If a melee gets into melee range, he can kill the mage in 0.5s.
Really, half a second?
What, you run around at 5 hp for fun all the time?
If you are at full health, counting 400 (even though you can have more), hitting in the back (even though you could ...not show your back), you would need 6 hits minimum (not with daggers).
6 hits is 3 seconds, at least. With 2h probably closer to 5 seconds.
Is that fast, highest dps in the game, yes. But it has a severe range limitation that warrants the compensation.
If you are not at full health (because archery is a thing) then sure, you can die quicker.
But you deal damage back at range. You are advocating superior mobility (note, not kite potential through the use of CC or other spells, just straight up mobility), because melee must be avoided at all costs.
Its simply tilted too far, as often with things that are unbalanced.
If you catch him he is dead in the blink of an eye, so it HAS to be difficult to catch. HARD is way different from impossible, though
2 heavies spot a mage on a mount, the mage rides away and they cannot catch him.
Not enough mobility, even with unburden. And while slow mount sprint is great...
The mage can literally ride a quick mount, have it be sniped after mount sprint from the heavies.
Then bunny hop himself and mount a slow mount and sprint away.
You cannot get caught, unless you blunder...repeatedly...and your aim is so bad you cannot win a fight with your opponent(s) at low vitals because of the difficulty of chasing you.
2 mages spot a heavy on a mount, 1 dismounts and hops to get the heavy to dodge shots making the 2nd mage close the gap.
2nd mage dismounts as he catches up to the first, swapping roles untill both are close enough (and/or) the mount to die.
Heavy now has no means to escape.
Before you say, he can turn at any point and start killing them like the mage situation before.
Keep in mind that a heavy really does need to melee. So yay for mobility right?
It is impossible to catch him? No, it isn't or, otherwise, we'd only see mages out there and there would be no one killing them and we both know that is definitely not true since there are a TON of melee/archers doing fine and able to kill mages with no problems.
Melee is the best tool to kill bad players if you are good.
Just because nubs get chopped up by better players doesnt mean the balance is in a good spot.
I had meet some mages that were able to always manage to escape one way or another when in difficulty, but those were a very small minority, they were specced with the right titles (air/fire) AND were really good at doing it....but in most cases, we always managed to kill a fleeing mage.
Ignoring the "we" part, meaning your opponent decided to fight in an outnumberd situation (or lost a fight he was part of trying to escape).
There's a very simple basic truth in this statement. Some good players can take this game mechanic and always not lose.
Not losing =/= winning, but its certaintly a step forward from having to live with the consequences of getting into a fight.
Or a consequence of being out in the world with the option of pvp.
I also met people in fullplate/infernal being able to recover from being nearly dead to 40% life in seconds thanks to potions/rage/transfer/heals/base hp regen and being nearly "immortals" just by managing to avoid being hits for a few seconds (hiding behind something for example)...those it makes heavy armors unbalanced because they can manage to recover fast thanks to a combination of low received dmg+high hp regen? nope it doeesn't....but it doesn't make them less of a bitch to kill just as much as a good mage
You are forgetting the part where health =/= stamina, the ability to actually fight.
Longer fights drain stats on heavies. Good ones will utilise the regen of mana and stamina, but recovering like that takes a lot out of you.
(keep in mind, im not saying the ammount of punishment a full heavy with shield can take is in a good spot.
But you cant give mobility, something which can be used in many situations, and couple that to endurance.
Especially because you are still fucking over the leather geared players that lack magic magnitude, have to use unburden, and cannot endure as much damage nor recover that health very quickly.
(yes, they got more stam so they should stam>health right?
You are a mage, you should mana>stam, and stam>health. Immortality can always be argued if you were given infinite time to transfer. But guess what, cast speed and magnitude is a thing there too. So....mages > leather > heavy in the continued restat potential. The only thing heavy got going for it is resistances. And both leather and mages get magnitude on their attacks to compensate for that).
This will be the last reply.
Two more facts to add to the discussion:
* you CAN heal someone's stamina (not much, only ~10 per cast)
* using unburden improves displacement effects even when you're at 0 encumbrance (because Encumbrance, in addition to being a penalty, acts as a resist to displacements too)
Carry on.
Alright, so some people can heal stamina but its still not standard and still minor.
And yes, unburden ofcourse improves your ability if you have magic encumberance.
But having 0 magic enc =/= same magnitude as a (title) mage
Also...casting unburden still takes time, which the mage can restat or deal damage in.
You cant pretend its fine to be casting all the time just to achieve the same as another in half the time.