The magic sorc/bsum

[ichat3]

Now if
Fire arrow lvl 20 = 1000 damage

Life leech lvl 10 = 1500
Fireball lvl 20 = 2000
Corruption lvl 10 = 2000
Bloody Arrow lvl 20 = 4000

All fine and dandy BUT now take a look at the cast/cool time and mp cost of these skills.

FA = 0.5ca, 0.8co, 44mp
LL = 2ca, 30co, 275mp
FB = 2ca, 15co, 230mp
C = 1.5ca, 30co, 215mp
BA = 2.5ca, 120co, 456mp

What does any of this mean? It means that Fire Arrow is the only skill you can effectively use for dealing damage. Fireball, Corruption and Bloody Arrow are completely useless. Well actually you could use lvl1 corruption and fireball to keep sins uncloaked and of course life leech can give you back a smattering of life however in terms of dealing damage these skills use too much mp and take too long to cast and cooldown for the amount of damage they are doing!

E.g.
1) 2xFA = 2000 instant damage for 88 mp. Compare that to the length of time (because in addition to cast time you must also consider the durations of the dots) and the amount of mp used by either corruption or fireball to get the same 2000 damage result.
2) 4xFA = 4000 damage for 176 mp while 1 Bloody arrow is 456 mp and can be interrupted while cast.

These skills are doing piss poor damage for the time and cost. I would like to encourage the GMs to please let the developers know that right now none of the magic skills are worth using other than fire arrow.

If I did a mp per damage comparison with some times the result would be:
FA = 22.7 in .5sec
LL = 5.4 in 2sec (note that the damage registers a little while after)
FB = 8.7 in 11 sec (cast + duration)
C = 9.3 in 13.5 sec (cast + duration)
BA = 8.7 in 2.5 sec (but remeber that you must wait for all 4 balls to hit so its a bit longer than 2.5 secs. I estimate roughly 4 secs total).

Anyway these number are absurd and point to the fact that the developers have made a bunch of useless skills. The damage of these skills have to made appropriate to their mp usage and time taken to use them.

It is basic mmo common sense that the higher up the tree a skill is and the harder/more it takes to get it the more usefull it becomes. Obviously Rappelz does not seem to follow that kind of thinking since it seems that the higher up the skill tree you go there can be instances of skills that are less usefull than starting skills.

DOTs have to be revised. If you look at the length of time they take to do their work its silly that they do so little damage.

I know you guys had a post for this already and I guess I'm a bit too late but seeing as how things have been delayed/whatever please take this information into consideration. Perhaps a different suggestion would be if these skills are not going to give better damage, why not allow them to inflict status effects e.g. decreased accy/maccy for corruption and deceased patk/matk for fireball. As for Bloody Arrow its a NUKE. It supposed to do huge damage for its cost and time. Give it another 4 balls. That makes the damage 8000. After all it has a 2min cool down and can rape a bsums mp bar, its not like youre going to be spamming it!

[rayutasu]

It's pretty much the same for warlock and bishop farming.
Using fa/lb and energy beat respectively.
Cm actually can have some variation while farming while still using spells that are worth the mp:damage.
Although you might use a longer casting spell as a opening one.
It's more the fact that all the other spells have a long cast time and a bad mp:damage.
If they had just one, they might be more useful.

[ad2466]

They aren't entirely useless...

I do agree DOTs are crap in this game but they are good in slowing down casters and interrupting their long casts e.g. DA.

Bloody Arrow is really worthless in a sense but if you have nightmared someone and you want to deal burst damage to it, BA is the way to do it (unfortunately, the only way to do it as a BS). You don't want to wake up someone who was waiting for the time to run out so he can instacast you something else instead.

Chip + FA is the only thing worthwhile on a magic BS while DDing... Nightmare is CC, and DOT is just slowing down hp regen and spell interruption etc, BA for burst damage. Though I do agree they are pointless to use in the fields they do serve some purpose in the game, though I prefer to have stronger damage of course...

I doubt BA is only 4k damage though... FA uses only 70% of your matk + a little base damage per cast, for BA I think its coefficient is the same as DA: 50% + base damage, which each lvl increasing the base damage. 5 hits (if all lands) is 250% matk +1k base damage, and all that in 2.5 seconds, you probably don't have that much time casting 4 FAs just to reach there, especially in the arena. I'm pretty sure the base damage on BA per hit is higher than a FA's, so you really degraded BA a bit. ^^ (I meant a lv20 BA vs a lv20 FA btw)

4 FAs = 0.5+0.8 (ca and co)*4 = 5.2, about 6 seconds if you include reaction time. Though BA does give burst damage its mp cost is indeed too high (which is why I think BA needs more damage to make up for its mp costs). Either ways I'm just making a point that the skills aren't useless at all...

In fact, if you want to look at useless skills how about:
Scream of the Underworld
Blood of the Underworld (lv2 and up)

SotU totally sucks... I used a lv1 and couldn't kill the lv20 kentas outside laksy (I grouped up about 20 of them and used scream), in fact couldn't fall their hp down to half even... I guess it's bugged. Might as well remove it and give weaker versions of the 2nd job Auras to sorcerors. (This reminds me of my dm using AOEs on these kentas, I used lv2 Fire Field and Lightning Field 3 times and didn't kill them, and it costed me 1k mp in total, and 2k hp for taking those 30 dmg per hit, in the end i cbf and killed them with FA/LB.)

BotU is good I must say. Lv1 heals all my hp and the 50 mp used to cast it gets returned to me too. But Lv2 and up... I don't think the cooldown is reduced, just +10 mp cost and +10 mp recovery per lv, same hp regen, why the hell would I lvl it? (right now it's sitting at lv 3 on my BS, and I use a lv 1 all the time)

[rayutasu]

Doesn't it give a short term defense buff also?
Which is probably what goes up as skill level does.

[ichat3]

Maxed Bloody Arrow does roughly 4k damage with me. So yes its damage does suck immensely. I believe its roughly 900-1000 damage per ball and 4 balls in all.

Now bloody arrow is easily interrupted so most likely you are going to cast nightmare first. Max nightmare uses 230 mp and takes 0.9 seconds to cast. Now you can either use corruption since its DOT doesn't interrupt nightmare or go straight for bloody arrow. If you use corruption maxed add another 1.5 seconds and 215 mp. Finally finish off with bloody arrow which takes 2.5 seconds to cast and uses 456 mp.

Your combo has just taken 4.9 seconds (perfect timing) of casting and used 901 mp to dish out roughly 6000 damage in about 12.9 seconds (takes 12/13 seconds for corruption to end).

Now consider that a level 71 red pixie with a r3 lvl 1 + 0 2h staff can dish out roughly 12k+ damage (on a BS alone, no other buffs but mine) in under 4 seconds (using 3 damage spells) and barely move its mp bar.

My complaint is not even about the amount of damage since a dual weilding BS on auras is one of the most damaging classes in the game.

My complaint is that the skills should do something more useful for the time/cost involved like the debuffs I mentioned.

All of the Underworld Spells are nice! Blood Gives you a second life but at the expense of 1 pet and has a huge cooldown. Might gives you better def and attk but at the expense of you pets def and atk. Scream kills your pet before a mob could (hence saving xp) while still doing some decent damage (at least in PvP it does but then again if the pet dies in PvP it does not lose xp). Heavy cost but nice returns. On the other hand the spells I have pointed out have medium-heavy cost but offer very little in return.

[rayutasu]

Maxed Bloody Arrow does roughly 4k damage with me. So yes its damage does suck immensely. I believe its roughly 900-1000 damage per ball and 4 balls in all.

Now bloody arrow is easily interrupted so most likely you are going to cast nightmare first. Max nightmare uses 230 mp and takes 0.9 seconds to cast. Now you can either use corruption since its DOT doesn't interrupt nightmare or go straight for bloody arrow. If you use corruption maxed add another 1.5 seconds and 215 mp. Finally finish off with bloody arrow which takes 2.5 seconds to cast and uses 456 mp.

Your combo has just taken 4.9 seconds (perfect timing) of casting and used 901 mp to dish out roughly 6000 damage in about 12.9 seconds (takes 12/13 seconds for corruption to end).

Now consider that a level 71 red pixie with a r3 lvl 1 + 0 2h staff can dish out roughly 12k+ damage (on a BS alone, no other buffs but mine) in under 4 seconds (using 3 damage spells) and barely move its mp bar.

My complaint is not even about the amount of damage since a dual weilding BS on auras is one of the most damaging classes in the game.

My complaint is that the skills should do something more useful for the time/cost involved like the debuffs I mentioned.

All of the Underworld Spells are nice! Blood Gives you a second life but at the expense of 1 pet and has a huge cooldown. Might gives you better def and attk but at the expense of you pets def and atk. Scream kills your pet before a mob could (hence saving xp) while still doing some decent damage (at least in PvP it does but then again if the pet dies in PvP it does not lose xp). Heavy cost but nice returns. On the other hand the spells I have pointed out have medium-heavy cost but offer very little in return.

Weird, my bloody arrow has 6-7 arrows.
And using level 1 nm should be fine in most cases, the only discernible difference between 1 and 10 i can see might be the mdef they take off.
And sure, a red pixie does more damage, but it's a pet.
Meaning you wouldn't be able to use another pet in it's place.
So it's not really a good comparison.
Scream's not really good for saving a pet, it has a much longer cast time than recalling, doesn't it?

[ichat3]

There is a reason why most bsums if not all except me at my level use a dirk and shield.

I could quibble about the specifics but I am taking the time to point out the deficiencies. If you are ok with how it works then fine for you, but for me those skills are all a waste of time. I'm not going to get into another numbers argument. As a level 112 battle summoner who has decent PvP experience I am stating that the skills in question:
Fireball
Bloody Arrow
Corruption
Life Leech
are all pretty much useless because the returns (in this instance the damage) are not worth it, based on what you give put in, that is, cast time and mana.

I'm not talking paper talk here or paper duels. This based on many PvP matches at my level. My damage output went up tremendously and my mp usage went down tremendously from the moment I realised that those skills were serving 0 purpose in battle. Even life leech is wasting time because it is not every instance that nightmare is up and if it is not, the cast time on lifeleech is long enough that an opponent can kill you before you even finish casting the spell. Thats another issue you seem not to take into consideration, especially versus other dual summoners, spell casting is very risky especially where long cast times are involved. The 2 sec cast time of life leech can easily become 5-10 seconds (if you keep trying instead of aborting and kiting) just from the oponent hitting you! Keep it real, in the arena a melee class IS going to get near and IS going to be hitting you! Even in that respect fire arrow is still your best offense.

From a distance, once again I can fire off enough fire arrows to make your bloody arrow + corruption damage look shoddy!Not theoretical stuff, the real deal. Im not arguing, those spells need to be revisited because they are not worth the effort.

Even from a farming perspective using those spells is plain mp sucking because with 3/4 auras running and constant dual summoning you will constantly be drinking mp pots/scrolls/teas to keep your mp up. In that time a dirk + shield bs does not have to drink anything at all and just keep going and going. In fact farming with a 2h staff is quite frankly stupid but I do it because I like magic. Guess that makes me stupid.

Anyway, you are defending these spells as if you believe them to be worthwhile when clearly they are not. They serve 0 purpose. They use too much mp, and take too much time to use for the little damage they produce.

The one point I may concede on and certainly will look at when I get home is using level 1 nightmare. Afterall I do have a level 112 Siren which has a better version of that skill anyway. But even then, I wont be using corruption because in 2 fire arrows I would have done the same amount of damage and only used 80 mp (mine is +2).

The solution is plain and simple. Giving those skills debuffs would instantly make them far more attractive than they currently are. Furthermore because of the cast/cool times they certainly would not be that spammable.

Thats all I'm saying .

[rayutasu]

I'm not saying bloody arrow is amazing, but it is better than you're making it out to be.
If you nightmare someone, you might as well go ahead and use it, you aren't losing anything except mp.
Time isn't really a issue because nightmare breaks as soon as they're damaged.
And life leech is useful no matter what, and it's not for the damage.
Though, i was mainly referring to pve, i guess you were mainly talking about duels.
Fireball and corruption are pretty useless though.
And yes, i'm primarily dagger too, but sorcs are made to be versatile, so i have a staff with me all the time also.

[ultimatemx]

Welcome to Battle Summonerdom.
We get the weakest skills from DM and strider thrown into one class, with pet skills and 1 magic and 1 melee attack that is ours alone, well two magic attacks if you count scream, but lets be honest, does any one have a useful application for that skill, ever? And if you say saving a pet... I'll rant at you.
In my humble opinion we were never meant to be full melee or full mage builds, at least not in epic 4.
Why else are we given all these dirk and mage skills?

You ask alot of the PvPers, and the best Assassins are the ones who use a crossbow and dual swords/dirks. The same strategy can be applied to a sorc. Staff > Sleep > DoT > Nuke > Dirk > Double impact etc.
Hell the only reason I don't have an r5 staff, for offensive purposes, is because they cost too damn much and are ridiculously rare. Even so, the DP potential of magic as a one off attack is still valid, not to mention the amount of chips you save pulling with fire arrows. Ultimately with Auras, pass damage, and support toggles, you don't have enough regen to support a full mage build.

[rayutasu]

No, we're not specialized in either, but we're decent at both.
Which allows people to pick, magic isn't that great, but it's still a option.
Which fits with everything else about sorc, we're the most versatile of the pet classes.

[pluberus1]

This needs to be posted o the general forum ^^. Anyways, E5 is supposedly brining an increase in skill damage.

[spence]

I think this is the number one rule:

Ultimately with Auras, pass damage, and support toggles, you don't have enough regen to support a full mage build.