Question on Magery Spellcasting Timing

Dragor 2025-04-25 18:30 #0

I was curious about the delay that occurs when trying to cast a second spell immediately after the first. I had assumed the spellcasting timer was intended to serve as the balancing mechanism to prevent casting too rapidly. However, the additional delay seems to significantly impact a mage’s effectiveness—especially in PvP scenarios.

If you mis-time your next spell and attempt to cast too early, it seems to trigger an even longer delay before you're able to cast again. This puts mages at a noticeable disadvantage when facing melee opponents, where every second counts. The issue also applies in PvM situations—for example, when trying to cast a heal spell quickly, there's often a 2-second delay before you can attempt to cast again.

I'm just curious about the design logic behind this mechanic and would really appreciate any clarification on its intended purpose. Thanks for all the work you put into the game!

Garret 2025-04-25 18:51 #1

We've already had this conversation, this problem has several components.
Firstly, mages in pvp and pvm should use protection spell, this prevents unnecessary spell interruptions and helps to survive in 90% of situations.
Secondly, the game has a mechanic faster casting and faster cast recovery just to compensate for these moments, this is one of the important components of the caps in the game like hit chance or damage increas, but for the mage.

Thirdly, we do not have these characteristics on NL due to the lack of any class balance patches and the general lack of class changes during the beta and during the release.

I don't see how they can add this characteristic to the game, so they need to reconsider the balance of spell speed for NL servers.
The next point is all those balance things that I voiced about the path of the divergent and or the balance of mages and their survivability.
One big addition would also be the addition of Spell Channeling enchant for the congiarium so that it would be possible to make hybrid mages and not make all mages tamers.

Dragor 2025-04-25 19:08 #2

I always make sure to have the Protection spell active when playing on NL. I'm not a programmer, but it seems like there must be some kind of internal "check" or timer that controls the delay before a spell can be cast again. Wouldn’t it be possible to simply adjust that timer value to reduce the delay—or even eliminate it?

I won’t even get into how a spell like Flamestrike doesn’t come close to the damage output of a single melee hit with a special move. I do my best to live by the "adapt and overcome" mindset, but at times it honestly feels like an uphill battle.

Looks like I’ve just got to keep working harder at it.

Garret 2025-04-25 19:20 #3

I don't think spells should deal comparable damage to weapon damage because magic has no chance to miss and you can combine spells, but if you give Spell Channeling to mages, mages will be able to combine their spells with special attacks and it will be balanced that the mage needs to invest at least two skills.
The second and in my opinion the most important problem is the cost of spells, mana regeneration and LMC, at the moment the absence of these properties makes magic ineffective, damage is one of the last issues, but the fact that you have to cast a couple of preparatory spells, and then the one that deals damage, and then also heal and end up without mana in 5 seconds of combat, when a warrior can deal damage almost infinitely - this is a problem.

Dragor 2025-04-25 19:26 #4

Good points. Hopefully they will be taken into account. And I do have to say that when i first started playing UO in1997, i really liked that i could have magery, swords, tactics.. etc. but that was before they implemented things like meditation and Eval Int. I was hoping when NL went live you would be able to work any 7 skills you wanted. But sadly that was not the case.

Question on Magery Spellcasting Timing

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