Sorcerer combat ability

I feel that for combat there could be something like life drain that adds to your life as you drain the target. or a fear ability, maybe increase lightning storm damage to bases a little or have direct strikes where you target but in the circle area of where you target the lightning storm. Maybe change wall of fire to be more instant.

I feel the the corrupted part of your stamina could be used for instant effects such as corrupted land around your character, and also placing runes on the ground so if your enemy steps on it you can do a spell effect on them.

What about high magic as well, yes I think starcalling is too good to not have in the spell-list for use on enemy base after all its age of war and sorcery has not gotten any new stuff this age. Abd things like kuraks spell making the sun at night etc

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OK sorcery isnā€™t a combat skill and therefore if you are solo and trying it, you should have your @$$ handed to you.

HOWEVER, if you do pull off the words of magic, they should do a heck of a lot more than what they do. Getting hit with lightning (random shot regardless unless you are a golem with a pointy head) you should at least be getting hit with 400 hp of damage 100% AP. Zombies raised should have more than 100 hp. Darkness should have modifiers so that your opponents (NPC or player) are at a significant disadvantage (like 50% damage reduction in the AOE)

As of right now, sorcery is an advantage for logistics and resources. It needs revamped almost as badly as pets.

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What Iā€™m getting at is that sorcery should have its own approach while in combat, yes it has zombies, but the corrupted part of your stamina should have some instant combat applications like corrupted ground around you for example such as tendrils or wall of fire instant cast, you would have to wait for the corrupted part of your stamina to regenerate, this is the missing part to sorcery if there were some instant cast effects using corrupted stamina it would feel just as flowing as using melee.

Hey there, I recently posted something about Stamina consuption in Corrupted Builds. With that said, my post is mostly about Corruption in general, not Sorcery.

Anyways, to meld a bit of what I said with what you did:
What you mentioned about the part of Stamina thatā€™s Corrupted being usable as some other form of battle resource could be interesting. Perhaps the more Corrupted you are, the more damage your offensive Sorceries could do? For the status based Sorceries (like Slow-Fall) the durations could be raised? Maybe cast time could be hastened by further corrupting?
Just a few system-orientated ideas there.

I agree with what youā€™ve said here. A risk-reward system where tactics get you far is how I see a Sorcerer performing best as well as closest to how I would expect and appreciate.

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Corruption as a resource is weird. Thematically (which is an important thing to consider), the more you use sorcery the more corrupted you get and the more physically weaker you get. This also works mechanically.

Hereā€™s where things get weird. So to cast a spell, you need reagents and the staff. Not biggie there. But to cast higher tier sorcery, you need a certain level of corruption. Ok you need to be ā€˜weakerā€™ to use more powerful spells. Alright, neat trade off. As you cast sorcery, your corruption grows. As your corruption grows you get weaker and you get access to more powerful sorcery.

So far, I donā€™t think this system is working in a way anyone would think is unintuitive or overly restricting. It works both mechanically and thematically. Which is a fancy way of it sounds cool and plays cool. To quote an author, always err on the side of what is awesome when it comes to magic.

Now we have corrupted attributes. These make you permanently corrupted, but give some unique benefits. Okā€¦ for dedicated sorcerers this is good. Corrupt enough attributes and you donā€™t have to find ways to corrupt yourself if your corruption wore off in some manner. Sounds great. And we get some cool powers (in theory), for a permanent reduction in health and stamina.

Thematically and Mechanically that sounds good. In practice we have an issue. That being stamina. Even before the Age of War changes to stamina costs, we had issues here. Cutting Stamina to 50% of max is a horrible tradeoff and leaves the sorcerer far too vulnerable.

If the powers of a 50% corrupted sorcerer was enough that you didnā€™t need the stamina. Like if you were the clan sorcerer that was dedicated to sorcery and your powers were enough to devote yourself to that role would bring a benefit. Or if you were the hermit who others could seek out to benefit from your sorcery (assuming such a choice wasnā€™t simply a potion away from getting away from the consequences thereof). There might be a case for how this works.

But now letā€™s look at your suggestion. And its a suggestion made many times. Using corruption as a resource.

Wellā€¦ if you look at the wall of text I just made. You can see that corruption as a resource doesnā€™t really work. Weā€™re gaining corruption as we use sorcery, not losing it. Weā€™re not expending corruption. Weā€™re gaining it. Our resource is our max health and max stamina we are giving up. Expending that would be a boon, why not simply keep casting? With corrupted attributes, we canā€™t spend all of our corruption effectively making it an infinite resource.

I can say this, that mechanic is probably not going to change. From what I know in the various livestreams about sorcery and the conversations weā€™ve had in testing. The idea of corruption affecting the health bar and spells increasing corruption and spells requiring a certain level of corruption based on their tier, is not going to change.

Now for the idea the more corrupted you are the stronger your spells and effects. I could see this. It also makes sense. Personally I would like to see the corruption gain be something that is more gradual. Right now it is a weird ā€˜debuffā€™ that existed in the game prior to sorcery. It was meant as a sort of timer for entering areas and fighting nasty creatures.

If anyone has played Enshrouded, thatā€™s how it kind of worked. But instead of going back to normal when you got into uncorrupted areas. It lingered. And you needed to use a Dancer or Potion to cleanse it.

But sorcery was tacked onto that. I think something more comprehensive should have been done with it. While keeping with the mandatory thematics.

This is what Iā€™d like to see. Corruption happens much more slowly. The more corruption you gain the more it takes to push it forward. Its not something that can be grinded. For example to get the first 10% corruption you can sit in a corrupted area and tick it up or cast Tier 1 spells. To get the next 10% (and to be able to cast Tier 2 spells) you need to consume some form of item. The previous methods donā€™t work. To get the next 10% (30% total) you need to start sacrificing thralls. After that it takes rituals that require an activated altar of some sort (could even be the thaumaturgy bench, but a new bench would be thematically more fitting) and this altar emits a corrupting influence over a decent area (the area of creeping darkness). These rituals are costly and require significant effort and resources to do. But will allow a sorcerer to get up to 50% corruption.

Corrupting attributes is how a sorcerer can lock in their corruption. This way dancers and other effects donā€™t undo some of their hard work. But the requirements of doing so would be different. Right now you need 40% corruption to spend points to corrupt. I would change this to 1pt per 1% corruption you have. So if you want to have 10pts of corrupted attributes, you need to be 10% corrupted.

Additionally sources of corruption can still corrupt you beyond the limit. Sort of like how a transportory stone does. So if you are in a corrupted area or fighting corrupted foes. If they push you past the threshold, its temporary corruption that does NOT count towards sorcery. And depending on source can push you beyond 50%. This makes those areas and foes just a tad more spicy, and something even sorcerers would need to be careful about. Being reduced to 1hp 1sta would be very dangerous after all.

Cleansing corruption would also be based on how far along someone is. Requiring much of a tiered response in reverse. With higher costs associated with getting higher levels under their thresholds. You donā€™t simply sit at a dancer for a minute to fully cleanse. If youā€™re 50% corrupted then dancers would have no effect until you get down to say 10% (the first threshold) before such a mundane method has any effect.

This would mean sorcerers are something that stand out among the rest as those fully dedicated to their craft, while still allowing casual users to not fully dwell into the abyss. Resetting attributes would not be as simple as a potion for sorcerers either. This is so that players donā€™t simply swap back and forth between corrupted and uncorrupted builds at a whim with enough materials.

But there would be a benefit to this dedication. With it being harder to gain corruption, the idea of spells and effects having greater strengths can be explored. There would also be sufficient reason to elevate some of the powers granted to sorcerers to warrant the dedicated playstyle.

And of course something needs to be done about the stamina. In someoneā€™s words, you canā€™t even get a full dagger combo off with full corruption and that is a problem. This is an issue that is pretty well known and Iā€™m curious what the solution will be. That might be a chapter or two after Chp4 unfortunately.

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Wow. Very well thought out response here!

I have to agree with you at this point of reading. A tradeoff is absolutely key to this. Youā€™re effectively giving post of your being and it does come off as ā€œcoolā€ or at least unique in that way.

This is also true, and I feel now that I really could have phrased it better. It would not be something you ā€œlost.ā€ What I meant to convey was that your Stamina/Health meter would remain where they are (say 50% for the example), but an amount of either ā€œchargeā€ or some other function could be built up within that 50% bar of Corruption. This is of course a rough layout of a concept, Iā€™m just throwing out an idea of how this Corruption acts. Iā€™m not necessarily trying to talk about Corruption being spent but more the power granted by it being expended and then regenerating much like Stamina would. This again is still a very incomplete thought, but I think it could bring an interesting dynamic while giving sorcery a bit of a bump I think it might need.

Once more, I completely agree here. I feel itā€™s a sad state that Corruption is and moreso what it will be in very soon. There has been no serious mention of it nor that there is a serious issue because most people just resign the thought due to overall low viability.

This is also my preferred take on this. This could either be just a flat up to the spells in power/duration or perhaps like I mentioned before it could be ā€œusedā€ (again, Iā€™m lacking the immediate vocabulary to say what I mean) and then regained by regeneration like Stamina. This would act like a Sorcerer channeling their spell and could work exactly like you see in the upcoming update with the meteor Sorcerers where a spell can be charged to a point in this meter and then cast at whatever level of power.

For this part, Iā€™d rather just quote the beginning of the paragraph because I agree with a lot of the principle idea here. Corruption being a full playstyle that you force yourself into is a very cool idea albeit slightly complex.

These two combined really come together nicely and I would like to add that dancers could actually be used to ward off spells in some manner. Thematically that makes sense given their current abilities anyways. This could partially take away from a Sorcererā€™s spells and be a good reason to actually bring a dancer to a PvP setting.

Your post from here on out I fully agree with.

Going back to Stamina at the end:

This is a very sour note from me, but with no indication right now I feel like even getting a change then would be lucky.

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And this is where sorcery fails dramatically.
The trade off is pretty much worthless.
You gain some cool gimmicks with very limited and situational applications.
Thatā€™s why its usage is mostly limited to ilusion and transport.
IMO, itā€™s a missed opportunity so far.
Instead of sword and sorcery, we ended up with sword and fashion. :smile:

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An unfortunate and painful truth haha

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Iā€™m always that guy who will go for the hardest magical builds in games, @OmniHeckinInu .
Usually they are a pain at the beginning, but the pay off in endgame makes it all worth it. All the pain, the grind, the frustration, while other builds breeze through content that gets you stuck for agesā€¦ but in the end, all that sacrifice rewards you in abundance.
If you knew me as a player in the genre, me basically ignoring sorcery on Conan speaks volumes.

I keep bouncing back and forth. The logistics and immunity to most effects via corrupted vitality keeps drawing me into the vile practice. Zombies are always great and superior to thrall IMHO since I get three of them (if played correctly and not exploited) vs one tank. I usually do corrupted authority mostly so it maximizes the bat flight and that is my main mode of transport. I played around with the corrupted death knight but keep going back to necromancer.

Whereas Iā€™m never one to go for the magic option in games (I guess Conan was quite formative in my early fantasy readingā€¦) - but from a lore perspective, I entirely support the sorts of ideas being discussed here. One key factor of sorcerors in the Conan stories is that they are almost invariably more powerful than non-sorcerors - and usually it is only their own hubris that leads to their downfall (well, hubris and Conanā€¦). Powerful, selfish, virtually incapable of cooperation (as Taemien noted) - their souls blackened, sometimes at least their physical bodies also damaged (which the game tries to emulate). But always capable of more than mere parlor tricks.

Obviously, from a game perspective, there needs to be balance - but it doesnā€™t seem like thatā€™s been reached yet - the current form of sorcery seems too easy and (perhaps consequently) too weak. Who cares about a short ice bridge, when even a minor sorceror (in the stories) can break a manā€™s will and root him to the spot, or force him to slowly walk to his doom? At least until his concentration is disturbedā€¦

The idea of a far harder (and more clearly ā€˜uncleanā€™) route to power, resulting in greater power than is offered now, makes sense to me. Clearly characters should be unable to reach the same power levels as Thoth-Amon - but then at least some of his power is tied up with key artifacts - the iron-bound books of Skelos and the Serpent Ring of Set - when he loses access to them, he loses power and is hunted by his enemies - so it need not be impossible to match his ā€˜nativeā€™ power and still be unable to escape the trap he has woven (the Exiled Lands).

One idea that occurs (but Iā€™ll need to leave to you guys to discuss, for reasons that will become obvious) is that of the Phylactory. This is a concept that would feel very much in keeping with Howard style sorcery and could potentially create an intriguing PVP dynamic - a powerful enough sorceror potentially binding their very life essence to an item - it protects them for so long as they are able to protect it, but take it from them and they are doomed. (For those unfamiliar with the idea of a phylactory - think Horcrux, itā€™s close enough). Obviously this would be a max level power, and one with many complex and dark requirements - probably if it goes wrong the sorceror gets dragged to hell by their demon patron or similar. Iā€™ve no idea if such a thing could be successfully balanced for the game, no matter how hard the requirements or how great the risk (and the risk should really be player actions (own or others) rather than the more usual Funcom rng approach) - thatā€™s way beyond something Iā€™m qualified to claim - but it seems like it could be an interesting idea that would fit the themes and lore.

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Generally I play all builds.
But I never, ever miss a magical build playthrough, usually after finishing the game with a melee build.
In this game, sorcery is very interesting in terms of concept, but the implementation is dreadful. I donā€™t feel any pleasure playing as a sorcerer, and believe me, I tried. I will give it another shot with @OmniHeckinInu build, but thatā€™s more a batlemage than anything else, without the offensive spells. Seems pretty interesting, though. A true glass cannon. :blush:

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I must admit, Omniā€™s build has got me curious. I suspect it might go badly for me (simply because of how much I seem to rely on stamina), but it seems like it could be an interesting experiment (and expecting it might go badly is no reason not to try, lol).

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You have slightly over one week before that build becomes terrible. Have fun if you do give it a go!

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So i think from reading from your suggestions that one yes you should gain more corruption howeverā€¦i think that as you use these instant cast combat orientated spells your corrupted stamina increases (temporarily having less stamina) but not your health, and later on goes back down to half, just as if you had gone through the Transportory stone and had to wait for the usual half bar to return.

This way your following the theme of gaining corruption and its actually enjoyable to take a risk for a boost in power by using these instant cast abilities while your corrupted stamina rises, BUT!.. the abilities they use for this have to be one 1.worth the risk to use in combat and 2. Your corrupted stamina returns to the original half value after a while same time as the Transportory-stone effect.

And also these are effects of the corruption building, i know Conan magic is meant to be ritual magic, So when your using these instant cast, combat effects, your drawing from the corruption within you, your corruption rises (Temporary increased corruption stamina bar) every time you cast the new instant cast combat effects.

I would like to thank you all for your input, and i do think this would be a good template for the future of sorcery.

Letā€™s hope devs find a way to make it viable in the future. But one weeks is still some time to play around with it. I love the impressive dmg output it is capable of dealing.

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I will say that it CAN go poorly. Itā€™s freaky going against enemies that can multi-hit you. Think rhinosā€™ charge, the Sunken City fat fishmensā€™ ā€œuppercut,ā€ dragonsā€™ fire breath, etcā€¦ Those attacks are pretty nearly ā€œone-shots.ā€

Past that, just get to doing damage!.. But stay safe! Dodging hits is more important than dealing them!

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Celebrate its life, donā€™t mourn its death lol. Iā€™ll hold on to a bit of hope but Iā€™m overall feeling pessimistic about it. The new extreme mule kick is pretty fun.

Also, yes, a comeback in the future would be great and very welcome.

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An extra 60% reduction that cannot be penetrated. The balance is that you get one life and thatā€™s it. You lose it there is no respawn and puts you back on the cross.

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