Shocked at the reduction in mage damage, quadruple mp cost, and lowered resources

[CPS]

Sure, the old "i just spam nukes and laugh when they hit me" method won't work anymore, but that does not mean Mages can't solo.

If you can hold it, you can solo it. lol

[SuzakuCMX]

When fighting pteroc type mobs you can simply back away from tail chase while they are charging it up. If they start using backflip you can walk around to their side and completely avoid that was well.

I love the feel of party play in the dungeons so far. It felt like teamwork was much more essential now especially with the crazy hate curega seemed to generate.

Good to know :P I ended up failing it because I ran out of time waiting for Weakness to wear off xD

[mikefmc]

i mean dont you think they are trying to make the game harder neptune? should you really be able to solo NM's? no.. im sorry you shouldnt.

[Maxi_Irving]

I'm not seeing it Suzaku. What rank were those Doe? I just fought some myself as R21 THM and had no trouble at all.

[SuzakuCMX]

I'm not seeing it Suzaku. What rank were those Doe? I just fought some myself as R21 THM and had no trouble at all.

They were R25.

[Ava]

I have to say one thing I really enjoyed in this game was playing my Conjurer. The Nature's Fury ability, which lets you use aoe on your auto attack to burn up levequest targets was really fun.

-Nature's Fury recast time means I can only use my aoe attack twice a minute.
-Cure 3 MP cost has been quadrupled from 36 MP to 130, meaning I have less than 7 cures to use when soloing an NM. Some of these NMs hit for around 500 HP, meaning you would need one Cure 3 for every hit just about. Now, I doubt I'll be able to continue going on adventures by myself since I simply won't be able to cure myself through the damage.
-Since aoe has been removed from cures I'll now have to leave some of my abilities behind so I can assign Curaga spells to my action bar, and since 7 heals take priority over any kind of damage, I guess I'm playing a healer all of a sudden and I can forget about being a caster damage dealer
-Siphon MP no longer aoe means I have less resources to work with and improvise with out in the field

Well, how do you feel if you're a magic user? Did this change impact your playstyle or your enjoyment of your class?

I didn't read through the thread at all, but I think I can offer some tips for you. Bare in mind I haven't done any instances so this may not apply to those.

- I find the lack of basic attack with no cooldown for casters HURTS. Really bad. I think they should adjust the CD to something like 3 or 5 seconds (whatever Archer's is). No advice here, I play THM and DoTs do sufficient damage.

- Cure costs have been raised dramatically but I found a pretty good remedy for soloing. Get Stygian Spikes and you'll never go oom between your 10min MP ability and Siphoning corpses. This obviously wouldn't work in instances, but I would assume in instances it will be possible to swap in and out of active stance to regen more.

- I don't see the issue of cures being split. It's a whole 2 AP, you shouldn't run around with everything equipped all the time, that's silly. If you're soloing, you don't need Curaga. If you're in an instance and you're a healer, you might need Curaga - replace your nuked with it. If you're in an instance and you're not a healer, just equip your basic single target heals.

- Siphon MP is no longer AOE'd but I think I answered this one above. The true strength of Stygian Spikes is really showing now. Prior to the patch all the THMs leveled CON for Shock Spikes because it was so good, now it's time for CONs to level THM for Stygian Spikes.

Well, how do you feel if you're a magic user? Did this change impact your playstyle or your enjoyment of your class?

How do I feel? I feel it's too early to judge. They clearly changed things up dramatically. I went out to solo some leves and had an incredibly difficult time trying to do so. I could hardly solo 1 star leves I use to tear through on 3 stars. So that part sucked, but as I started swapping around my action bar and trying different abilities and different strategies for approaching battle, things eased up a bit. It's still REALLY hard, but I think over time it's adaptable. Just don't give up.

[Nicco]

all in all i think the changes will be for the better, i do agree though that i would like to see a slight reduction to the mp cost for at least the non-aoe cures that way to better help the solo aspect of leveling (notice i said leveling and not nm fighting >.<)

[Kane]

I'm happy.

[Kiote]

Bear in mind they are also adjusting the impact of Stats so it may turn out that those adjustments balance out over the next two patches.

[XangaXanga]

Don't mages drink juice anymore? I wouldn't know, I've been off and on playing this since last September that I haven't really partied with a group of randoms. I believe, however, that a few stacks of the proper juice, and maybe some pie (or whatever raises MP caps in this) would help to relieve some pressure on MP pools.

In XI, food and drink weren't an option, they were a necessity in every party situation, and if you didn't have food or drink that augmented the role you were in, you were considered inferior (a gimp).