Hello there,

first of all I'm a bit biased so take my suggestions not as granted evidence and look over everything again if you want to. I'll sum up why physical dmg skills are superior to magic skills first and then offer my suggestion what needs to be changed from my point of view. So if you are intrested in viable mage gameplay this thread might be intresting to you but if you are not feel free to debunk everything ^^.

1. Armors only roll material and occult % dmg and not elemental % dmg.
2. Weapon dmg for Phys melee users benefits from the material % dmg mods that can be rolled on items because they increase the weapons dmg as well.
3. Bleed is hands down the most potent ailment in game and you have a hard time to get bleed ailments as a mage.
4. Phys dmg dealers can convert a lot of their dmg magic dmg users can't.
5. Phys dmg on weapons is a dead stat for mages because mages can't convert that phys potion of the dmg into anything else, because this only works for melees.
6. Pro phys melee bugs are left in the game like for Example "Virtuose Stance" it says basic attacks and not attacks and still phys melee dmg dealers have another way to get 2x the dmg on a skill.
7. We have 4 1h options for melee fighters and 3 2h options even ranged toons have 2 different weapons and every possible phys dmg build with these weapons benefit. Mages have only 1 weapon choice we don't benefit of at all from the base dmg the weapon offers.
8. Magic skills have lower dmg overall then phys dmg skills while BE ist still the most dmg dealing ability ingame.
9. Mages armors are crap and no matter how much Force shield you get you'll be killed pretty fast because FS don't benefit from all resi.

I realy suggest to bring back magic dmg stats for Mage weapons as baseline because you took those away without any substitute. If I have 200% attack dmg the number of attack skills skyrocket if I compair it to the numbers of a magic skill with 200% Spell dmg. Just get the "Attacks with this weapon count as spells" staff mod back on staffs as a baseline and give them basic spell dmg instead of phys dmg that only scales with phys dmg skills or even dmg converted dmg skills.
On top of it Casters need a 1 hand melee option to be able to wear shields. You alwaysed said your game is classless so why should a caster not be able to wear a shield? You remove a great defensive option from magic skill users for no reason!

It's a shame you are that physical dmg dealer focused and lost track of the downsides magic users have and I think this is pretty narrow minded. If you don't give EVERYTHING in your game the same basics and possibilitys your "classless" game is flawed in it's foundations.

I'm pretty sure I don't get an answer to this or someone from the staff is shedding light into this matter but I realy hope we'll see some postive changes for people who don't want to use Bleeding Edge or Havoc Orb. I'm looking forward to all people who run magic only builds and beat 187 exp in under 2 mins and deal over 40 mill dmg with a single attack because the game gets worse and worse for mages even if you go all out in ailments.

Thx in advance for reading this wall of text and for your oppinions.