[Autumn]

with 2 res, as long as I maintain distance from an evoker, currently there's little counterplay an evoker can do against a spellthief, and by little, I do mean there's very little an evoker can do if there's a spellthief in the enemy's party, if only because of Spell Snatch, or snatch spell, I can't tell which, but it's the one where you queue up a status effect, negate magic completely and steal it from the enemy.

All I ask for is a simple change, the skill itself already provides you with stealing their magic ability and limiting them from using it again for the rest of the battle, I believe this skill does not need to negate damage completely, a spellthief hard counters evoker just by existing, and that's not okay.

Instead you should take either:
1) Full damage
2) Reduced Damage based on rank. (Rank*5 would mean you would only reduce the damage of the spell used by 25%, etc.)

Discuss/Agree/disagree.

[Trexmaster]

Fully agree. I think reduced damage would be the way to go so they're -probably- not insta-gibbed by whatever they steal, and so a mage can't just nuke them for using it anyways.

Completely negating -and- stealing the skill is a bit much. Having such a hard counter discourages people even playing a mage if someone can just decide to slap on Spellthief and never fail to win against them.

So, this is a step in the right direction.

[Egil]

+1

[Raigen.Convict]

I didn't even realise this was a thing so yes I whole-heartedly agree, because let's also think about people who AREN'T Evokers too... This is the hardest counter I can think of to like 90% of youkai, and anyone who can't use charge-mind.

[iDarkCara]

Raigen.Convict » Tue May 17, 2016 10:07 pm[/url]"]... This is the hardest counter I can think of to like 90% of youkai.

Youkai can't be stolen anymore.

--

I don't believe the counter to dealing with a spellthief as an evoker should be spellthief yourself. I would suggest a limit on how many spells you can steal per battle and impose a once per battle on Snatch Spell. I am not in favor of changing Snatch Spell to take full damage or even reduced damage from a spell (and then steal it) but more so an overall nerf to Snatch Spell's M cost to 6m.

Breaking it down. @6m cost, Snatch Spell no longer is a 3m Spell shield. @6m you keep the skills primary intention, while also giving a drawback to using it to shield from CM (for 3m). @6m, you've now effectively wasted your turn and it won't work against someone who's paying attention. I personally have never seen a mage without access to a spell that won't use up CM if they really want to use their spell.

While I'm not in favor of stacking the odds further against a less-common class (Evoker has seen better days), I am also not in favor of taking away a key identity of another class. Despite it being a hard counter to a mage.

[Chaos]

Right now, the main reason why Snatch Spell looks unstoppable is because it's a 3M move with no real strings attached. I think it should be treated the same way as Create Shade: It requires 3M minimum, but consumes all momentum on use. That, or like Cara suggested, give it a 6M cost. With a Snatch Spell that will eat up a turn, opponents are capable of counteracting its use. If the FP cost seems a tad cheap, then bump that up as well (but not to some 50+ FP).

On the side, Spellthief is a hard counter/nightmare to anything that's overly reliant on Spells. It's the same way with guns; if you focus solely on a certain thing and your enemy/enemies are built against it, your loss is close to guaranteed. This is the major flaw found in anything that goes 'screw variety, I will be very good in this one thing'. The prime method to stop that issue is, you guessed it, variety. In fact, if you mixed up your Spells with other Skills, I'm pretty sure that few would be so keen on keeping their Snatch Spell up.

[MegaBlues]

A gun is a weapon.

A spell is a whole avenue of dealing damage.

Being able to negate a gun is much different than being able to negate a spell. (not to mention that the counters to spells are much more numerous and potent than the counters to guns)

But yes, I think that Snatch Spell should consume all remaining momentum, because it's pretty akin to Guard. Maybe a potency reduction based on missing momentum as well.

[Autumn]

Chaos » Tue May 17, 2016 9:05 pm[/url]"]
P.S. Let's also not forget that a guaranteed negation from Snatch Spell requires at least 50 WIL. So you're not going to see anyone that dumps WIL (or doesn't even focus on WIL, really) reliably get negations off in the first place.

Blue steal requires a WIL scaling, Snatch Spell flat out just negates magic and steals that spell, no stat scaling involved, This could be subsituted if the % chance to negate the spell was based on your RES if anything, and the base chance being 30-40 at max, the fact it flat out negates ALL damage on the cast of a magic is unfair.

Edit: Not many spellthiefs will be going will-less in the first place either, the class sorta promotes being wil/ski/cel/luc based

[Kameron8]

I'm not...Entirely sure people are understanding why Snatch Spell is so backbreaking against casters. The issue with this kind of ability is that against someone who uses nothing but spells, you will be essentially immortal by using your first 3 momentum to flee if they try to get in range of anything. Since there are very, very few spells that can strike someone an entire movement away, you're stuck either doing nothing, or running up and getting your spell taken. You can do something like wretched oil to consume it then cast Magaisendo across the map, but that will never kill someone at a large range with max health and evasion. Then you face the same problem I just mentioned, without Magaisendo in your spell list.

This is in a very similar vein to cobra, however with no facing requirements, no ability to stop it with a status effect, etcetera, there are far too many situations where a spellcaster can do literally nothing. Far more than should be acceptable, even if we're operating under the context of it being a 'counter'. I don't particularly think this skill can be balanced without a functionality shift or a momentum increase. So long as people can move the same turn they can snatch spell, this is going to completely cull any one versus one against a pure spellcaster.

Allowing some damage to go through snatch spell is an okay idea, but it will be inherently unfair across different spellcasting promotions. The reason for this is that if you have a reduction high enough that Evokers can't punch through a spellthief with Charge Mind, other classes without that level of damage will do essentially nothing. If you have a reduction that's more reasonable for every other class, Evokers will ignore the mechanic entirely and try to brute force through Evasion and Snatch Spell. Which can be fine, if that's a route people want to go.

tl;dr either a momentum change or a way to deal damage through snatch spell will be required to give any pure mage higher than a 0% win rate