The Wizard and Firebolt

[fallen]

To all,

Since the conversation about this is running on multiple threads, I thought I'd start a new one specifically on this topic.

In testing out why everyone thinks the Wizard's spell attack is too weak, I found three interesting facts:

1) Because of the way the damage is split up between physical and magical Fire damage, the monsters are getting 2 soak rolls which is unfairly reducing the damage. I will fix this.
2) There was a bug in the dice pools that monsters get when defending against ranged attacks, some important fields got switched. They will dodge both arrows and Firebolts a little less expertly. Choking Ash will have a greater effect on to-Hit rolls.
3) Balancing of weapons left the Firebolt weapon well-balanced, but dropped an arbitrary bonus it (and all spell attacks) were intended to receive because they are Talents, harder to raise, inaccessible via gold, and the like (as opposed to swords that you can buy or find new ones). You'll see the Wizard's Firebolt level 1 restored to a whopping 5 Accuracy, up from 2.

Thanks all for the continued details on this so that we could discover and iron out these three critical balance issues!

[beuns]

fallen - I didn't know about 1) & 2) even if the effects could be saw during play. About 3) I also think that the min-max damages of firebolt are a bit low at moment and as johndramey had said earlier, it ends as the thief is doing lot more damages than the wizard. Maybe if the wizard hit less often but for more damage, it would be more balanced.
Just my 2 cents

[evmaker]

I guess I'm an odd man out here, I never really noticed an issue with the mages fireball, at least after leveling once.

With first level fireball I did notice the damage seemed a bit low in comparison to the other members of my team, but after a level and level 2 fireball, sorcery skill increase and intelligence stat (I think I got those right), his fireballs were hitting for about as much as my thief/little less then my outlander with increased strength/swords.

In that 'generally' it seemed damage ranges were about:
First level:
Outlander 14-18+
Thief 8-14
Wizard 4-8

Second level:
Outlander 14-20+
thief 10-16
Wizard 12-16

Now that's completely rough off the top of my head estimates, I'll try keep a closer watch on the numbers if that is any help.

I did notice it tended to miss a bit more often then the others, but not greatly so, I'd say probably it probably hit 70-80% of the time about the same as was posted on another thread (but that is on hard or lower, not brutal or nightmare).

[slayernz]

Fireball 2 actually delivers reasonable damage for that skill level. It was the hit accuracy that caused an issue, mainly because a miss consumed 2x AP, and SP on top of that. The Outlander wastes 2x AP for every swing and miss, but at least you have the choice of doing so with out SP consumption.

The changes sound really good to me. It's meant to be the first combat spell you learn, so should never become so powerful that it eclipses other talents in the future. Looking forward to level 12+ spells