how would you react if spells worked like this?..

Thats not as the game sees it. You don't sleep in dks, you recharge at bonfires. You're undead, magic could work differently for the living. They might have to sleep.

In infamous, you have to stop fighting and drain power to recharge, in pokemon its sleep or a hospital trip. It can be done with items, but perhaps there simply are no such items in dks. (if you'd played demons online a while back you'd know why)

"Most other games" that include pvp don't have spells that will drop a boss in 3 hits or an enemy player in 1. Games like skyrim can do whatever they want because the game isn't supposed to be hard and there is no pvp to balance. Dks has to consider both maintaining difficulty and balance for pve/pvp and regenerating mp gets in the way of that. Thats why its not in dks. They did it in demons and it was way overpowered, especially in pve, even with weaker and slower spells than dks has.

What can I say? It "spiced" things up a bit
But yes, I do remember. Those items wear broken though, and would be in any PVP game. A slow but constant mana regen would be much better.

you list mtg, but the earliest of decks can kill on turn 1 due to mana manipulation.
all those other games are cheesey.. racing games with nos aren't even real driving.

heres the thing. you make the mana come back slowly. so slow that making any fast spell something you can spam forever completley a waste of points.

have the mana come back slowly enough that it's like having small cooldowns, and have the better spells cost so much you can cast one, maybe two in a row if you heavily invest into magic.

if someone decides to go caster and isn't casting cheap pyros and cheap fast sorceries exclusivley have it so they'd need to decide- do i cast my cheap spells to fend them off? do i blow my mana on this big spell and leave myself vulnerable to a lack of mana? do i try to hang back and let my mana regenerate to get the next more powerful spell?

if they keep attacking and fending the opponent off then they'll have eventually lost their more powerful spells. you'll need to be a skilled caster to be cheap with your spells, or you'd have to blow them all right off the bat and hope it gets a kill, but leave yourself vulnerable afterwords.

but i mean not everyones going to like that idea. personally i think it's stupid that someone can cast 3 wotg's in a row and then suddenly swap to gcf and throw 4 of those at someone and then swap to gc or black flame and throw 8 of those at an opponent if they wanted. i'd much rather fight someone using those kinds of spells using them effectively and managing their mana well.

If its slow it wouldn't help in pvp (where fights are generally short) and it would break pve (where the player has as much time as they do patience so they could kill everything with their most powerful spell, no matter the mp cost, and wait for the regen.) In other games maybe, some mmo's do it reasonably well, but dks is to slow and methodical for such a system. sorcers in ds could do the slow, passive regen, and it made most of the non-boss pve a joke.

@rifter those were just examples, and they made my point to the person I was debating. Your system would also make mages way under powered in pvp. Just pressure them and dodge the spells (ie with rolling r1s or turtling), now that they don't have the mp for a big spell murder them with a stun. Assuming neither party sucks or is mid rolling, mages take a good deal of skill as is. I play a pure pyro at 80, its far and away the most challenging pvp I do. I have to be concerned with my spell order and how many casts are left, on top of

the poise/hp/spacing/stamina everybody else has to be concerned about. Sure I can kill in 2 hits, but I only get 12 tries (total, and with different spells) where that zweihander build can kill me in 2 hits and has infinite tries.

If I have the patience, I can heal myself completely. in PVP.

Say I have 250 MP, CSS cost 50 mp or something. That's 5 casts. At a regen rate of 1mp/per 2sec's it would take a little more than 8 minutes to be able to use all 5 again. At 1mp per 1 second it would still take about 4 minutes, that's longer than your average match.

If bosses are the problem, then raise their magic defense. I have never 1-shotted any of the DLC bosses.

Not bosses, pve in general. Why fear anything when I can 1shot groups of them with a cast, go make a sandwich and repeat the process. If I'm not 1shotting them (or at least doing double the damage of a warrior), why am I a fragile mage instead of a tank with a greatshield?

(thats why the game shouldn't have passive regen, unless it takes a spell cast to get. replenish is fine as its limited, sanctus isn't as its not.)

If someone has the patience for that, then why not? If people have the patience, then they can turtle the entire game to death too.

I can backstab 1-shot most mobs to hell and back if I want. The only exceptions are the mobs of hollows inside the church, and the Taurus Demons(who I can still cheese using the bonfire)

Turtling with a spell caster should be possible too. You could always raise the magic defense of regular enemies, not just bosses, if it would be a problem. If people want to 1-shot entire levels then they better be pretty damn patient.

Again, then why bother being a mage? You're not powerful enough to justify being so fragile if mobs arn't almost always killed in 1 hit, 2 tops.

You also can't turtle the entire game. Stamina regenerates very slowly while blocking, magic decimates your guard, heavy attacks from several enemies will guard break very quickly or are unblockable, can't block bleed, poison or toxic (with 1 exception,) can't block grabs.

The game is supposed to reward patience in combat. Rewarding someone for just walking away while their character regens is a bit much. Thats pushing past rewarding patience and instead rewarding not playing.

The general idea is that you should still be able to two shot almost everything. NG+ on the other hand..

With Mana and a Mana Regen the Pursuers + Dark Bead spam combo wouldn't be possible.

Agree'd, but anyone who used such a tactic would only be depriving themselves of experience. By the time they reach NG+7(if they even get that far), they'd be screwed. And they would definitely stand no chance in PVP.

So? As I said, it would make magic fairly useless in pvp. Dodge or block the 1 or 2 strong spells they'd be able to do with rifters system, or count the smaller spells until they couldn't cast a big spell anymore and murder them because they couldn't cast through havels shield or the GSoA and they're out of dangerous casts.

That's generally still what happens with the system we have now, only difference is that you can pull a big spell out of nowhere.

Also, MP shouldn't be a static amount. It should change based on a stat.

So? Why should they counter that? I can spam deadangle buffed dgm r1s for 900 a hit and to stunlock, on the same sl 120 that has 2000+hp and 400 defense.

Simply increasing spell requirements and debuffing light armor or buffing heavy armor would ensure dedicated mages had serious tradeoffs for their power, even at higher sls, in the form of little to no melee abilities/health/defense/poise. In essence, they'd be glass cannons. Hybrids would trade that power for versatility.

The proposed system is so different from the one we have now that its not even funny. Have you played a pure caster? If not, make a pyro (as in no weapons,) duel for a week or 2 and come tell me that

a:its easy
b:the system wouldn't completely screw that build.

Just because its effective, doesn't mean its easy. I can cause all kinds of havoc with my caster, but (unlike my other builds) even 1 modest mistake will lose me the match.

Aside from The Storm spells, I don't see any Pyro spells that would require significant mana usage.

5 for fireball, 10 for Fire Orb, 15 Great Fire Orb, 20 for the chaos version.

I do however think that your suggestions should be implemented alongside these. Dark Bead at 16 Int is ridiculous. There should also be armors that block magic as well as they do Physical attacks. Maybe a shield that blocks 100 magic but only 60 physical?

And equipment that boosts attack stats aside from rings should either be done with or severely nerfed.

Historically and currently Nothing in WoW will kill you faster than Wizards (In fact the 3v3 arena team comp my PSN is named after was and still is one of the most successful because even if you train one of the plural wizardS the other is free casting and ruining your day) In Aion Sorcs and SMs (basically mages and warlocks) Are at the top of the 1v1 ladder untill templar get fully geared and become unstoppable killing machines (Hi Gerard!) In ToR an unimpeded Sith lightning fingers machine is perhaps just the best thing ever.

The downside to all of these as has been mentioned has also historically been Rogues, Hunters, Assassins Rangers Operatives. Jesus Operatives (on release I played an operative and would 100-0 any caster I touched while stealthed without breaking a sweat)

@1shoting DLC bosses. Chaos storm virtually gets gaurdian Will get Arty and does so much more damage to Kalameet than anything else I've tried (he doesn't seem to give any damns about bead)

They also cant just pull big spells from thin air. Not only does more than 4 slots start getting very expensive very fast, but getting multiple stacks cuts their versatility and requires multiple play throughs. 4 slots of db is what, 9 casts? Thats 9 chances to kill in 1 or 2 hits, when (assuming my suggestion) 1 hit from a katana would go through 1/3rd of their hp and stun them out of a cast, if they were casting. That sounds fair to me.

You seem to be missing my point. I will be extremely blunt:

If magic does not kill in 1 or 2 hits, it is downright not worth the investment. Not worth being killed in 2 hits by a zweihander. Removing the mages weapons is absurd and defeats the purpose of being a mage at all. If you instead lower their defenses, then they may keep the entire point of their being. What you are suggesting is essentialy the same thing as removing a stealthers dagger crit damage, and replacing it with a longswords. Its all they have, the whole point of playing that type of character.

Like I said, I agree that spell casters should be able to 1/2-shot near anything.

4 stacks of DB is 12 casts with the TCC, 24 without it.

In the mana system, a stronger catalyst would use more mana. There could also be a weaker Catalyst that uses less.

https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=439662114892587769

It would require NG+9, but don't you think 27 casts of Dark Bead is kinda over kill?

We've had the mana system. We don't still have it for a reason. It was even more ridiculously powerful in pve than sorcery is now. That the mana system doesn't work in the soul series has been both shown and explained, and none of the logic presented in support of it is sound when considering balance. I'm just not going to argue any further unless somebody can manage to present a decent argument, instead of responding to my entire post with a 1 liner that fails to actually address anything I mentioned.

The reason that the mana sytsem failed, was because of the spices. The spices should not have been available for purchase, let alone so early in the game. The spice that healed 50 mp cost 200 souls, and weighed as much as an arrow. The most mp a spell would use was 100, combined with the fact that Demon's spells were gennerally stronger than their Dark counterparts, the problem becomes pretty obvious. At 400 pop for a God's wrath, I could literally buy my way to victory. Mana restoring items would be a terrible Idea, unless they were in the form of a ring or weapon. However, I do think there should be a passive regen rate. Albeit a very slow one, so as to not allow people to spam 5 CSS in a row after only a minute of dodging. 1 or 2 mp per second should be fine.

If your main concern is that people can just set the controller down, "go make a sandwich", cheese part of the level, and repeat, then there's a few problems for anyone who would try to do that. Aside from being time consuming, it would also require one to be hollow. No one is going to go and make themself a sandwich while they risk being invaded. Since they have to play hollow, they also have to Solo the bosses. If they're entire strategy up until that point has been to cheese the level, then they're going to be in for a rude awakening. Unless their 5 casts of CSS are enough to kill endgame bosses, they will have to learn to fight and properly pace themselves eventually. Also, as far as levels/areas go, it is already possible to cheese entire levels. with poison arrows and enough patience, one can kill nearly anything in the game.

I also think that it would work out pretty well for PVP. It would force people to fight strategically and actually get them to think about what spell they're going to use next, instead of just attuning whatever their strongest spell is to every slot and hoping they land a hit. "Do I use Great Fireball right now, or wait few extra seconds so I can use Chaso Great Firebal/Fire Storm/ or what have you" those are the kinds of choices people would have to make in the middle of a fight. Maybe they can go with my different Wands = differnt MP usage or perhaps they can combine attunement with the mana system and make it so that the more times you have a spell attuned, the less MP it uses. Lore-wise, CSS could be your characters specialty and that's why it takes so little MP for him to use it. It isn't as simple as "it didn't work before, therefor it will never work/we wont bother trying to fix it".

Now then, I'm off to make me a samich.

Its not simply "equip whatever spell is strongest" or fire tempest would be the only thing anyone cast, as it can break 3k damage.

Mages (again, not the db spam idiots that get roll bs'd to death) are already way more complex than playing a melee character. Just trying to keep spell order/ where you are in the order/why you're were you are in the order/how many casts you have left, on top of managing the spacing, stamina use and current hp of melee builds is complex. Its very difficult to play a good caster.

People can just spam css, but people can also just spam kat r1s. These people suck and will get parried, roll bs'd, turtled out by any half decent player most of the time.

You say their spamming hurts worse if it works and kats can only do so many r1s, I remind you that kats can 1h r1 a good 10 times before they go through 160 stamina that regenerates fully in just over a second, where if someone is out of a spell (which are harder to hit with) they are out. No more. done. Even getting stacks of a

spell gets to costing ridiculous amounts of stat points to attune them.


Mages are already complex enough in pvp. They don't need to be even tougher. I know you have a caster. Move him from the forest into duels and see what I mean. Idiotic db spam just gets the caster killed.

Even so, how hard would it be to limit the number of spell stacks to 2? Good casters are mostly unaffected and having 27 wogs doesn't work so people who don't understand the complexities of a proper caster will stfu. why its decent mages problem that they're not good enough to handle noobish spell spam is beyond me. Its really not hard to wreck dumb casters.

It shouldn't be a decent mages problem. Cheap people will find ways to be cheap using almost any tool they're given. Backstabs have backstab fishers, the co-op system has gankers, elemntal weapons have griefers. Elemental weapons could be given stat requirements, but then that would ruin their intended purpose of giving people with low stats the ability to deal decent damage. They would then also have to give them scaling so as to prevent them from being useless, when changing them should have been unnecessary in the first place. I don't think Rifter's or my system are necessarily better, they're just something different. They could work, or they could not.

My point is that systems shouldn't be built with possibility of people taking advantage of them in mind(or at least not have it be the deciding factor), they would become unnecessarily complicated if they did. I can already see the problems with the system I proposed; heavy builds would turtle until they can cast again, light builds would just evade(as is what tends to happen when they see someone buff). That you, or I, may like the current system is no reason to not be willing to give a different one a try. It's only the second game in the series(at least I consider it a series) and they already changed the Spell system once, they may very well end up changing it again.

That the system you propose has such gaping holes and that rifters system defeats the propose is reason not to screw with it though.

Des to dks is not the same world, dks to dks 2 is. To change the system outright instead of streamlining it based on what they've learned both screws with continuity and is a terrible waste of knowledge and money (as they'd have to design the new system) especially as the system works fine most of the time.