before making their decision and/or there's no limits for polls on players with ALTs getting X amount extra votes - which isn't really ideal)