Skills: Charge (in General)

Skill trained against level of STR (dex?)

Exponential increase to hit and damage in round 1 of melee, prevents firing ranged weapons in round 3, as minion races ahead weapon aloft running full bore.

Wall killer skill...

Targets minion with most HP?

/me waits for "Side Step" Skill

That would be a sweet idea, but I think it would be better if it was a decreasing benefit to damage and pth. e.g.: melee round one has a 2x benefit, round two 1.7x, round three 1.5x, etc.

It would be like a 'surprise' charge and as the surprise lessens the benefit lessens. And, I love the ranged/melee transition change.

Hey if you want surprise they could do the old Scottish "skill" of turning and flapping up their kilts.A Scottish posterior would put me off of combat and my feed.

A wall killer skill is intriguing, but...

novice, aren't you one of the railers against the VB, the weapon that eats through endurance, protection, and AC as so much tissue paper? Isn't the VB already a "wall killer"?

Though, if someone devoted a minion to a one-round skill, I guess, more power to them. Yet another boon to the multi-minion team! HUZZAH! Might as well call it "kamikaze", yes? We already have defensive "kill slots", why not make them offensive as well? Go the full nine if you're going to go the one. *smile*

How about a mage skill other than Evasion? Wait, we can't have that...we can't have mages becoming interesting, that would make them tanks. *smile*

sute, has there seriously been a good mage skill that doesn't involve reducing amf in some way? I haven't been able to think of any way that a spell could benefit mages aside from evasion or a amf reducer.

spell focus...(AMF resistance)

time stop...(makes round 1 of melee last up to three rounds)

elementalist...(BL for mages, but turns the mage into an AMF bomb, with AMF spread damage to friendly minions)

share spell (this one is for you Sut, guess what it does...)

Sounds like novice has _all_ kinds of ideas to make mages interesting... *smile*

Let's face it, folks...the big OH DAMN improvements to the game have been things almost no one has thought of. Jonathan knows what he is doing. I like to think I have come to think like him, except I am lazy. And crass. And ignorant. And not very creative. And not very much skilled. And did I say I was lazy?

My worry is that mages have been relegated to: "the type of minion that is powered ONLY by pure, minion-individual PR". History bears this out. Mages have DD. That's it. Staffs have been summarily called "retarded". They would make mages too much like tanks: stat + weapon = offense.

Mages also can't really hybrid themselves as much as a wall, or tank, or even a very effective enchanter (granted, neither can a tank). Now, we have even more things a mage can't be, such as a PL sink. And we have enchanters being made MORE important by things like the RoS. (seriously, Ranger, just switch to an RoS team and become well-nigh invincible even without playing for a month, just to prove the point, yeah?)

So, in making sure mages don't just become alternate tanks, mages have become crap, at least at the high end (and before you might want to even consider waving your hands and telling me I'm wrong, get a lesser-minion mage up here and _then_ tell me I'm wrong).

I don't know what to do with mages, and most folks think they aren't broken. But Jonathan has surprised me before, and I am hoping he might again. I ask for the little things, things I am familiar with: begging for some mage-centric EDs, or some additional mage skills. Asking that a cap be put on training price so that lesser-minion teams aren't penalized for simply concentrating their stats to such stratospheric levels... Not much has happened yet.

1) Keen Swordsmanship. An increase in CTH in exchange for a decrease in damage done. The counterpart to Bloodlust.

2) Double Cast. A skill trained to 10% of the DD in order to cast twice per round, with each casting at 50% of the spell's power.

This would be useful against teams with PL and cases where a minion has very few HP left and you don't want to waste 300k damage killing a minion with 40 HP left. You exchange AMF resistance and some damage for increased damage efficiency.

--OBBQ, November 12 2006 11:12 AM EST

"We already have defensive "kill slots", why not make them offensive as well?"

20 HP, Base Decay minions. ;)