Inscription Damage Bonus

I think what HC just pointed is pretty important; that damage bonus came on the heels of the availability of power scrolls that let people start getting spell damage bonuses through magery and eval (and maybe int, although I can't remember if there was ever a relationship between int and SDI, but the soft int cap was changed to 125 at this time.) And soon after this publish, AoS was truly launched and people were able to also get spell damage increases on rings and artifacts. Inscription really was nothing more than poor-man's SDI. If you could only afford a few power scrolls you may have filled in the gap with inscription. But if you were in a leading guild that threw this loot at you or you worked particularly hard at it you were better off just being 5x120 mage 5 skills.

I'm not actually convinced this would be a terrible buff here on UO:R. I've never lobbied for it, but as I sit back and think about what are the most popular templates, and also what are the strongest ones in my eyes, this isn't one of them.

So as I analyze this I want to address the opinions of Mandevu and Hatecrime who probably represent the most respected pvp opinions on the server.

Mandevu recently picked up scribe and dropped healing on a character and started using a scribe/stun mage. But he's using it because of what I believe is a huge bug with the protection spell. I pointed it out to Ezekiel and haven't heard much back except that he didn't think it should function the way that cr3w and TT thinks it is functioning. If that spell was 'fixed' or changed to how I think it should function I'm pretty sure Mandevu would claim its a bad skill and pick healing back up on his stun mage (I don't think heal mages are really great but Mandevu has a really basic strat that makes them very useful in duels and I respect his skill in using this template.)

Hatecrime I might argue has good reason to not support this skill. Most pvpers by now know that his stylo is the swords tank mage that differs greatly in playstyle from the pure mage templates, and I don't think he'd be very inclined to change his style if this skill was buffed. It would probably be a frustrating change to him if some mages were doing a little more damage than he was with spells.

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I spent the last six months play stun/tracking mages, and then I spent a month or so on a scribe/stun mage and I have to admit that I often wish I had the tracking. I don't ever play my stun/tracking mages and wish I had the scribe.

I'm starting to think that a SDI bonus for inscription wouldn't be a bad thing. I would never say 'if this doesn't happen pvp is broken' or some bullshit like that. PvP mechanics are good here (sorry Tater, RIP) and it's pretty clear that Chris and Ezekiel have worked hard and are very knowledgeable of pvp mechanics to have brought us to the point we're at.

But when I sit back and think about how an SDI bonus for scribe would change things, I think it would be pretty good overall. There's only one supplemental skill that makes pure mages viable here. The rest are truly filler.

Here's a test;

Name a good UO:R pure mage that doesn't use stun punch!

Trick question, there aren't any. You won't kill anyone worthwhile without stun punch or a melee skill or dragons.

Since I've been here I've seen very few good players that tried hard to make it as pure mages (for the record I'm defining a pure mage as one that does not use a weapon skill or dragons.) Liberation comes to mind. Isabel and Clyde, perhaps. Although Isabel was always much scarier on his dexer. The guys in LoL use them to gank tamers but when facing pvpers they immediately get on tank mages or dexers. Even my own guildmates have forsaken pure mages and instead play the different types of tank mages.

The only thing I'd fear is a pairing of stun punch and an SDI bonus scribe. Which really may not be scribe's fault as much as stun punch. And even then there is an important shift that is happening here and will continue to happen. When I first came here the most difficult fight was against very wealthy pvpers like HC or Tater that used +25 vanq halberds/war hammers. A typical tank would be using a weapon in the +10 power range and this usually seemed to fit to me. But runic hammers have and continue to develop since then. One of the things that kept these in line was that they risked those weapons when they used them. I've got a chest full of +20 vanq qstaves and war hammers from when Tater was around.

But since then runic hammers have developed quite a bit. Tater was swinging gold and agapite war hammers before he left, and nowadays it's Isabel and HC that will be/are swinging them. Those weapons will probably still dominate a stun/scribe mage that has a spell damage boost (you can always wand out of a tough spot with a stun mage, afterall. And then he's out of the fight because he has no mana.)

So I think I've come to a point where I support spell damage on scribe. I do think protection needs to be looked into by the admins though, and brought in line with the bonus it gave pre AoS.

It wouldn't have to be a flat 10% damage increase. I think I'd like it more if it treated your target like it had 90% resist or something similar. It would give you a small damage boost and help you land poisons which is really important to pure mages. I'm convinced magic resist is really beefy here, I don't recall during this era being able to resist more than 1/3 of poisons but I think here at GM resist you resist 1/2. It makes dueling or playing a pure mage pretty tedious.

Some concerns I have about it:

At this point stun is a must have on a pure mage. I'm afraid that scribe would become a must have. Perhaps if the damage bonus was small enough then skills like hiding/healing/tracking/poisoning would still be considered useful. It might also be argued that some of those skills are the problem and not stun or an SDI proposed scribe. Poisoning could make it harder to resist poisons (people would truly use this skill if that was the case, it would be popular with highly skilled players.) Healing could heal a little faster perhaps. These are just unrelated thoughts that are only tangentially relevant to the topic anyways.

Actually, I wasn't a pure stun/scribe mage. I was a stun/heal/scribe mage. My template was GM mage/med/scribe, and 80 eval/resist/heal/wrestle/anat. It works okay, but like you said my main strategy as a mage is my reliance on my bandage timing, and with 80 heal/anat I just can't rely on bandages as I like to. However, were I playing a pure stun/scribe mage with 7x gm skills I may like it more simply because I have a 100% disruption block when armed with the protection spell, but even at that I don't like not having my bandages because I've built my entire defense, and therefore offensive strategy around it. Even if you were to add SDI to inscription I still wouldn't play it.

I would argue with you, however, about the inability to play a mage without stun. Yes, without stun im severely crippled if my opponent is using potions, but if i'm in a duel and we aren't using potions I don't think there is anyone who can stop me from poison locking them until death. In fact, I know they can't because I've perfected the use of magic arrow to keep my opponent disrupted. But i'm one player amongst many, and I don't know anyone else that can do that at the time being.

I play one class of pvp character 99.9% of the time and that's a pure mage template of some sort. I agree, there are very few people who play a pure mage template effectively. However, there are definitely other players out there in the UO community who can effectively play the template because I've come across quite a few over the years, they just aren't here on this server. But that doesn't mean that they won't be as the server grows in time.

The only way I would agree with allowing for a SDI with scribe is if the protection enhancement was reduced from 100% to 50% chance of a disruption block. Even at that i'm still not sure I agree. Reason being is because spell damage as is already does a good amount of damage, and if I were playing a mage that could have an even bigger bonus to my spell damage it would be fucking retardedly easy to kill people..even more so than it already is.

As for runics.. I know you were making the point that most people when it comes to serious pvp resort to their dexxer, or tank mage, is because quite frankly they don't know how to effectively play a pure mage. However, I fought torin the other night using his runic longspear and runic war fork with DP, and was still able to brin him to 8% an loading a MB when his aids kicked in nearly killing him. I ended up running out of cures and died, but the possibility of killing that template using a runic was definitely there as a pure mage. The only reason you don't see so many legitimate mages running around is because people simply don't take the time to learn the mechanics of one because it's just easier to play a tank.

IMHO the most effective template in this era is a stun/heal mage if you know what you're doing. I've played all kinds of different templates and different creations of templates an there's a reason I always stick with a stun/heal mage. As it stands, a stun/scribe mage with SDI and 100% protection bonus is too OP.

I pretty much agree with you all the way, and I wouldn't back any buff for inscription until protection is fixed, like you said, either. I think the main reason I can get behind a slight SDI buff for inscription is because I think runic hammers are finally starting to make pure mage templates seem bad. One of the reasons I dislike the idea of an SDI increase is not because I think it would make the pure mage better than tanks or dexers - I don't - but because it might make stun+scribe the only pure mage template used.

As far as what the most effective template is on the server, in the right hands? I think it depends on what kind of fight it is. I think Torin Gorefiend style dexers win in field fights as far as 1on1 is concerned. Tank mages are pretty solid too at wearing you down. I'm assuming your opponent can heal with pots and wands (which is huge problem when trying to play a pure mage.) In group fights the stun mages start to edge out the dexers and tank mages, although the healing is mostly irrelevant.

Well, runics only add the bonus of having a magic weapon that also has the benefits of an exceptionally crafted weapon which, if i'm correct, is +4? But still, even if scribes had SDI and 100% protection bonus I still would prefer my stun/heal template in any pvp scenario except a group fight. Reason being is because if my team is sync dropping I like the ability to get our drops off without worrying about the dump being ruined via disrupt. However, like I said previously, I am only one person and I play a stun/heal because I know how to use it effectively. But it is true most people lean towards some type of weapon usage which I suppose runics add a bonus to, but I haven't ran into anyone using a runic that made me feel like I was at a disadvantage. Namely, because bandages are huge in conserving mana and playing defense, which allows me to focus more on offense. Combine that with the usage of explosion potions in combos and a stun/heal mage is lethal when fighting solo in the field.