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Announce News Post #2361

Mage touchups, part 2

Written by: Keroc
Date: Wednesday, January 21st, 2015
Addressed to: Everyone


Hi folks,

Earlier on I pushed out some changes for Mages aimed at making
Crystalism and Tones more useful. I had mentioned at the time
that I was going to look into Elemancy and Sciomancy as well, and
today I'm happy to push those out to you.

Some of the changes here have been considered after watching a few
of you use the class within the Sect arena and at Foci fights. As
a result I have gone ahead and rebalanced some of the earlier
changes to make it a little more fair to fight against.

The rest mostly concerns Brands and making them a viable option for
Mages within 1v1 combat. I will leave it to the notes to explain
how it now works, I'm sure most of you Mages will be pretty excited
to have some active options again.

If you have any questions you'd like to ask me, feel free to drop
me a message. I'll be keeping an eye out as these changes play
through so don't be afraid to let me know how you feel!

General
=========================
- Renamed Tone balance to Sorcery balance.
- You can no longer INJECT underwater without the
waterbreathing defence.

Afflictions
=========================
- Agoraphobia/claustrophobia affliction combo changes:
* Lowered the chance of blackout to 20%, down from 25%.
* Lowered blackout duration to 3 seconds, down from 4.
* Increased mana drain from a flat 150 mana, to 8% of max.
- There is no more bonus damage from ablaze if you are set on
fire a second time. Instead, any fire damage received while
ablaze will increase the damage stacks on it by one.
* Infernal shroud will continue to cause bonus damage.
- Removed the cap on ablaze damage stacks.
* Newbies no longer gain damage stacks from the damage tick.
- Lowered the ablaze damage tick to 6 seconds, down from 10.

Crystalism
=========================
- Removed the Tone abilities for Altering and Cataclysm.
- Increased the number of gained facets from folding a pearl into
the Master Crystal to 12, up from 7.

Elemancy/Sciomancy
=========================
- Brands have had their requirements for casting reworked:
* Windbrand and Mistbrand now require four unique afflictions
upon the target, curable by either herbs or slices, in order
to cast.
* Stonebrand and Emberbrand now require your target to be below
60% of their max health in order to cast.
* Shadowbrand and Spiritbrand continue to require 4 seconds
of channeling in order to be casted.
- The Brand effects once placed have also been reworked:
* Windbrand and Mistbrand now passively give one of the four
original afflictions met for the brand's casting criteria to
the target every 8 seconds.
* Stonebrand and Emberbrand now increase the balance time of all
magical shield granting abilities by 1 second.
* Shadowbrand and Spiritbrand continue to burn their target for
30% of all mana drained or used.
- Increased the lifetime upon Brands that are placed after the
first and second Brandings.
* Previously the second placed Brand lasted 100 seconds, it now
lasts 115 seconds.
* The third Brand was 50 seconds, it is now 80 seconds.
- Staffcast now imparts an elemental weakness identical to the
damage type you select.
* This weakness is applied after the damage, so the first hit will
not receive the damage bonus.
* This works the same way that Altering tone ability did, in that
any existing Brands upon the target will increase the potency
and that the amplification values remain the same.
- Delay can now be used with any ability in Elemancy/Sciomancy.
* Any damage ability that is delayed in this fashion will be
reduced by 40%.
* No delayed ability will work in conjunction with Cataclysm.
* Any ability captured by Replicate can also be used in conjunction
with Delay.
- Delay now costs sorcery balance in addition to equilibrium,
with the sorcery balance cost equal to the delayed time specified
plus 3 seconds.
- You can now cast skills that you have prepared with Delay.
- Lowered Delay equilibrium recovery time to 2 seconds, down from 3.
- Delay now uses a more precise method for measuring its delay time.
- Tsunami and Cloudburst no longer work underwater.
- Added 1 second of equilibrium loss on an unsuccessful use of
Absorb/Steal.
- Halved the mana cost on an unsuccessful use of Absorb/Steal.
- Replicate now requires sorcery balance, but doesn't consume it.
* Unless the stolen ability uses secondary/ability balance, then
it will consume the balance like normal.

Enchantment
=========================
- New Enchantment: Frostblast.
- Increased the damage caused by Firewall to make it a bit more
alluring to use over Icewalls.
- Firewall damage is now credited to the creator.

Penned by my hand on the 22nd of Haernos, in the year 439 MA.


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