Magic Wand Rework

[Vaneal Serozen]

Hello folks.

   I would like to suggest a rework for the magic wands given as a reward from Leverus' quest and the other way quests.  My approach is to first state where the wands are currently and where I propose the developers take them followed by an explanation of why. 

   Currently, the magic wands are a 1-handed weapon and give an additional +3, +5 or +7 levels in the magic way and +10 levels in a stat depending upon the rank of the wands (apprentice, adept or master).
   
        My suggestion is to keep the wands as 1-handed weapons remove the flat boost from the master wands and to give all the wands a multiplier. (apprentice, adept and master).  I propose a multiplier  of about 2%, 4% and 10% or 1.02, 1.04 and 1.10.  This multiplier will affect the level of the correspond magic way and the stat that the corresponding way is affected by the most.

Mechanics:

Unlike all other boost weapons this effect will only ever be able to be applied once per way.  This is prevent duel wielding wands of the same way. 

A master of a way should only ever be able to use 3 out of the 6 master wands.  Due to the wands being tradable, a system check will have to be made before the buff is applied to prevent players from using a wand that they are not allowed to but they can still use the apprentice or adepts wands.

         Now, as to why I have proposed this idea.  I have always felt that the master wand boost is very lack luster for the amount of work gone into getting it.  At first I thought that it should just get its boosts doubled.  Since it takes level 100 (maximum level being 200) to get, I don't think that is a valid solution as it will appear very powerful at first but will seem weaker and weaker as you get better.  Instead, I thought a item that grew more powerful as you grew more powerful would be more fitting of a master.  For the lower rank wands, I am thinking they should be given a multiplier and keep their a flat boost because when you are low level a multiplier is not going to do squat and the last thing I want to do is make things harder for the new players.   The inspiring idea was to make the master wand so that no matter what boost weapons a player has, he will always reach for his master wand when trying to get more power. 

         I encourage you to play around with the numbers and see how the multiplier will affect your levels.  According to my calculations, in the most extreme conditions the multiplier will yield 12 -14 levels more than standard boost weapons.  A nice increase but not ridiculous.   I hope the post was an interesting and thought provoking one.  Thanks for reading. 

[Bonifarzia]

I guess for a way master, a few more skill ranks are not all that useful indeed. This idea is nice, and maybe you want to discuss an even bigger change. For instance, I could imagine to lower the targets resistance - there's already at least one spell that does this. For someone who already has high way skill stats, that seems much more useful than a marginal increase in casting speed. I don't know.

[Vaneal Serozen]

I guess for a way master, a few more skill ranks are not all that useful indeed. This idea is nice, and maybe you want to discuss an even bigger change. For instance, I could imagine to lower the targets resistance - there's already at least one spell that does this. For someone who already has high way skill stats, that seems much more useful than a marginal increase in casting speed. I don't know.

Lowering the resistance of enemies when the master wand is equipped is a very interesting idea Boni.  I would some day like to see a maximum magic resistance for monsters put into effect so there is none of this 70+% damage resistance that renders some magic ways almost useless in some encounters.  I almost wonder if this topic would not be worthy of its own forum post altogether.   

[Bonifarzia]

Hehe, I really did not mean to derail your topic, rather, I think that your suggestion to redesign wand mechanics is the best way to lower resistances. Discussing the actual effect of higher skill ranks gets complicated, but higher ranks will certainly have their use as well.

[Eonwind]

A rework on the magic wands is on our to do list as part of a bigger project to finally complete the magic ways gameplay and mastery bonuses. As to how this will be done has not been decided yet.
Generally speaking I'm not a fan of having skill ranks exceeding far too much the ordinary cap (200).