[Senna]

So, with the new meta coming about, everything seems a lot different now. While Dev nailed some of the problems and made some class a lot more bearable, some nerfs were a little too much.

This nerfs I'm talking about is over-killing silence. Yes, he did target some of the heavy hitting that make running mages unfun but some other stuff got hit in the crossfire.

Now, let's just say we don't have a crazy amount of ways to stop a mage without praying to your god.

Fun statements aside, I believe some methods of silence are needed for some classes. From what I'm witnessing, the meta has come down to which mage has a conscience from which can burst down X target within a turn or two. While this isn't exactly bad? It forces and murders a lot of different play-styles as well as builds.

Add an Impure element bonus to the mix to add salt to the wound.

How to fix it? The return of SOME silence as well as a small adjustment to the talent!

Sonic Shell: Why do we need this back? While inflict checks are always a thing, people that stacks resistance is as well. It's not often someone with 200 status resistance will suffer at all from said silence. Due to the customize tomes, those who build this way will not be losing too much power or be punished too much for it. What to do? Simple! The problem with Sonic shell before was the fact that if someone had crit twice, that was it, they're unable to use magic. Instead of that, just like Ranger, tie their silence to overcharge (It replace Confusion with Silence if overcharged.). Whereas it will force the Magic gunner to decide if they wish to shut down the usage of other shells or not.

Sonic Arrow: This still silence! Yes but the risk to get that silence going is a bit too high. Not only if it an Inflict check, whether they were successful or failed is where the problem lays. If they fail, not only are they put on a CD which locks them off from other ranger Annorum skills, the entire attempt would be in vain. Suggestion? Simple, If the odds failed, it does not consume the Annorum status but put the skill itself on a 1-2 round CD. Perhaps a bonus? Each rank increase the percent of status inflict it allows.

Drowned Woman: While the youkai itself can be helpful, her range is not that good and nothing is really stopping a mage from deleting her from the battlefield the moment she is summoned or before she even gets into range. How to fix this? Grant the summoners to the ability to silence again with her skill, however, change the condition of the inflict check whereas the chance could be Drown's level plus the user's will added onto half the user's inflict.

Death Glare: This is one of Ghost's forgotten skills. The condition needed for this is both CC and fear. While getting fear off is easy against most, if the mage is aware of what you're doing, they will merely prevent you from haunting behind them. This hurts even more against a Shaitan mage as it's impossible to even use this skill then. Suggestion? While the unmarking is already crippling, I'd suggest removing the fear requirement and instead allow the silence if they've reached a certain about of CC level (Like 3-5 and up)

Invocation talent: With the nerf of silence which indirectly buff mages, it seems the rise of mages has become a common thing. While I myself have abused this new wave as well as helping others, I can't help exactly bat my eye at what I've been seeing recently. Invocation spells are on the rise however they also seem to be putting battles on a timer. Especially if they're using something like charge mind. All the current classes that grant silence are a bit risky except Black bolt which can't be used that often. If they fail to reach the condition needed to inflict silence, that's game over. How to fix this? This suggestion I've seen a few months ago however I'll mention it now; the adjustment of the talent whereas there will always be a chance someone breaks Invocation base on the damage they've obtained. So instead of 1-100%, it would be 1-80%.

Bonus: With the methods mention above except the talent, I'd also like to suggest a silence immunity of 2 rounds(?) once their effect wears off to avoid back to back silence.

I'd like to hear what the others have to say to this.

[Noxid]

I am mixed on a lot of the other stuff but I will comment on two things.

Death Glare: I agree that it would be nice if this was a bit easier to use.

Invocation: Personally I'd like less RNG not more. Also this change would effect the weaker evocations outside of evoker more than evoker itself, since evoker can use high speed divine words to get them out without risk of taking a hit.

[Autumn]

I've always been under the impression that Invocations should have a damage breaking threshold, what that'd mean is that Invocation would be set at a certain level (Increased MASSIVELY by the Invocation talent itself) which would be your 'damage threshold', it'd be a very generous number that allows people to unload burst damage into an invoking mage in order to potentially save an ally or themselves from certain destruction.

Say the threshold starts at 50 and goes up by 30 per SR of the invocation talent. This would be if you are counting post-mitigation damage, if you want to treat tanks fairly and go for pre-mitigation damage you would need to ballpark for anyone with high DPS being able to shit out roughly 600-700 pre-mitigation damage in a single turn and constitute that as burst.

When that threshold is crossed (IE: Invocation runs out of levels similar to frozen) the status is broken.

No other changes to silence would exactly need to occur if Invocations weren't 100% assured like they are currently.

[WaifuApple]

I agree with Spo, tbh. None of these proposed changes would solve the main problem - they'd just bring a side of dread back for everyone else who doesn't rely on invocations for their magic. Making it so you always have at least a chance to deal with an invocation, even without silencing would be the way to cut down the biggest threat.

Anything else just seems to be going back on the reason the silence changes even happened in the first place, which I do not think is the right thing to do.

[Mr.SmileGod]

I get that invocations can be pretty pesky and poweful, but I don't really think that giving a damage-based chance for people to just lose the 6 (or even 12) momentum they spent is a good option. Invocations are a risk, sure, but there's something very disheartening about wasting all that time just to be a pincushion that people target AND losing the momentum anyway. I don't really have a solution, but I'd rather not see invocations being broken by damage become a common thing again.

EDIT: And upon discussion over this idea, I came to the realization that the most problematic invocations all come from a class that can... you know. One turn cast invocations anyway, meaning that making invocations breakable via damage would literally only hurt people that aren't running Evoker.

[Snake]

Can we have a moment to talk about Whispering Cant and how Mages are unstoppable because their weapons have 120% scaling, and Elemental Attack can easily be stacked up to beyond 100 for damage higher and more reliable than critical hits?

Silence's role was to prevent that overpowered shit that mages are to run rampart. Now it is. And I'm very much not happy with the situation of the game right now.

If only Silence itself, as a stat, was changed. Made it so it acts like Spelldaze or whatever. Or maybe if silence just made it so all spells are put on a 3 round cooldown after they're used. Bam! No one would whine that they can't use their class.

That would be a much better alternative than a 'hit or miss', 'you either can use spells or not'. I just hate how everybody forgot -why- Silence exists. The reason is because the game balance and development always revolves around stuffing all the OP and broken shit to magic and magic damage since it has "counterplay". Silence's pretty much the only way to stop that from giving the spellcaster a free win.

Now we don't quite have that anymore. Atleast not in hope to save our own asses. One single class now is the best one in the whole game because it has no counters anymore. And even if Silence gets them?

Heron Feather. Throatopener. Whispering faccing Cant. Wash Away. Cleanse Potion. Asinine Status Resistance. Running away for 1 or 2 rounds until the silence runs out. You know... All the goddamn easy single-click buttons or cheesy strategies to rid of something that nowadays either doesn't exist or has to go through a literal wall of S.RES? Big meh.

[Senna]

PREACH SNAKE PREACH!

Yes, I understand what you meant by 'Yeah, it takes 9 momentum to get it off though!' but those spells, 90% of the time, are massive game changers AND can easily decide how a fight will end. From either big damage that can delete any squishy or delete 50-80% of a tank's HP to their effect that could be very crippling. Before when people wanted to get one of those spells off, they'd move away from the actions, away from the aggressors and set up so if they do come in range, they'd have to play the game of "Can they stop it?". Currently? Due to the lack of silence status as well as guarantee Invocation, I've been seeing people, just stand in the middle of combat, disregarding anything others do IF they're not running the only few classes that could even do something about it (If they're not already build to counter those) and getting their spells off as well as chains. If the poor soul facing this mage lacks enough mobility, that's the whole match for them.

At the moment? They have no real big risk in using them which was the main thing. THIS is why half the game suddenly became mages.

Ironic, before it was alotta ghost, now it's alotta mage classes.

The game already has many ways to get around silence as is. Seen by the list Snake has mentioned thus far (You forget a few like Silent prayer). Add that on top of not many counter-play options and you have the rise of the tank mages meta.

Yes, we had some heavy hitters before that were very cancerous. Nightflower, if you were faster, you could have perma-silence someone, so I understand why that had to be changed. Sonic shells with spark drive, crit twice with the range guns have to offer and they can perma-silence that person as well. Rebia was an iffy one but I get it's because of its range even though the inflict chance gets lower the further away they are.

Sure, I understand, don't get me wrong but over nerfing silence only leads people into using abusing their spells/Invocation since not many people can stop them anymore.

This is the first time in a while I'm afraid to PvP because right now, it feels like a race or I'm on a timer.

[HexGirlBestGirl]

Personally. While I have minimal to add onto this. Building for being resistant to magic tends to not have me getting shred apart easily by non-HSDW Evokers nowadays.

Silence not being there is fine since I just have to build more to resist magic and elemental damage rather than relying on the chad 'all or a lil' something' tool.

So my take on this is simple. Just make it so that base mage and maybe dynamic tomes aren't capable of being on equal or arguably better damage , range, effect, whatever terms than their advanced counterparts. Most notably Evoker.

I rarely feel as if i'm losing much if i'm a whispering cant mage with Earth or Fire or Lightning as my elements. Why the hell are my base mage spells more often than not better/more effective than what silence is literally preventing me from using??? In terms of damage, anyway.

So that's my take on this. Just fix that instead and it likely won't be as much of an issue. As for something in particular, on the Drowned Woman part. The inflict on Drowned Woman is pretty low as is. Making it castable from a summoner again with the suggestion provided by Senna would literally make it just better than Drowned Woman's...well. Y'know. Drown in more cases than not.

Since you do realize WIL gives you more status inflict, right? So you're gonna scale this off a stat that gives status inflict then add half that inflict (not even accounting for SKI but rather overall) as well? Questionable.

[Mr.SmileGod]

I feel like this whole mentality is part of why we're in this cycle to begin with. "This is way too strong, nerf it!"

It happened with ghost. It happened with autohits in general. It happened with silence. Now it's about to happen with mage. Everything gets nerfed to uselessness, the meta switches, then the new meta gets made useless and people move on. We're not even a week past the last update, and everyone's talking about the 'new rise of mages'. Give it a bit of time, at least. And instead of just tearing down whatever's strong, what about bringing back some of what was nerfed? Silence might've been over-nerfed, and while it probably shouldn't be brought back to what it was before, scaling back a bit might help.

I'd really just rather not see mage be the next thing to be made nearly worthless, so I'd ask to look into rebalancing silence to be somewhere in the middle of pre-nerf to post-nerf.

[Autumn]

Sorry to say but thats sort of how shifts to balance work, when one thing becomes weaker, other things rise up and become stronger, silence controlling mages was because if you didn't control them then they'd wreak havoc on an entire field.

I don't want to see mages become nearly worthless but I do think that currently certain invocations and certain mage base spells are too strong without proper wide ranged checks to them, those being:

-Enma's summons
-Exgalfa w/high luck rolls
-Isenshi
-Overload
-Earthbound Vengeance

-Explosion
-Stone Dragon + Air Pressure specifically together.
-Rye
-Ryemei

Most of the reasons these spells are particularly strong is due to their sheer versatility while also being able to pump out very reliable damage numbers, Explosion specifically is an issue because of just how big its range can get, you can't get it out of the way either without tile destruction mechanics specifically.

Because of its sheer range and AoE, Explosion is probably the most reliable spell in the game currently and I do want to talk about it, it has the same fire ATK scaling as higher end single target fire spells like Flame Whip but has SO much AoE on it, and burns things on top of that. The only way to really beat this spell in a team fight is hope you're slower than the person spamming explosion, which is very unlikely as tank is the favored mage build usually.

The FP Cost is negligible as well, given mages usually have access to an incredible accessory for FP Regen and boast at the very least 350+ FP, if not 400 or more. On top of this the Evoker's Arcane Tattoo can reduce this FP cost by just under half which applies after all modifiers I believe.

I do actually want to note out that most times invocations end up dominating low participant fights rather than higher participant fights, a charge minded exgalfa or isenshi is more and more unlikely to happen the more people can respond to it. However in a 1v1 its currently just 'check this or die.'