TorilMUD Forums

Enchanters, Invokers, and Illusionists are great classes. Yet an old school sorcerer still seems to fit somewhere inbetween.

Conjurers < Elementalists though for sure and would need an upgrade to be worthy, unless or course they could summon those 3k fire elementals *drool*.

The sorceror class was great for being everything that invokers and enchanters are not: well rounded. We didn't mindlessly chuck out nukes, but we weren't wusses either. A Spec_Prot sorc shared the stoneskin spell with several other classes, and his/her stone and globe were reserved for the melee classes who needed it most, but we were definately more than just a protection class.

The illusionist class is in some ways very similar to the old sorc class. I was surprised to find that I actually like illusionists more, and now consider them Shev's greatest achievment.

Conjurer was one of those classes, like mercs, berserkers, and rangers, that never really found a niche. First they were weak. Then they were overpowered and unbalancing (3k hp fire elementals anyone?). Then they were weak again. I guess thats what happens when you are a one trick pony and your entire class revolves around one spell (or type of spell, cough invokers). I think shev did a great job turning them into elementalists, which made them more well rounded.

Personally, I think the mage classes would be perfect if enchanters and invokers were folded into sorc's.. or given a choice to become a sorc, illus, or elementalist. But i'm strongly in the minority once again on that one.

Corth

First vote for Rangers!

Hell yeah, give me Toril 1 Rangers back... just like today's Rangers, except no archery, no forage, no woodcarving, no tame, no call lightning, and no cure critic. But we had minor creation, bitch.

Rangers 10 years ago were useful and I loved mine!

I'll reroll him eventually, but for now, long live the 10 year old rangers!

I liked old sorcs a lot. very well rounded. Conjies were fun b/c of their uber large mentals.

I agree tho, the Elementalist class is a good upgrade over the conjies. IIRC conjies didn't have any 9th circle spells or something like that =P

I would also enjoy seeing a kit system (homeland), but in order to do that, a sorc class has to be brought back in as a template. It wouldn't bother any of the current mage classes b/c they'd all be kits.

When you were able to heal your fire mental with Burning Hands and fireball spells.


Grummy

holy shit are you kidding me, rangers circa soj1 were dualing gleaming mithril axes 4d5 4/5

Corth,

Iif you fold enc and invokers into sorcs then give sorcs the option to become enchanters and invokers what exactly did you accomplish besides giving stone skin to invokers and incendiary cloud to enchanters?

Surely you mean and reduce the power of their specialized spells in general? So its more of leaning towards damage or defense but not 100% offense or 100% defense.

specializations made the difference then. it added the variety to that class.

kiryan wrote:Corth,

Iif you fold enc and invokers into sorcs then give sorcs the option to become enchanters and invokers what exactly did you accomplish besides giving stone skin to invokers and incendiary cloud to enchanters?

Surely you mean and reduce the power of their specialized spells in general? So its more of leaning towards damage or defense but not 100% offense or 100% defense.

You misunderstand what I was saying. I did not suggest that the attributes of enchanters and invokers be folded into a new sorceror class. Rather, I meant that I would like to see the enchanter and invoker classes removed completely, with players who have characters in these two classes given the choice to make those characters either sorcerors (same attributes of old), elementalists, or illusionists)

Corth

wouldnt that make sorcs the red headed step child of mages? Both ele and illusionist are way more powerful than sorcs were.

kiryan wrote:holy shit are you kidding me, rangers circa soj1 were dualing gleaming mithril axes 4d5 4/5

Nogs, that rocked. My ranger used to do SO much damage. It was AWESOME.

Grumdikanikus wrote:When you were able to heal your fire mental with Burning Hands and fireball spells.

That, and Fire Ellies were 3k HPs and Earths were 3x as big. Warriors actually knew how to fight then, not just stand there and absorb damage.

Monk 7d5 barehand damage for the win. Ranger who?

kiryan wrote:wouldnt that make sorcs the red headed step child of mages? Both ele and illusionist are way more powerful than sorcs were.

With enchanters gone, sorc's would be the best stoning and globing class, plus they have a fair amount of damage and enchanting capabilities. So no, I don't think that sorcerors would be overshadowed by elementalists or illusionists.

Corth

Corth wrote:

kiryan wrote:wouldnt that make sorcs the red headed step child of mages? Both ele and illusionist are way more powerful than sorcs were.

With enchanters gone, sorc's would be the best stoning and globing class, plus they have a fair amount of damage and enchanting capabilities. So no, I don't think that sorcerors would be overshadowed by elementalists or illusionists.

Corth

How about we just downgrade dragonscales then? That would be an easy fix. Then enchanters would be like sorcerers with spec_prot.

Not exactly.. sorceror's weren't a one-dimensional protection class like enchanters. They had offense too. Taking away dragonscales would not even start to turn enchanters in sorcerors. In any event, this is all hypothetical talk because enchanters and invokers are here to stay. However, downgrading or removing dragonscales (and displacement, blur, etc.), while leaving enchanters in, should be done anyway because it would allow for the difference to be made up by an upgrade in tanking skills by actual tanking classes. The goal is to shift power in this game from casting classes to melee and tanking classes.

Corth

dp!

As foreign as this may sound, I don't recall many people playing invokers on Homeland.

stealing thread for a sec

Burmadapig wrote:As foreign as this may sound, I don't recall many people playing invokers on Homeland.

there was a reason for that, they were boring. they had no solo ability and not many spells to entertain yourself or walk around the mud easily ie no gate/fly and think no tele either. almost everyone had one though but wasnt ever on as them because of the above reasons. my own guild had close to 10 invokers stashed as alts. so unless you were a pyro freak and liked torching little furry creatures in westwood with your newly acquired ferno then you would probably be playing any of your other chars.

ok im done stealing thread carry on :P

grundar wrote:so unless you were a pyro freak and liked torching little furry creatures in westwood with your newly acquired ferno

*cough* Vena *cough*

drabyl rolled an invoker after the split and he loved the hell out of it.

course soon after he went to rehab, stopped smoking weed and at the same time started to suck at mudding heh.

grundar wrote:stealing thread for a sec

Burmadapig wrote:As foreign as this may sound, I don't recall many people playing invokers on Homeland.

there was a reason for that, they were boring. they had no solo ability and not many spells to entertain yourself or walk around the mud easily ie no gate/fly and think no tele either. almost everyone had one though but wasnt ever on as them because of the above reasons. my own guild had close to 10 invokers stashed as alts. so unless you were a pyro freak and liked torching little furry creatures in westwood with your newly acquired ferno then you would probably be playing any of your other chars.

ok im done stealing thread carry on :P

as much as I wouldn't want to lose my tele spells, it sounds like a fairly obvious way to balance an overtly powerful class

Isn't travel more convenience rather than power?

I agree with Thilindel. As things stand right now, Invokers are the most powerful class in terms of damage. Take away their Tele/Lev spells and they'll still be great nukers, they'll just be slower and require rides. Not gonna stop them from being used.

Ok really as amusing as it is to watch people talking about invokers who don't play them it's a little absurd. Let me put some stuff into perspective for you.

a) Invokers have the least innate hps out of all mage classes.

b) Invokers have no defensive spells while every other caster has something (displace/mirro, stone/embo, stone/blur, heal/vit, heal/vit/stone, etc etc etc) yeah we can use potions before someone mentions that.

c) a lot of times when running for our lives we tele and gate out or just gate out.

d) We do a lot of damage but other spells do more than some invoker spells in different situations.

anyways before you go on saying invokers are overpowered due to the amount of damage that they do please look at the class as a whole. Damage is really all vokers have so i see it as being fine.

Pril

50 invoker with close to 700hps (and I don't have really great equipment) here Pril. Innate hps only matters for spob or spanks.

Without gate/relo, that is exactly the point. They wouldn't be able to run jump a gate or relo. It's an inconvenience factor. Not necessarily a solution as you said.

I was really refering to Rer and cheap ThRil, but the only mage class that doesn't have a relo/gate type spell atm are lich's and that's because they have pets to rescue them. Shrug seems to me like it would cause many a voker death. Although it would stop people from asking me for ghetto wells.... and i die a lot as it is, eh go with it :p

Pril

Pril wrote:anyways before you go on saying invokers are overpowered due to the amount of damage that they do please look at the class as a whole. Damage is really all vokers have so i see it as being fine.
Pril

As you demonstrated, they are not overpowered. If anything, they are underpowered. That being said, its still a stupid one-trick pony class that should have been removed or made more interesting years ago, and also happens to be unbalancing in its own way.

Corth

Pril wrote:I was really refering to Rer and cheap ThRil, but the only mage class that doesn't have a relo/gate type spell atm are lich's and that's because they have pets to rescue them. Shrug seems to me like it would cause many a voker death. Although it would stop people from asking me for ghetto wells.... and i die a lot as it is, eh go with it :p

Pril

Um, PrilDo...I have had a lvl 50 voker for years. *whap* I've seen more shit with that guy than a toilet! I'd LOVE to lose some power to gain usefull spells that'd keep him alive. WHY do you think I don't play him often? I'm sick of being a guinea pig like in spob! All I said that teleportation spells are more on the lines of convenience than power.

Thilindel wrote:

Pril wrote:I was really refering to Rer and cheap ThRil, but the only mage class that doesn't have a relo/gate type spell atm are lich's and that's because they have pets to rescue them. Shrug seems to me like it would cause many a voker death. Although it would stop people from asking me for ghetto wells.... and i die a lot as it is, eh go with it :p

Pril

Um, PrilDo...I have had a lvl 50 voker for years. *whap* I've seen more shit with that guy than a toilet! I'd LOVE to lose some power to gain usefull spells that'd keep him alive. WHY do you think I don't play him often? I'm sick of being a guinea pig like in spob! All I said that teleportation spells are more on the lines of convenience than power.

Oh, well first of all *whap self* , and second of all *whap you* for not playing him enough for me to know who he is :p Gonna remove foot from mouth now :p

Pril

I'd really like to play him more! But elf and res fail sucketh mightily *sniff*

ahhh so yer problem is yer a stinky elf. well reroll how many hps ya got at 50 when yer nekkid? like 178? :p

Pril

Pril, I didn't say they were overpowered, I said that Vokers were the undisputed damage kings. For a mud that's supposed to be group based, you're awfully focused on yourself! There are a lot of classes that are lacking a good means of solo'ing, and a lot of classes that are not.

As Corth said, Vokers are really just a one-trick pony.

Even chanters get more than that - Prism is a good offensive spell, plus they have PWB, and are the undisputed Buff class they've got defense covered. Is it easy to solo as a Chanter? According to Osod, not really easy, but it is possible. Illus are more offense than defense, but are a good combination.

Take away Tele/Relo, and Vokers will still get plenty of zone invites, they'll just be inconvenienced in doing so. It's not going to remove their Powar.

If ya read my post rer i was discussing diing due to not having Relo/Gate, tele i can live with although it does make it easier to travel. Also if ya read my thread i posted that certain spells in game do MORE damage than voker spells so for a 1 trick horse they don't do a great trick. I'm not talking about ability to solo, i'm talking about ability to stay alive when all hell breaks loose in a group. If you look at most groups in a zone then enchanter is almost always self spelled, the shamans are always stoned/vitted, and the invokers are always mage flamed, so when hell breaks loose and people start diing is it a surprise that vokers tend to go first? (after the tanks). If ya remove our ability to get the hell outta danger then it'll cause even more voker deaths (see my thread above where i decided that it was fine since i die lots anyways).

Pril

1) More Voker Deaths Are Better! (joking)

2) Which spells do more damage than Inferno? Or Force Missiles? Or are you saying that Tendrils does more than Ball Lightning? Educate us non-voker types.

3) "so for a 1 trick horse they don't do a great trick" - are you saying that Voker damage should be upgraded now? I thought it was pretty clear that Vokers do more damage, overall, than any other class. I'd say that's a pretty good trick. I think it was Kiryan that called Vokers the "Undisputed Damage Class on the Mud". I happen to agree, and I know I've seen many posts on the BBS from others who agree as well.

Don't you see? That's the point! We're trying to make vokers die even more, forcing the mud into the new age groups, consisting of: 3 warriors, 1 cleric, 1 shaman, 1 illusionist, 2 (insert class here, including ones not mentioned), 2 chanters, and 5 evil human female rogues.

Why? Lets see: The rogues can deal so much damage it's terrifying with upwards of 12 attacks at 90+ damroll. Their procs can heal them (already a plus over vokers), they can backstab and circle for massive multipliers, they can evade areas, their dodge maxes out, they can blind, paralyze, slow, etc. with their attacks (like vokers can), they _can_ garrote, though I'm sure they're loathe to admit it, which helps vs demons and other such normally non-bashable casters way more than a voker who is dealing 50% less damage due to MR (I dunno exact numbers, don't care. MR doesn't save you from getting your head squeezed off.), they have more natural hp, so not as dependant on hp gear, they can hide while the rest of the group dies or gates out, therefore surviving AND holding pop, they can instantly kill a mob, they can serve as backup bashers, and with 5 of them, areas are just filler damage.

No, I'm not saying downgrade one item just to appease vokers. I am saying, though, that with the abililty to survive and take less damage, as well as a general usefulness with the abilities listed above, rogues can fill a number of spots in a pinch. Vokers are still just damage with a possible secondary proc.

Why do I bring this up, though? I was in a group recently that aborted due to lack of rogues with khanjaris. There were other options aside from wistfully hoping a few would log on, but very few were taken.

I've also gotten totally off track from the original post.

Old school sorcies wouldn't fit here unless zones are doable without a total dependancy on chanters - i.e. brass no resser?! you can't do brass without a resser! omg!!111oneone

rer wrote:2) Which spells do more damage than Inferno? Or Force Missiles? Or are you saying that Tendrils does more than Ball Lightning? Educate us non-voker types.

For starters yes tendrils does do more damage than voker spells, given it does it differently (tendrils attacks a random mob in the room while ferno attacks all mobs) but during a 1 mob fight yes it does do more damage), but it also outdamages force missile. Doom used to do more damage (not sure if it still does haven't played with a druid in arena)

rer wrote:3) "so for a 1 trick horse they don't do a great trick" - are you saying that Voker damage should be upgraded now? I thought it was pretty clear that Vokers do more damage, overall, than any other class. I'd say that's a pretty good trick. I think it was Kiryan that called Vokers the "Undisputed Damage Class on the Mud". I happen to agree, and I know I've seen many posts on the BBS from others who agree as well.

And no i'm not saying that invoker damage should be upgraded, just saying that since we can only do 1 thing (damage) that running away with our tales tucked between our legs shouldn't be taken away from us w/o giving us some kind of either defensive skill or a more offensive skill that can save us by killing the mob. (for those that like to don't take that out of context, i'm not saying that invokers should get more damage for shits n giggles)

Pril

For starters, doom's 'damage' is lame. Some waves you'd swear heal the mob. Level 5 mobs can live thru them now. Tendrils seems to be a different argument cuz at least an illusionist can drag a spell. Vokers can't. It's rather dangerous being a voker, really. Feedback, groupleader's anxiousness to send your sorry ass in big fights, ..sigh. Coldshield/fireshield claim to reduce damage on the helpfiles. I always see welcome to Toril within like 3 hits so big whoop. The class to me is something a group wants to take along, but not too many people enjoy it. I used to LOVE the damage I could do as a voker, then when people see it, you get sent in and die in one hit; such as Spob/cleric killing/ etc. I just chose to not play the class unless I have to. My guy has 198 hps nakey, Pril. My guy got about 3.5 hp/lvl. wee! Just the failed res rate for elves pathetic. Deshana/Ionari can back that up too. I'll start cussing if I have to think about the over 200% xp I've lost in level 50. Just f'g'&%(#@$*$@& well damn! Wimpy assed elves. Now I'm mad again *sigh* I don't get how deshana had over a 40% res failure rate and was told 'we don't see anything wrong' ...*boggle*

I would kill or perform disgusting sexual acts for sorcs back.

Actually, Cold/Fireshield can increase the length of stone duration and in general reduced mob damage to you per round by about 18 hp when last I zoned with my lvl 50. It also had the benefit of doing slightly increased damage to the mob when it hit you....If you were coldshielded and the mob was fire based as an example from say, Fire Plane.

Invoker damage also had/has subtle tactical usages which most current invokers have not seemed to explore.

As an example, most do not change out force missiles based upon the fight or coordinate with other invokers to show their true stopping power. Before Thunderblast stun rate was significantly reduced, you used to be able to stun large quantities of mobs in a fight, then switch and cast a quick meteor swarm given its (***) cast time. You could then cast another (**) thunderblast to restun/add to the currently !switch warriors and !cast mage/clerics you where holding at bay. Repeating this tactic for all 10 spells gave all the other group members 20 rounds of limited special attacks by the room mobs.

Not like these matter as much nowadays though, cause invokers are just supposed to do damage and not think according to most arguments here.