Casting fire breathing should recharge the number of breaths you have. Currently, it does nothing if you any amount of breaths left, whether it's 6 or 1. When I fill my gas tank, it gives me a full tank of gas, regardless of how much gas is left in my tank.

This would make combat more efficient and makes sense.

Would that make fire breathing too powerful balance wise though?

Why would that make it too powerful? You can't cast it during combat. The worst thing about it is when you breathe a target 6 times and it dies, it leaves you with 1 breath. And trying to recast it with 1 breath does absolutely nothing. I know everyone that uses a mage has an alias to breathe target x7, taking up the whole breath. So what ends up happening is the next target that gets your secondhand breath gets 1 breath plus the sight of you breathing the air 6 times.

Yeah.

By the way, I think fire breathing not very mage-like.

Going on what Red posted, I suggest removing the breathing part. Just show the actual fire breaths, not the empty breaths. Why would a fire breather breath out empty air - doesn't seem very skilled.

Ok so waiststat inc on fire breath took away all the rush of fire breathing. I have to wait for fire? Fire in its elemental state isn't slow. Flames are fast and quick. Waistat makes me feel like a borg on discharge.

Bah on waistat on fire breathing.

I understand it's frustrating, but it was never intentional to have no wait state associated with this ability.

How do you know that? If that's true then why did it turn out that way?

All you really did was make it so no one will use it. It takes me over 10 seconds now, which is ridiculous. Rather than making it worthless just take it out.

Intentional or not, it's what made it fun and useful. Now it is neither. Why are we trying to nerf mages btw? They are basically the only playable class.

I don't think a waitstate on this ability makes mages unplayable. They remain one of the strongest–if not THE strongest–classes. Others are viable choices, and it's intended to revisit some neglected classes in order to create more options.

Also, while we're on the topic: discovered a bug affecting the damage of fire breathing. It should be fixed soon, bringing it in line with prismatic spray for damage, where I thought it was already.

And oops, missing Shaba and Deneb's comments.

Deneb: Good question. The ability was first used by NPCs and was ported over to be used by PCs. NPCs have always had the waitstate, but it was handled differently, so it got missed. Sometimes there are comments in the code as well, which which might say something, "//limit this to a maximum of five" followed by some code that looks like this "chance = Deneb's INT / 5." Well, that assumes the old max INT of 25, not today's of 50. That doesn't mean we have to change it, but it does help inform the intent at the time.

Shaba: See my reply just above this one regarding damage. A missing flag for the ability meant that it's damage was about half what it should have been. As a spell, it should have been affected by mage damage increasers like INT and spell skill.

If you guys don't need 6-7 attacks at the same damage level as prismatic spray for one third the mana and a lower waitstate than casting seven prismatics, then mages are even more overpowered than we all thought!

I think the original usefulness of fire breathing without the wait state was the damage over time (especially with stun). Putting the waitstate back doesn't make the spell useless, but it makes it useless for the original intention.

And I agree with Deneb that fire breathing isn't very mage-like. Perhaps some other classes could use a similar skill (charge up once, unleash a fury of attacks 6 to 7 times)?

Firstly, "we all", don't think mages are overpowered. Secondly, in my test on Kakarot, stun/pris spray did 1000, and stun/breath did 100.

It'll be updated in the next patch. I assume the mage was level 49, so you should have done much more damage than that. Perhaps your victim has high saves?

The update for fire breathing is live. Damage was increased and wait state decreased, which hopefully makes it feel a little like the old mechanic.

Still useless.

Yeah, not very good at all. Why do less damage when you can do more damage?

First, I appreciate everyone's interest in the mage class. Thanks for posting respectfully here. As I mentioned a few days ago when a few of us tested this in the arena, there's still another problem affecting the damage. In other words, we fixed two problems, there's still one more. We've found out what that is and hope we can include it in the next patch. CircleMUD is a wild, aged beast, so I hope you'll forgive us for not noticing a few of the quirks.

It will do 88% more damage if you have high int. I don't typically like to pull back the covers and expose all the math, but I think it would be helpful here amid complaints that "fire breathe is low damage" and "prismatic spray is much more damage." You have to consider waitstates (which impacts the damage you can do per second) and mana efficiency (if you are resource-limited).

Fire breathing will work best for lower gen mages (who don't benefit from the casting speed improvements that a high gen mage gets for traditional spells). For example, a gen 1 level 49 mage with 50 int would do 1035 damage on average every 2.9 seconds with a prismatic spray, vs. 460 damage every second with fire breathing. Per second, prismatic is only 357 while fire breathe is 460. It's also only 25 mana per use to breathe vs. 90 mana for prismatic spray, so a gen 1 mage would spend only 280 mana to kill a mob with 5k HPs, vs. 1260 mana using prismatic spray. Without access to locust regen until gen 5, that seems a simple choice. Haste and other +speed abilities impact both spells equally, so I've ignored them here.

So, at gen 1, it's definitely better to use this ability to do more damage at a lower cost. Suppose you were gen 10, however. In this case, fire breathing is still 4x more mana efficient than prismatic spray, but with unlimited mana from locust regen, prismatic spray does deliver more damage than fire breathing. The damage cap makes this difficult to calculate, but it's between 10% to 30% more damage per second. Again, if mana matters, fire breathe is supposed to be a compelling option. We think it's more interesting that way.

Through experimentation you'll find out which abilities are the biggest numbers per hit. (Wait states and mana cost be damned if you're PKing and need a big hit, for example). You'll find out which ones are most mana efficient. Some are best at low levels, some best at high levels. Some at low gens, others at high gens. Lightning bolt, for example, might be your best mortal ability before you get fire breathing. I haven't done an exhaustive test but perhaps you want to to help those mages who come along! That's part of the fun!

Oops, once again, pretend I posted as Synthesis. And of course, fire breathing is fire damage, so fully expect victims to have damage reduced if they are protected from fire. Magical protection and traditional damage reduction would affect all spell types including breathe fire.