Carpal tunnel wizards

[taltamir]

I noticed that in a lot of games playing a wizard is a recipe for wrist ach. An enemy will take many hits to go down, as a warrior that means clicking on him once and waiting for him to drop as you take turns hitting each other (and your massive health and armor means you are safe while doing so)... as a wizard you have to manually cast each and every attack spell, even though it is the same basic spell you are casting again and again and again.
And if healing isn't limited to clerics, that means you are going to have to alternate targets mid combat to heal yourself between blasting the enemy in the face.
As a summoner you have it worse, after every area transition expect to take 5 minutes to resummon all your minions and full buff them.

Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be a trope of it on tvtropes (they have other gaming tropes, even though they are called tv-tropes).

So, anyone else been bothered by that?
what are some of the games you encountered that are the worst offenders?
what are some of the games where this is averted? (either by warriors having to click every single attack, or by wizards being able to auto cast spells.)

[Demented]

What games are these?
My experience with games that have playable wizards is rather limited.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Its generally made up for with Spellcasting classes being the most powerful. Look at D&D as an example.

[taltamir]

what games you have to cast each spell? practically all of them.
the most major exception I can think of is dungeon siege 1 where you "equip" a spell as you would a bow or a sword, and the guys cast it repeatedly by themselves, just like they would with a bow or sword.
the latest game I was playing that reminded me of it is spellforce - the order of dwan (I decided to replay it after many years). if an enemy is in range your melee guy will start hitting him again and again, but if you want to be a wizard, that means casting each spell manually.


Its generally made up for with Spellcasting classes being the most powerful. Look at D&D as an example.

D&D is a PNP RPG... what I described is limited to CRPGs... where, indeed that is often the case.
With DnD games it is actually justified, with NWN2 for example, having the AI waste your daily spells is terrible (especially with rest limitations).
but games where spells = mana it makes no sense for the toon not to spam it...

Finally... linear warriors, quadratic wizards is RARELY the case when this occurs. In most games where magic is a pain the butt to cast, magic is vastly inferior to combat...
EX: mass effect 2. shooting people is vastly superior to biotics, in fact, biotics is so pathetically weak there is no point bothering with it. (contrast with another bioware game, dragon age, where the ultimate party is 3 mages and a tank; hard to tell how good 4 mages will fare since it is not an option)

[Demented]

What about ranged attackers? Presuming they have a selection of attacks or ammunition to use...

[ObadiahtheSlim]

My old school Everquest bard was murder. 3-4 songs going constantly, with a 3 second cast time. When I was crowd controlling I would have to switch between targets to mez or charm them. Plus I would continue to melee the main target if I could.

As I understand, they made twisting songs easier not too long after I quit but still.

[taltamir]

What about ranged attackers? Presuming they have a selection of attacks or ammunition to use...

depends on the game. In some game the archers are even easier then the meleers, as they attack automatically with infinite ammo and have range so you don't need to run around to the target.
in others they have to click every attack while the meleers do not, making them as carpal tunnely.


My old school Everquest bard was murder. 3-4 songs going constantly, with a 3 second cast time. When I was crowd controlling I would have to switch between targets to mez or charm them. Plus I would continue to melee the main target if I could.

As I understand, they made twisting songs easier not too long after I quit but still.

I never got to play that game, but that sounds just brutal.

[Ashen Lilies]

The Diablo games are a good exception. No matter what you play, you're going to end up wearing holes through your mouse buttons.
...
Unless you're a summonmancer.

[taltamir]

yea, diablo was a clickfest.
with the necromancer, you had it easy early on, but latter your minions would be shredded (and on occasion stuck and unable to proceed) so you had to resummon very often, AND had to rely on attack spells like bone spear.

[Mewtarthio]

Finally... linear warriors, quadratic wizards is RARELY the case when this occurs. In most games where magic is a pain the butt to cast, magic is vastly inferior to combat...
EX: mass effect 2. shooting people is vastly superior to biotics, in fact, biotics is so pathetically weak there is no point bothering with it. (contrast with another bioware game, dragon age, where the ultimate party is 3 mages and a tank; hard to tell how good 4 mages will fare since it is not an option)

Biotics doesn't take that much work in ME2. Just assign one or two commonly-used powers to shoulder bumpers, and it's as easy throwing a grenade in an average FPS. Heck, it's easier than switching between different weapons (including heavy weapons).

Side note: I wouldn't exactly call it "weak" so much as "situational." My Vanguard at least has managed to smooth out a few encounters by shockwaving heavies behind cover or clusters of weak enemies like mechs. It's certainly better than playing Whack-a-Mole with the bad guys, anyway.

[Murska]

Not to mention Wide-Area Singularity, otherwise dubbed as the Husk Nuke.

[taltamir]

husks are pathetically weak; they go down with one pistol shot to the groin. (husks are unique in that their head is in their groin... headshots don't do bonus damage, balls shots do)

Most things go down with one sniper headshot or a few headshots from other weapons. it doesn't really matter if they have armor, health, and shields/barriers.

Meanwhile, armor/shields/barriers render anyone completely immune to biotics (and most enemies have one or even two of the above, especially in higher difficulty levels). So you need to switch between different biotic based attacks to strip the enemy of all its defenses before you can actually harm it.

when I say useless I don't mean you cannot kill someone that way, you most certainly can kill them, I mean to say that there is no point to using biotics over a real weapon, because the weapon is always more effective solution to killing your enemy. Biotics are cool but usless (hillariously, the "defense values" the game calculates for your characters to determine if someone dies when holding the line at the end of the game puts biotics pretty low...)
so, its not that biotics are not capable of killing enemies, its that there is no mechanical point of bothering with them... biotics are the fighters of mass effect 2, soldiers are the wizards of mass effect 2.

Biotics suffer the following:
1. Bullets do more damage
2. Biotics have infinite ammo, but bullets are "effectively" infinite due to very high drop rates. Also, bullets ARE infinite for all henchmen... So are special ability bullets/grenades/etc
3. you have to use multiple different biotic types (switching between them) and spend too much time to kill each enemy, first whittle their defense with an appropriate ability, then kill them.

[factotum]

yea, diablo was a clickfest.
with the necromancer, you had it easy early on, but latter your minions would be shredded (and on occasion stuck and unable to proceed) so you had to resummon very often, AND had to rely on attack spells like bone spear.

Which version of the game were you playing? Once they added synergies in 1.09 Necro Skeletons became extremely durable--it was rare that you had to resummon one.

[nooblade]

The Diablo games are a good exception. No matter what you play, you're going to end up wearing holes through your mouse buttons.
...
Unless you're a summonmancer.

Huh, I played through Diablo 1 and 2 several times with the same mouse.

Maybe I have some kind of "economy of clicking" mojo going on. Or the mouse is just built tough. Or both.

[Thorcrest]

husks are pathetically weak; they go down with one pistol shot to the groin. (husks are unique in that their head is in their groin... headshots don't do bonus damage, balls shots do)

Most things go down with one sniper headshot or a few headshots from other weapons. it doesn't really matter if they have armor, health, and shields/barriers.

Meanwhile, armor/shields/barriers render anyone completely immune to biotics (and most enemies have one or even two of the above, especially in higher difficulty levels). So you need to switch between different biotic based attacks to strip the enemy of all its defenses before you can actually harm it.

when I say useless I don't mean you cannot kill someone that way, you most certainly can kill them, I mean to say that there is no point to using biotics over a real weapon, because the weapon is always more effective solution to killing your enemy. Biotics are cool but usless (hillariously, the "defense values" the game calculates for your characters to determine if someone dies when holding the line at the end of the game puts biotics pretty low...)
so, its not that biotics are not capable of killing enemies, its that there is no mechanical point of bothering with them... biotics are the fighters of mass effect 2, soldiers are the wizards of mass effect 2.

Biotics suffer the following:
1. Bullets do more damage
2. Biotics have infinite ammo, but bullets are "effectively" infinite due to very high drop rates. Also, bullets ARE infinite for all henchmen... So are special ability bullets/grenades/etc
3. you have to use multiple different biotic types (switching between them) and spend too much time to kill each enemy, first whittle their defense with an appropriate ability, then kill them.

You clearly didn't play on insanity where, other than basic troopers, enemies take more than 1 head/weak point shot to kill due to having shield, armour, or barriers, as well as health. Fighting a husk, It takes 1 point blank shot with the Evisorator Shotgun to take out their armour, then I believe it is two more to take out health. I have played it as both Adept and Soldier, and I found with both, the most important part was to have a team that could carry various weapons and have various abilities to take out all things situationally. However, the Adept is much weaker than the first game where you could simply Barrier and take a million shots then lift and have all of your enemies fly around for thirty seconds unable to do anything.

To get to the OP though, it is more annoying playing wizards in a lot of RPGs as you have to cast each spell on its own, so I agree with that point.

[taltamir]

Which version of the game were you playing? Once they added synergies in 1.09 Necro Skeletons became extremely durable--it was rare that you had to resummon one.

version 1.0? :P
maybe a little bit with later versions. I finished the game and it was awesome. I think I then replayed it once or twice... but it didn't take me more then a week to get bored with it.


However, the Adept is much weaker than the first game where you could simply Barrier and take a million shots then lift and have all of your enemies fly around for thirty seconds unable to do anything.
That was a lot of fun, yes :P

[Domochevsky]

Huh, I played through Diablo 1 and 2 several times with the same mouse.

Maybe I have some kind of "economy of clicking" mojo going on. Or the mouse is just built tough. Or both.

Or because of the fact that autofire was inbuilt. Just hold and aim. >_>

[Tome]

Huh, my experiences are a bit different. Most of the games where I've played a wizard type of character, you just fire off a couple of big spells and everything is dead. It's the warriors who have to continually whack away with the same attack over and over - though that could be due to me not playing many games where auto-attack features tend to crop up.

[Blayze]

Protection Warrior tanking in World of Warcraft is a collection of no less than thirty buttons of varying levels of usefulness, all of which will come in handy at some point during your playtime as a tank -- yet still my Heroic Strike, Devastate and Cleave buttons must hate me by now, the way our Rage mechanic allows me to mash the ever-loving hell out of them.

[taltamir]

Protection Warrior tanking in World of Warcraft is a collection of no less than thirty buttons of varying levels of usefulness, all of which will come in handy at some point during your playtime as a tank -- yet still my Heroic Strike, Devastate and Cleave buttons must hate me by now, the way our Rage mechanic allows me to mash the ever-loving hell out of them.

nobody claimed that every game in existence features carpal tunnel wizards. many games do, but not all of them. heck, maybe not even a majority. But it is a common enough occurrence.

[taltamir]

Protection Warrior tanking in World of Warcraft is a collection of no less than thirty buttons of varying levels of usefulness, all of which will come in handy at some point during your playtime as a tank -- yet still my Heroic Strike, Devastate and Cleave buttons must hate me by now, the way our Rage mechanic allows me to mash the ever-loving hell out of them.

yea, but at least the regular attacks are repeated automatically. The mage base attack must be cast individually each time.
its not how many buttons you have, its how many times you need to click the mouse/keyboard...

also, thirty is a lot, but not as much as the mage. I had about 45 (4 full bars and half a bar) when I played mage in DnD.