I don't know why the discussion keeps revolving around HT and bossing when all OP wants is to grind on his arch mage without spamming ult 24/7. All he's asking is for a fun grinding experience utilising other mage skills that will not affect the bossing meta in any way possible. He's not asking to make mages viable dps for bossing, so can we bring the discussion back to just making mages fun to play outside of ultimate spamming?
While we are at it, lets buff another crappy mage skill, big bang, so it will either: Do more damage when its fully charge Charge faster Big bang is as much of a meme as the update named big bang. Its slow to charge, its range is around the one of the third job main spell of mages, and its damage is subpar even when maxed. Not to mention this bug: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/charge-attack-while-getting-knocked-back-qol-suggestion.130222/ which makes using big bang really cumbersome. This skill will never be used in bosses or leeching so all of you can lower your pitchforks. Btw if you say that it will still be useless id dare to disagree. As this is the only mage spell after MAGIC CLAW that has no elemental damage, that means enemies which are immune or really strong against your normal spells could still be killed at a reasonable speed with bigbang (after the buff). Also, this server has elemental wands, which makes big bang fall behind even more than usual.
Mages seem fine to me. The only problem for new players would be acquiring decent LUKless equips but you'd do fine with 100% scrolled stuff until later.
Because to make his non-ult attacks even remotely close to as good for grinding as his ult is, that would be a huge bossing buff. You can't really separate the two. If OP doesn't like spamming an ult (regardless if he wants to boss or not) a mage probably isn't the right choice for him. That's okay.
I get that OP wants to have fun playing mages with more than 1 effective, viable dps skill but I think it's a norm for anyone even with non-mage classes to use a single skill 24/7 in 90%+ situation because it'll end up being most effective. Among the most popular none-mage classes, -Drk only spams spear crusher, -Hero only spams brandish, -BM only spams hurricane, -NL only spams TT Yea they alternate with few other skills too like roar, avenger etc. but they are not significantly used compared to their main att skill. If we are planning to buff mages' non-ultimate skills, I anticipate similar request from non-mage classes where they ask "Make non-mage classes viable outside bossing meta". This might be outstretching the standard of "nostalgia" in Matt's blueprint.
Thats roughly how it is if CL or Paralyse is overbuffed to be viable incomparisan to the current class signature skill. It will get very “new” and a change of meta of grinding which i believe that it might not be wanted. Perhaps allowing CL/Paralyze to be SI-able and attack speed to be buffed to scale with weapon might be a viable change, which might make the current AM better for bossing and the 163Staff actually wanted. But still Paralyze will be so much weaker incomparsion to CL this way. Theres alot to consider about.
I liked how mages used to play before 4th job. They were tanky, relatively short range, but mobile, and with a lot of utility. You had to get fairly up-close and personal with the mobs, and for me, I felt like I was interacting with the game more. I would have liked to see Nexon continue down that line of gameplay, with stronger versions of the non-ult skills they currently have in their line up. I liked parts of what Big Bang brought to the table for 4th job mages. Even the chargeable Big Bang skill was about as powerful as Marksman's Piercing Arrow. I think that mages could play a unique role of being a very mobile, tanky and fairly close range mobbing character. As someone who likes grinding, that sounds genuinely interesting to me. Naturally I understand that there's a meta around how mages work in this version of the game, and many players may even enjoy the ult-spamming gameplay. I personally wish there could be a compromise, a way to change mages such that a player could choose to build their mage viably for either a teleporting-around-the-map-and-fighting-at-close-range (think a beefed up 3rd job mage with expanded arsenal) or play as mages are typically played now. But that's just my opinion
