spellcasting
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'Maguss' wants your help bringing its mobile spellcasting to life
If you like the idea of a Harry Potter-like mobile spellcasting game and aren't that attached to J.K. Rowling's universe, you can now plunk down some cash to get it. The Maguss team has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to bring its Pokémon Go-style augmented reality wizardry to life. Pledging at least $19 (normally $25) will get you access to the beta test when it starts on December 10th. However, you'll likely want to pay more to get the full experience -- spending $39 ($49 if you're not an early bird) gets you a Bluetooth-based physical wand on top of beta access 9 days earlier. You can contribute more if you want to either get into the alpha test (November 10th) or duel your friends.
Tree of Savior answers questions about wizards and companions
Are you excited to get your hands on Tree of Savior when and if it gets a release over here? Then you'll be happy to look through the latest community Q&A, which has been helpfully translated into English. Like most community addresses, it covers a variety of different topics, ranging from casting spells on the move to working with companions in the game. Not all spells in the game can be cast while moving, depending greatly upon the type of spell and the class using it. Similarly, there's been discussion about which classes, if any, will be allowed to dual-wield. Companions can be stored at the barracks, allowing you to choose between several different companions based upon the situation, although not all companions will have the same degree of closeness with a given character. For more information, peruse the full set of answers.
New Spellcasting Pathfinder dev blog declares game 'half done'
In the most recent dev blog for Pathfinder Online, CEO Ryan Dancey announced that the game is half done, stating,"We're a little bit past the halfway point of development before Early Enrollment." Luckily for those eager to hear specifics about said progress, the blog goes into more detail -- a lot of details! These details, provided by Designer Stephen Cheney, focuses on changes to the spellcasting system. After bumping into difficulties with the system as first proposed, devs came up with some solutions to address concerns. The new system includes a new class of weapon that produces expendable effects (called spells for casters and maneuvers for non-casters) and alterations to the Refresh system. The expendables are also dropped as loot and treated like learned feats, which also prompted a few changes in active feats. You can read up on all the details in the blog post. [Thanks to Crysillis for the tip]
Goblinworks illuminates Pathfinder's spellcasting system
Thinking about becoming a Wizard or Sorcerer in Pathfinder Online? It's not going to be like rolling a mage in another MMO, where you'll instantly have access to infinite firebolt and ice shard spells that are conveniently located on your hotbar. No, it's going to be complex and deep because this is Pathfinder and that is what Pathfinder does. In a new dev blog, Designer Stephen Cheney spells out (har) the approach the team is currently taking with arcane casters (i.e., Wizards and Sorcerers). While these classes will get a huge reservoir of basic cantrips to fling out during normal combat, their actual spells will be difficult to acquire, powerful to perform, and limited in number of uses. Cheney talks about how wizards will put together spellbooks, why it's important to have a pouch full of spell components, and what keywords you're going to want to collect in order to build the type of caster you envision. It's a lengthy read, but as a wizard apprentice, you're already used to that, aren't you? [Thanks to Matixzun for the tip!]
The Mog Log: Class actions
The biggest news about Final Fantasy XIV this week, other than the somewhat mollifying UI update preview, was the addition of another 30 days of free playtime for everyone. This is the sort of thing that I don't think you can really see as anything other than a classy move on the part of Square-Enix. It's also very unexpected, but in the best possible way -- I can't help but be surprised that the company which has long been seen as completely dispassionate by Final Fantasy XI players has essentially responded to the "I don't want to pay for beta" complaints with "that's fair, we'll let you play for free." So as long as we're talking about class, let's talk about Final Fantasy XIV's classes. I'm a big fan of games that give you a broad toolbox and let you decide what you want to do with everything, and building a field class is one of my biggest joys in the game. It's not that you can't mix-and-match abilities from Disciples of the Land or Disciples of the Hand, but there's less variance than the combat-oriented classes. Let's start dipping our toes into character building, yes?
New tailoring recipes discovered in Wrath Beta files
MMO-Champion has just discovered 3 interesting new tailoring patterns in the Wrath Beta files. Rather than things you can sell, however, these are soulbound cloak embroideries, and at least at first glance, they seem very nice indeed. Lightweave Embroidery: Embroiders a subtle pattern of light into your cloak, giving you a chance to cause an additional 800 to 1000 Holy damage when you damage an enemy with a spell. You can only embroider your own cloak and embroidering your cloak will cause it to become soulbound.
Spell Haste will affect global cooldown, to minimum of one second
The CMs are doing a real drive-by on the forums this afternoon. The latest tidbit dropped by Drysc (in an only barely related thread) is that spell haste will reduce the global cooldown on spells, to a minimum of one second. It will not apply to melee or ranged attacks. Previously (and currently, as of this writing), Spell Haste was capped out by the Global Cooldown-- it doesn't matter how fast your spellcasting went, because you were stuck with the 1.5 second Global Cooldown every time you cast. But as of 2.4, that cap will go bye-bye for casters, leaving them to rack up as much Spell Haste as they can, aiming towards a 1 second global cooldown.Now, Drysc does say that it would take a lot of Spell Haste to reach that one second-- more, he supposes, than is possible in the game at this point. One player speculates that it would take 785 Spell Haste rating to go from 1.5 to 1 second (+50% spell casting speed basically), and while I'm not sure about the math on that, there's no question that you'll need a lot of Spell Haste with the current gear to cast that fast. In the expansion, however...Non-casters are unhappy, to say the least-- especially hunters, who are distraught that while mages will be able to shoot off fireballs faster, they won't be able to shoot off Arcane Shots any quicker. Melee don't have much of a leg to stand on (their attacks aren't limited by mana as caster attacks are), but hunters may have a point-- they get charged mana and can't go faster. They shouldn't get too ruffled yet, though-- odds are we haven't heard the last of the big changes in patch 2.4.
Spell haste rating revealed
This came up when we reported on the new "rating" system a long time ago (implemented so that Blizzard could better scale gear on the way up), but like Cyberdemon of Frostwolf-A, I missed it. Alongside the self-explanatory stuff like critical strike rating, and the new resilience rating, there's a new rating called "Spell Haste." Cyberdemon wondered what it was, and Tseric confirms that a higher spell haste rating speeds up the cast times of all your spells. Pretty cool.The reason we likely haven't seen it much yet is because so far, spell haste stuff only drops at the highest levels, and, from what I can see, in the form of temporary buffs that allow you to get a few casts off quickly. An equipped high spell haste rating would fundamentally change the way the game was played in many situations-- if mages could kick out a quicker pyroblast whenever they wanted, that would have a big effect in a lot of PvP situations.Tseric also clarifies that this only affects cast time, not DoT tick time, or duration of spells. And while the two trinkets linked above are the only places I could find it in the game so far, I wouldn't be surprised if this rating found its way into certain instance specific buffs, either for us (players could get a DoT put on them that would kill them in 30 seconds, but let them cast all their spells almost instantly within that time) or against us (mind-controlled players get their spells hasted for a short period against the raid). Either way, as more and more players move into the endgame, spell haste will be something to look out for.Update: Commenters have found a few other spell haste items, including this 60 trinket, and an awesome BoE caster sword.
