This article is written based on the mechanics changed with the release of the Age of Shadows expansion. During the Renaissance era (and those before it) spell wands determined their effectiveness based on a static value of 60 magery & 0 evaluating intelligence. There was also no delay between how often you may use charges from a wand, but the universal action delay of 1 second set this to a minimum interval of 1 second per use.
It may have been written after aos but it doesn't say that wands were changed then, just what type of wands. And as far as ultima online and wands go this is the only article I can find about wands at all. Aside from angry forum posts from players at hybrid who outraged at this exact change until they put it back. This 60 magery 0 eval idea may have been from uosa or the POS demo from 96 but lets face it, those both sucked.
This probably wont help much.....but at least I did find some mention of wands from the UO:R era patch notes. I'm assuming since it just says "Increased" damage....there was no magery/eval requirements related to the damage to begin with. I would like to think that if there was some tie to magery/eval, it would have been mentioned. http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_5
Nice post Markos, and I agree that you can infer from what was not said that wand damage was static. I've been looking for information on this myself and I think this dev chat started what became that publish - http://uo.stratics.com/uohoc/logs/1998-09-10-pub.shtml Also found this mention of wands on 2-17-2000, though it's unrelated to this particular topic - http://uo.stratics.com/uohoc/logs/2000-02-17-pub.shtml
I'd like to revisit this, so far we have sources other then uosa about wand damage. One saying it was skill based another saying damage was increased. Thoughts?
Scenario - Gm magery, 0 eval, vs gm resist Lightning spell - consistant 7-9 damage Lightning wand - consistant 4-6 damge Shouldn't I be doing more damage with 60 eval invoked from the nerfed lightwand?
No, it's 60 Magery/0 Eval on nerfwand and that 3-3dmg defecit seems legit. Admittedly, I'm not doing the math to prove it but it seems about right.
<bump> Am I the only one that feels wands are useless here?. And perhaps I am bias because I have been using them in pvp for years. And spent months collecting them while they did work then had them turned to poop on a stick? Thoughts? Perhaps I am the only one but there must be some halfway point from good -> useless
Considering how many times I have lost my last few hit points to HateCrime's lightning wands, I disagree regarding the term 'useless'.
I want to just jump in and say that I don't like the way that wands fit in to pvp. It's spellcasting without the time spent frozen in place and I think it takes away from the skill needed in timing and chasing and casting. It's that part of the game where items you farmed up or bought are working to give you an advantage against people with average or expected loadouts. I feel the same way about explosion pots, for what its worth. I would have no real issue with wands if they froze the user in place as if he was casting the spell. They're really just the tool of the gank squad and I think the lone guy should always have good opportunities to hoof it in this game.
I've looked high and low and have never found a reference (pre 2003) of wands being affected by Magery/Eval of the caster. This was apparently changed sometime in the 3rd Dawn era right before AOS, or early on in AOS. However no documentation seems to exist. However the link posted above was first crawled by the Wayback machine in late 2003. While there isn't an archive of the page, we can assume that the first time it existed on the internet was late 2003. http://web.archive.org/web/20050801000000*/http://uo.stratics.com/content/guides/magicwands.shtml This patch note is equally vague since the wands inherently cast the spell as it exists mechanically. It's unlikely that they changed the core damage of say the lighting spell, however if they converted the wands to be based on the players skills, this is not how they would have stated it in the patch notes. Markos's assumption that they would have mentioned skill integration is correct as someone with 0 magery 0 eval wands would essentially do nothing. If this was the case, there would be a post somewhere on the internet, with players complaining that their greater heal wands went from doing 25-35 healing to 1-10 damage healed overnight.
Or that the url changed in 2003. Clearly there is information out there and wands deviated from demo mechanics. What you choose to do with the information is your prerogative.
Here is my proposal. I like using wands, they help. Some people don't that's also fine. But what i would like to see with the wand is this : Wands used the skill of the caster (no 0 mage dexxers running around with gheal wands) Wands consume the mana of the spell you are trying to cast, ie : no casting a greater heal with no mana ,no lightning strike while you are OOM Wands have a 4 second delay between uses, no lighting spam, or heal spam to kill/heal fully. They should be a tool not a bazooka. I have played with them this way and find it enjoyable perhaps some people may as well. Aside from the straight up wand haters but you need to have an open mind here. We need to stop making everything so week so that they become just more on the item count.
If wands had a long delay, and used mana, and required magery skill, then they'd be completely useless. What you're proposing is making them work exactly the same as a spell except with an even longer delay. People would just cast normally, and faster. I'd suggest - 1) A reasonable delay between uses. I won't just throw a random number out there that sounds good to me; I think it should be tested. 2) No mana/resources used. The items are "charged". To me that sounds like "carries sufficient power to do its thing without draining the user further". 3) No skill requirement. With reasonable delay, wands will not be OP. They'll be supplemental instead of primary. Therefore I'd treat them more like potions (no skill required) than halberds (swords). 4) A below-GM cap on the strength of the spell cast. I think this would need to be fine-tuned in addition to delay, striking a balance between the two. Go too hard on both and they might end up useless. But this would at least keep pure warriors from dropping GM greater heals.
So I'd agree, mostly 1) Wands need to not be spammable, meaning reasonable delay, which needs testing to get a balanced delay. 2) charges mean something magical has already spent the resources charging the wand with the adequate resources and mana to embue the item. You don't need to use mana to use that magic sword or how of yours. 3) is open for interpretation. I think for the most part wands were an unfinished thought and were never really revamped from their original form (hence the intense conversation). If I were in charge of coding wands they would have a very baseline stat (like they are now), but have influencing factors. Magery, eval, arms lore all influencing %bonus to the wand 4) in no way should a wand cast a spell as powerful as a gm Mage. Defeats the purpose of a Mage in the first place, and overpowers warrior classes.
Just throwin in my 2 cents but i do think that wands should be less powerful than a GM mage, doesn't make sense to be able to use a wand to be as powerful as a GM mage. But I disagree that wands overpower pure warrior classes, only way for a warrior to kill a mage 1vs1 is luck and a good bit of skill. If that warrior uses wands then they aren't exactly a pure warrior anyways. But thats just my opinion.
They can be free spells as far as im concerned as long as they freeze you in place and are interruptable lile a spell normally is. What people want to use them for is to cast things instantly and on the run without fear of interruption and thats the main pvp mechanic that they cheat. Although Im well aware those terms are unacceptable to people that want to use wands - because what they want is free item based instant heals and ranged damage on the run.
