Water magic getting the boot

[Wakazu]

...and me being not okay with it. I mean, seriously, what reasons you have right now to train a Water mage? Water magic sucks. It does way less damage than Air and Fire, it doesn't have usefull buffs like Air and Nature, it doesn't have as much shields as Air and Earth, it doesn't have any usefull gimmicks like Air and Thunder...
Also yeah, what's up with Air school being superior in every way, eh? Supreme damage with multistrike (which is also cheap af and consistent, unlike Flame Lash that can hit only for first two turns), megauseful Haste buff that essentially gives you a second turn, and nullying Air Shield that you can even AoE-cast, what is this, a magical T2000?!
Meanwhile Water isn't needed even outside of combat, because cleaning can be outsourced to quilted or students and you won't be using potions that require level 4 water like, EVER (and Dragonfire Flasks and Lightnings in a Bottle can be crafted by anyone).
One might think Water mages are supposed to be healers \ buffers, with all the ties to alchemy and medical cots refilling, but nope, the game simply doesn't have healing \ ressurection magic at all (which is also wtf)
I kinda hope that it will be addressed in the future and Water mages will get some love and an actual niche, but right now there is a total of 0 reasons to have a Water mage on staff.

[Owlchemist]

They are indeed pretty meh. I just finished training up a staff hire that did water (for sake of variety, I already did the other types). He's easily the most useless in both combat and non-combat situations. Good for making potions I suppose but who cares lol.

[Jilocasin]

The concealing droplets, or what's it called does only give you armor but cleanse you from negative effects. So they are kind of a healer, but I agree, they are weak. And for your potions, as soon as you can make a dark or nature mage a water apprentice, you don't really need water mages anymore

[Philtre]

A certain level of water skill is also needed for some of the healing rituals, if you let people get hit with the out-of-combat debuffs. (I think level 3, IIRC.)

I agree that you can handle all of the water tasks by getting people with good secondary element stats (by random roll or via apprenticeship), but the same could be said of pretty much every element except for whatever you are using as your primary dungeon teams; if you're not using fire as DPS, you can have someone with a sideline in fire to cook and hunt invasions, if you're not using earth to tank, you can have someone with a sideline in earth to build and mine, etc. The game encourages you to keep your staff small (the conviction penalties start at 4 staff), so having people who are effective over multiple elements is kind of baked into the design.

[PyroMancer]

Originally posted by Philtre:

you can have someone with a sideline in fire to cook and hunt invasions,

I gotta disagree here. I find that Fire mages are one of the most important Non-combat skill. The high end food which you need to keep conviction up in large schools like mine with 9 Staff and about 18 Students have a large Discordance penalty and need those +10-20 Conviction food which both require min 3 Fire skill to make but have high crafting cost so need a good fire skill to make them fast enough.

Second most important Non-Combat is Dark as you need 4 in skill to make Quilted which means it's either primary skill or Apprentice secondary as the most you can get from non-specialized is 3. But quilted take time to make so you want a high skill producing them anyhow and thus reducing the production time.

Good Lightning skill for R&D in start is also important but once you finish tech tree the need for the skill drops like a stone.

All the others can mostly be managed by generic mage. But that's a bit of a Balance issue as there are several things that need a major overall in terms of balance and abilities.

Problem is it's still EA and has a lot of things still to add so don't know if there is a planned future change for them or not. Kinda like how apprentice brought back the elements that was in the original demo release. But also added a new relic system.

[Aldehydra]

I think the biggest issue for water is that shields and buffs/debuffs don't scale with stats.

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

I gotta disagree here. I find that Fire mages are one of the most important Non-combat skill.

It's the most important non-combat skill later on. Everything else can either be done by quilted minions or is not needed very often. What lightning is to the early game, fire is to the late game.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

Originally posted by Philtre:

you can have someone with a sideline in fire to cook and hunt invasions,

I gotta disagree here. I find that Fire mages are one of the most important Non-combat skill.

Originally posted by Aldehydra:

I

Originally posted by PyroMancer:

I gotta disagree here. I find that Fire mages are one of the most important Non-combat skill.

It's the most important non-combat skill later on.

I agree having some people with 3+ skill in Fire is very important, but having 2-3 staff with level 4 or level 5 fire as a secondary element via apprenticeships (or relics) is more than enough to keep a late-game school with a nice kitchen fed. Similarly, one person with level 4 or 5 dark as a secondary element can do all the quilting you need; it's hardly a full-time job.

Of course, you could also choose to have Fire or Dark as the primary element and something else as a secondary element; my overall point is that because each person can get strong skills in at least one secondary element, once you have highly-trained staff you don't absolutely need a staff member with any one specific primary element, unless they're key to your dungeon team.

[Teag]

It is strange to me that:

- Water, like a couple other magics, has school-vital tasks that can't be performed by Apprentices (Alchemy, Cooking, etc)
- Water skill seems to have no impact on revive or other healing rituals?

Hospital stuff is a /huge/ tax on time so I would've thought Water mages would be a lot more impactful in that regard.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Teag:

It is strange to me that:
- Water skill seems to have no impact on revive or other healing rituals?

Several of the healing rituals have a minimum required water skill, mostly level 3 IIRC. The healing rituals always fully cure the patient and can't fail, so there's not much that skill level can influence beyond "are you capable of doing this ritual". Water skill level also affects how quickly they can refill the water globes on the medical beds (which are required for the healing effect), which is the main time cost of providing aid.

[Jilocasin]

I think higher water skills speed up refilling the medicinal beds. Not really that useful. Is the length of the medicinal rituals independent of the waterskill?

[Aldehydra]

Making alchemy more relevant outside of combat could make water more useful. Especially since the dungeon doesn't go deep enough right now for combat potions to be necessary if you have a half-decent team.

Water combat magic would still also need a buff. A shield for 30 makes no difference at level 10+.

[Asa]

Another reason that's hard make use of alchemy (therefore water magic) is that creating potions require ectoplasm, which have to be refined from the rats (unless you want to deal with the hassle of spawning and hunting spectral croas everyday). That's taking away resource for refining the sinews required to make quilted that you need so many of.

[Jilocasin]

Originally posted by Asa:

Another reason that's hard make use of alchemy (therefore water magic) is that creating potions require ectoplasm, which have to be refined from the rats (unless you want to deal with the hassle of spawning and hunting spectral croas everyday). That's taking away resource for refining the sinews required to make quilted that you need so many of.

How many potions do you use? I usually get almost enough from all the spectral rifts popping up.

[Asa]

Originally posted by Jilocasin:

Originally posted by Asa:

Another reason that's hard make use of alchemy (therefore water magic) is that creating potions require ectoplasm, which have to be refined from the rats (unless you want to deal with the hassle of spawning and hunting spectral croas everyday). That's taking away resource for refining the sinews required to make quilted that you need so many of.

How many potions do you use? I usually get almost enough from all the spectral rifts popping up.

Before I had access to tier 3 wands, usually 1~2 hastening potion, 2+ miasma for underschool exploration, and maybe a few lightning in the bottle (because smokepearls were scarce and had better uses) for the rancor crystal battles.

The resources were especially tight because I was pressured to explore to find the wand transfigurator, so that was a lot of battles I was going through.

It may be just RNG, but I hardly had any spectral rift events occuring, so I had to make most of my potions.

[Aryath]

they teased the Ultimate spells, and it seems water will indeed get a healing spell
Tsunami: Attacks all enemies for 50 damage, and heals all allies for the total damage dealt.
Base Damage: 50, Mana Cost: 50

with 150 Power and 4 enemies, this would mean 800 HP heal for everyone

this is just my guess but judging from the other spells (Nature Ultimate: Mighty Growth), future update battles might take much longer, so Sadness/Fearful/Restless might become actual threats

Consecrating Drops might become a crucial spell if you want to avoid Cure Melancholy/Terror/Insomnia rituals

otherwise if you do end up with Melancholy after a future boss fight, you will need Cheerfulness Potions which require Water Skill 4

[foimols]

Water damage against the fire enemies should be double too... That rock monster that retaliates should be debuffed if hit with water spells