These suggestions are linked to the core idea of this topic and balance with other mechanics I'll be adding to this topic. In short, 300 primaries are freed up by making sprinting, combat maneuvering, and blocking secondaries. This allows new primaries to be added to every role.
The point of these suggestions is to create true specializations within the exceptionally broad category of "mage" that lend the game more genuine build variety and keep the role balanced with the changes I suggest for melee and ranged combat.
INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHE, AND MAGIC DEFENSE
The Problem
How these three things are currently handled is... a mess. Naked players have the same magic defense as a fully geared one. Psyche is a supplementary attribute even though optimizing around it cripples every other stat and there are a race (Sarduucans) that seem to be based on being a race with an amazing psyche cap. Intelligence is a hard requirement for any mage but the only attribute that offers zero value whatsoever to other roles.
Fixing Magic Defense
Magic defense is removed entirely from psyche and magic resist (the random chance to resist a spell) is removed from the game. Magic defense is now a stat on armor pieces based on the materials used. It should favor materials used in lighter armors, particularly those of higher value. Wool variants are a great candidate for the highest magic resist material as both a material that isn't currently considered very good and one which thematically makes a lot of sense for a material that would insulate people from spell effects. Wool's stats could be entirely overhauled to optimize it for this role as nobody currently uses it, so nobody would care.
Stone is a great candidate for the "all-around good defenses" armor that compromises between physical and magical defense. Both flakestone and jadeite are underwhelming stat-wise given the time it takes to acquire enough to make a set of armor but are two of the coolest-looking armor sets in the game. Them suddenly being a good choice for people looking to balanced between physical and magical defenses would break nobody's hearts. And stone logically fits this role extremely well as a material that is extremely non-conductive and resistant to changes in heat.
These changes increase both the depth of crafting, creates uses for underutilized material, but also help fix the extremely weird and unbalanced game dynamic between geared melee and ungeared mages without changing the concept that most geared players are going to be more resistant to physical damage than magical damage.
Fixing Psyche (Healing)
Psyche deserves to be a primary stat like all other primary stats. Also, the changes above make it lose its current bonuses that make it useful to all roles.
The first is fixed by dividing healing spells out of regular magic and making them their own specialization with their own schools. This is frankly VERY needed. As someone who is a healer in most MMOs, two single-target healing spells of differing mana efficiency are a great start but real healers who love to play support roles are NOT ok with having these, magic reflect, and purify be the only options available to them.
Nor should we have to pick up a heal spell or two from each and every magic school that comes out to get real variety to our healing. Healing deserves a school of its own ASAP with 2-4 schools in total once all schools are implemented. There is A LOT of good that comes from making a healer be able to spec into healing without picking up magical damage and a DPS mage able to spec into DPS without picking up healing. A healer/DPS mage should be possible but separating those roles allows for a lot more variety of build mixes that could be unique and fun.
So Psyche should be the stat that defines healing power with int entirely losing any influence on it. It's interesting in noting that psyche peaks at age 80 meaning you have to lower all other stats to reach max potential psyche via age and that younger characters (fighters and dex mages) tend to have worse psyche caps than int. I actually kind of like this. I'd buff healing to keep those builds about where they currently are if you were to say make a healer hybrid in the new system, but makes this crippled old man 80yo chunky Sarduucan have some insanely good heals (at the cost of literally everything else). I'd also personally nerf Sheevra a bit in terms of psyche cap as their age clade probably makes them a bit too good with their cap where it currently is.
Fixing Psyche (Secondary Effects)
Having removed magic defense from psyche leaves it with no more secondary. It needs new secondary effects and ones that provide it with some level of use to all roles but the most benefit to it's primary role just like str/dex/con/size.
For that I suggest the following: Increased duration of received buffs, decreased duration of received debuffs, increased received healing from all sources. I'm not going to suggest values because they're not worth debating in this topic. If you think it sounds OP lower the values you're imagining, if you think it sounds bad raise them.
Fixing Int
Int currently provides more effect to all spells and mana at a 1:1 ratio (just like psyche). All the changes suggested so far do nothing but crap on Int which already was the only stat lacking secondary effects and value to every role. So int deserves some really cool buffs to make up for that right? Of course it does.
The most major new effect of INT is decreased charge time for spells.
The second is decreased cooldown of any ability with cooldown (bandaging, clades, etc) and faster sheath/unsheath/swap actions giving it some level of usefulness to all roles.
NEW SPELLS
Energy Blast (1-20 Ecumencial): A 10m low damage, mana efficient, no cast-time spell. This spell is designed to make PVE and 1v1s a bit more mage friendly by allowing mages to run and gun at short range. This spell is also the replacement for lesser heal in ecumenical.
Charge Weapon (20-40ish Ecumencial): Empowers the caster's weapon to deal a small amount of magical damage on it's next attack at the expense of mana. If the attack misses or is parried the spell has no effect but is expended. This spell has a quick cast time that does NOT require the user to sheath their weapon. This spell replaces purify and also goes a long way to make up for the fact that without healing int hybrids would be kind of garbage.
Noble Sacrifice(100 Life Magic): Self-cast only spell. Apply a 10-second debuff that cannot be removed by any means (but is reduced by the new psyche secondary) which deals 5 damage to the caster per second. Regain 33% of missing mana. Cannot be cast again while the debuff is active. This spell kind of helps compensate for the fact that a healing-focused build would be really bad at everything else as even int is debuffed by making a very elderly character. If they run out of mana they can regain it by dealing damage to themselves.
NEW SKILLS
Life Magic(Primary)- This is a school that focuses primarily on removing damage via healing. Lesser heal, greater heal, and purify are all transferred from ecumenical to this school. In addition to that foundation it picks up new healing over time, area of effect heals, etc. I won't detail them all except the one given above.
--Purifier(Secondary)- Life magic spells damage undead targets for 0-100% of their healing value.*
*Heals based on psyche no longer affect undead at all without this secondary.
Protection Magic(Primary)- This would be the second healer school and 2nd to be implemented. It would focus on proactively preventing damage rather than reactively healing damage already received. For instance, a spell that caps the damage you can take in a single hit or makes you receive a small amount of healing each time you are hit.
Battlemage(Secondary)- Cast the spell scribed onto your weapon (A new ability scribes have on the crafting end) while your weapon is unsheathed. 100-0% fizzle chance based on battlemage level. Works only for int-based spells. Child of Mental Offense. Meant to bring int hybrids to the status of a fully viable role along with energy blast and charge weapon despite how much better healing is generally. Note that this allows two spells for dual-wielders.
The point of these suggestions is to create true specializations within the exceptionally broad category of "mage" that lend the game more genuine build variety and keep the role balanced with the changes I suggest for melee and ranged combat.
INTELLIGENCE, PSYCHE, AND MAGIC DEFENSE
The Problem
How these three things are currently handled is... a mess. Naked players have the same magic defense as a fully geared one. Psyche is a supplementary attribute even though optimizing around it cripples every other stat and there are a race (Sarduucans) that seem to be based on being a race with an amazing psyche cap. Intelligence is a hard requirement for any mage but the only attribute that offers zero value whatsoever to other roles.
Fixing Magic Defense
Magic defense is removed entirely from psyche and magic resist (the random chance to resist a spell) is removed from the game. Magic defense is now a stat on armor pieces based on the materials used. It should favor materials used in lighter armors, particularly those of higher value. Wool variants are a great candidate for the highest magic resist material as both a material that isn't currently considered very good and one which thematically makes a lot of sense for a material that would insulate people from spell effects. Wool's stats could be entirely overhauled to optimize it for this role as nobody currently uses it, so nobody would care.
Stone is a great candidate for the "all-around good defenses" armor that compromises between physical and magical defense. Both flakestone and jadeite are underwhelming stat-wise given the time it takes to acquire enough to make a set of armor but are two of the coolest-looking armor sets in the game. Them suddenly being a good choice for people looking to balanced between physical and magical defenses would break nobody's hearts. And stone logically fits this role extremely well as a material that is extremely non-conductive and resistant to changes in heat.
These changes increase both the depth of crafting, creates uses for underutilized material, but also help fix the extremely weird and unbalanced game dynamic between geared melee and ungeared mages without changing the concept that most geared players are going to be more resistant to physical damage than magical damage.
Fixing Psyche (Healing)
Psyche deserves to be a primary stat like all other primary stats. Also, the changes above make it lose its current bonuses that make it useful to all roles.
The first is fixed by dividing healing spells out of regular magic and making them their own specialization with their own schools. This is frankly VERY needed. As someone who is a healer in most MMOs, two single-target healing spells of differing mana efficiency are a great start but real healers who love to play support roles are NOT ok with having these, magic reflect, and purify be the only options available to them.
Nor should we have to pick up a heal spell or two from each and every magic school that comes out to get real variety to our healing. Healing deserves a school of its own ASAP with 2-4 schools in total once all schools are implemented. There is A LOT of good that comes from making a healer be able to spec into healing without picking up magical damage and a DPS mage able to spec into DPS without picking up healing. A healer/DPS mage should be possible but separating those roles allows for a lot more variety of build mixes that could be unique and fun.
So Psyche should be the stat that defines healing power with int entirely losing any influence on it. It's interesting in noting that psyche peaks at age 80 meaning you have to lower all other stats to reach max potential psyche via age and that younger characters (fighters and dex mages) tend to have worse psyche caps than int. I actually kind of like this. I'd buff healing to keep those builds about where they currently are if you were to say make a healer hybrid in the new system, but makes this crippled old man 80yo chunky Sarduucan have some insanely good heals (at the cost of literally everything else). I'd also personally nerf Sheevra a bit in terms of psyche cap as their age clade probably makes them a bit too good with their cap where it currently is.
Fixing Psyche (Secondary Effects)
Having removed magic defense from psyche leaves it with no more secondary. It needs new secondary effects and ones that provide it with some level of use to all roles but the most benefit to it's primary role just like str/dex/con/size.
For that I suggest the following: Increased duration of received buffs, decreased duration of received debuffs, increased received healing from all sources. I'm not going to suggest values because they're not worth debating in this topic. If you think it sounds OP lower the values you're imagining, if you think it sounds bad raise them.
Fixing Int
Int currently provides more effect to all spells and mana at a 1:1 ratio (just like psyche). All the changes suggested so far do nothing but crap on Int which already was the only stat lacking secondary effects and value to every role. So int deserves some really cool buffs to make up for that right? Of course it does.
The most major new effect of INT is decreased charge time for spells.
The second is decreased cooldown of any ability with cooldown (bandaging, clades, etc) and faster sheath/unsheath/swap actions giving it some level of usefulness to all roles.
NEW SPELLS
Energy Blast (1-20 Ecumencial): A 10m low damage, mana efficient, no cast-time spell. This spell is designed to make PVE and 1v1s a bit more mage friendly by allowing mages to run and gun at short range. This spell is also the replacement for lesser heal in ecumenical.
Charge Weapon (20-40ish Ecumencial): Empowers the caster's weapon to deal a small amount of magical damage on it's next attack at the expense of mana. If the attack misses or is parried the spell has no effect but is expended. This spell has a quick cast time that does NOT require the user to sheath their weapon. This spell replaces purify and also goes a long way to make up for the fact that without healing int hybrids would be kind of garbage.
Noble Sacrifice(100 Life Magic): Self-cast only spell. Apply a 10-second debuff that cannot be removed by any means (but is reduced by the new psyche secondary) which deals 5 damage to the caster per second. Regain 33% of missing mana. Cannot be cast again while the debuff is active. This spell kind of helps compensate for the fact that a healing-focused build would be really bad at everything else as even int is debuffed by making a very elderly character. If they run out of mana they can regain it by dealing damage to themselves.
NEW SKILLS
Life Magic(Primary)- This is a school that focuses primarily on removing damage via healing. Lesser heal, greater heal, and purify are all transferred from ecumenical to this school. In addition to that foundation it picks up new healing over time, area of effect heals, etc. I won't detail them all except the one given above.
--Purifier(Secondary)- Life magic spells damage undead targets for 0-100% of their healing value.*
*Heals based on psyche no longer affect undead at all without this secondary.
Protection Magic(Primary)- This would be the second healer school and 2nd to be implemented. It would focus on proactively preventing damage rather than reactively healing damage already received. For instance, a spell that caps the damage you can take in a single hit or makes you receive a small amount of healing each time you are hit.
Battlemage(Secondary)- Cast the spell scribed onto your weapon (A new ability scribes have on the crafting end) while your weapon is unsheathed. 100-0% fizzle chance based on battlemage level. Works only for int-based spells. Child of Mental Offense. Meant to bring int hybrids to the status of a fully viable role along with energy blast and charge weapon despite how much better healing is generally. Note that this allows two spells for dual-wielders.
