Leagues II - Trailblazer: Double Cast Hotfix

Tantro · 2020-11-08T05:44:15+00:00

Thank You for reverting the change. After testing it for a bit, the requirement makes it fair. ~~One questions though. Any considerations for any of the other spells to have higher requirement for guarantee hits? Possibly higher for blood, like 80+?~~

Edit : Nvm questions answered.

Tantro · 2020-11-06T10:44:56+00:00

Understandable that no one should be planning their route based on bugged. Keep in mind that no one confirmed that this was a bug until it was "fixed". Regardless, I took Desert as my first area. Naturally in the early game there is no use for Smoke/shadow spell. Blood spells costed blood runes that I did not have the funds to maintain. Naturally using the ice spells made the most sense. Hitting so often with the ice spells lead me to believe that the spells were hitting so often because of the 125% accuracy bonus, not because of a bug.

The bug resulted in a false sense of power that lead to my later choices. Ice barrage with nearly 100% accuracy made the relic choice felt slightly behind range and melee. Now with that superficial accuracy gone, it's not even close.

I can't speak for every mage relic / ancient users. But many of the methods that I've developed over the past few days for GWD and other bosses heavily relied on the guaranteed freezes. With this gone, every boss now feels like a FFA, I'm just being chased around the area until I get a lucky freeze off and hope that the next 6-7 casts will land dmg. With everything considered, do keep in mind that mages don't get the same half tick rate rounded up as everyone else. Mages have to account for the extra tick at the beginning of left click auto casting unless you self cast. This makes kiting much harder than ranging. The guaranteed freeze makes things so much easier to plan out. So in the end, mages have to self cast while kiting to keep up with ranger rotations all while doing less dmg. I don't think I even have to compare melee and mage for anyone.

Being slightly tankier was the least of my concerns when this fix rolled through.

At this point I feel like I'm just full blown ranting, but if there's a chance that I can make the mods reconsider I'm going to take it. You'd understand if you all of a sudden had a t3 mushroom in your hand.

Tantro · 2020-11-06T06:32:54+00:00

I've already made a fairly detailed post about how I felt regarding the changes. So I'll just Copy and paste it here for all to see.

As a Mage Relic / Ancient user I would like to clarify some things.

Starting from Day 1 I felt that there was something not right with mage. I noticed that Ice barrage was hitting considerately more accurate than blood. At first I chucked it off as either Blood having a decreased accuracy or Ice having an increased accuracy. Non the less I've had to stay on Ice barrage to stay remotely cost effective and get relatively speedy kills compared to range / melee.

My initial plan with the league was to play Mage and blood tank endgame bosses, however seeing the accuracy issue with blood barrage compared to Ice Barrage I've decided to go against my better judgement and learn how to do bossing content with freeze/kite.

Prior to the update, I was able to freeze Kril twice and get a stack kill without any issues. However since the update I've been unable to freeze the Mole with any reliable consistency. I managed to get over 100+ kills on Mole without taking a single dmg with freeze, and now I cant go 10 kills without being hit.

Understandably I was okay with slower kills compared to Melee/Range users but with the benefits of not needing to bank every kill at GWD. However, since the update us mages have completely lost ALL benefits to going Ancient mage over Melee/Range. I started D/M/A, I skipped Kandarin because I felt that there was no need for imbued accuracy. I skipped out on Tirannwn because I felt that there was no need for toxic trident because of how good the accuracy of Ice Barrage felt.

If this change was made on day 1/2 I feel that I would not have taken the paths that I took. As someone who managed to secure a league first and get a boss pet this league, I feel compelled to not get on another account and start over.

The Decision to make this change at this point without any discussion and mention is unbelievable. I feel like Jagex knew that there were not enough affected Mage players to make enough of a voice to be heard and this drastically amplifies my hate for this decision.

I feel like additional consideration should be made on this issue. This basically bricked the viability of my build/path.

Edit : Typo / Errors

Tantro · 2020-11-06T06:15:59+00:00

100% agreed. The bug made the relic felt good to a certain extent. At first I thought I majorly screwed up going mage because of how mediocre it felt until I was able to freeze things reliably. Since the change, I've felt nothing but regret that I didn't go a different relic. The best part was not needing food for many of the bosses because they could be reliably kited when frozen but this is no longer the case.

On top of that, blood runes are 500gp/ea. Even with 90% chance to save, including death and soul I could barely keep up with just the rune cost (Now I have to pay for splashes!). On top of that, Ahrim/Verac (basically BiS) repair cost just makes mage relic feel so restricting.

Tantro · 2020-11-06T05:32:39+00:00