Right now it's 6 6 4. We could make it (4++.25) (4+.25) (4++.25). That more or less balances it out with Fiery Wand, which is ( 6 + +.25 ) ( 10 + +.25 ). A little stronger, especially at later levels, but it needs 2 more to build, so I think that's alright. Especially since that means you need Wandcrafting to make it, while Fiery Wands can be crafted by Rogue Scientists.
Laser hits harder earlier. It is cool that some wands be better earlier and others scale better (especially with wand crafting), but yeah, all wands should scale.
So basically you don't want wands to scale primarily with ? Seeing how you get 1 point of damage out of 4 , which you can easily reach 40 in which equals +10 damage whereas you can only get +10 damage through extreme amounts of dedication with using that equation. I'd personally go with something along the lines of (4+.15) + (2+2/3x) + (2+2/3x) as it'd make the main stat here and keep the Wand Lore skill from getting -even more- obsolete. The way I see it the entire question regarding wands could be solved pretty easily: Make wands more accessable, nobody takes Wand Lore to craft wands anyway - they take it because wands scale with and because it has some sweet encrusts, although the scalling is the primarry focus of the skill. An easy way to make wands more accessable would be to, for instance, make use of the changewand (can't remember if it's called that) spell effect in a related skill. Probally with some harsh drawbacks if need be. Sure it'd break the crafting aspect but in a world where we have Xenochemistry that's a pretty mute complaint. Besides just isn't a crafting stat the same way that , and are as it's also a stat which has a direct impact on your character and his/her/sqlers offensive power. Basically Wand Lore is like the Rogue Scientist skill, only that it's much more luck bassed as you'd have to rely on getting the right wands to keep on blowing stuff up rather than just waste a cooldown, this randomness is the big problem here the way I see it. ...along with the horrible scalling that is, seriously the level 1-2 wands are horrible no matter what amount of you have. Now note that I'm not an expect on wands, although I've been doing quite a bit of rescearch for my upcomming Space Wizard mod and this rescearch mostly centers around playing wand swinging characters, namely Rogue Scientists... and thinking up bad wand puns. So I do believe that I deserve some kind of hearsay. EDIT: You may be fixing wands right now, yes, but you're effectively destroying Wand Lore - even more - by changing into a crafting stat which has some combat support rather than being what it is, a combat stat with crafting support. EDITEDIT: Also meatwand.
Yes, that seems like a good enough summary of this plan. Though I'd like to point out that I don't want anything. I'm just the guy who figured out which numbers to use for Essence's ideas. The thing about that, is that it stops us from scaling to . Under Essence's plan, you should be dealing about 50% more damage if you take and work on wandlore than if you don't. Not enough to break crafted wands, but certainly nothing to laugh at either. You don't see arrows that scale to tinkering, or armors scaling to smiting, after all. What you're doing seems little better than choosing random scalars for both and based on how strong you want the wand to be. At the moment, few wands scale to both and , which means we'd need to go through each one and pick new scalars for both and just guessing how strong they'd make it. I like the idea of a formula. You can ask for more per if you want, but I believe there should be some kind of hard conversion between the two on all wands. Yes, this is a problem we hope to fix. If we make wands usable, that makes Wand Lore usable, and even more so because it provides both and , which wands scale to (or it will- right now it provides and ). I don't see how that's any easier. Especially not when, as you said, it would break the crafting aspect. That's a pretty huge aspect to just throw away Tell that to Rogue Scientist and Clockwork Squire and a few other random things. Yet another thing we fix with this. You mean to say the stat whose primary purpose is to craft things is not currently a crafting stat? If we're effectively destroying Wand Lore and fixing wands (which I don't believe we are), you're advocating the exact opposite- effectively destroying Wands and fixing Wandlore. Your suggestions would make wands unusable for anyone who didn't take Wandlore. Nobody can use wands now, and your suggestion only helps people who take the skill tree with your new changewand skill. Essences's plan to switch primary scaling to and make scaling secondary ensures that anyone can use the wands they buy or pick up off the ground, but characters who craft their own wands still deal a significantly large amount of damage with them.
That's not scaling, that's crafting, and Wands do it too. And if anyone thinks Wandlore will remain underpowered after this change is enacted, there's an easy way to fix that. We can add some sort of damaging skill to it, maybe a spell that scales to or something, nothing very strong, but something to make it worth taking. I don't think it'll need it, but if anyone does, that's a way to boost it while still using Essence's plan.
Ok, thought finished. The thing about scaling with first and second is that it doesn't hurt anyone, and it helps pure Rogues who don't take Wandcrafting. The extra scaling from is extra. It's a bonus for people who choose to take the skill. needs to be the primary stat so that people who don't take Wandcrafting can still use wands effectively.
That's good and all, now the question is how you want to make Wand Lore attractive? Seeing how people arn't going to spend a skill slot on a minor and occasional damage boost from a non-persistent source and seeing how without permanent crafts that arn't encrusts it won't be able to hold up against , and as a pure crafting skill. Not to mention that the, at best, meager and pathetic list of craftables isn't exactly ruling in its favor. The way I see it making the primary scalling stat means that everybody get's a fair chance at using non-scalling wands, although with a bit of investment. It'd help make Wand Lore a LOT more appealing and Aetheric Deathray would actually become, y'know, useful as you wouldn't be hunting an "occasionally somewhat useful" stat. I'm actually pretty close to calling the idea of making wands instantly accessable to almost everybody a matter of being spoiled for choice, but that's just me. It's not like I'm against the idea it's just that while the intention is good I feel like it's misguided and that focus should be on the Wand Lore skill and not the wands themselves. Hence the question, y'know, to make sure I'm mistaken and all that.
Since this thread came out I have been trying wandcrafting in a variety of ways. Without perception or piracy for gems (or wasting tons of time in alchemy for transmuting) you really don't get many gems to craft tons of wands. If you could spam the CRAP out of wands without regard of the cost they would be MUCH better earlier. Late game, yeah they need scaling, but another big flaw to wandcrafting is that it is too hard to craft them with much utility... kind of like how in another thread we evaluated a lot of the smithing stuff and found that it didn't really have a niche early or late game.
Now I'm really curious, let's assume that I'm wrong. What makes you think that people would pick a crafting skill in order to gain an occasional damage boost which they ultimately don't need and access to bunch of situational consumeables rather than pick an actual crafting skill and make a much larger variety of items, including gear? Asking because I really don't see why anybody would want to sacrifice a skill slot on something like that and, well, curiousity. - The smiley is there to make it 100% clear that I'm not oppossed to the idea. My point exactly (or rather one of them). You spend way too many rescources and gain little to nothing in return. Not that it'd be that difficult to fix seeing how there's a spell effect in the XML-coding for the game which changes one wand into another but keeps all the charges, that way you'd be able to gain something from crafting even low level wands as you can turn them into better ones or make sure that you always have different wands on you rather than having 2+ of the same wand. Basically removing the randomness from the skill. --- I've said it before and I'll say it again; is not a crafting stat and was never meant to be so. Sure it has crafting recipes, or rather it was given them when the burnout concept was changed in order to replace some of the wand focused skills that Wand Lore used to possess. Therefore it should not be treated the same way you would , and simply because they don't actively affect your character (unless you pick a skill that scales with them, -just to make it perfectly clear despite me mentioning it once already-), rather it should be treated as a skill which has the same goal as Rogue Scientist and old-Clockwork Knight but excecutes it's plan differently, namely through comsumeables rather than cooldowns. On another note why haven't anybody mentioned the unused Diggle Wand icon or the fact that Pearlescent Wand dosen't actually have a demon/undead specific ability despite it's flavor text saying so?
If Adding scaling to wands that currently scale to and scaling to wands that scale to (and changing the scaling to scaling) doesn't work (and I honestly believe it will), we can add various skills and spells to the skill tree to balance it. The easiest would be a level 1 spell which scaled to , and so got stronger as you leveled up the tree. It's not an occasional damage boost, it's a 30% damage boost to all your wands, plus the ability to actually craft said wands (important, since it's the only tree that lets you do so). You can say it won't hold up against the other crafting trees, but I don't see what they have to do with eachother. They don't directly compete, that's for sure. One crafts wands, and the other 3 equipment. Though I agree with you on one thing; the wand that isn't currently craftable (Camera) should be. Can we toss that in somewhere when we do this? Very few wands are non-scaling-less than half. Which means you're advocating putting a good chunk of items in this game that are only useful if you take the Wand Lore skill tree. I disagree with that idea. The wands themselves are created by Wand Lore. If they are good, then crafting them is good, and if crafting them is good, Wand Lore is good. It's a 30% damage boost to all wands, plus the ability to actually craft said wands. That's not horrible. Your idea doesn't help wands at all, and leaves almost all of them as crap. --- has only one major purpose right now, and that's to craft wands. You can say you don't want it to be a crafting stat, but to say it isn't is just silly. If you look at all the wands, quite a few of them don't even scale to right now. It's easier to balance the wands assuming you didn't take Wand Lore (and thus not forcing you to take it in order to use them), then come back and do what needs to be done to Wand Lore if anything does need to be done (I suspect playing around with the output of at each stage, would do enough so long as there was any scaling at all in wands).[/quote]
After all, this should be the philosophy of every crafting skill (I don't see why shouldn't be a craft skill anyway): your bonus is to create useful things, rather than being stronger in fights. And I thought that was the idea behind the proposal change. Rogues of any variety can use wands effectively, not-rogues with maxed can use wands better than not-crafter rogues, and rogues who take are going to have very powerful weapons in their hands. And Rogue scientist is a rogue skill.
I have an idea! What if wands scaled primarily to savvy and wand output scaled to wand crafting? 3 Wandcrafting = 3 Wands! Problem = Fixed!
Wands are pretty strong, or at least they will be after this. Creating 3 at once with only 2 levels in Wandcrafting would be OP. Maybe once you hit lv 6, as a capstone, you could start creating 2 wands at once instead of 1. That would be a nice incentive to max out Wand Lore.
You could always knock the scaling down a step. Of course, you could just slow down the rate at which wand crafting scaled, too. Say, a bonus wand for every three levels of Wandcrafting you have (so 2 wands with 3 wandlore, 3 wands with 6, 4 wands at 9). The idea being to solve the ingredient bottleneck by making ingredients go farther.
