Mechanic Assumptions - Sorcerer

[Adophnil]

The thread that contained most of the dark magic musings sort of derailed into another conversation. That being said I wanted to post a separate idea, which is merely a speculation.

I agree entirely with Garthriks speculation that dark magic has to have an intelligent design otherwise it will be a huge negative. The way I believe it may work is that you have a standardized list of abilities. This being your core, your mastery bought abilities, your morale abilities, and so on and so forth. They will work the same every single time, unless you opt to invoke dark magic. Using dark magic will simultaneously increase a tiered meter, which will increase your damage, but also do intermittent or random levels of damage to you that increase proportionally until you "bleed" it off with time.

But hey, I see some holes in my own proposal, although I think it'd make for a very interesting class. Heres to RDPS casters!

[impulsebooks]

I think you're right about that, but the damage won't be a explosion (unfourtunately) it will be a debuff on the sorcerer. The DOT will be something like 20dmg/sec over 10 secs is my guess. So if you have healer support go for it, but if you don't and don't have a full health bar think very carefully. :)

[Arkane]

I think it will be a direct damage effect when you hurt yourself.

[Lemures]

My speculation for the system is that it will take a percentage of your health. They may make it where you can never actually die from casting spells, only injuries. If it takes a percentage of your health when the magic bullet goes off, say 25%, then the lower your health the less effect the magic bullet is. Of course if you have full health 25% can hurt pretty bad dropping 1/4th off in one shot.
I also think there will be a meter, showing how much dark magic is ebbing and flowing off of you, so you'll know your chances of being hurt. But of course that is a chance, it could still happen your first spell cast.
The other percentage option would be smaller, but a percentage of your total health. Say, 15%. But now, it's 15% no matter how much your Current health is at, so if you have 9% of your total health, you get the magic bullet... 15% off and you be dead. This is just off the top of my head at a way of doing this...

[Arkane]

My speculation for the system is that it will take a percentage of your health. They may make it where you can never actually die from casting spells, only injuries. If it takes a percentage of your health when the magic bullet goes off, say 25%, then the lower your health the less effect the magic bullet is. Of course if you have full health 25% can hurt pretty bad dropping 1/4th off in one shot.
I also think there will be a meter, showing how much dark magic is ebbing and flowing off of you, so you'll know your chances of being hurt. But of course that is a chance, it could still happen your first spell cast.
The other percentage option would be smaller, but a percentage of your total health. Say, 15%. But now, it's 15% no matter how much your Current health is at, so if you have 9% of your total health, you get the magic bullet... 15% off and you be dead. This is just off the top of my head at a way of doing this...
I would think you COULD kill yourself over extended use of Dark Magic. If it only took off a percentage of your current health, then once they got low on health they could just go nuts and spam cast making them crazy death machines emitting completely overpowered spells because their bar would be more than full at this point. Then, before somebody targets the Sorc, a healer could heal him back to full and watch him take out more players with ease. You can quote me on this just like my responses in the debate of is Sorc RDPS or Support, you will be able to kill yourself if you get reckless or are trying to kill yourself.

[Zante]

All we can do is speculate for the time being as Paul seems to get too worked up in his descriptions and enthusiam for each class to provide reliable info.


I'm not sure if Sorceres would get "Drain life" type spells, but to me, it would make sense from a mechanics standpoint if they did. That way, they can pump out some dark magic until half health or so, then drain someone's life until their healthbar is filled, then go back to the dark magic. Kind of like how WoW warlocks utilised lifetap/drain life.

[Doc Lumbago]

Arkane;569464']I would think you COULD kill yourself over extended use of Dark Magic. If it only took off a percentage of your current health, then once they got low on health they could just go nuts and spam cast making them crazy death machines emitting completely overpowered spells because their bar would be more than full at this point. Then, before somebody targets the Sorc, a healer could heal him back to full and watch him take out more players with ease. You can quote me on this just like my responses in the debate of is Sorc RDPS or Support, you will be able to kill yourself if you get reckless or are trying to kill yourself.

Yup
I totally agree.
Best way for a russian rullet mechanic would be some kind of death-bar
Death-Bar full = you got a 99% chance the next spell will be your last one ( you still got a 1% chance to cast an ultimately ultra death spel and get away with it , it s RULLET after all)
then there are maybe 3 kinds of spells
High Effect Spells: filling your death bar to 100% in very short time
(maybe they can only be used totally safely when your Death Bar is 0%)
Medium Effect Spells: average increase of death bar, average effects
Low Effect Spells: almost no effect, but no increase of the Death Bar
( can be used safely even when the Death Bar is up to 100% )
These could also include some cloaking and fleeing device. It would definitely SUCK
to stand around waiting to cool off doing NOTHING

[Sinjin]

For me, it seems that Sorceress will work like any other class. Why change the mechanic that's build in other classes? (although in different forms the mechanic is still the same) So, sorcerer casts spells, their "meter" goes up. The more the meter has gone up, the more powerfull spells you can cast. And the more powerfull the spell, the more change to die.

I don't believe there will be any health loss. This would be very bad for 1on1 balance since sorcerers will most likely have low hp to start with. So even if you are able to cast your most effective spells with high cost, and propably hurt the enemy, you will most likely die anyway. And even if you do kill him, you are gimped next 20s(?). (to get full health)

Some life draining mechanic to counterbalance that would be my quess if health decrease would ever be introduced, like someone in this thread has mentioned.

edit: now that i think of it, seems like death is kinda harsh, and even with 30% chance it will happen quite often. So some health loss do seem a good idea, but i still think the general workings of "meters" is the correct one. And I don't believe there will be any multipliers to normal spells either.