Minor Steam

[Winter]

I've noticed that most people (including the super duper capped) use this spell almost exclusively in DR arena and to quest with , fantastic damage factors, great AvD, only 4 mana and a godsend for the early levels. In DR arena I use 903 and 910 but for everything else my go to is steam. For those above lvl 50 that mainly use steam what would it take for you to regularly switch to the other elements?

Also if the acension skill Mana Adept (reduces spell cost) becomes a thing would that tempt you to use Hurl Boulder or Major Shock more often?

[Elgrim]

My wizards (36 and 58) hunt exclusively with it unless there is a really good reason to use something else, fire for trolls for example. My regular routine is throw a few steam bolts, leech if needed, and continue until the thing drops. I've not yet found a situation where I'd consider using 910 on anything, even with the increased mana pools. It just doesn't seem to kill as quickly, and I don't hunt in areas that regularly swarm too bad. I know some people swear by 917, but I haven't found a an area where it yields better results than a couple steam bolts. I will say the only thing I find steam lackluster against is incorporeal undead, and might end up trying some other options on those.

[Fryinhades]

As a ranged mage I used to use 910 mainly because of the fact that I didnt have steam available. Now at 75 I have steam and it works similarly to to 910 depending on the critter. Yetis, 910 would crit more often but you use less mana with steam. All depends if you have to kill something with the fewest casts possible or not.

I do believe 910 versus metal type armors, ie full plate, and the likes it's still better. Same with hurl boulder

[Methais]

I've noticed that most people (including the super duper capped) use this spell almost exclusively in DR arena and to quest with , fantastic damage factors, great AvD, only 4 mana and a godsend for the early levels. In DR arena I use 903 and 910 but for everything else my go to is steam. For those above lvl 50 that mainly use steam what would it take for you to regularly switch to the other elements?

Also if the acension skill Mana Adept (reduces spell cost) becomes a thing would that tempt you to use Hurl Boulder or Major Shock more often?

Elemental weakness or immunity is about the only thing that would make me use something other than Steam.

Can't rely on spells that crit hard due to randomization of both the crit and the location, so you might as well just bleed them out with 2-3 shots of Steam instead.

Bolting, at least for wizards who are supposed to be the "masters of the elements," is still a mind numbingly boring piece of shit system overall and dev has no interest in making it more interesting. Which is probably a good thing, because they're incapable of working on anything without nerfing everything.


My wizards (36 and 58) hunt exclusively with it unless there is a really good reason to use something else, fire for trolls for example. My regular routine is throw a few steam bolts, leech if needed, and continue until the thing drops. I've not yet found a situation where I'd consider using 910 on anything, even with the increased mana pools. It just doesn't seem to kill as quickly, and I don't hunt in areas that regularly swarm too bad. I know some people swear by 917, but I haven't found a an area where it yields better results than a couple steam bolts. I will say the only thing I find steam lackluster against is incorporeal undead, and might end up trying some other options on those.

917 is better on stuff that has stupid high bolt DS, but not much else.

[Menos]

My wizard pretty much exclusively uses 917. Pre-cap he used a lot of acid, but I switched completely out of spell aiming to get more wizard ranks... Someday I'll have enough Post Cap experience to add it back in.

I guess that's not exactly an answer to the question because I don't use minor steam. But it explains what it takes to get me using something else. The cast and forget nature of 917 is really nice, and never having to come up in stance.

[Methais]

My wizard pretty much exclusively uses 917. Pre-cap he used a lot of acid, but I switched completely out of spell aiming to get more wizard ranks... Someday I'll have enough Post Cap experience to add it back in.

I guess that's not exactly an answer to the question because I don't use minor steam. But it explains what it takes to get me using something else. The cast and forget nature of 917 is really nice, and never having to come up in stance.

What do you do about swarms?

[Taernath]

I will say the only thing I find steam lackluster against is incorporeal undead, and might end up trying some other options on those.

Steam does massive HP damage though. I would think it would be ideal on something that can't be critted.

[Methais]

Steam does massive HP damage though. I would think it would be ideal on something that can't be critted.

^ This.

[Menos]

What do you do about swarms?

950 410 917, or run away.

I should probably do something with rapid fire and target next, but I never remember to.

[drumpel]

My capped wizard doesn't have fire lore to cast steam. Always went with 904 with his high EL:E ranks he almost always got the DOT from it to trigger - sure the DOT wasn't impressive, but one or two flares can do wonders at times to help whittle down health for an easier kill. He strictly uses 510 or 917.

My level 86 wizard stopped bolting by level 34 and has strictly been 917/502 caster. He never made use of steam bolts either. He used 904/906/510 for bolting. Around level 40 or so I stopped training in SA and around level 55 I completely unlearned SA and dumped the extra TPs into more spell ranks
I've found that 917 can be a very good spell against creatures that are naturally crit/damage resistant. Like pra'eda - without high damage to get good crits, you're basically throwing water balloons at them in terms of damage from bolting. However, toss 917 at them and 2/3 of the time you'll kill them in one cast. The ones that continue to live, a few casts of 502 or your choice of bolt spell should be enough to remove the last of their health.

If my 917/502 mage comes across a swarm he just does a self cast of 909 (STOMP/TAP) followed up with 950 917 502 502 502 502.

To get wizards to move from using the most effective and least mana intensive bolt spell - which appears to be Steam bolt - all creatures would need a rework to have them adjusted for elemental weaknesses and strengths.
Stone creatures for example - right now fire and bolt spells don't do much to them (aside from the rapid heating and cooling of the skin to cause some skin breaking/cracking damage - but it's not a cost effective means to kill them). All other bolts appear to damage them, but acid and stone bolts should do more damage/extra flares/something over casting say 910 or Steam bolt or Tonis bolt.
I don't see a system like that getting done any time soon - would be a massive undertaking and I don't think many of the GMs could pull it off in any kind of a decent time frame without making it a full time job.

[Riltus]

Damage Type|Total Damage|Fatal Criticals|Limb Removals|Plate DF|Plate AvDs
Fire|2600|20|18|.323 (906)|44/38/32/26
Steam|2572|18|13|.277 (1707)|40/34/28/22

1. This comparison is for AS-based attacks.
2. Plate DF for both Minor Fire (906) and Minor Steam (1707) includes 20 ranks Fire Lore. Twenty fire lore ranks adds .020 DF bonus to 906 and a .010 bonus to 1707.
3. Overall, fire criticals have better stuns than steam crits.

Mark

[Derex]

910 and cone of elements vacuum bolt.
never done the steam train becuz i think steam is lame af

[drumpel]

Damage Type|Total Damage|Fatal Criticals|Limb Removals|Plate DF|Plate AvDs
Fire|2600|20|18|.323 (906)|44/38/32/26
Steam|2572|18|13|.277 (1707)|40/34/28/22

1. This comparison is for AS-based attacks.
2. Plate DF for both Minor Fire (906) and Minor Steam (1707) includes 20 ranks Fire Lore. Twenty fire lore ranks adds .020 DF bonus to 906 and a .010 bonus to 1707.
3. Overall, fire criticals have better stuns than steam crits.

Mark

You stop using numbers to back up things factually. Simu doesn't do that. They just slap things together and bam!
https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PresentEagerCondor-size_restricted.gif

[Methais]

Damage Type|Total Damage|Fatal Criticals|Limb Removals|Plate DF|Plate AvDs
Fire|2600|20|18|.323 (906)|44/38/32/26
Steam|2572|18|13|.277 (1707)|40/34/28/22

1. This comparison is for AS-based attacks.
2. Plate DF for both Minor Fire (906) and Minor Steam (1707) includes 20 ranks Fire Lore. Twenty fire lore ranks adds .020 DF bonus to 906 and a .010 bonus to 1707.
3. Overall, fire criticals have better stuns than steam crits.

Mark

Makes sense, since Steam was intentionally made to be a low crit high damage spell.


910 and cone of elements vacuum bolt.
never done the steam train becuz i think steam is lame af

It is pretty lame. But it's more effective than it is lame. Which is lame. :(

[Winter]

If Major shock had a chance to cause nerve damage like all the other forms of lightning damage and Hurl boulder's earth lore perks were revamped would that tempt anyone away from steam?

[Methais]

If Major shock had a chance to cause nerve damage like all the other forms of lightning damage and Hurl boulder's earth lore perks were revamped would that tempt anyone away from steam?

No because you're still almost always going to be better off just killing the target instead of worrying about disablers.

[Taernath]

That would be fun for flavor, but you generally want to kill something as fast and as efficiently as possible.

[Winter]

Ok forget acension because that's mainly for capped people, what if a certain threshold of elemental lore decreased casting cost for the other elemental bolts because that's basically what ele lore fire did for minor steam and ele lore water for Major acid.

What if bolt cost could be reduced with enough lore training? Every 50 lore lowers the casting cost of the bolt spell by 1 mana up to a certain limit? So 910/510 to a cap of 7 mana, 908 to 6, 907 to 5, 906 to 4, 904 to 3. Leave out 903, 901 because they basically already cost peanuts and 1707, 1710 have already had reductions. Make the lore threshold high enough so you can't lower the cost of everything or also tie it to attunement.

[Maerit]

There's some areas with really crit vulnerable targets, like SoS, where 510 and 910 would potentially kill in fewer casts than steam assuming you get sufficiently lucky for a CAST to hit a vital area of the body. Also, any bolt is better to CHANNEL than steam due to the higher chance to fatally critical a target, so younger players with sufficient mana but insufficient EMC for rapid fire would see greater returns channeling other bolt spells against targets vulnerable to crit death.

Since bolting is effectively attrition without the ability to aim, and you're casting with 1s RT using rapid fire, the best spell to use is the one with the highest damage output. Thus steam wins. It doesn't tend to crit kill nearly as much as other spells can, but it will drop targets faster from raw DPS. Similar to using pain vs dark catalyst.

For your standard single targets, bolting steam all day long is more efficient over time than bolting any other spell. As mentioned regularly, targets with vulnerabilities or resistances may benefit from using other spells over steam.

[Maerit]

If ascension creates some kind of "target zone" of aiming, so you could potentially target your bolt at areas of the body (chest/abdomen/back) / (neck/head/eyes) where you only hit those areas with your spells, then you start slinging boulders and lightning. It would be way too powerful to be able to accurately aim at a specific part of the body, but perhaps the argument could be made that you could hit aim and hit (with like 75% chance max) within a tighter grouping on the bodies of your targets.

If you aim chest/abs/back you can have a 75% chance of hitting the targeted zone + 1s cast RT (even under rapid fire) with 25% to hit somewhere else.
If you aim head/neck/eyes you have a 60% chance hitting that targeted zone + 1s cast RT with a 40% chance to hit somewhere else.

Then we can start adding sighting to our runestaves to help hit the aim cap for bolting!

[Winter]

Then we can start adding sighting to our runestaves to help hit the aim cap for bolting!

An offensive rather than defensive based staff maybe? Total magic ranks contribute towards aiming or some other offensive skill?

[Maerit]

An offensive rather than defensive based staff maybe? Total magic ranks contribute towards aiming or some other offensive skill?

Firstly, face the fact that this will probably never happen (as long as Estild is around), so take the following as a jaded analysis on what appears to be balanced, but would be deemed too powerful by game devs. Though, frankly, wizards don't really need any more power as it stands.

It would likely be a combination of spell aiming, spell ranks for the bolt spell being cast (capped at level), perception and potentially harness power. Just like with ranged combat, I'm sure there would be a cap (75% is what I believe ranged caps out at) for aiming a bolt spell, and you have to deal with additional RT. Magical sighting could possibly help you toward the aiming cap, if this were a thing, and that would put $$ in simu's pocket.

Runestaves are already our strongest offensive option. You don't get flares or ensorcell with a shield. In all likelihood a wizard would max out aim % without the need for sighting post-cap just how rangers can with ranged combat.

#wonthappen

[Hightower]

I've noticed that most people (including the super duper capped) use this spell almost exclusively in DR arena and to quest with , fantastic damage factors, great AvD, only 4 mana and a godsend for the early levels. In DR arena I use 903 and 910 but for everything else my go to is steam. For those above lvl 50 that mainly use steam what would it take for you to regularly switch to the other elements?

Also if the acension skill Mana Adept (reduces spell cost) becomes a thing would that tempt you to use Hurl Boulder or Major Shock more often?

The issue is the archaic design of spell circles. Specifically, the relationship between cost/power and spell level (e.g. spell 910 is supposed to be more powerful than spell 903, which justifies its mana cost). Thus spells are designed with cost and power locked (or at least limited, with convoluted workarounds as they realized the inherent flaw in that design). Minor steam is an anomaly, justified (poorly) by the fact that it's about the only thing really propping up fire lore!

In my opinion, a better design is to have a bolt spell where the caster is able to determine which element to use as well as how much mana they'd like to power it with. From there we could add lore tie-ins, synergies, and tradeoffs for each element to differentiate them and give players a reason to choose one element over another, depending upon the scenario.

~Taverkin

[Winter]

In my opinion, a better design is to have a bolt spell where the caster is able to determine which element to use as well as how much mana they'd like to power it with.

~Taverkin

That's how they currently work in Dragon Realms and Telekinesis for 6-10 mana. I'd like to see 1-15 mana because that would cover the broad spectrum players from the newbies all the up to the insanely capped people.

[Hightower]

That's how they currently work in Dragon Realms and Telekinesis for 6-10 mana. I'd like to see 1-15 mana because that would cover the broad spectrum players from the newbies all the up to the insanely capped people.

I think it would be nice because the choice would shift away from considerations of relative cost vs. damage factor and toward choosing elements for their unique properties. You no longer have to take minor steam because you can cast a bolt spell with similar cost/DF from any type you like. The reason you choose steam over another element should relate to what steam does that other elements don't. I think this would be both more flexible from a development standpoint (assuming it can be done - you never know with GS code!) and produce more interesting game play.

~Taverkin

[Hightower]

If ascension creates some kind of "target zone" of aiming, so you could potentially target your bolt at areas of the body (chest/abdomen/back) / (neck/head/eyes) where you only hit those areas with your spells, then you start slinging boulders and lightning. It would be way too powerful to be able to accurately aim at a specific part of the body, but perhaps the argument could be made that you could hit aim and hit (with like 75% chance max) within a tighter grouping on the bodies of your targets.

If you aim chest/abs/back you can have a 75% chance of hitting the targeted zone + 1s cast RT (even under rapid fire) with 25% to hit somewhere else.
If you aim head/neck/eyes you have a 60% chance hitting that targeted zone + 1s cast RT with a 40% chance to hit somewhere else.

Then we can start adding sighting to our runestaves to help hit the aim cap for bolting!

I favor a cooldown over the slot machine (GS4 really relies on this layered randomness system far too much for my tastes!). Let me use the skill in all of its OP glory, but limit how often I can use it. This has the happy consequence of creating a niche for other spells. Obviously, if you could point your finger and go for the kill on every cast with 1s RT and no cooldown, why would you ever bother with anything else except perhaps a 1s RT room clear like, oh, say 950? Those two spells have it covered! Except that they have cooldowns, which means that you have to rely on other options in the mean time and perhaps think about reserving those spells for when you really need them. Now what am I going to use in the mean time?

By the way, I am not literally advocating for an automatic kill spell on a cooldown. Even as I've described, that could be too much! But that's another debate to have. I'm more commenting on the merits of using something like a cooldown vs. the (seemingly) preferred method of simply making everything really unreliable so that the outcome isn't too predictable!

~Taverkin

[Hightower]

No because you're still almost always going to be better off just killing the target instead of worrying about disablers.

Agreed. GS has a big problem with skill overlap. Bolt spells are very constrained by the balance between cost and power, which is why we see situations like this with minor steam. My thinking is we remove that consideration entirely (as detailed in a previous post). Now you no longer choose which element based on arbitrarily assigned power and mana costs. Suddenly those side-benefits which were previously useless become much more relevant because they no longer have to overcome that limitation.

Players might not choose to use a spell with an unfavorable damage/crit:mana ratio, but if we simply let players choose the power, cost, and element for themselves then the only question becomes which cool elemental-based lore tie-ins would you like to pair with that otherwise generic method of delivering damage?

~Taverkin

[Methais]

Agreed. GS has a big problem with skill overlap. Bolt spells are very constrained by the balance between cost and power, which is why we see situations like this with minor steam. My thinking is we remove that consideration entirely (as detailed in a previous post). Now you no longer choose which element based on arbitrarily assigned power and mana costs. Suddenly those side-benefits which were previously useless become much more relevant because they no longer have to overcome that limitation.

Players might not choose to use a spell with an unfavorable damage/crit:mana ratio, but if we simply let players choose the power, cost, and element for themselves then the only question becomes which cool elemental-based lore tie-ins would you like to pair with that otherwise generic method of delivering damage?

~Taverkin

They won't even let us choose our element with 502, so I wouldn't expect anything creative out of them regarding bolts anytime between now and when GS eventually dies.

[Hightower]

They won't even let us choose our element with 502, so I wouldn't expect anything creative out of them regarding bolts anytime between now and when GS eventually dies.

LoL Sorry! I've been away playing games that weren't developed in the 1980s and it's infected my brain with ideas that I should know better than to propose!

~Taverkin

[drumpel]

If they went that route to let wizards choose their element for bolts they'd need to do a revamp of creatures to implement elemental weaknesses and strengths.

I'd also like to think they'd actually let an attuned wizard have some kind of extra benefit for like elemental spells over non-attuned elements.

Too much work, probably never happen.

[Hightower]

If they went that route to let wizards choose their element for bolts they'd need to do a revamp of creatures to implement elemental weaknesses and strengths.

I'd also like to think they'd actually let an attuned wizard have some kind of extra benefit for like elemental spells over non-attuned elements.

Too much work, probably never happen.

Perhaps. That's ever a concern with GS. However, they have been pretty active on development as far as I can tell and they are clearly willing to entertain changes of course at this point. It occurs to me that modernizing combat a bit with tried-and-true concepts that reduce skill overlap (e.g. cooldowns, spell slot consolidation, etc.) would not only be great for players who are a little dissatisfied with combat, despite the fact that wizards are arguably one of the most powerful and versatile classes. It would also be great for developers, who must be sick to death of coming up with convoluted workarounds to deal with skill overlap. It's simply a colossal challenge without using something like cooldowns to carve niches for other spells with similar functions.

How much easier would it be to design cool and useful spells if you didn't first have to overcome the fact that a spell like minor steam gives too favorable a damage:mana ratio to make anything else worth using? They actually did a pretty impressive job of it with the wizard class. It really does feel better than ever, despite the issue with minor steam. But if we're going to do even better, I think it's time to modernize a bit.

~Taverkin

[Methais]

Perhaps. That's ever a concern with GS. However, they have been pretty active on development as far as I can tell and they are clearly willing to entertain changes of course at this point. It occurs to me that modernizing combat a bit with tried-and-true concepts that reduce skill overlap (e.g. cooldowns, spell slot consolidation, etc.) would not only be great for players who are a little dissatisfied with combat, despite the fact that wizards are arguably one of the most powerful and versatile classes. It would also be great for developers, who must be sick to death of coming up with convoluted workarounds to deal with skill overlap. It's simply a colossal challenge without using something like cooldowns to carve niches for other spells with similar functions.

How much easier would it be to design cool and useful spells if you didn't first have to overcome the fact that a spell like minor steam gives too favorable a damage:mana ratio to make anything else worth using? They actually did a pretty impressive job of it with the wizard class. It really does feel better than ever, despite the issue with minor steam. But if we're going to do even better, I think it's time to modernize a bit.

~Taverkin

Their "solution" will probably be to nerf Minor Steam and then tell us we should be grateful.