Wizard Development Thread

[kablizzy]

For all Wizard Development discussion. I suppose Black Magi are just ranged, multi-DPS?

Fire | Fira | Firaga | Firaja
Blizzard | Blizzara | Blizzaga | Blizzaja
Thunder | Thundara | Thundaga |Thundaja

(I think, collectively, we've decided to only keep two levels of these, yes?)

Sleep - Puts a dude to sleep
Focus - Increase in MA for next turn
Dark - Low-level Dark-elemental damage
Temper - Increases attack power in an ally
Death / Doom - If anyone would get something like Doom, it'd be Wizard, but I dunno.
Quake - Earth-elemental for non-flying/floating dudes.
Aero - Wind-elemental
Bio - Poison-Elemental
Break - Does Oracle get this? Petrify and stuff. 
Curse - Reduces M-EV?
Flare / Nuke - Heavy Non-elemental damage
Meteor - I think this was a Time mage thing.
Osmose - Syphon MP
Rasp - Syphon HP
Toad - Makes a dude a toad - Shove off to Oracle?
Ultima - It's on the recurring spell-list, but I'd rather not.

Reaction
Counter Magic

Support
Magic Attack UP

Move

[Schwerpunkt]

The first thing we need to do here is decide what, exactly, the Wizard's role is. There are spells there that really could go either way.

Also, something Mord and I discussed that he wasn't fond of was giving Wizard a free ability called 'Channel' (or whatever) that would turn the Wizard's typically single-target, instant-cast spells into aoe spells with charge timers. A similar ability would likely also be used with the Priest and Time Mage, who fall into the same boat of having way more than 9 abilities thanks to varying levels of investment.

The purpose of Channel, in a nutshell, is to turn Fire into Fira and make it an aoe that probably does marginally more damage, albeit at the cost of requiring a cast timer.

[kablizzy]

As I was saying in the Summoner thread, I think that we should turn Wizard into single-target, and instant cast is a great addition to that. I love the concept of Channel, and that way, you can turn Fire into Fira into Firaga if you channel for multiple turns. That solves a lot of issues there in a clean, fun, awesome way, and also (kinda) solves the CT problem for Wizard. Great, great suggestion.

[kablizzy]

Ability	Description	MP	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Channel	+range, +power to black magic spells.	0	0	Self	Now / 40?	0
Fire	Black magick that envelops targets in ferocious flames. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Element: Fire. Quote: "Destruction of nature, gather in flame! Fire!"	6	4	1	25	350
Thunder	Black magick that strikes targets with lightning. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Element: Lightning. Quote: "Strip away the ground with glistening blades! Bolt!"	6	4	1	25	350
Ice	Black magick that conjures forth bone-chilling icicles. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Element: Ice. Quote: "Scatter your chilly sharp blades! Ice!"	6	4	1	25	350
Quake	Black magick that shakes the ground underfoot. Element: Earth Quote:					350
Aero	Black Magick that summons piercing winds. Element: Air Quote:					350
Bio	Element: Poison
Focus	+MA next turn? Probably conglomerate into Channel.					200
Curse	Decreases Opponent's M-EV					180
Death	Black magick that offers up the target's soul to the spirits of the dead for an instant KO. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Effect: KO. Quote: "Death gods carving life, take their souls! Death!"	24	4	1	10	600
Flare	Black magick that converts energy into heat, scorching the battlefield with searing temperatures. Can be Reflected. Arithmeticks. Quote: "Inscript the dark god into a rotting body! Flare!"	60	5	1	15	900/1000
Ultima	Non-elemental damage.					1400

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Counter Magick	Counterattack using the same magick with which the user was attacked.	Magick Attack	800

Support

Name	Description	JP
Magic Attack-UP	Inflict greater damage with magickal attacks.	400

Movement

None

[Schwerpunkt]

Channel shouldn't increase range -- it should instead increase the area of effect by 1 (so you go from hitting 1 guy to 5), increase damage dealt by 15%, and increase MP cost by 35%.

Ultima needs to go. Wizard already gets a top-tier nuke in the form of Flare.

Death needs to go because Death and Doom are terrible effects for basic classes.

Focus needs to go because Channel is a direct replacement.

I'd also like to cut Aero and Quake, saving them (and Torrent or whatever we call it) for the Spellsword.

Bio is crappy if all it does is add poison. In order to make it useful, it should inflict 75% damage and then deal 60% more damage over 6 turns.

We'll just cut Curse and rework it. I think it has a ton of potential, particularly if we get creative, and wasting it on a "your M-Ev is reduced" is less than ideal.

So that leaves us with: Fire, Ice, Bolt, Bio, and Flare.

We'll also add Force Lance to this list, which does 50% damage with 100% chance of knockback. Can be channeled, just in case you need to hit people with a wall of force.

Curses are a neat concept that I want to really expand upon for the Necromancer prestige. But for the Wizard, I'd like to see two -- and, like other curses, they wouldn't be affected by Channel. Curse: Enervate (deals damage to enemy's MP pool comparable to the HP damage from unchanneled Fire/Ice/Bolt) and Curse: Despair (target loses 10% to all action rolls for 3 turns).

This brings us to: Fire, Ice, Bolt, Bio, Flare, Force Lance, Curse: Enervate, and Curse: Despair. To fill in the last slot I'd go with something that provides utility. Either Banish (which attempts to auto-kill elementals and demons) or Polymorph (which gives the Wizard legitimate CC).




Reaction
1. Ball Lightning - Self aoe (think classic Draw Out) that shocks all nearby parties when receiving direct physical damage (ie, a sword in the face).
2. Icy Gale - Conical aoe (directed at the source of direct physical damage) that deals ice elemental damage. Maybe give it a chance to slow.

Support
1. Iron Resolve - All spells cost 10% more MP, but you always ignore the Reflect effect.
2. Elementalist - 'Channel' cost is reduced to +20% MP (instead of +35%), but is always active.

Movement
Gate - Teleport back to the position you were in when the skirmish started.

[kablizzy]

Ahahaha. Polymorph would be freakin' awesome. I'll add in the RSM abilities when I get a spare second. Iron Resolve is also really, really cool, and Elementalist is really awesome. Gate is weird, although I can't come up with a better Movement ability myself, so we'll see.

[Schwerpunkt]

Yeah, I'm really not sure about Gate. But I think every class needs a movement ability and this one is... well, it's not very shitty. That's about all I can really say for it. It's less ridiculous than teleport (which is hugely problematic) and it's a classic D&D spell.

Polymorph is basically a modernized version of Toad. I like Polymorph more because the battle runner can add flavor text describing what sort of silly creature the guy was turned into. Because we'd all bust a gut if some lowbie wizard went up against Cid and turned him into a platypus.

[Ilium]

Channel: We would need to define what power meant in this context. This would also need to reset after every other turn so as to not allow it to stack. I like Schwerpunkts additions to this, however instead of base 35% increase in MP cost I would say we do this:

Cost = [MA * 1.2] + x
Where x is the original cost of the spell. Therefore, the cost of the effect increases at a slightly slower rate than the damage itself, if the Black Mage were to want add range and power to it.

Death: KO is a pretty big status effect. I think we should save this ability for an advanced class.

Fire/Lightning/Ice: Are we just sticking with one level of each of these abilities, or two or three? Whatever the decision on this is would determine the changes done to the damage algorithms.

Quake/Aero: Good Geomancer abilities, somewhat out of place on the Black Mage. Perhaps Quake/Aero/Sliprain could be a Geomancer equivalent to Fire/Lightning/Ice?

Bio: Bio does need damage added to it if Black Mage is going to only target single squares. The damage needs to be slightly low, because Channel+Bio would get a lot of mileage together otherwise. Altogether, Bio with Poison +  damage would need to do slightly less-to-equal damage of Fire/Ice/Lightning.

Focus: Depending on how we determine power for Channel, Focus either will be or won't be a direct replacement. I like keeping this one on the table for right now as an alternative to Channel. Perhaps make Channel purely range and make Focus purely MA?

Curse: There is no need to complicate Curse at the base class level. Magick Evade is fine, if not Faith, or perhaps a combination of both. -5% M-EV and -5 Faith? Remember lower Faith equals less damage received from Magick Attacks.

Force Lance: How exactly would this ability work? If it can be Channeled, we are talking about 100% knock back on up to 5 enemies.

Ball Lightning: I like this.

Counter Magick: Like this as well, also its classic FFT.

Polymorph/Toad: My instincts tell me to wait on this and see if it will fit better with Oracle, however it would be fine for BM as well.

Osmose/Rasp: I like these.

Flare: Keep it, classic FFT.

Ultima: Really I'd like to keep this for Squire, if anything.

Support Abilities: Honestly Magick Attack-Up is fine here, however there could be some issues with Focus and stacking. One or the other would probably need cut.

Iron Resolve: This becomes too powerful during high-level combat if the cost is only increased by 10%.

Elementalist: Also pretty powerful. It is fine however it would need to cost a good amount of JP. Using the above equation, with this ability we could substitute *1.2 with *1.1.

Gate: I'm not sold on this one, however I don't have any alternative ideas for Movement abiltiies right now either.

[Schwerpunkt]

MP cost on Channel should scale with the cost of the skill. It'd be kind of silly to have the cost of channeling Fire to increase at a higher rate relative to the base skill than, say, the cost of channeling Flare. Tying it to MA simply makes it easier to justify spamming really expensive skills and harder to justify lowbie skills.

Basically, if you only have to spend 16 more MP to channel a spell, why would you ever settle for channeling Fire when you can channel Flare?

Curse: If all Curse does is reduce M-Ev by 5%, no one will ever use it. At no point during the course of a regular battle will you ever be in a situation where you would have reducing an enemy's chance to evade by 5% (and the chance may not even be 100%) be a better option than simply attempting to attack the enemy. You're talking about an ability that, statistically, means you hit one more time in 20 rounds. Most battles will probably end within 20 rounds.

If we start ratcheting it up, we run into the question of "why even have M-Ev?". Especially if the Wizard can ignore Reflect. Having the ability to negate Reflect is a conditional utility ability. Having the ability to reduce the enemy's M-Ev, depending on how we scale it, will either be useless or so wtfgood that it's always used.

This is a recurring problem with developing here and we really need to stop falling into this trap. Curse, as presented by Kablizzy, simpy isn't viable. And if we scale it up, we're going to quickly go from "not viable" to "overpowered." That means we step back and completely re-evaluate how Curse works. Namely by expanding it.

Fire/Lightning/Ice: one level, with aoes and superior damage effects coming from the use of Channel.

Bio: If Bio doesn't do more damage than the basic three spells, no one will use it. Remember, if you will, that we're talking about an extremely conditional ability. Poisons don't stack and they're relatively easy to cure (Regen, for instance, is on one of the Priest's bread and butter heals). There needs to be an incentive to justify using it.

Force Lance: Yes, if people cluster up, they all get knocked back. Just like they'd all get nuked with a channeled Fire. Or poisoned with channeled Bio.

The odds that actually happens is basically zero, though.

Osmose/Rasp: Nope. Drain MP is the Oracle's thing. Doesn't belong in this skillset.

Ultima: The purpose of Flare is to be the wtfhuge direct damage ability for the Wizard. Ultima renders Flare pointless. It doesn't belong in the skillset.

Counter Magic: This ability was most useful in FF7 when you could stack it eight times and make it so that the enemy's Fire 2 would result in basically turning him into a pile of ash. Beyond that, it's extremely niche. We already moved away from this with the Archer, so I'm not sure why we'd keep it here.

It's also kind of nonsensical that you can counter with a spell you don't know. It fundamentally undermines the concept of unlocking and learning new abilities.

Focus/Magic Attack-Up: Both of these abilities are fundamentally for one thing -- balancing the fact that magic in endgame FFT is terrible if you're not a Calculator. Incorporating these abilities into the game doesn't do anything but say "look, we can't balance the spell against regular attacks, so we're going to fiddle with the formula and hope this band-aid stops the hemorrhaging."

I see it and I think "bad design." That's all it is.

Iron Resolve: I disagree. A 10% increase on all your spells is pretty significant, especially if it starts rolling with high cost channels. Flare costs 60 MP in FFT. Channel it and you're now spending (+35%) 81 MP. Now tack Iron Resolve on it and we're talking about 89 MP for one spell. Even at the highest growth rates for MP (+8), that's just over 11 levels worth of level ups to cover the cost.

Seems pretty significant to me. And it hurts Summoners even more if they take it as a secondary, since summons will tend to be more expensive (Summoners also get lower MP growth).

Elementalist: A 10% increase to turn all your spells into nukes is way, way too cheap. You get 20% because it's over half the normal penalty but you lose a good deal of versatility. You can't, for instance, just slap someone with an instant-cast Fire because that skill is literally no longer available to you. The flip side is that you're spending 15% less mana to channel.




Enervate, on second review, should probably deal more like 35% of Bolt's damage as MP damage. Otherwise it's a little silly.

[Mordred]

Ladies, I have an idea.

I still don't like the Channeler spell because it leads to problems with multiclassing. I do, however, like the idea of "Channeler" being an inherent, unlearnable class feature of Wizards. No secondaries need apply.

This would go towards differentiating Summoners and Wizards as well - a Summoner is magic artillery, tossing down slow AoE spells of any element, whereas a Wizard tosses single-target instant damage of a restricted elemental palette. Using Channeler would initially just increase the damage power of a spell, but would not expand its AoE (or would only do so if you Channeled for a long-ass time).

Thoughts?

[Schwerpunkt]

We cut Channel and suddenly we have one of two problems.
1. Either the Wizard has an additional 5-6 skills, reducing JP costs across the board and making it crazy easy to get enough JP for the really good stuff or
2. The Wizard has to lose his instant cast utility or his aoe utility to compensate.

Neither of those is ideal. And by simply noting when a spell can be channeled, we dodge all the problems you mention.

[Mordred]

Cutting out the Wizard's AoE utility is the entire point. AoE is the Summoner's department.

Wizard = insta-cast, single target
Summoner = slow cast, multi-target

[Ilium]

Channel: Why would you use Fire if you could use Flare, regardless of what we do with Channel. If we are going to have one level of Fire/Ice/Lightning, than the differences between basing it off the MP cost and MA are small. I am more in favor of a smaller addition to the MP cost, and re-introduce CT for Channeled spells.

Curse: Well, you ignored the -5 Faith modifier, which over the course of the past couple hours I thought would be better suited if as a +5 modifier. The argument can be made for 10% M-EV and possibly some minimal damage, however with +5 the skill would then work to both increase your chance to hit the unit(s) and also to cause more damage doing so. Especially if Channeled, you can hit multiple targets with this, and make a majority of your opponents more susceptible to your attack.

I also don't like the idea of the Black Mage being able to negate reflect. We can explore that concept in the non-base jobs.

F/L/I: If its only one tier, then this will be a a discussion in and of itself that we should start now before even continuing with anything else in the class. My next post will address this.

Bio: This is true, but this also depends on how we handle the poison modifier. Being able to continuously damage an enemy without targeting them in that round is a sizable advantage.

Force Lance: The odds of that happening are basically zero only if we re-introduce CT to Channeled spells. Auto-cast a knock back on multiple units with 100% accuracy is a bit much. Don't have any problems with it otherwise.

Osmose/Rasp: Perhaps, but they should be left on the table for now, and weighted against the eventual skillset we come up with the Oracle.

Ultima: agree

Counter Magic: There is nothing 'niche' about a non-specific magick attack trigger at all. And I actually haven't moved on from the idea of having a few niche abilities in the classes, so...

Focus/Magic Attack-Up: Okay, bad design from the point of view of the original game, maybe? Good thing we can do whatever we want/need to any ability to make it work for our game, whenever we want.

Iron Resolve: A Level 50 Black Mage with base MP and Iron Resolve would pull off 8 standard Flares, 6 Channeled Flares. Regardless, I am not too interested in base classes being able to nullify Reflect passively.

[Ilium]

May 8, 2013 17:38:37 GMT -6 Mordred said:

Cutting out the Wizard's AoE utility is the entire point. AoE is the Summoner's department.

Wizard = insta-cast, single target
Summoner = slow cast, multi-target

 I agree with this, to a point. I like the option for the BM to perform AoE damage with Focus, so long as we find good requirements for doing so. Making AoE passive in the manner that Elementalist does would be kind of defeating the purpose of even making the Black Mage target single units.

[Mordred]

F/B/I should be one tier. Remember the business about Q and FP and the like.

Channeling to add AoE to Fire/Bolt/Ice makes sense when you put it that way. Elementalist is a wtfbroken ability that should probably not be in the build.

What's the feeling on Channeling as a class feature rather than a learnable skill? This makes primary Black Mage something worth taking rather than taking it as a secondary to Summoner or Time Mage.