Is dark magic really overpowered, or is how people use it overpowered?

Forum Pirate wrote:350 is the diminishing returns point. Anything below that is akin to going in with a +15 uchi at 30 dex. Functional, but inefficient. Better off going another way, if possible.

Heavier weapon stunlock, bs, aren't limited by cast number, have roll attacks and running attacks and power attacks. In short, they have far more variety and the range is a non issue as long range magic is even less accurate than it is at close range.

One can simply walk sideways, no need to roll, to avoid a hcsm at any range except point blank (we're talking within shortsword reach.) The same can be said of CSS, though its not quite as bad. (also not the case with heavy weapons except at the far edge of their reach) The projectiles should either be wide enough, home well enough or move fast enough that this is risky at best, especially locked off, but as is its pathetic, lock off or not.

Pursuiers is HCSM done right (one of the ways it could be done right anyways)

(it would have somewhat higher HP if I optomised the gear)

I certainly agree. Magic needs more variety, since most of the spells play somewhat of a supporting role to melee, while not being stand alone. Personally, FROM should have added spells with different effects. Instead of just lowering or heightening the damage/uses. For example, what if Dark Bead's damage was majorly lowered, but had the ability to ricochet off of walls? That would certainly make for some interesting scenarios. There are a multitude of ways to balance such things out in the game, it's just the I think that FROM did it wrong.

Forum Pirate wrote:In short, reliability and variety are the problems with standard magic. Not enough of either, not for the risk involved (in the form of low defense, lower (than optimal for a STR or DEX build without sacrifices) hp and limited casts.

I completely agree with that! Magic needed a buff, but not in the way that Dark Bead or Pursuers provided.

Most sorcery spells (that dealt damage) were just variations of the same attack until Dark Bead; fire a magical arrow. Everything was a narrow, long-ranged attack. In Dark, the only damaging sorceries (until dark magic) were Soul Arrow, Soul Spear and Homing Soulmass and stronger variations of those. Dark Bead is the only directly damaging sorcery that is a splash, spray or arc besides Homing Soulmass. (which is only a slight variation and usually easy to dodge) Note that pyromancy and miracles both had plenty of aoes, mid-range medium-diameter aoes and a few 'melee' attacks. Sorcery lacked all of those.
I think spells, items or weapons are overpowered when they are so superior to other gearsets that they win in the rock-paper-scissors game on in far more pairings than others. For example, take the different weapon classes and spells and pair them together, saying that one class beats, loses or draws with certain others. (not including skill and environment as factors) Say that Straight Swords beat Spears and Pyromancy while Straight Swords lose to Ultra Greatswords and Miracles. If these weapons and spells are balanced then the number of weapon/spell classes that each class beats and loses to against should be about even, and those numbers should be close to all the other classes. If an overpowered weapon or spell-something gives a player an advantage over a lot more of these than the others-then it's less about player skill than the item itself and it makes other weapon/spell choices less practical and often less fun. There will always be some degree of this and that's actually okay as long as the difference in advantages between one class and another don't render one so much worse by comparison as to make it useless or necessary to completely outskill everyone else just to make it even decent. Everyone losing to a mage occasionally is not a problem; everyone who is not mage except one or two types losing most or all fights with mages (sometimes regardless of the mage's skill) is.

Acarnatia wrote:Most sorcery spells (that dealt damage) were just variations of the same attack until Dark Bead; fire a magical arrow. Everything was a narrow, long-ranged attack. In Dark, the only damaging sorceries (until dark magic) were Soul Arrow, Soul Spear and Homing Soulmass and stronger variations of those. Dark Bead is the only directly damaging sorcery that is a splash, spray or arc besides Homing Soulmass. (which is only a slight variation and usually easy to dodge) Note that pyromancy and miracles both had plenty of aoes, mid-range medium-diameter aoes and a few 'melee' attacks. Sorcery lacked all of those.
I think spells, items or weapons are overpowered when they are so superior to other gearsets that they win in the rock-paper-scissors game on in far more pairings than others. For example, take the different weapon classes and spells and pair them together, saying that one class beats, loses or draws with certain others. (not including skill and environment as factors) Say that Straight Swords beat Spears and Pyromancy while Straight Swords lose to Ultra Greatswords and Miracles. If these weapons and spells are balanced then the number of weapon/spell classes that each class beats and loses to against should be about even, and those numbers should be close to all the other classes. If an overpowered weapon or spell-something gives a player an advantage over a lot more of these than the others-then it's less about player skill than the item itself and it makes other weapon/spell choices less practical and often less fun. There will always be some degree of this and that's actually okay as long as the difference in advantages between one class and another don't render one so much worse by comparison as to make it useless or necessary to completely outskill everyone else just to make it even decent. Everyone losing to a mage occasionally is not a problem; everyone who is not mage except one or two types losing most or all fights with mages (sometimes regardless of the mage's skill) is.

Yup. That's practically what I mean. There won't ever really be true balance, but making it close such as that sort of rock-paper-scissors thing is certainly do-able. Dark magic may have added variation, but it did it at the cost of being way too powerful for it's own good.

I've had one guy message me about using dark bead in a fight. He said "why would you bring yourself down and use that **** dark magic?" but to be fair in that fight all he did was spam parries whenever I got close so I had to do something else to catch him off guard (couldn't kick since my mage character uses Velkas rapier). Maybe its because I use dark bead every now and then but I don't have an issue with dark magic at all. It's just as easy to dodge as regular magic, except pursuers which you just have to either do a lot of rolling or just back up. They are a lot of things people say are overpowered in Dark Souls, but the bottom line is 90% of those things have a counter to them it just depends on if that person is able to find that counter or not. I don't completely agree with the whole 'It's in the game so deal with it' mentality but there is some merit to that. It's the same you have to deal with BS fishers, gankers, and even hackers it's all part of the game. And for every one of those people there is probably 3 others that will give you a good fight, so you just gotta comb through the ******** and learn to deal with it.

Dark Magic is not OP. IMO, things are only OP if there is not a good counter to them. Dark Magic has counters.

It forces you to play cautiously, albeit boring at times. I took on a Pursuers/DB/HCMS player last night. I baited his Dark beads and easily dodged them. I was able to easily avoid his Pursuers. I kept a good distance and dodged with minimal problem. If I would have rushed in, I would have been one-shot.

Anytime you see a Crown of Dusk or a catalyst come out, beware and adjust your strategy. Don't rush in. Stay at a medium distance. Roll to the side for HCSM, DB, CSS, etc. Walk backward to avoid pursuers. They will run out of magic, or realize they will run out of magic, and have to adjust their strategy.

Acarnatia wrote: everyone who is not mage except one or two types losing most or all fights with mages (sometimes regardless of the mage's skill) is.

I don't think thats the case though, unless the opponent (ie not the mage) is, shall we say, underdeveloped, or unless there is a significant skill gap in favor of the mage. At low (skill) level pvp it will certainly seem OP (as will WoG, the zweihander, ect.) but at mid to high level pvp its not so anymore. There are enough ways to block, kite, avoid, interrupt or punish it that its no different from anything else, except its more limited.

The limited casts don't really matter if you use them appropriately however, as a caster, I could easily smash someone for a 1300 damage bead just by waiting for them to attack before casting, for example.

Yeah. and they can bait such casts (especially with faster weapons) and roll bs you or stay back with a bow, or catch you in a roll r1 to stunlock combo.

So we're back to basic high level pvp mind games.

(the removal of the wolf ring would help the stunlock point)

Indeed, however here is what I'm getting at, in high level PvP, battles can last either 5 seconds, or 2 to 5 minutes depending on how well the players mess with each other, however spellcasting, while limited, could easily result in the player managing to crush out a decisive victory for one mis-step. Unless magic has it's damage drastically nerfed, the limited casts need to stay because of how they genuinely effect the metagame.

I'm all in favor of limited casts, so long as those limits reflect the spells relative effectiveness. Thats why I prefer this system to the mana, easier to balance.

Its not perfect as is, don't get me wrong, but its better than last time around.

I think it might help to compare them by their uses in different situations. For example, close range seems to be magics weak point. Since they can't BS or be as flexible as melee weapons. Yet, one spell practically 'fixed' that problem (overkilled it.)

(If anyone has anything to add to this, certainly go ahead and do it. Finding out magics main flaws and how to get around them might clear some of the problems.)

Weapons Advantage
------------
High durability
Backstabs / Ripostes
Can be buffed
Some can be used while blocking
Can stunlock


Spells Advantage
------------
Excellent range
Magic damage (goes through shields)
Has equipment to increase damage output (sometimes at a cost...)
Generally high speed
A large application of uses (although, a small amount of offensive options.)

I probably didn't cover everything, but oh well.


Anyways, if you can take advantage of what magic does best, or the weak points of other weapon classes. That will help it immensely.

Rynn wrote:The limited casts don't really matter if you use them appropriately however, as a caster, I could easily smash someone for a 1300 damage bead just by waiting for them to attack before casting, for example.

Sure, you can certainly ration your casts. But that doesn't change the fact that the amount of casts matter.
Mages can't fire back or at least, not as much as melee classes. I personally find that to be a huge problem with magic.

I think that magic should have a lot more variety in attack spells, while leaving other spells such as Chameleon to another dedicated form of magic that focuses around support.


https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t19203-dark-souls-2-mana-vs-limited-castings#375782

In that thread, I basically said what I hope the magic system turns out to be. As it would make limited casts not a problem, yet limit magic spam to some degree.


So, what does it come down to when talking about magics biggest flaw? Is it that there's cast limits? Or is it that there aren't enough offensive options? Possibly both?

Forum Pirate wrote:I'm all in favor of limited casts, so long as those limits reflect the spells relative effectiveness. Thats why I prefer this system to the mana, easier to balance.

Its not perfect as is, don't get me wrong, but its better than last time around.

That's certainly true that it's better than last time. But, limited casts can severely affect the way magic is used. Which is why I still support using a regenerating mana bar, but change it's regen speed depending on the percentage of mana used.




(If my posts are way too long, should I just split them into different sections into spoilers?)

Your fine. (intelligent) discussions on mechanics and balance are always long.

Oh ok, thanks. I was worried about that.

I am a dark magic user. I think that if dark magic is at all overpowered, it's only a little bit.
I remember when I was playing with the 2v2 arena group with Reim in it. He was mid-rolling with a murakumo. Out of the dozens of times I cast pursuers (and I really mean dozens) I hit him something like three times. I did only a little better with dark bead.

How is this even a question?

Saturday-Saint wrote:How is this even a question?

What do you mean by that?

What he said. He doesn't understand how someone could attempt to separate somethings effectiveness from its (none glitched) use.

I remarked on it in my first post as well. The 2 are inseparable. Nothing is overpowered in a vacuum. Context (how it can be used) makes it so. If it can't be used to do OP things, its not OP, and vice versa.

That certainly makes sense. But, I'm guessing the question is more so about how it can be buffed to extreme measures. Sure, Dark magic by itself is fine (it's unbuffed usage). But with the huge potential it possesses in combination with other things, either being able to combine those things is OP, or one (or more) of the things in the combination are OP.

(its not OP, this is purely hypothetical)

Then its OP, because it can be used at such high power. Wether or not it would be OP un boosted is irrelevant, it can be legitimately boosted so it is OP. Things have to be judged at optimum capacity.

The boosters aren't OP, css, hcsm, wdb, gcfb, fire tempest, GC, none of these come anywhere near the OP threshold, even while boosted. best in class spells all. That eliminates the boosters as candidates for OP.

That leaves dark magic as the root problem, the "broken element" in pokemon meta terms. Thus dark magic is OP and should be addressed.

Again, this was entirely hypothetical, but thats how balancing works. The thing cannot be separated from its use.

If anything can be used in a way that is overpowered, then it probably is overpowered..

The obvious flaw in this is when people start saying that certain things are overpowered when in actuality, they're not. I consider dark bead to be this. It is very much the sorcerer's short range shotgun. Useless at further than 3/4 steps away, but powerful when used up close- like it's supposed to be used.

Other examples are WoG (I mean the range isn't that high, nor is the power and you only get 3 casts of it, it's actually quite a well balanced magic), weapon buffs and GC.

Ghadis_God wrote:Dark Magic isn't overpowered at all, it just makes mages viable in PvP without much skill, while beforehand a dedicated mage had to have an extreme amount of practice and skill to go toe to toe with better PvPers.

When it came out yes. But if you cant dodge it now, its not the caster lacking skill.

Forum Pirate wrote:...Know how many times I've been hit by CSS? 12. 3 twopped, 5 in ganks, 2 unlocked and 2 that were made 30 feet wide by lag...

If there is a legal pad next to your recliner or favorite gaming chair, then I am amazed :affraid: …and a little scared. :pale:

jaythibodeau wrote:

Saturday-Saint wrote:How is this even a question?

What do you mean by that?

I love it love it love it!!! Another thread going into “For Ego Links”. This is too easy man. 8)

Alrighty. This time, I'm gonna have to section this behemoth into spoilers.
This took me approximately four to five hours to make while Google Chrome decided to crash on me multiple times I think.

Spoiler:

Dark Bead and Dark Orb shouldn't have a 16 intelligence requirement, thats the only problem with them imo.

No, its just really, really uncommon so they stand out.

OBJECTION! Actually serious is right on the money. Thats where raw data comes in. To separate the whining from the legitimately OP stuff.

I do think there is a problem with Dark Magic, but it's a problem that is similar to Elemental weapons. The ability to use them at low levels and invade potentially new and inexperienced players. Normally I see people who are experienced at the game mid rolling or fast rolling through their runs, so DB shouldn't be much of a problem. Plus they can counter it, but its use against inexperience/new players I think is an issue. I don't however hold it to just Dark Magic, I'd say it's more so a side effect of the connection system.