A few magics have turned out a little bit unbalanced with my proposed magic size affinities, so these small changes are to rebalance and make the size of these magics make more sense. In light of new information and three magics being taken out of the equation, I propose reasonable magic size affinity changes to Water Magic, Ice Magic, and Light Magic.
Water Magic
Size Affinity:1.3 -> 1.2
Because Water Magic already has solid base stats alongside its synergy potential, giving it this much size was an oversight. It should still remain an above average size magic though.
Ice Magic
Size Affinity:1.15 -> 1.3
Considering Snow Magic is 25% faster than Ice Magic, has the same damage affinity, clears more status effects, and can serve the same general purpose as Ice Magic to a broader extent, it would be fair to make Ice’s size one of the notable parts of the magic rather than being the same size as Snow Magic. Ice Magic already had its Bleeding status damage bonus reduced to 30%, and it would still have less speed and damage than Water Magic with this change. This would make Ice Magic a more reliable, effective alternative to other synergizing magics. Not really a gameplay reason, but when water freezes, it expands by approximately 9%, so as a bonus, this change would make logical sense.
Light Magic
Size Affinity:1.0 -> 1.1
The recent speed affinity buff and Crystal synergy to Light Magic were a great starts to making it balanced again, but it still needs just a bit more. Light Magic, with only a single synergy, is somewhat underpowered, with the lowest clash rating and lowest damage despite its lack of synergies. All of its stats except for speed (which is outstanding) are below average or low. Bumping up one of its stats to be at least close to average would help alleviate Light Magic’s weaknesses by itself.
If you have any additional feedback or counterarguments for these changes, please reply with your thoughts.
Ok with this one we have to be extremely careful so we don’t end up with a Water 2. I think the Water size change is reasonable and well warranted. Everybody has been calling for it and 1.3 down to 1.2 won’t suddenly make Water drop off the face of the planet.
With Ice though, I think you overlooked Ice’s potential with Frozen, as it’s the only magic that can initiate Frozen and also has a positive interaction with Frozen, which in itself opens up so many possibilities that other combos will not, but when compared with Explosion, you would see that Explosion can basically do almost all the things Ice can but better, and does in fact have 1.3x size. But, Ice also has +30% damage against bleeding and when comboed with its size that could be very threatening, so I think that is a dynamic that can be more considered. Also Frozen is generally better than Petrify so it also has an advantage there that changing magic size would directly factor into. You could still argue that Explosion’s generally better stats and ability to clear statuses would put it up to par but I think that when second magic releases Ice will be able to take much more advantage of these benefits than Explosion would be able to take advantage of stuff like clash rates, and even clearing statuses since even though it will help curb interactions, it will be less significant than the interactions themselves, especially when we only have 2 magics.
Final verdict: Probably 1.2-1.25x. I think this range of size buffs is reasonable. I honestly believe that even if Ice were to still be balanced with 1.3x size people would still complain that it’s broken because people will freak out about buffs as they come out than already existing stats. Honestly though even 1.3x probably wouldn’t be gamebreaking (still strong though), but we don’t want to get insane community backlash from this. However, from what I’ve said currently I think from taking the balanced approach it should still have less than 1.3x, at least as AO rolls out, it could change later.
Light’s size change could be decent but highballing it too much would just make it literally impossible to dodge light which would also factor into making blind stronger, so I’d be careful here. Not sure exactly how much I’d change Light’s size, maybe 1.1x. I’d probably have to get an opinion from somebody more capable at combat.
You make a fair point with Ice, but I’m still unsure how reliably Ice could capitalize with its potential self-synergy. Frozen only lasts for two seconds and a high number of magics can clear it easily by simply charging, or any magic can by just pressing a button. Typically, a player attempting to freeze you would be a fairly predictable strategy so it would be especially difficult to make use of it to the fullest extent unless you are caught off guard.
I think experimenting with Ice by giving it a 1.3 size affinity would be worthwhile. It could always be changed if it ends up being too strong, because Ice as is right now is underwhelming.
I used my magic size-defense build as a reference for buffing Light Magic. My kit included Hard Sunken Boots and Hard Sunken Armor to reliably compete in PvP with Light Magic alongside a few Powerful enchantments. The moderate amount of magic size made a huge difference to make up for Light’s low damage for more reliable hit frequency, so I thought it’d be fair to put it at the same size as Shadow to match its power as a magic without synergy.
fr, in it’s current state I feel like Light is literally just a worse version of wind. At the cost of 0.3 less speed, wind gets:
.05 more magic size
.1 more base damage
some decent synergies and charging status clears
funni knockback effect that messes up people sometimes
Giving light more speed and size would definitely help to set it apart from wind. Following the philosophy of Shadow as a magic that trades synergies for more stats I think Light should be statistically superior to Wind to make up for the lack of synergies.
I feel like Ice will benefit much more heavily than other magics with upcoming 2nd magic and that this in combination with a size buff probably won’t be a great recipe even considering the prior comparisons I made with Explosion magic. Right now it may seem underwhelming but probably not with the release of AO. Either way it’s probably better to slowly edge on and avoid community backlash than to make stupid changes considering
#1. We’ve already influenced stupid changes and that’s going to be a part of the reputation of testers for a long time now. It also says that we should probably be more careful and avoid making more drastic changes.
#2. Balance changes only happen every once in a while so if Ice becomes broken it will be REALLY broken and for a very long time before it gets a nerf.
Yeah but we still get the risk of superbuffing lost spells if we get any lost spells that synergize well with blind like Zone or Locking Blast, and it is a drastic size change for what is already the fastest magic, meaning it is already easy to hit. I don’t think this is too unreasonable though. Unlike with Ice we could probably do this without much consequence. I honestly think 1.1x is like the golden number for now and we could go up higher, but I’m less opposed to giving Light 1.15x than giving Ice 1.3x and I consider the viewpoint that it could probably be very positive (at least in the short term).
It’s can’t be the initiating magic, it’s the secondary magic when snow causes frozen on soaked targets.
Unless he meant initiated as in causing, in which case you’re right.
If it’s obviously broken on launch, there’s always the immediately following hotfixes. Given vetex is going over half a year without any real large scale testing, I’m sure TGR will have plenty of those.
Also vetex is planning to move to a bi-weekly update cycle, which means more regular opportunities for balance patches.
I’d much rather over-buff something and fix it later, than underbuff something and have it stay shit (but not quite shit enough to get more balance changes).
Light isn’t the only magic with blind (I’m pretty sure “magic themed blind” is the most common type of status effect), and if you’ve landed enough consecutive hits that your opponent actually can’t see, they’re probably dead.
I don’t think these kind of pseudo-synergies are going to be a serious factor in light’s viability.
More importantly however, I’d refer to your first point:
We’re about to get the update that significantly improves every magic in the game except light (and shadow). Light is already garbage as a solo magic - it’s going to need a pretty significant buff to keep up.
I don’t think ice should be as large as Earth and Light getting a size buff makes it both lose its uniqueness while still not being especially good, nobody’s complaining about missing a shot with light, most people hit a shit ton of shots with light, the problem is sheer lack of damage.