The new spellweaver.

[steebs]

Originally Posted by _Rage_

was great change for the game.remembering times when SW ruled in pvp and ranger had nothing to defend with was awful. now along with marking bird or net,adrenaline and wolves bit evened it out.. you say SW is weak now eh? don't think so.its just more balanced in pvp aganist other classes now. i will take the ranger example.yes it deals bit more base damage than spellweaver with precision shot. however its only class vulnerable to armor that weakens your damage done to others by 30-40% and if opponnent blocks.. well you barely deal anything at all.

spellweavers ignore armor and deal their spells with full power,also they have plenty powerful AoE spells.and ranger got just lame scatter shot dealing 40% base damage.
Also lets take example of the most basic attacks the hunting arrow and magic missle. hunting arrow deals 50% base damage and costs 5concentration for each shot while magic missle deals 60% base damage [+25% after lv 10 talent],doesn't cost any mana to use,oppossitely it gives you 5 mana for each hit made by it.

you guys just whining because you can't spam insanely powerful spells anymore that hit not just 1-2 targets like ranger but lots.developers did great job balancing the game and deserve a medal for this.if earlier stuff would return rangers and dragon knights would be angry because they couldn't withstand their damage and would be forced to run in circles trying to avoid hits.i know this as i played before that update..ranger was completelly powerless aganist SW.marking stun and wolves somewhat evened it out however still at lv 10-29 pvps SW easily defeat rangers because they not yet have access to those abillities.

mind in this- rangers and dragonknights stuns are avoidable and not instant like SW frost wind and frost nova they immediatly congeal you not allowing to avoid that. and after you're frozen they just keep attacking you.if thats not enough usually some another guy from opposing team come and stun you 2nd time.that means only 1 thing-your character just died.

Dear Rage,

Please go and play Diablo for a while, in particular D2/LOD and D3. Then come back and tell me that the characters in that game are throttled by the devs insane need to keep PvP happy.

PvP has its own server. Put throttled charaters for the PvP freaks on that. The other servers, leave the chars alone. They were obviously intended to be PvE sites, therefore leave them at that!

[jcdenton01]

After extensively playing the game now, I still disagree with how things have been done. Rather than 'yell at a brick wall' that the devs have put up, I've adapted my playstyle to the changes. I'm still unhappy about them but its w/e. Outside of Lightning Strike (and Destruction at later levels), SWs still lack a really good single-target long-cast nuke.

Basically, our version of PyroBlast (from WoW), our version of Inferno (from Aion), our long-cast-time nuke that makes us vulnerable as hell but once we get it off it pretty much tears apart anything in our path.

The mechanics of spellcasting and mana could've been reworked to be different from rangers, yet still allow for some sense of balance. Adjusting cooldowns (cd) instead of making us run outta mana would even balance out PvP a bit better.

As an example:
On the old system I could spam fireballs pretty much nonstop while drinking mana pots and laughing gleefully. In the new system I get 3 fireballs before I go OOM. In a revised system, I could get a short one or two second cd between fireballs so I'm not spamming them nonstop in arena. Outside the arena, the fireballs would still work fine. Adjusting the COOLDOWNS of abilities inside the PvP arena instead of messing with the DAMAGE or MECHANICS of those abilities is something that could satisfy both PvP and PvE diehard fans. This is Game Design 101, not something terribly hard to figure out. Get a very simple message (or an NPC that tells you) that all your damage-dealing abilities now have X seconds cd added to them in arena. Adjust as needed for flavor and context.
These nerfs hurt more in PvE (swarms of mobs pretty much nonstop) than they should. The kinisthetics of being a 'mage' class and having to run around and kite like a ranger just leads to 'gameplay dissonance' and reminds us 'HEY YOU ARE JUST PLAYING A GAME' while breaking immersion.
Not to mention all the (potential) money lost from cash shop sales of the instant-regen mana potions. Having cooldowns added in the PvP arena wouldn't require nerfing anything else.

We had health orbs drop, but no mana orbs. Mana orbs (only for SW) restoring 25% or 50% of base mana (or whatever values are appropriate) is something that would've helped with the mana issues without such a drastic core-system change for an entire class. Even under the old system I never had issues with running out of mana potions. I'd go into a dungeon without any and exit out with more than I could carry, since mobs dropped them so often.

This entire system could easily be changed. Mana orbs dropping could easily be added (since the mechanics are already in there, just change the type) and perhaps even put in rage/concentration orbs for DKs/Rangers. Bingo, satisfy all 3 classes with minimal work/effort! The rage/concentration orbs could allow those classes an extra boost to use some of their more powerful abilities back to back (in PvE) instead of waiting for regen.

As for mana potions taking up inventory space, well we sure could have (all) classes use a dedicated 'quest items' tab in their inventory. The space is there and such quest-only items are already clearly marked. Add that in for everyone and add in a 'mana potions' tab for SWs. Maybe also add in a 'rage potion' for DKs and 'concentration potion' for Rangers. Again, the CDs being added/increased in the PvP arena means none of these changes would affect (ranked) PvP. As for World PvP on Balor you could ask your players if making such items dungeon-use-only on that server would suffice. There ya go.

[Malestrom]

I agree with most of the comments that the SW is under-powered/weak compared to the other classes along with a low mana pool. Aka, we still remain nerfed. As a lvl 40 SW in the parallel dungeons, i've basically become a support role that uses ice spells (frost nova, ice wind) to buy time and slow mobs down while the other classes wipe them out. In no way should our class have become this where we can't dish it out like the others in battle. We have low armor/dmg. We should not have to run around hiding most of the time, jumping here and there to survive and get attacks off while trying to avoid being 1 or 2 shotted. At least throw us a bone. Now with the multiple characters we can now use, I think you'll see SW's fall to the wayside and why shouldn't they. The only reason most of us are still utilizing them is because we've already put the work into them to get them to 40 and geared as we push our way through the parallels.

What's even sadder is the fact that this class has almost an 80% disapproval rating since the change about 5 months ago and the developers have failed to do anything about it and make any changes for us. It really shows how much they care about our concerns i guess.

[sherbertmachine]

I've only been playing this game for probably a month now and my first toon was a SW, and obviously I didn't have the luxury of playing the old style SW's, what I can tell you is my experience with this "new" SW.

I've been playing about 99% solo and using the highest green essences i can buy for my level, for the sake of learning/exploring etc. I just decided it was easier to be solo since the chat system is a little wonky still from the couple times I tried it. I took it slow and crept along when needed and did lots of active dodging/timing to survive. I really wish there was an LFM/PUG system here that would be great

I was initially overwhelmed with how they played because I only got to get off 3 fireballs then run around and ball up the masses of mobs again and wait for my mana to come back, and lets not even talk about how the red aura enemies hit for 200-400+ damage at level 14-15! Coupled with well placed mobs soaking my fireballs and only killing 1-2 mobs at a time...I almost gave up on my poor SW at this point, so many deaths :P

I struggled on until i got chain lightning started to grind in silfmoor and i felt things were getting easier. I can reliably hit virtually all the enemies that are coming after me and not worry about their placement and i have frost wind/ice nova/watchman to help crowd control as well. Destruction is a nice touch but the cooldown is way too long for a much needed high damage spell for the tough guys (cant expect us to wait for the cooldown improvement at level 40 in the talent tree for a level 24(?) spell?

Next was burning coast/fortress teganswell and the other neighboring areas, I felt quite weak again until i was about level 30. Between singularity (which i dont think is really helping all that much) + watchman and the stunning effect for chain lightning granted from the talent tree I felt somewhat safe again.

Then on totorstrond and i'm getting torn up again thanks to the charging barbarians :P
I'm currently at level 33 and leveling around the eternal watch. Granted I haven't capped a SW yet I feel I got a pretty good feel for what the devs intended for them, and that is group play I'm pretty confident in capping with less speed bumps than previous level brackets but i'm taking a break from my SW for a little bit to try out the DK's. So far they steamroll through everything (level 19 atm).

I couldn't see myself relying on mana potions playing a SW and in fact i didn't even see my first mana potion until i got to torstrond. So I don't mind waiting 5 seconds or so to get back full mana as long as I can set up proper defenses/distance. I may update this with my last stretch when i get back to playing my SW. Great game btw devs.

[_Xanatos_]

Although I tried all 3 classes (I have a lv. 40 spellweaver and ranger, and a lv 33 dragonknight), the spellweaver is my favourite. But in light of the permanent nerfings, I think I will stop playing now.

I came to see now that complaining about the spellweaver is futile. Since spring, the spellweaver has been nerfed on a couple of occasions. Dragonknights have been tweaked a bit too, whereas rangers have been made stronger and stronger. I can’t help getting the impression that the developers play rangers and hate spellweavers. After so many complaints from the players and after promising us that they will improve the spellweaver, one of the latest patches nerfed the spellweaver yet again! Maybe some players did not notice, but there are 2 changes: magic missile has a reduced range now (for ex. you can’t shoot from certain balconies in the Catacombs on mobs down below anymore; on a side note rangers can do that, their range has remained the same) and our ice missile not only has a new look, but it’s nearly impossible to hit more than one enemy with it anymore, no matter how close they are to each other (the old ice missile, could hit 2, sometimes even 3 enemies, if they were close enough to each other).

[Warrax]

Agree, that SW is now too much bound with little mana reserve, and spells.
Maybe I would introduce more +maxmana items in game, so they could basicaly raise mana to 125 quite easily in moderate levels (15-25), or to 150 with better equipment. And get 175 to 200 on highest levels with very good equipment.
The spells should be also reworked a little.
Cannot help, but I like old SW much more. In very ancient times, with old essence system, I liked it more, with those physicals spells, that could be enhanced with colors and power. It just looked cool, and feeling was better. I also like to have meteor earlier. I would rather see destruction to be high level spell, with better abilities and damage, and get meteor in weaker version earlier.

[ancui999]

The update made this class more balanced and a little more challenging and fun. You now need more skill to use this class.