Thoughts on improving the design of Mages

Peppermaster

Mage is a damage dealer type of character in Solomon series. According to John "Mages are supposed to be like siege weapons - super devastating, but vulnerable". Considering this, the main focus of each variant of mage build must be "How do you deal damage". There are total of five schools: air, ether, fire, water, earth. There are also total of ten wielded spells as well. By adding all of that, that makes mage to have at least 15 variations of different builds to offer. Now let us see what is different with each of the builds and see what we can do to make them more unique from each other and be viable as well.

Peppermaster

1. The current state of each build

Air only is a build focused on dealing DoT damage to few enemies nearby. It is strong against mall groups of enemies and bosses. Crowd controls and flat damage amplifiers(more hit=more efficiency with flat damage amplifiers) have synergy with this build. It tends to have weak early game due to low damage and mana cost.

Fire only is a build focused on dealing small aoe with instant damage. It excels in cramped enemies or enemies with small hitboxes grouped in an area. crowd controls have synergy with this build.

Ether only is a build that is mundane and has little merit as a main build. However, it excels at being a wield ingredient.

Water only is build focused on dealing DoT damage to masses while blocking approaching enemies and arrows. It is a very defensive build that makes mage more of a frontline tank+dealer hybrid. Damage dealing secondary and defensive skills have synergy with this build

Boulder only is a build that is only for weirdos who likes to torture oneself for a challenge. It was supposed to be sacrificing dps for one big shot kind of thing but...

Air Fire is a build that excels in high DoT damage to few enemies with a bit of small burst aoe. It has one of the highest mana cost and there for needs extra care for mana usage.

Air Ether is a build that is better than ether but also mundane. It can apply slows to mass amount of enemies and it deals decent amount of DoT damage but it does not have merits compared to things like water only and water air build.

Air Water is a build that specializes in dealing DoT damage + CC to straight narrow line. It is more efficient in narrow corridors and therefore having terrain generations have synergizes with this build. 

Air Earth is an inferior build of Aire Ether. It is a mundane version of a mundane build. 

Fire Ether is basically a superior version of Fire only other than mana cost.  

Fire Water is basically an inferior version of Water only other than damage. 

Fire Earth is basically a burning manure. Moving on.

Ether Water is a basically a superior version of Air Ether. It is very unique in a way that it does not make player tankier like water only build but still promote this tank-dealer hybrid style gameplay with its cc and arrow blocks. 

Ether Earth is basically a superior Earth.

Water Earth it is interesting build that allows players to use more bursty charged attack or machine gun like button mash attack. It is true that the machine gun like button mash attack is not really viable form of playstyle in Solomon Dark but it might serve its own purpose and advantages if tweaked a little bit. This is basically what Earth build should have been: A burst attack after a short delay that deals massive damage. 

Peppermaster

2. Other issues

Mana is one of the biggest issue when it comes to monotony of this game. There isn't really much of a strategy other than get as much battle mage and channel mana as possible and get items with +2 battle mage. Rather than every build having exactly same strategy for mana issues, we need something that allows each builds to have some sort of unique solutions for mana shortage. AOS games like LoL and HotS has good examples of this. For example for HotS, Uther can choose whether he gets mana from hitting enemies with his basic attack or gets mana from hitting something with his W ability. These two options changes Uther's playstyle drastically from being more of frontline bruiser to backline main healer.

Defensive options is another issue. The only real defensive options other than just picking water related stuff or hurricane is basically magic shield. It is true that mage is suppose to be a glass cannon type of class and John knows this issue of over-reliance of magic shield. If Paladin soaks damage and Rogue dodges, then what must be the defense option for fragile mage? It is just simply utility: Crowd controls and obstacle generations. We actually do have some of these in original games like Flash Freeze, Magic Circle, Turn Undead, Ring of Fire, Earthquake, Ether Drain, etc. However, you only end up using flash freeze and that is it cuz rest of them are useless. Solution? Just make good cc and obstacle generations! Creating Stone wall that blocks projectile and enemies, ether drain that sucks projectiles as well, Magic Circle that literally stops projectiles until the end of duration, etc. So what about the magic shield then? In my opinion, every school of magic should have its own form of magic shield with gimmicks. I will expand upon that when I talk about how to change each build.

Having insignificant improvement in each skill level is another issue. While some skills like more missile, cone of ice, show significant improvement in each level up, things like stun, ember, explosion doesn't really show much impact after level 1. Rather than just adding more levels to put skill point on just make those subskills to max at 1 and instead add variety of subskills so that each decision has more impact.

RodentRacer

What?  Earth is my favorite!  I mean, I know it's not that good, but it's uniqueness is what I like about it.  Also, I completely agree about the earth+fire combination.  That needs some serious help.  The aiming is complete rng.

Peppermaster

Well actually I also love earth. Of course the reason is obviously my love of weird and unorthodox builds. I just hope that it gets better so that people don't treat earth as meme.

RodentRacer

True.  I actually started making a level that was designed specifically for earth to be more useful.  I haven't finished it though.  It still needs a lot of balancing.  And a lot more to the level.  It's very short right now...