[Teemo]

I can’t respect this thread because it was started by a sand mage. Sorry armed is rewarding when it’s don’t well. That’s the trade off for not having AoEs win the fight for you.

PS I agree on the hidden armed stances doing to much and the phys Stat on weapons doing to little.

Lol? You act like I haven't played anything other than sand in my time playing Eternia. Anyways, that's besides the point. I don't know which part of the armed meta is hard to play right now. Fatal was gutted and made irrelevant, power smash is extremely easy to hit, phantom strikes is auto target. Arm's spells are easy to land when you dash strike or space dash, the difficult part is not being telegraph in what you do and predicting people's counters, which is not solely exclusive to armed. 

And none of this has nothing to do with the fact that armed gets the highest numbers in the game on an incredibly usable tree that can be paired with any other tree.

[Lammy]

Bleed damage is meh. You're not using fatal for the bleed, you are using it for the burst of 12 spell damage if we're being honest.

And if you don't go deeper in Melee you don't benefit that much. Someone like Sarasha who goes deep into Melee for all the benefits and burst potential beats people due to them going that far deep, while also having gravity to slow and mist form and ice as utility.

Galynn, who is armed and holy/fire attests that if you just go those three skills and nothing else, suffers the most. And he even suffers against others with more burst potential.

The only people who go those Three and do optionally well, Rain for example, do well because of their DR stacking, field control, and sustain. If anyone else were to use those skills, and didn't have an optimized build for minimal burst with a lot of healing, they would lose against most people who verb well.

Also, you can run from the second phantom strikes. Mist form the other strikes. Sand Shield the other strikes. Etc, Etc.

[Chance]

Armed/Unarmed are overtuned, but I don't think it's as bad as it was by any measure, and a well built mage is on par. It's essentially the opposite of the problem that we had in Spires, where melee was a hard path to follow and the minority unless you really knew what you were doing?

Certain spells, like Sweeping/Double/Hundred Cuts should be made more consistent and not as frustrating to use, and the overall numbers need to be adjusted accordingly. 

Some trees (Sound/Crystal/Earth/Wind/Blood/etc) could do with some much needed TLC. There are a handful of 'average' options you can pick as a mage and struggle dearly against any half-decent armed build, unless you've put a lot of work into your character with hiddens and such. But on the flip side, I don't think any one tree is too good, except maybe Holy/Occult/Cosmic where they give you a lot of 'easy' options that feel comfortable to use (big aoe, shields, light orb/shadow bomb, etc etc).

[Hated]

Me and mouse literally had a nice convo in our dms about the same topic and came to the same conclusions this is eerie are you reading my mind?

[Prestige]

if armed gets hit im outtie

Me and mouse literally had a nice convo in our dms about the same topic and came to the same conclusions this is eerie are you reading my mind?

i used the wrong quote

[Hated]

[Teemo]

Also, everybody saying that you have to be close to someone to use armed and that they have the chance to miss as an argument against why armed shouldnt be nerfed is just wrong. When you're close range against a mage you're basically putting your high damage, low cd spells against their lower damage higher cd spells.

The only real hard trees to go in on is cosmic, holy, nature or agi max builds. If you're going against a homing spammer, a cheese build, sustain, burst you will constantly stick to them while out damaging them by a substantial amount. Anytime they use a spell is a window where they're vulnerable for one of your spells. Armed spells have huge spell damage numbers with huge power numbers. You will win. You dont struggle against invulnerable spells like barrier, mistform or deflecting because you can always wait for them to end and hit a spell regardless. That and you're trading your 10-20 second spell for their 30 second one. The only problem you face is shadow walk or shields, both of which u can walk out, wait and reengage.

[Detective100]

Also, everybody saying that you have to be close to someone to use armed and that they have the chance to miss as an argument against why armed shouldnt be nerfed is just wrong. When you're close range against a mage you're basically putting your high damage, low cd spells against their lower damage higher cd spells.

One word: Beam.

Another one word: Knocback.
Basically, anything with knockback can punish melee users if they try to go all in without a care. And some of those beams HURT. Interestingly though, Cosmic gets to use a homing dash that can keep going even if they get hit by a knockback move, and hit you ;-;.

Another, more specific ability though, is sand's root AoE. Roots in general, too. Against melee, roots are basically stuns for most of your skills (while rooted, moves that have dashes in them are cancelled. That includes dash strike, fatal strike, and I believe even Psmash).

There's... Quite a case to be made for Armed/Unarmed to be a high risk/high reward tree. Saying that the reward in their playing style may be too much? Maybe yes, maybe no, that is part of balance. Saying they have low/no risk involved, though? With that, I disagree. All the skills I just stated for example, are mage abilities. Slows can work on melee too, even if on a lesser degree.

[Hoovyking]

get earth bomb and reap the tears of every melee in the game

[Detective100]

get earth bomb and reap the tears of every melee in the game

Except cosmic, and their homing dashes...
(I may be repeating myself a bit too much, but that is because earth bomb IS my answer to dashes, and it just doesn't work on Cosmic builds >.>)