I play a mage. Yes, there are players who can whip me in seconds if I'm attacked (I dislike and avoid PvP when possible). Yet, when facing any non-player, it's great that spell attacks always hit target (excluding magic resistance), regardless of dex differences. So, to balance mages, I'd look to do a few other things:
1) allow mages to equip some type of armor (2nd glove?) in other hand. item should have a min level and level cap (like level 499): I agree, some mages are too powerful, so why add unchecked defense?
2) allow mages to equip spells so they don't waste pack space. yes, players could ideally carry 4-5 more pots. but, for others, they could carry 4-5 mats for crafting or items to sell
3) introduce +2 and +3 walking boots (all characters) with level requirements
Basically, "balancing" characters is more than looking at raw damage!
It's good to be the king!
-- History of the World - Part I (1981)
(though I disagree about the faster boots... anything more than what we currently have is simply too fast - especially think of a dwarf, running on speed pot and faster boots :p - unless the entire speed mechanic was reworked, but then that's a different conversation entirely)
I thank blitzcraig for being comprehensive over this matter.. but i know its up to comp to make these changes but still.. would be happy to have a new spell in game.. so that we all mages can fight without the fear of someone blocking.. tell you what guys.. im a lvl 1300.
i lost many many rare gears in pvp i would never thought ill drop them.. deliberate intervention..and wow you guys can tell me how come a 2000 archer now can wear shield 2k.. a 1500 +2 bow got 1800 damage.. wow .. 2k +2 2200
Mages staff at 2k+2 only 2000 man..seriously who plays str rather than mana..each time attacking someone with ballistas.. they can sit down n relax n have fun cause of their resistance.. --'' Many wont agree because they simply dont like mages..
I would agree that mage + gear should work differently
focusing more on mana than str for example
as it's very rare that a mage uses str - unless they're low level, or just having fun
(ya try an all str over mana build sometime, it's funny)
Playing on the mage I noticed 4 huge minuses:
1)Heal block(at the expense of which it is possible to kill the magician and it must be).
2)The class melee has a potion of acceleration that lets run away on red hp to heal to full hp and return to attack(this is very angry magician and he can not do anything with this without a friend of the near class who can keep him stunned and still he will not lose pvp but will simply quit the game and remain alive).
3)Siege give full invulnerability in pvp against the magician and I myself became convinced of this in practice.Looking at how 834 ogres with sieges can not kill 3000-3500 mages and ogres just stayed on full hp made me laugh.
4)And most important is the lack of hp from the magician, so you can throw the stats into armor and this will help but only in pvp.In this regard, the magician can not enter the clan buildings of level 2850 with fire shells up to 10,000 lvl of his magician when he can have more than 2b hp and have at least some damage due to at least 10k stats in mana because half have to spend in arm.
Meanwhile, as other races will be enough 3-5k lvl just to park the siege and be useful(and the magician can also create a siege, but they have too weak characteristics of hp and damage and from them there is practically no use if compared with the siege of the swordman and ogre).
And by the way on full hp my 4k mage had 70k hp without stats in the armor do not know whether this is adequate.
And so go to the very idea perhaps it would not be bad if the magician could get for pumping statistics into mana this should be somewhere 50% or 25% of the increment of HP for one + 1str.
I think it will help the same way for mages who just started playing FT.
in my opinion the two biggest issues mentioned in the recent posts here are the need for a self heal spell and fixing the issue with siege shields... so much is being done in FT right now, hopefully these might make the list too (though there are still 2 other things that are much higher priority imnho, but they aren't about balance so I won't bring them up here lol)