Spell Damage Delay

I guess for myself I'm just having a hard time understanding why these mechanics are making it difficult for you to pvp. I only pvp on mage characters and I don't think I'm experiencing any real problems. I don't want to derail this more by talking about the changes I'd want to see, so I'll just say that the time from spell targetting to damage happening seem right to me. Maybe it would help me if you could explain better the situations where it does not feel balanced.

Well for example, greater heal 2 second cast time, and instant, ebolt 3 second cast time and 1 second till damage
you can fast cast 2 gheals in the amount of time one ebolt is finished.

Or someone casting recall, getting hit by a spell, then dying on the other side of the recall, any spell other then explosion this seems silly.

if you fast cast magic arrow, or any spell in succession, with short cast time, chances are if it hits before the other damage was applied, that damage never hits, like trying to cast an explode before the other explode goes off.

Interuptions, a 5x mage duel could be more then just harm over and over, because casting arrow lightning or fireball, would open the door for easy cures, so basically if you say 5x here you really say poisonharm

Long story short, I think pvp should be more then who can cast harm the most or run the other person out of resources, it opens up for more interesting combos and different styles of attack. Currently if you don't use harm, the other guy just skips away whistling calling you a baddie.

It's not that it is making it difficult for me to pvp, its that I don't enjoy the style you have to use like this. It's not enjoyable for me to harm spam someone all day, I would like to use some other spells in my spellbook, fireballs are fun

Well I've been having some trouble making use of fireball and lightning too. I've been using fireball, but mostly I've had to use weaken/some debuff first to interrupt a cure and then a fireball to interrupt the next one. It could be that what's holding it back is the delay, although I do think some delay is appropriate for most spells. I had attributed this issue not to the delay from the point of targetting to damage resolving but instead to the time required before casting another spell (which I think is a little too long).

And in the case of lightning, it just seems completely useless. I can't come up with any ways to use it.

http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_-_January_19%2C_1999 under Miscellaneous.

This is pretty much the only thing I can find regarding any type of spell delay from original OSI patch notes. Not sure if this will sway the argument either way, just throwing info out there.

http://www.uoguide.com/Publish_5 <- under update 8

more wand related but still part of my teeth grinding.

I'm not sure about the time on spell damage resolution being a problem, but I do think spell recovery feels a little off here.
Maybe tightening spell cast recovery up a bit would make spell interruption a bit easier. I get hit with cast recovery messages trying to cast low level spells in rapid succession.

I also strongly disagree with statements made earlier about how you shouldn't be able to kill with mage 5. Mage 5 dueling is the only form of dueling I really recognize the legitimacy of.

Took the time to get a clip of how osi ebolt's were thrown and compared them to ours, here's how it came out.

http://youtu.be/VnK6wa_kqp4

And i wasn't saying you can't x5 duel here, i was just saying its pretty difficult with the current function of spell/spell casting. I personally wouldn't even attempt it with these delays.

I don't want to jump into the middle of this thread and make a statement which will sway the course of discussion one way or another, however I would like to state that I am not opposed to reverting the spell damage delays back to the default 500ms for the spells which originally had those timers.

Those spells would be:

• Magic Arrow
• Fireball
• Mind-blast
• Energy Bolt
• Flamestrike
• Meteor Swarm
• Chain Lightning

The lightning spell by default had no delay, and the damage from target was instant, just as the harm spell & debuffs are now. I am also not opposed to reverting this.

That being said, my personal opinion is that the 1000ms (1 full second) delay as it stands currently is the most efficient & desire-able mechanics. As was stated previously in this thread by another poster, the delay before the spell damage is applied can be used as a tool, for various strategies & functions. I also feel like the concept of certain spells, such as greater heal & recall, which are able to be cast & completed yielding the target cursor faster than they could be disrupted by higher level spells (energy bolt, flamestrike) has been exaggerated to some extent. It's without question that this can be done, however the current delay in damage as it functions now does not prohibit the player from utilizing these spells as a method of interruption against those spells, you must simply apply a basic level of skill & anticipation to the strategy of interrupting the target.

Additionally, it is fact that on production servers the 1000ms delay as we have it now was indeed in place, for all of the spells which function this way now on Renaissance. This ultimately has no bearing either way on what we will decide to do, this is simply a point of reference from which we can base a foundation for a starting point. Neither the 1000ms or 500ms delays for spell damage will make or break the server, it is merely a choice of preference. If this topic of discussion can constructively present reasonable points to support the reverting of the delays back to the previous 500ms, then I don't see a problem with entertaining that change to the live server.

In regards to the recovery delay (time between completing spell1 & beginning spell2, as well as the delay before casting another spell after an interruption) this is something that I personally have set to a level which was hand-picked based on a number of thorough tests & "feeling out". I would not consider the current status of the recovery delay on the live server to be "official" or correct for the era, it is entirely possible that this could be off. However unlike the spell-damage delays, this aspect must be very carefully reviewed, as even the smallest of changes to this could yield drastic changes to the pvp play-styles & strategies. I would not be against tweaking this, and lowering the delay from its current state, however if this were to be done it will require a large amount of testing & thorough investigation to support the change that would take place.

I will see what I can do about getting some demo changes applied to the test server to allow for an ease in testing for both of these functions.

I think Tater's video really shows rather convincingly the difference in damage timers.

Mindblast and lightning had no delay on OSI btw and Ebolt was quicker on OSI than it was here IMHO.

I agree that staff has done a great job and the community here is top notch. However I get frustrated when certain skills are nerfed (adjusted) slightly to create greater "balance". Balance is very subjective. I really think increasing the damage delay on spells like ebolt and lightning and mindblast and even poison is ridiculous... Lets go back to where it was before we made these changes. The server worked great.

My thoughts exactly. A player should have the chance to gheal themselves if your attempting an off the shelf explode/ebolt combo with no style/skill. With a .500ms delay everyone will be precasting gheals, or they will be dead if not. With the .1000 second delay you have the chance to get in those heals, but can also be interrupted by higher level spells if you didn't time the gheal right or if the attacker actually knows what they are doing.

With a .5 second delay on these spells all you are doing is 'dumbing' down pvp style. You can essentially hold a precasted FS and go to work with a hally/poisoned weapon/weapon of your choice, put in good damage and then interupt their gheal with your high damaging top level spell. Then your opponent is stuck with a delay before they can even try to cast another spell. While they are waiting out this timer you can cast another FS or ebolt etc. This would pretty much be an OP / stupid mechanic. With that said, if anything is to be changed it should be a spell recovery delay and not the delay for spell damage to hit. This change would barely need to be tweaked and would clearly take a TON of testing.

With a .1000ms delay you truly do have to anticipate, which is where experience/time pvping comes in and can truly set people apart.

I understand Taters want to have things the way they were when the shard started, but that does not make them correct or best for the shard. And to anybody reading this please keep in mind that the 2 other people outside of Tater who would like to see this change are his Left/Right hand cronies (Bart/Mutumbo). Both of these guys are good people, however they will both tell you themselves that they are not great pvpers. If you can't properly throw a purple potion, how can you truly understand spell timing mechanics and the effects that will come from changing them? Please don't take this as trash talk, I'm just repeating what those two players have said, and making a point out of it.

"If it isn't broken, don't fix it."

In regards to wands being useless, I disagree. I do however understand this argument a lot more. Wands need to be something that is used as a support item and eligible for any class to use(so these items inheriting the users skill-set is out the window). Currently when you resist a lightening wand, it does seem very gimped as it does next to no damage. I would actually support some testing to find a legitimate median for all of these type of items, pvp oriented or not. Off the top of my head, a lightening wand could act as 80/40 Magery/Eval. This would greatly increase their usefulness. At this point a delay of at least 2 seconds would need to be put into place. I would caution for a 3 second delay.

For pure mages.

Ezekiel, can we possibly put up a list of "In effect on Test" changes so people know what they can/should be testing when they log in there for such?
It would be cool to have a bulletin board or something so people know that x, y or z was changed so check it out while you're on test, kinda thing.

Maybe that's already up and I haven't seen it yet.

I do like all the (mostly) constructive conversation going on in here. This, in concert with extensive testing, is what will bring balance (not subjective) to the shard.

Balance in PvP implies no obviously viable combat template is more dominant in combat than any other. It is not subjective but it is wildly challenging and practically insane to attempt to find.
I remember discussions about the MP-40 in Call of Duty World at War. It was the n00b gun, because you could spray and pray headshots across the map. It was completely imbalanced and yes, I managed to barely ever use it and still be successful. However, when I did pick one up, it was disgustingly obvious at how much easier it was to get kills with it. My preference was the Type-100 because I liked the action on it, but it was most definitely not as 'hip-fire accurate' as the MP-40, even when all the data seemed to indicate it 'should' be.

Yes, I understand the example is a bit out there, but you get the point I hope. Balance is a challenge to find and only through extensive play by many people, will the overpowered things come to light.

Cheers.

I thought a bit about it and talked it over mes to see what we remembered. We both seem to remember different spells being different speeds during UO:R.
I think EB and FS are about right on this server. I remember there being time to get a lightning or harm in under a FS if you were quick (but who uses FS anyway)
Fireball seems about right too.
We both seemed to agree that harm, debuffs, and poisons all hit nearly instantly.
I remember lightning having a little bit of a delay on it (enough that you can get a harm under it) but mes says he remembers lightning being close to instant.


Anyway, that's the stuff I remember from the era. Maybe this info will be useful to somebody.

Fix it

Don't change it.

Put the change on test.

I feel a server wide poll needs to take place for big changes like these, majority decides based on IP etc. Make it really strict so people aren't able to abuse the poll system, but at the same time get changes like these done asap as it can effect the pb.

I"m a dude who has casted a lot of mage spells in my day and all of the spell times seem pretty accurate. If you can't figure out how to kill someone who is precasting greater heal to counter your combo you're terrible.