Weapons & Equip Mage survivability- Wards!

[Guardian_Angel56]

I've noticed that mages in Terraria have high DPS, but low defense/survivability. Most mage armor does not have high defense, and their accessories do not have many protective qualities. Of course, this differs from setup to setup, but it would be cool to have another form of defense.

Wards!

Wards are castable shields of magic that would block projectiles, and optionally mobs/players(PVP) from moving through them (maybe at a higher level). They could be a spell or an accessory that allows a key to be pressed to throw one (or something else). They would have cooldowns (or maybe increased mana cost, similar to the effects of Chaos State) to prevent spamming. The caster would also be able to fire past their own wards.


These wards could have health, and when depleted, they would shatter and disappear.
Maybe this health could be affected by 'charging' the ward by holding the casting for longer, using more mana for more health.

They could also just last with infinite health for a certain time.
This likely wouldn't be very long. Maybe higher tiers of wards would have longer times, but also higher mana cost.

Maybe the wards could run off of the caster's mana, so when the mana is depleted, the ward breaks. (Mana Flower and potions may be a problem here)
The rate would have to be cheap damage->mana cost for mages to keep using magic, but it could also be expensive to make it less viable to always keep a ward in front of you, and only to use it on heavy attacks.

These could be used to block things as simple as arrows, to something like blocking beams and other heavy attacks.


Wards could also be a castable form of defense, which would be easier to implement, but it wouldn't be as flashy (or as useful) as a flying shield.


Proposed values for wards:
Of course, these can be changed as needed, and if you have an idea of better numbers for these, by all means, comment!



'Cooldown': 5-6 seconds, costs additional ((1/8 * max mana) + (1/4 ward mana cost)) to cast, similar to Chaos State.

E.g. Ward costing 150 mana is cast, and the caster has 400 max mana. The new cost to cast during cooldown is ((50+37.5) + 150) = 237.5.
With a max mana of 300, the cost is ((37.5+37.5) + 150) = 225 (too expensive to cast again without potions.)

This is for wards where they would have health and be able to shatter.

Spoiler

Max charge time: 3 seconds
Would add (1/2 * ward max hp) to ward max hp, but would cost double the mana cost to cast.

Tier one:
HP: 100
Mana cost: 50

(Tier two would likely be early Hardmode)
Tier two:
HP: 300
Mana cost: 100

(This would be somewhere around post-plantera.)
Tier three:
HP: 500
Mana cost: 150

This is for wards that would have indefinite health, but a certain amount of time before they expire.

Spoiler

(It should be noted that this is nearly enough to block the 'death ray'.)
Tier one:
Duration: 3 seconds
Mana cost: 100

Tier two:
Duration: 5 seconds
Mana cost: 200

Charging these would also cost double mana cost, but would add 2-3 seconds to their duration.

Duration could appear over the ward in number format, or it could be the ward fading or jittering.

This is for wards that would drain the caster's mana during their existence.

Spoiler

Of course, these wards need to be able to be canceled, so a buff icon would be necessary.
Higher tiers would be more efficient with their costs.
Mana could be either rounded up or down.

Tier one:
Mana cost: ((incoming damage * .4) + (incoming damage / 10))
As such, an attack dealing 100 damage would cost 50 mana to block.

Tier two:
Mana cost: ((incoming damage *.3) + (incoming damage / 20))
An attack dealing 100 damage would cost 35 mana to block.

Tier three:
Mana cost: ((incoming damage /4{or *.25}) + (incoming damage / 30))
An attack dealing 100 damage would cost 28.33 mana to block.

 

[Milamber33]

Nice idea! The concern that I would have would be breaking game balance, particularly if you wanted to get just that one ward item in your inventory to boost your melee character's health/defense even further, making them overpowered. This would be particularly effective as melee and ranged builds have no significant use for mana. That being said, there are ways of dealing with that scenario so it doesn't become a problem. Placing a ward effect on a mage-only armour piece comes to mind.

I would think that two forms of wards could be useful (though they should be named different things):

1. The first kind would be a bubble around the caster, ensuring that all damage that the caster would receive is instead taken by the ward first. I think this would work best as a permanent effect that grants a small amount of extra 'health', but which recharges as quickly as mana. No mana cost should be attached to this in my opinion. This could become a differentiating feature of mage themed armour if handled properly. I'm picturing this as a coloured circle around the mage, with the colour either being based on the armour colour or the amount of additional 'health' remaining.
2. The second form that I can think of is a placed ward which should be invulnerable but only last a few seconds. I'm picturing something about 3-5 blocks long and oriented based on the direction between the player and the place clicked (vertical for straight left/right, horizontal for straight up/down, etc). It should serve as a barrier to all attacks, even those that pass through blocks I think, and possibly a physical barrier to stop enemies and/or harmful liquids as well. I'm kind of torn on the idea of shooting through (and passing through if it serves as a physical barrier) your own barrier wards. On the one hand I think it would be too powerful, but on the other hand this is effectively what you can already do with the ice rod (for shooting through anyway). It should have a very high mana cost, high enough that you can only cast a handful of them without needing a potion. This should be a very late game item as the effect is too powerful even for a short duration to not cause balance issues if introduced earlier.

 

[Jon Smitten]

I'm interested to see this idea being explored by the devs!

This also makes me think that at least, the devs might add an accessory that projects a personal energy shield around the player. Just passive defence, which maybe absorbs 75% of all incoming damage as damage to mana instead? This mana reduction is affected by mana consumption reduction buffs as well, so it'll be more useful for mage builds than say melee builds who also maxed out their mana. (Also need to spend an additional accessory slot for the Mana Flower.) Maybe the percent reduction is also affected by max mana as well, so those with lower max mana will have less damage absorbed by the shield? I'm just thinking of ways where this would benefit a mage build more than a melee or ranged build.

 

[Milamber33]

That's what I was going for with my first idea, hence the no mana cost but being an effect of mage armour. I think anything that costs mana to aid defense will always be of more benefit to melee and ranged builds than mage builds just because those builds won't care about the mana cost because they weren't using it anyway. There has to be some other mechanic to actually restrict it to a mage build, and armour makes the most sense because that way you're trading one kind of defense for another, so you can't stack high defense melee armour with a defense bonus intended for mages.

 

[YourLocalTerrarian]

Mages are supposed to have low defense, and already have end game healing abilities. Adding a way to boost defense would just take the "Mage" out of "Mage"

Anyway no support

 

[Muninn]

While "traveling" wards could be useful, Stationary wards would be best. This is due to the fact that, as YourLocalTerrarian said,

Mages are supposed to have low defense."

This is true and could be rectified with a different system, Like so:
Use a "snail" speed item, which causes Projectiles and NPCs to receive a Strong knockback for the duration of the Buff.

 

[Milamber33]

Mages are supposed to have low defense, and already have end game healing abilities. Adding a way to boost defense would just take the "Mage" out of "Mage"

Anyway no support

-Melee have the best defense of any class, which would make sense if they were actually using true melee, but once you hit hardmode, almost every melee weapon hits at least most of the way across the screen, some a lot further (Terra Blade...).
-Ranged have better versatility with the different ammo types, and while collecting them may involve a bit of grinding, they can carry ridiculous amounts of ammo, PLUS they have infinite ammo boxes for the basic ammo types, so over the course of a boss fight they probably do higher DPS than melee. They do have slightly lower defense, but not that much lower. They're probably fairly balanced with melee.
- Magic and summon though both have TERRIBLE defense compared to the others, don't have the versatility of ranged, and except for the occasional brief standout most of their weapons don't actually do that much more damage than melee weapons do. Plus you have mana limitations to take into account, which work fine for general adventuring, but in a boss fight, with equal level gear melee will often actually do higher DPS than magic unless you rely on spamming mana potions and star statues. That would be like suggesting spamming health potions and heart statues to make melee viable - something you might have to do if melee was actually 'melee', but isn't necessary in the game's current form.

Now I might be missing something here, but I set out to play this game as a mage, but I keep having to go back to melee armour and weapons because the mage stuff just isn't as good. If I am, please tell me. I'd love to feel like magic gear was a truly viable way to go, but as long as they have such terrible defense with no real offensive advantage when it matters most, it's not working for me. The above was about balancing the defensive deficit in a thematically appropriate way to bring magic defense in line with melee and ranged, since their offense seems to be in the same general ballpark anyway.

 

[YourLocalTerrarian]

-Melee have the best defense of any class, which would make sense if they were actually using true melee, but once you hit hardmode, almost every melee weapon hits at least most of the way across the screen, some a lot further (Terra Blade...).
-Ranged have better versatility with the different ammo types, and while collecting them may involve a bit of grinding, they can carry ridiculous amounts of ammo, PLUS they have infinite ammo boxes for the basic ammo types, so over the course of a boss fight they probably do higher DPS than melee. They do have slightly lower defense, but not that much lower. They're probably fairly balanced with melee.
- Magic and summon though both have TERRIBLE defense compared to the others, don't have the versatility of ranged, and except for the occasional brief standout most of their weapons don't actually do that much more damage than melee weapons do. Plus you have mana limitations to take into account, which work fine for general adventuring, but in a boss fight, with equal level gear melee will often actually do higher DPS than magic unless you rely on spamming mana potions and star statues. That would be like suggesting spamming health potions and heart statues to make melee viable - something you might have to do if melee was actually 'melee', but isn't necessary in the game's current form.

Now I might be missing something here, but I set out to play this game as a mage, but I keep having to go back to melee armour and weapons because the mage stuff just isn't as good. If I am, please tell me. I'd love to feel like magic gear was a truly viable way to go, but as long as they have such terrible defense with no real offensive advantage when it matters most, it's not working for me. The above was about balancing the defensive deficit in a thematically appropriate way to bring magic defense in line with melee and ranged, since their offense seems to be in the same general ballpark anyway.

Ok so ranged class actually has decently less defense than the melee class, and the ranged class is generally using rapid attacks of minor damage but can attack at any distance. The melee class has high dph already, but multiplying with it's attack speed boosts, the melee dps is far superior to any other class. But the melee class can only fight at fixed distances, unlike the ranged class.

And the mage class also has ranged attacks, but also has unique attacks, like homing attacks, aoe attacks, piercing attacks, and attacks with special effects, it has the less defense and dps than ranger and melee, but it has a variety of ranged attacks and special effects which makes it a fun class to use. It also doesn't need ammo, instead it has mana, which is like cool down ammo in a sense.

 

[Milamber33]

But the melee class can only fight at fixed distances, unlike the ranged class.

My whole point is that melee doesn't really have a limit on their attack range once you get to hardmode. According to the wiki, the Terra Blade projectile will travel for 2500 blocks before dissipating, how is that 'fixed distances'?

And the mage class also has ranged attacks, but also has unique attacks, like homing attacks,

Chlorophyte Bullets, Flairon, Scourge of the Corruptor, Snowman Cannon, Horseman's Blade. Homing is NOT unique to magic, nor is it even on the majority of magic weapons.

aoe attacks,

Grenade launcher, rocket launcher. Again, not magic specific nor on most magic weapons. And melee has flails and yoyos that you can put in an area and they'll just keep doing damage to everything coming in contact with them. I'd argue that's better than aoe in most cases.

piercing attacks,

Please tell me you're joking now. I swear once you get to hardmode there's more melee weapons with piercing than without. Not to mention, again, flails and yoyos.

It also doesn't need ammo, instead it has mana, which is like cool down ammo in a sense.

Melee doesn't need ammo or mana and matches magic damage while outclassing magic survivability significantly. And the cooldown of mana is exactly why magic can't really compete. Again, with ranged at least you can stock up on ammo and keep firing during boss fights, magic has to keep taking breaks, or using star statues or potions in order to keep up a constant barrage, something you get automatically with the other classes. I get that there are some unique weapons in magic and I love the idea in general, but until you get some of the endgame magic weapons you're pretty much always better off with melee. And since the damage output isn't actually superior and you can't generally hit anything further away or from better cover than melee lets you do, the defense should also be similar, purely from a game balance perspective. And since the idea of mages is generally low defense, the ideas above were about thematically appropriate alternatives to raw defense.

 

[RottenPlayer]

Wards could work like the Thorium mod's energy projector.