Assessment of Life Magic

[Torock]

Warning; long thread

I have recently attempted to make a "Life Mage" - I didn't really give him a fair run, stopping at only level 12. However, he isn't much fun to play so I have decided to make an evaluation of the Life Magic skill from what I have learned.

Making Life Magic your most used school of magic is difficult, as there are only two offensive spells: Life Blade and one of the three Summons (Insect, Animal, Monster)

I decided to make a summoner. Summon monster appears to be the most effective. I think I was able to summon a Fire Drake somewhere around 7-8 Life Magic. I continued training Life Magic to level 12. However, I feel it would have been most effective to leave Life Magic alone until a more powerful summon (like a ghast) was available. At 12 I could summon a Green Dragon and Brown Dragon - they were both less effective than a drake.

Life Magic has a fairly limited array of spells - with such limitations on offensive power, one would assume the defensive capabilities would be great. This is not the case. Healing spells are obviously more potent when using Life Magic. I calculated Life Magic to add 1 HP/level to the average healing of minor heal. However, even when ignoring the fact that Life Magic has zero effect on healing after level 20, the sustaining power of the healing spells is distressingly weak when compared to mana shield. Especially considering that mana shield is preemptive and protective - where healing must be used in reaction to damage.

I decided I wouldn't let my powerful heals go to waste - I trained 6 Zoology. I used it to monitor the health of my summons and used minor heals to keep them alive. Overall, this was a waste of skill points. Yes, I could usually keep my summons alive for a bit more time with healing, however, it proved impractical and rarely mattered.


In the end, I found playing a "Life Mage" to be unrewarding. Powerful summons were about the only reward while other schools of magic offer powerful summons and an array of useful spells. Life magic simply has heals that become outdated towards the higher levels anyway. The only somewhat redeeming quality is that your buffs last a very long time.

Currently, I only see Life Magic useful as a sub-skill to aid in buffing. And, to be a unique, albeit gimped, summoner.


How to fix it?

Yes, I think Life Magic needs fixing. Healing has been almost completely disassociated with Life Magic with the healing nerf. People aren't going to build a character focused on heals when 20 levels worth of points are worth nothing at level 21. What do you do with your Life Magic then? Untrain and trade it in for Incantation?

I propose a three-part solution:

One: Add "(Level of Life Magic - 8)" to the formula for the max level of heals. This makes no changes to the effects of the healing nerf other than allowing people with varying levels of Life Magic to maintain the ability to use their heals.

Two: "Overhealing" - Allow healing spells to increase the target's life over maximum by an amount. The maximum amount of overhealing would be something like: the maximum amount of healing your heal is capable of.

So, for example, if you have 100 HP and can heal for a max of 45 with Major Heal - then your maximum HP when overhealed is 145. If you can heal for 15 with minor heal - then the spell would have no effect until you drop below 115 HP.

This would keep the overall encouragement of graduating to higher level heals while allowing heals to be somewhat closer to the sustaining power of mana shield.

Three: Overhealing would be overkill if spamming was still an issue - I personally think incantation is the root of the heal spamming problem and its effects should be capped for certain spells. Part three would adress being able to endlessly spam heals in some way. Once addressed, parts one and two would be balanced.

[randorxeous]

so basically what you're saying is make a loophole to go around the "healing nerf"? I am pretty sure that R won't agree with that...

[Torock]

Originally Posted by randorxeous

so basically what you're saying is make a loophole to go around the "healing nerf"? I am pretty sure that R won't agree with that...

No, it's a patch to the unintentional disassociation of the Life Magic skill with healing spells. If it was not obvious, I don't expect my suggestions to be followed out - they are there as an untested idea. My hope was to convince the higher-ups that Life Magic is worth revisiting.

Making use of "healing" shouldn't just mean making a stone giant caveman and stacking incantation.

[Salkand]

I stopped reading half way because I can clarify the entire issue for you.

Not every element is designed for be offensive or defensive. Life magic is for healing and causing ones resist to last longer. Neither is Earth or Spirit magic meant for offense.

Each element offers something different, life isn't offensive.

The offensive spells are in order from weakest to greatest. Air, Water, Fire, Death (That does not mean they are the best to train with).

Life is a support element that every mage uses, it's not meant to stand by itself.

[Unknown]

i do not like the idea... its all i can say (also i think you need to play more the game, life skill is really really usefull as it is now)

[Torock]

Originally Posted by Salkand

I stopped reading half way because I can clarify the entire issue for you.

Not every element is designed for be offensive or defensive. Life magic is for healing and causing ones resist to last longer. Neither is Earth or Spirit magic meant for offense.

Each element offers something different, life isn't offensive.

The offensive spells are in order from weakest to greatest. Air, Water, Fire, Death (That does not mean they are the best to train with).

Life is a support element that every mage uses, it's not meant to stand by itself.

It's not meant to stand by itself because it can't. Before the healing nerf, I would wager that it was quite possible to create an effective Life Mage. You say life magic is for healing, if you had finished the thread you would realize Life Magic has zero effect on healing unless you plan on killing youeself to stay at level 20 (and never HoF).

Again, my suggestions are completely untested. I don't expect them to be implemented.

Sure, a Fire/Death Mage uses a couple Life Rings and thinks Life Magic is a grand skill. One of the finer aspects of Wyvern is the flexibility in creating classes. If you make the same cookie-cutter class that has been proven 20+ times then you are truly missing out.

You see, Salkand, you say in your post that Life Magic isn't offensive, however, it isn't defensive either. It isn't even supportive. If we were to all be satisfied with your logic, it could be removed from the elements and called "resistance" - makes your resists last long.

Look at it this way - there is good reason to train each school of magic to at least 20. The offensive schools, as you mentioned, along with:
Spirit - Mana Shield, Resist Magic, Enchanting, Charging.
Earth - Half of your earth magic level is added to strength. I wager you can summon diamond or jade golems (I got to iron).
Life - Ghasts (Get Death Magic instead)

In spite of all this, I think I realize why skills like Life Magic have been neglected along with polearms and hurling. Because players like you are completely fine with Life Magic being barely a school of magic. It doesn't effect the countless Fire-Death/Frost mages, it doesn't effect full heal giants. And no one cares.

[Tensu of the moon]

dose raising your life skill increase the resist, bless, and regen offered by it's spells, or just it's duriation?

if the awnser is "just it's duration" then the obvious and only nessicary fix to life would be making increase the effects too.

I, personally, think that putting a cap on major healing is a mistake, but there's probbobly a reason for it.

causing healing to raise your max HP is a bad idea. I would like to think I don't need to explain why, but I doubt that's the case.

the first reason would be that it's hard to implement. the game is, I assume, coded so that nothing can have more HP than it's max. there are things that increase it by a set percentage like shapeshifting and the pally guild, but I get the feeling that implementing a way to raise your max HP indefinatly would be hard to implement, and I would personally rather have wizards make new spells and maybe implement combat tehniques for melee fighters than focus on that.

the second is that if spamming healing was a problem, this would only make it worse. the only flaw to spamming a healing spell is that the leftover healing translates to wasted SP. you'd be making the only problem with spamming heals obsolete.

what I think would be cool is two new spells: indignation in life and evil ray in death. indignation would deal more damage the higher your alignment and the lower your target's alignment, and evil ray would be vise-versa. indignation would have no effect on a good-aligned target and evil ray vise-versa.

this would keep you and I from whining about life magic and simtainiously keep Salkland from whining about death magic, as well as giving more purpose to alignment

unfortunatly I have no idea hoe hard this would be to implement, but since there are already spells that do damage only to certain targets, (see life blade) I think it might be a possiblity.

[Godhand]

I personally think incantation is the root of the heal spamming problem and its effects should be capped for certain spells.

This is so true. The way the art skills work is a big problem, reducing spell costs by 90% is very unbalanced. Reducing the amount to skills people can put into the arts would balance a lot of things.

[Penny]

Today I realized that life magic doesn't strengthen the regeneration spell either. I think it should.
Life magic should affect life spells. >.> Earth magic affects strength.
And for non-human/halfling mages, who only get three skill points per level, it would be helpful to be able to heal using regeneration and life magic (something they already need to train for resist length and stuff). Magic usually takes up more skill points than archery and melee, and as far as I can tell this has made pixies mages ("natural" mages) weaker than human mages.

So yeah, I think life magic needs an upgrade.

[Jessikha]

Talk sense into me. Right.

Originally Posted by Penny

Today I realized that life magic doesn't strengthen the regeneration spell either. I think it should.
Life magic should affect life spells. >.> Earth magic affects strength.
And for non-human/halfling mages, who only get three skill points per level, it would be helpful to be able to heal using regeneration and life magic (something they already need to train for resist length and stuff). Magic usually takes up more skill points than archery and melee, and as far as I can tell this has made pixies mages ("natural" mages) weaker than human mages.

So yeah, I think life magic needs an upgrade.

I absolutely agree that life magic needs an upgrade, excluding the group healing spell. The only difficulty I see with regeneration would be how to increase it with each point in life. I'd probably recommend a small % boost to your current healing skill each level; the only problem is that it makes the spell useless for lower levels.

With 0 life, it would give x1.2 your current healing, and with each additional point of life, would go up by .025%, so...

5 life- 1.325
10 life- 1.45
15 life- 1.575
20 life- 1.7

This way, the only people who get more out of the spell are the people who dedicate themselves into life magic, so it works like other magic types. Although those numbers are a bit low, so maybe make each increase .03% per level.

[Clubbz]

Life magic was not intended as a stand alone element. It was never meant to give ultra awesome attacks and buffs, but merely extend the lengths of said buffs and increase the effectiveness of healing. However now that healing has been nerfed, a large portion of what made life magic usefull has been lost, yes it does need some upgrades, but none of which should be powerful attacks. The only way a life magic spell should deal a lot of damage should be if you fighting an undead monsters, and you could possibly include demons in there.

As for the regeneration idea, its okay, but it wouldn't help that much because in order to get decent benefit out of it, you'd have to sink a lot of points into both the healing skill and life magic.