Right now There are only 3 viable mage gameplays
Mounted mage: Tied to your wheelchair, can only go around to places where mounts work.
Pure mage on foot: Only viable to play with other players, really strong with the right people around peeling and protecting for you, good for dungeons and group content like sieges, mincemeat by himself, trash at solo play.
Hybrid Mage/Dagger Mage: Your bread and butter go to PvP build you are very squishy but faster than most, plenty of outplay potential but you focus on your melee weapon for the vast majority of your gameplay, magic is only to initiate or peel for the team.
Now, as a Foot Mage whether I am skinny or fat i hate the fact that in order to defend myself i need to carry around a freaking Tower Shield, it doesn't fit in any way shape or form, it feels out of place and kills my drive to be a Mage.
IMO it makes no sense a mage has to invest into a weapon skill and be good with it in order to do anything by himself or last more than 3 hits if a melee fighter closes the gap and gets next to him, mages on small skirmishes are trash unless they are max dexterity hybrids moving faster than the enemy carrying around a heavy tower shield on their back.
As a Pure Mage on a 1v1 if the enemy is next to me and its faster than me the only thing i can do is parry until i die, there is no comeback or counter play.
Now to my suggestions for this matter:
First and foremost, regardless of anything else, ALL SHIELDS should have STR requirements, drastically impairing your character if you don't meet them, 10 STR should never work with shields.
Option 1:
Make Wrestling not useless, similar to Ultima Online almost all mages chose to have wrestling as a defensive mechanism.
Make it so if i have 100 points in blocking 100 points in wrestling 100 points in Unarmed Blocking and I am not holding anything i can get to mitigate as much damage on parries and blocks as melee player with 100 block and a weapon.
Option 2:
Implement Mage weapons, such as Staffs or mage bracers, you can cast spells on combat mode while holding these weapons, holding right click you can directional parry like with any other weapon but it also drains some of your mana alongside stamina to compensate you can cast while holding them.
Option 3:
Implement off hand mage shields, these can be anything and everything, Codex, Lamps, Focus, Skulls, Chimes, Tomes, Baubles, scepters, prisms... anything that works with the current material crafting system would be best.
They can boost your stats in some way such as mana(optional and not the main point) but they don't give any mitigation unless they are active.
If you right click you activate these and start channeling, making a force field in front of you, passively draining your mana while the shield is active, any incoming damage towards the hitbox of the shield will get mitigated by some amount (20-60% depending on the quality of the materials of the shield) and the rest will drain your mana pool instead of your hp pool, if you run out of mana the shield dissipates and any overflow damage goes to your life like normal. activation speed should be a bit longer than shields since it avoids directional combat, but its fast enough so you can cast it between spells if someone is closing the gap on you.
Option 4:
Concentration is 100% effective but it lowers with the same formula as mana regen, the higher your armor weight the lower your concentration becomes, a mage on Rugged garments can have 100% concentration. If you wear armor plus a 10kg tower shield then you get interrupted 90% of the time.
Honestly IMO all these can be implemented if balanced properly but any of them will work a thousand times better than the current system, I am just sick of using shields on my Pure Mage.
Mounted mage: Tied to your wheelchair, can only go around to places where mounts work.
Pure mage on foot: Only viable to play with other players, really strong with the right people around peeling and protecting for you, good for dungeons and group content like sieges, mincemeat by himself, trash at solo play.
Hybrid Mage/Dagger Mage: Your bread and butter go to PvP build you are very squishy but faster than most, plenty of outplay potential but you focus on your melee weapon for the vast majority of your gameplay, magic is only to initiate or peel for the team.
Now, as a Foot Mage whether I am skinny or fat i hate the fact that in order to defend myself i need to carry around a freaking Tower Shield, it doesn't fit in any way shape or form, it feels out of place and kills my drive to be a Mage.
IMO it makes no sense a mage has to invest into a weapon skill and be good with it in order to do anything by himself or last more than 3 hits if a melee fighter closes the gap and gets next to him, mages on small skirmishes are trash unless they are max dexterity hybrids moving faster than the enemy carrying around a heavy tower shield on their back.
As a Pure Mage on a 1v1 if the enemy is next to me and its faster than me the only thing i can do is parry until i die, there is no comeback or counter play.
Now to my suggestions for this matter:
First and foremost, regardless of anything else, ALL SHIELDS should have STR requirements, drastically impairing your character if you don't meet them, 10 STR should never work with shields.
Option 1:
Make Wrestling not useless, similar to Ultima Online almost all mages chose to have wrestling as a defensive mechanism.
Make it so if i have 100 points in blocking 100 points in wrestling 100 points in Unarmed Blocking and I am not holding anything i can get to mitigate as much damage on parries and blocks as melee player with 100 block and a weapon.
Option 2:
Implement Mage weapons, such as Staffs or mage bracers, you can cast spells on combat mode while holding these weapons, holding right click you can directional parry like with any other weapon but it also drains some of your mana alongside stamina to compensate you can cast while holding them.
Option 3:
Implement off hand mage shields, these can be anything and everything, Codex, Lamps, Focus, Skulls, Chimes, Tomes, Baubles, scepters, prisms... anything that works with the current material crafting system would be best.
They can boost your stats in some way such as mana(optional and not the main point) but they don't give any mitigation unless they are active.
If you right click you activate these and start channeling, making a force field in front of you, passively draining your mana while the shield is active, any incoming damage towards the hitbox of the shield will get mitigated by some amount (20-60% depending on the quality of the materials of the shield) and the rest will drain your mana pool instead of your hp pool, if you run out of mana the shield dissipates and any overflow damage goes to your life like normal. activation speed should be a bit longer than shields since it avoids directional combat, but its fast enough so you can cast it between spells if someone is closing the gap on you.
Option 4:
Concentration is 100% effective but it lowers with the same formula as mana regen, the higher your armor weight the lower your concentration becomes, a mage on Rugged garments can have 100% concentration. If you wear armor plus a 10kg tower shield then you get interrupted 90% of the time.
Honestly IMO all these can be implemented if balanced properly but any of them will work a thousand times better than the current system, I am just sick of using shields on my Pure Mage.
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