Mages Guild Skill line

Stapes

"The Mages Guild is a guild dedicated to the collection, preservation, and distribution of magical knowledge with an emphasis on ensuring that all citizens of Tamriel benefit from this knowledge. Members of the Guild receive many benefits, including training, services, and education in the established laws regarding the proper use of magic."

I originally posted some ideas in the nightblade thread but thought i'd post them in their own thread to see what people think and generally start a discussion. Please keep everything constructive and lets see if we can get some cool improvements DISCLAIMER: Yes I do mainly play PvP so i'd like to hear some thoughts from those that don't to see hw things might effect them and also get some suggestions from different perspectives

Now the reason I've posted this is to look into the 2 skills that are rarely used if at all, Equilibrium and Fire Rune, and possible adjustments to those and possibly entropy as well. Below is a list of spells available in the Elder Scrolls which you can learn through the mages guild in other ES games.

Spells are cast using magicka.
The spells of The Elder Scrolls universe are divided into several magical schools. Increasing the player's proficiency in the schools depends on spell uses and training.
Damage — Lowers health, fatigue, magicka, attribute or skill. Can only be restored with a Restore effect, such as a blessing from the chapel, a spell or a potion.
Drain — Temporarily and gradually lowers health, fatigue, magicka, attribute or skill for a duration of time.
Resist — Reduces shock, frost, fire, magicka, the damage afflicted by a normal weapon or reduces the chance of being poisoned, paralyzed, or diseased. Shield is similar to Resist.
Restore — Recovers health, fatigue, magicka, attribute or skill back towards normal level
Fortify — Similar to Restore, but can temporarily increase the skill in question beyond the normal level
Weakness — Decreases resistance to shock, frost, fire, magicka, the damage afflicted by a normal weapon or to disease, poison, and paralysis
Reflect — Reflects normal or spell damage back at the opponent.

Now they look very interesting...

Lets start with the Mages Guild passives in ESO:
Persuasive Will - Allows player to Persuade certain NPCs in conversations
Mage Adept - Reduces Magicka and Health cost of Mages Guild abilities by 15%.
Everlasting Magic - Increases duration of Mages Guild Abilities by 20%
Magicka Controller - Increases Max Magicka and Magicka Regeneration by 2% for each Mages Guild ability slotted
Might of the Guild - Casting a Mages Guild ability grants Empower, increasing the damage of your next attack by 20% as long as it's activated within 5 seconds.

I personally think the passives are spot on. Now with those in mind, lets look at some suggestions for the skills

Here are my comments/idea's from the nightblade thread

Stapes wrote: »

Now, because i'm not sure where to put this due to there being no specific thread for it, I thought here was as good a place as any. @Wrobel @ZOS_GinaBruno

Mages Guild

Entropy - While an often used skill, Perhaps a rework though in conjunction with equilibrium so that entropy becomes an execute. Perhaps something like Mages Wrath? (don't hate me) Or maybe remove the heal over time and make it a straight damage over time ability that also grants major sorcery or perhaps minor breach? Perhaps it could provide minor defile to reduce the enemies healing.

Equilibrium - Correct me if i'm wrong but this is one of the least used skills in the game in its current state. Can you please look into making this a healing ability? (it already has the breath of life animation)

This would go a long way to helping out magicka builds and providing much needed balance across magicka classes in the same way that Vigor did for stamina classes. Dragon knights and Nightblades probably lack the most in this department currently (although Coagulating blood needs more testing).

All of the classes have 3 skill trees - One for tanking, dps, and healing. The passives and skills have morphs that suit those play styles.

The tough part is how would the heal work? We don't need more breath of life spammers.. So maybe something a bit different with some utility that's not going to make more players invincible and is different to what the other classes have? Can still call it bartering magicka for health?

1) A heal the opposite of rally - a single burst heal followed by a heal over time every 2 seconds for 10 seconds.
* Morph 1 - increased cost, grant minor intellect increasing magicka recovery, a larger burst heal but only lasts 6 seconds
* Morph 2 - grants major heroism and minor fortitude for 10 seconds

2) A burst heal - Heal for X amount and cleanse 1 negative affect from you and 1 other player
* Morph 1 - Heal for X amount and cleanse 1 negative affect from you and 1 other player also granting minor bezerk for 8 seconds
* Morph 2 - Cleanse up to 3 negative affects from you and one other player. if a negative effect is removed, the heal is increased by 10% per negative effect removed

This second suggestion for healing could also replace the Purge skill in the Alliance War support tree if the it is not suitable for the Mages Guild lore (edit: this would still be fine after doing some research as it comes under restoration spell casting which is taught in the mages guild)

Now myself personally, I would like to see a burst heal that provides some utility. I really like option 1 mentioned above. Part of the key for any heal would be so that it doesn't make the Restoration Staff skill line redundant though however being in mages guild does make it more useful to magicka dps/ 1vX's anyway rather than healers due to the passives. I cant really see it effecting PvE content as much as PvP, but perhaps as long as its not over done, then I can only see it as a good thing?

Another thing to consider is the current state of Heavy Armour survivability. There are already unkillable tanks floating around in PvP and the last thing i'd like to do is make them stronger. So I think most of us are unanimous in saying that Heavy Armour needs to be toned down so this should benefit light armour users most of all.

As for Fire Rune, I don't really have many idea's. I think its a good skill but could perhaps affect more than 1 player? perhaps it could add a snare or defile while in the radius? Mages from the guild are pretty handy like that!

An interesting thought I also just had was to make the fighters and mages guild exclusive of one another - You could be apart of one but not the other? Like either you're a Vampire or a Werewolf? So you can only access one of those skill lines at time? Surely this wouldn't be a bad thing as fighters guild seems to be mainly for stamina users and vise versa for mages and magicka. Kind of makes a bit sense though right?

Let me know your thoughts!

Dracane

If we compare the mages guild skill line and the fighters guild skillline, then the fighters guild line definately overshines the other.

Not only because it is overall more usefull due to the Banish of the Wicked passive, but it also offers more usefull active abilities. Magelight in combination with magicka controller is probably the only selling point of the mages guild and that's well.... boring, it's something you slot and that's it and entropy for Templars of course.

The mage's guild tries to be good for mages, but its abilities are so underpowered, that they are outshined by class abilities. Equilibrium is outshined by dark exchange, rune focus and siphoning attacks. Fire rune is outshined by lightning splash, eruption etc. Entropy is not really more attractive than armaments, surge and sap essence.
I could go on forever.

SublimeSparo

Fire rune needs minor force added.
I personally really like and use equilibrium on my tank, the balance morph does need changing though, maybe change that one to something along the lines of
Draw from whichever stat pool is currently highest between mag/ stam and heal for x amount.
Ie on a magick character at full magick it would consume magick for a heal, at sub 10k magick it would consume stamina for the heal. And vice versa. (Have it scale as a magicka spell in both cases, for things like spell crit, magic cost reduction etc even when costing stamina)

Stapes

Dracane wrote: »

If we compare the mages guild skill line and the fighters guild skillline, then the fighters guild line definately overshines the other.

Not only because it is overall more usefull due to the Banish of the Wicked passive, but it also offers more usefull active abilities. Magelight in combination with magicka controller is probably the only selling point of the mages guild and that's well.... boring, it's something you slot and that's it and entropy for Templars of course.

The mage's guild tries to be good for mages, but its abilities are so underpowered, that they are outshined by class abilities. Equilibrium is outshined by dark exchange, rune focus and siphoning attacks. Fire rune is outshined by lightning splash, eruption etc. Entropy is not really more attractive than armaments, surge and sap essence.
I could go on forever.

Couldn't agree more! Entropy is a poor copy of strife but Equilibrium isn't even a heal like dark exchange!

the possibilities for some great skills are right there but what do we need from those 4 skills? perhaps 3 skills for the holy trinity of tank, dps & heals? then one for solo players? How about:

* Tank - (Entropy) A shield, that can increase resistances/buff the group damage/taunt and provide a DoT.
* DPS - (Fire Rune) Ground based AoE DoT and snare
* Healer (Mage Light) - Cleanse and health buff/maybe a healing shield/or maybe not even a heal but something that buffs healing
* Solo - (Equalibrium) An actual self Heal, restoring spell

The existing Passives would still work nicely for this kind of layout too I think

SublimeSparo wrote: »

Fire rune needs minor force added.
I personally really like and use equilibrium on my tank, the balance morph does need changing though, maybe change that one to something along the lines of
Draw from whichever stat pool is currently highest between mag/ stam and heal for x amount.
Ie on a magick character at full magick it would consume magick for a heal, at sub 10k magick it would consume stamina for the heal. And vice versa. (Have it scale as a magicka spell in both cases, for things like spell crit, magic cost reduction etc even when costing stamina)

Agree on Fire Rune needing something more, adding more utility does seem a simple and logical step in the right direction

I can see that you'd use it if you had a high health, high health regen build going, still a risky skill though and I'll bet most would rather put a much more useful skill on there bar.

I'm not sure having a stamina cost for a skill in the mages guild would really work though, something that can restore stamina would fit well though and be useful for all I think

Izaki

Dracane wrote: »

If we compare the mages guild skill line and the fighters guild skillline, then the fighters guild line definately overshines the other.

Not only because it is overall more usefull due to the Banish of the Wicked passive, but it also offers more usefull active abilities. Magelight in combination with magicka controller is probably the only selling point of the mages guild and that's well.... boring, it's something you slot and that's it and entropy for Templars of course.

The mage's guild tries to be good for mages, but its abilities are so underpowered, that they are outshined by class abilities. Equilibrium is outshined by dark exchange, rune focus and siphoning attacks. Fire rune is outshined by lightning splash, eruption etc. Entropy is not really more attractive than armaments, surge and sap essence.
I could go on forever.

How? Its Dawnbreaker and Trap Beast vs Meteor and Inner Light. Rearming Trap got a 30% dmg nerf btw, so both skill lines are equal.

I agree that the skill line is underwhelming but pretty much every suggestion here would magicka builds too strong. A self heal that empowers your next attack and gives tons of buffs? A magicka counterpart of Trap, Fire Rune with Minor Force? A taunt? A shield? Its nonesense.

VarilRau

Swap some mages guild skill (entropy or equilibreum) for mages wrath, execute for everyone that doesnt have.

Replace sorc wrath skill with a class spammable. My main grief playing a sorc is that i cant throw fireballs. Make it so that the base skill is frost ball, that can be morphed to fire or lightning damage.

I want to throw balls of fire!

SeanBlader

Stapes wrote: »

"The Mages Guild is a guild dedicated to the collection, preservation, and distribution of magical knowledge with an emphasis on ensuring that all citizens of Tamriel benefit from this knowledge. Members of the Guild receive many benefits, including training, services, and education in the established laws regarding the proper use of magic."

Ironically none of the Mages Guild skills meet those objectives.

Also from the list of schools, you missed a lot of the spells from Skyrim under Alteration. Sure the armor spells could be considered as fortification, but then you're missing out on detect life, and detect dead, and then there's also water breathing, paralysis, telekinesis, and transmute. And pretty much all of the Illusion spells are missing. Nightblade does have a fear skill, but that's really a stretch in comparison. Something that could be neat to see under the Mages guild skill line would be something like clairvoyance.

What if in order to accomplish some mages guild tasks you needed to use a spell to detect a door, or something buried, or a buried door. Now you're looking at something like archeology, which could be a popup in a random location, and the interiors could be hugely different depending on the zone. Maybe you have to hire a crew to dig out the site? And then you're doing some actual real "research" which is a lot more fitting into what the Mages Guild should actually be doing. Doing one of those could be really a lot more interesting if it was an empty tomb where all that was there was bookshelves, or scattered junk and you had to figure out what happened. Fun. I'm pretty sure there's enough historic lore in Tamriel that could make for a whole host of interesting archeological missions. A good example is where you take on the guise of the orc marauder on Betony before the Sea Orcs renamed it Betnikh. Just imagine that there are older sites that take more advanced efforts to dig up, they don't just come to you.

I also don't see any reason why there can't be 10 to 15 different skills on the Mages Guild skill line, some might suggest that would be overpowered, but if a lot of them are based on doing some searching through the countryside, or translating an old tome for a specific quest, that's not something a lot of people are going to be dedicating slots to, but they might be willing to dedicate a skill point to it and slot it as necessary. This would also gate those quests to later in the game as people felt like they had the skill points they were willing to put into them. There's some cool options available if you're gonna go with a learning institution like the Mages Guild.